Nice sad fic. Ichigo isn't too sappy here so that helps him being in-character. Thanks for sharing.

so sad
i love it
please continue this fic

So much hurt and pain.

But beautiful indeed.

Gosh, I love it!

Seventeen months. Dear Lords, how their angst kills me. Too true on noting though, that IchiRuki angst equals perfection. If there's anything that bugs me about how love is portrayed its the fact that the only emotion involved is happiness, but IchiRuki prove that it isn't so.

You got me choking up in the first month. How sad am I? Your imagery is just too vivid and so Ichigo that I felt as if I were watching him through all of this. I have to say it made me feel kind of awkward because no one deserves a witness to their agony: "...because his smile pricks his face like needles, embroidered to his face in haphazard stitches. He hopes the pain doesn't reach his eyes, but when he catches her violet orbs, he can see grief in them. Is the anguish hers? Or is it his?" This also got me: "But the debris clings to his body for a while, fresh water showering his naked soul, quenching his desert heart." It's amazing that even though Rukia has stopped the rain, now that she's gone, its like Ichigo is in a desert. Extreme conditions, extreme loss. How you depress me so...

The second, third and fourth month were just as painful. Having Ichigo hallucinate about shadowy figures in the second month, having the rain come down just as hard as it was before in the third month and the metaphor to sum it up in the fourth month: "But one coffin barely sufficed two fractured personae." quite literally made me get up, cry and come back to finish reading.

The following months proceeding is just as gut-wrenching, but I won't go on and on over them because my feelings on them are the same: Ichigo's sad. I'm sad. And he is still blind to the world beyond the mundane. Sigh.

What I do want to commend you on, however, was how almost everything reminded him of Rukia from how time no longer matters now that she's gone, how he craves the other identity he was forced to give up, how he rearranges his room, how he asks for strawberry juice, and how in the end of it all, he simply misses her and his only reason for smiling is because he sees the life before his powers left instead of what is before him now.

By the fifteenth month, I'm in serious need of Prozac. By the sixteenth, I read this: "He touches the mirror. And instead of the replica shattering into splinters, he breaks, shredded by the fragments of who he's supposed to be...Who?" I'm blubbering like a baby again because who would have thought the headstrong, heroic Kurosaki Ichigo would be having such a severe identity crisis.

Month seventeenth was definitely the worst. I loved the irony of the use of the beginning of Bleach to where he was at this point in his life and the question, "Aren't you lonely?" Makes me wanna hug and squeeze Ichigo until he gets angry enough that he doesn't feel so hollow anymore...

Throughout this oneshot you've shown Ichigo being slowly chipped away by the loss of his powers and Rukia in his life. Its almost a shock to have someone as strong as Ichigo mentally and emotionally break down like this, but its realistic in the sense that at one point in everyone's life, they will break to something and it won't be a pretty thing to witness.

"Until today, she still haunts him." That was the final blow for me. Officially depressed. I need ice-cream.

That was so angsty but so excellent. There's some really awesome writing in here, keep it up!

Damn.
Way too good for me to babble on about.
Just
Too
Good.

Well I was rather late reading this, as they had already reunited. Yet I still can feel the angst in Ichigo's heart when he lost his Shinigami powers, lost his ability to see ghosts, and lost the chances of seeing Rukia. Everything seems so normal for him, but he still felt pain, as he could not protect anymore and he felt half of his soul gone as there was no Rukia to disturb him or encourage him.

I really liked the way you put this together. It was very well thought out, you took us through the different phases he went through, and you kept him very ic, as far as I'm concerned. I like that so much of it was all internal. Little things that the rest of the world would notice, but huge changes inside of him. It was a great read, thanks for sharing it!

there are no words.

This captures the agony that was spun out for us in Chapter 423 and strings it along, hardens it, forges it into something tangible and persistent and real. The raw emotion in this story is cutting.

In my opinion, Ichigo always was a constant, unchanging sort of guy. Rukia came into his life and gave him something he'd been unwittingly longing for since his mother's death. He's not going to get over her absence and the loss of his powers easily.

I really love this story (definitely going to my favorites). It is beautiful in its angsty deliciousness, and it has none of the insultingly simple reunions and reassurances found in other stories pertaining to this particular time period.

Thank you for the great read.

~Song

so so beautiful. you wrote out his feelings so well and in character that i could feel my heart ached so painfully for ichigo. this piece of yours was brilliantly written and so heartfelt. i loved it to bits. i especially loved how you wrote his feelings down for all 17 months. i could easily picture how hard and painful each of those months were for them; the longer it became, the deeper the pain.;_; gosh i hope he will reunite with rukia soon.

OMG, I'm wordless, serious.

I saw today the new poem of the 49 volume of Bleach, couldn't help to see this AMAZING fanfiction.

your writing is so freaking good, and you put so much emotion in so few scenes. is really touching. I'm not ashame to say that tears have fallen.

brilliant work, already faved!

Truly, I lost count of how many times I read this particular fic (I even saved it to read on my ipod touch from time to time).

Thank you so much for sharing such a beautiful perspective of what happened within the time frame that will forever remain untold.

Thank you.

awwww, this is just heartbreaking sad. T_T But you really capture the mood of Ichigo. Love it!

That was beautiful. And painful. And utterly bittersweet. Like the infamous chapter(s), you've captured the essence of Ichiruki angst well.

Great one-shot. Your descriptions are creative and expressive. Thanks for writing!

This is a lovely interpretation of Chapter 423/424. It's really one of my favourite chapters in the whole manga. I like how you made the 17 days as a label, that would kind of distinguish them, and as a time measurement. The language flows, and is descriptive, and you certainly use the rules of threes very well! :) Be careful, though, not to use it too much - sometimes, the sentences of simple words are best. I have browsed through your works recently, and I'm have to say that they're really well done! Keep up the good work!

~iver-Severn