They adjust. It's not as bad as those first 17 months when he had no powers.

He gets communications from Urahara's shop whenever he drops by. He doesn't even try at his own powers when a hollow is nearby, though he probably should just to check out what works and what doesn't.

But he really can't be bothered now. He has done his time for Soul Society.

He can still see the ghosts. The hollows, too. And he can see the shinigami who battle them. No it's not her, or any one he knows really, not even Imoyama-san (though he'd call him by his actual name if he saw him, just in relief to see a friendly face).

Truthfully, he doesn't need to worry about it, though he doesn't know who these shinigami are, and they seem to be oblivious to his presence, or at least think he's like everyone else and that he can't see them. (It's like they're not even taught current events, really.)

Rukia's been managing the 13th pretty well in his estimation, since there's more than just one shinigami stationed in Karakurachou now. Something that should have been done long ago if you asked him.

She visits him a few times, at the beginning. She always brings someone along. The reason is always different- they need a break from rebuilding, they just wanted to pop in and say hi, or sometimes even because they want to pick a fight with him since he did a terrible job at saying his goodbyes. But she never stays for long and it tapers out after a while.

Urahara gives him a phone with interdimensional abilities.

They talk sometimes.

Never like how it was that one night. But about life. About their frustrations. About something funny that happened.

About where life is taking them.

It is never the same.

His life takes him to Orihime and he finds things about her he never appreciated before.

Her life rebuilds her relationship with Renji until eventually it grows past where they had once been.

Rukia is glad to see the life he is building, full of laughter and love, family and strength.

Ichigo thinks of what Renji had told him before his final meeting with Yhwach and is also glad.

She visits with Renji and an infant Ichika after Kazui is born. He never sees her unleash her Bankai. He does not train with her. He is not there when she is promoted to Captain of the 13th Division.

They promise their children will grow up friends, but they don't see each other again until a full ten years has passed since Yhwach.

Since that last threat.

But Ichigo is secure in his defeat of Yhwach. For how can that threat- to destroy his world at his happiest- come to fruition when he has never reached his happiest?

He gave that up. Sacrificed his happiest. And as bitter as he is sometimes, when he thinks about it sitting alone the dark at night and his heart aches with the conflict, he has come to terms. He thinks she has, too.

Whatever Yhwach saw could not possibly harm him or his world here and now, for that happiest future is naught but a fantasy now. It is a land of could have been. Ichigo was no expert, but he supposed Yhwach would simply cease to exist when he came into contact with this new future where he is happy, but not his happiest. He would be defeated simply because that future he saw, that future with his happiest moment, did not exist.

That world exists only in his dreams, in the whispers between him and Rukia, on that last night, and kept as a secret safely hidden in their hearts ever since.

"Yo."

"Hey."

And this space, caught between them, is where he could have been happiest.