17. But he too, will protect everything.

Dedicated to the lovely Fractoluminescence

"How are you able to just… come and go as you like, Shi-kun?"

The spirit floating by the orange-haired girl hums, thinking.

"I don't really know, Orihime-chan. But then again, no one ever asked how Kido, Hado, or the use of reiryoku was possible. I would think, just some quirk in my being allows it."

She takes his answer as it is – Shi has never been more knowledgeable about the on-goings than any of the rest of them.

Perhaps he was privileged with power, his abilities, but in many ways, he was limited still.

He's floating about Karakura town with the child, retracing the steps they took that one cold night Aizen sent an Arrancar to pick her up.

They walk past the hospital where they failed to find the elder Ishida; then the Ishida home whose halls are always silent.

Uryuu is underground, perhaps knitting, perhaps training. But he is not there to greet them.

Orihime is content to walk with the ghost, giving him a formal tour of the town.

"It's a comfortably small community, Shi-kun. If you'd like, I'm sure you could just stay with me."

She says it and means it, whole-heartedly.

Shi doesn't have to speak for her to know that his answer is a gentle, "No."

He merely smiles and thanks her for the offer.

He has too many things left in Soul Society for him to run to the Human World and stay.

Orihime understands; Shi just needs a little bit of time away from Shinigami and Seireitei and all it embodies.

"Respect and loathing, mistrust and yet still needing protection. Orihime-chan, when there comes a time, protect what is yours. Stand your ground if they ask you to sacrifice things you're not willing to."

They both know that he means more than he says, but that she does not (yet) understand.

His half corporeal hand, lightly resting on her head.

"I will not abandon you, or this town, okay? I promise."

Shi knows, better than any of the Shinigami.

The children of Karakura Town are still children. Not even dead yet.

And he knows better than most that they have saved the afterlife by their actions.

It would be cliché to say, but if Shi could be honest, the afterlife as it was (is?) was not deserving of the heroes that fate gave them.

But who am I to say? I who have seen little and met few people; thinking of acquaintances to be saints; of power to be merely for protecting and not greed.

They walk by the Kurosaki home.

Cheerfully, the child tells him that "Ichigo-kun is with Urahara-san, Karin is out playing football and Yuzu and Isshin-san are at the clinic."

They didn't go by the clinic that night – unlike Ryuuken, Isshin has every reason to be at home at night.

Shi knows, of course, that the senior Ishida loves his son. He could tell from the first moment they met at the hospital.

But he knows all too well that avoiding grief is simpler; throwing oneself into work and forgetting the emotional needs of the other.

Not too different, not too different at all, from the Shinigami that the elder professed to hate.

It would be wrong to say that they are all same, all still human.

But no one would deny that there were some commonalities between the dead and the living.

They both walk.

(Him and Orihime; the deal and the living.)

Both.

They wound up outside a dojo.

Orihime peeps in through the paper screens, Shi floating above her to have a look as well.

There is only one person inside, practising katas on a wooden dummy.

Her energy hums, where Orihime's flits about; warm like Orihime's.

Influenced by her own growing reiatsu another human child manifested powers to protect themselves.

As much a symbol of the children's strength and his (soul society's)- his (the Shinigami's) weakness.

That they developed powers to protect themselves because they had failed.

The girl doesn't stop but she calls out, "You know you don't have to stand there. Come in already."

And the smile on Orihime's face lit up the room as she slid open the door and allowed the last rays of sun in.

"Tatsuki-chan!"

She moved to hug the black short-haired girl but was waved off, "I'm sweaty Hime, let me take a quick shower. I'll be right out."

Shi can't tell what sort of kata the girl was doing, but he is willing to bet that the set of kata did not end where the girl stopped.

Orihime is busy for a moment as she checks on the fridge's contents, then the first aid kit and finally the storeroom.

Shi guesses it's the storeroom since it's where the wooden dummy disappears into.

She tried to introduce them, "Shi-kun, this is Tatsuki, my closest friend from childhood."

Turning to Tatsuki and gesturing back at Shi, she repeated it again.

Tatsuki only frowned and attempted to greet the spirit introduced to her.

"You can't really see me, can you, Tatsuki-san?"

"I can hear you though," comes the speedy response.

Shi is fully corporeal, using reishi to sustain his image, yet Orihime's friend still cannot see him.

He places a hand one of hers and she covers it with her other hand.

In her mind's eye, she constructed an image of him by touch.

By the end of the exercise she could see him, an outline of him at least.

She can't really see him, of course, but Shi can see that the girl is troubled by her inability to see.

Shi cannot do much for her; he complies and waits patiently as she tugs on his hair to complete her visualisation.

"You're a shimmery picture now. Nice to meet you, Shi-san. I'm Tatsuki, a human."

His lips quirk upwards.

"You're… your lips just moved, right?"

He blinks and looks at Orihime.

"You moved your head, you're looking at Orihime."

Shi laughs, gently.

"Nice to meet you, Tatsuki-san. I'm Shi, a wandering ghost."

Orihime is absolutely delighted.

She could see him.

At the same time, he worried; of what it meant for her and her friends. Of what it meant for him and the inevitable war that was looming.

History is cyclical.

War was coming.

There would be no running.

She was weak right now against the spirit world.

She was strong in the world of men.

It would not enough to protect Orihime from Arrancar.

Others would not always be around; Orihime was not a good combatant.

But this girl would always be there for the healer.

He would count on her power growing exponentially now that her Sight had awakened.

Until then, he would have to stay to protect them.

From themselves, from the scientist who hid under his hat, from the higher powers above.

The power of friendship is strong.

He knows that Orihime trusts this girl.

He asked for her hand, "Please," and she (he) gave it to him (her).

A little push of cold – and her powers reacted in an explosion.

Orihime who healed to save and the child before him, a fire smouldering who would burn the world to the ground in order to protect her friends.

Shi cannot do much, very often his hands are tied.

But somehow and someway he must find a way to protect Orihime, a way to protect her best friend, a way to protect the town that found itself entangled with the spirit world.

It's not much, but if there was one more child who knew how to call for a Shinigami, then maybe the town would be that much safer.

She asks him one day as she landed a blow on his solidified leg, "Why couldn't I see you the first time that we met?"

Shi tells her that he does not know.

"I could see pluses, hollows and even Shinigami by that point. What is it about wandering ghosts that make you all so hard to see, Shi-san?"

The child has many questions he cannot answer – does not know the answer to.

Even now, he knows that in his semi-corporeal form he is only a faint outline to her. When he is solid enough that her blows connect, he is still translucent.

"I've never come across a human quite like you, Tatsuki-san. I confess to being at a loss. Perhaps Urahara-san would know, but that would be a question for another day."

Shi knows that the girl is wary of the hatted shopkeeper. Not for the reasons Shi is cautious of him, but he finds her caution fresh among most of the human children who somehow come to be reliant on the mysterious man.

As she's distracted, Shi sweeps her legs out from under her.

Her scowl wipes traces of her curiosity away.

Shi smiles indulgently – because she remembers why she wants to be strong.

She only wants to protect.

That power to protect.

Shi questions himself sometimes.

Of course, he wants to protect them.

But how much power would be enough?

How much would be… too much?

Shi thinks of a hundred thousand souls coalesced into a stone buried into a homunculus and a phoenix screeching – the heat of a thousand suns.

He wakes up from his sleep, something that he ended up needing more of as he aged.

The dream was not… pleasant?

Shi is unsure.

If there was a problem, what was it?

Shi thought back to it.

When the girl declared that, "I have to get stronger in order to protect Orihime."

Did she know how much stronger Orihime was spiritually?

Maybe the gap made her uncomfortable.

Shi does not claim to understand everything.

But he knows very well that the dead are prone to their fits more than the living due to their age.

He prayed for a millennium of peace and an age of prosperity.

Prayed that at least, the next war occurs when Orihime-chan and Tatsuki-chan had moved on.

It was a little too quaint that everything happened so close (relatively, in dead-years) and everything just came back to Karakura town.

Could he blame Kisuke?

He ought to, but there was no evidence.

He slipped through the gaps in the barrier and found himself in Karakura – the place where the gap between the living and the dead was the smallest.

The place where the beginning of the end of the world would start.

Each time the hollows spilt over, it was to this town not any other.

He would have to be a fool to think it was a natural phenomenon.

But Shi doesn't have the kind of power needed to keep the worlds apart.

He can't do much, at all, after all.

He can only tell her, "You have to be strong, Tatsuki-san."

And he promises – he keeps promising things he can't really promise.

(Shi doesn't want to be a liar. He wanted to be a protector. So, he promised.)

The girl with the heart of a lion and the strength of one was by the side of the healer who rejected the universe.

Everyone is planning something.

Shi is just planning for something.

He wanted to protect them. Too late he realised that he could have protected them another way.

That he could have made them forget.

That the hundred thousand souls in the pretty rock embedded in him would have gladly taken many more souls to protect the two he wanted to be safe.

But that would have been… wrong?

Because every life should have mattered.

Shi protected them, as he wanted to.

He watched the child he trained with run ahead of him, her fists ablaze and he thought –

ah, what a cruel fate game played.

He prayed.

War came again, much too soon.

Hello! Um, I'm back for a bit after an entire year. Again, this chapter is dedicated to the prompt on Shi interacting again with Orihime and meeting Tatsuki. Pardon me, I've written this up in about three hours after midnight. I hope that it's not too disjointed; this does require slight knowledge of the Quincy War and Tatsuki's powers to understand fully. It was not really my intention, but I might be dragging our geta-boshi through the mud.

Somehow… I just can't really see him as an entirely good guy.

We're a little closer to the target of 31 chapters, but I'm not sure how long it will take to get there… depends on the prompts I get and the inspiration that hits me.

Much love and thank yous for your patience,

(I'll get back to all my PMs in a bit if anyone is still reading!)

Kayo.