Disclaimer: Bleach is owned by Tite Kubo. I do not own any of the characters or concepts within this work of fiction, and am not making any money off of this derivative work. (In fact I'm pretty sure I'm losing money since I pay for my own Internet access.

Please see additional author's notes at the end of this work.

At night, when his sleep isn't interrupted by the insistent beeping of Rukia's pager (or, not infrequently, a kick from its owner), Ichigo dreams of a woman. She stands at a distance from him in a wintertime city of skyscrapers, incongruously beautiful in a white kimono and lavender obi. Her face is blurred in his dreams, but Ichigo has an impression of long, silver-white hair and pale skin. Sometimes it is snowing, and she is nearly obscured by frigid winds; other times the sky is merely the flat gray of a winter morning.

Sometimes, when Rukia has shoved him out of his body with that horrible glove of hers and Ichigo is running at top-speed towards the scream of a hollow, he can hear a feminine whisper in his mind. At first it's as though someone is rolling over in their sleep, just the susurrus of fabric shifting and a yawn. Later, after Ichigo has fought Grand Fisher, the voice is louder – but still says nothing in a language he can understand – and he knows it's the woman in white from his dreams. Though he does not dream of her every night, she is a little closer each time he destroys a hollow, each time he becomes stronger.

The night before everything falls apart, the woman appears to him for the last time. This night, she is close enough to him that Ichigo can see there's a celadon wrap above her obi and a star sapphire clip holding back a lock of her hair. Her face is no longer blurry, and he can see that she has stern lavender eyes. She smells the way Karakura Town does during a snowfall, with something floral underneath that.

"Can you hear me now, Kurosaki Ichigo?" Her voice is the one he has heard when fighting, but clearer, now. Her voice is higher-pitched than Rukia's but not unpleasantly so.

"Yeah," he finally responds. "Who are you? Why do you keep showing up in my dreams?"

The woman laughs as though he's said something funny, using the sleeve of her kimono to partially hide her face. "You think this is only a dream, Kurosaki-san? Do you not recognize this place?"

Ichigo's eyes scan their surroundings; they are surrounded, still, by skyscrapers and snow. The towering buildings are wrong, he realizes; they are upside down or on their sides. In fact, Ichigo isn't on the ground: he stands on the side of one of the buildings, a glass monstrosity that belongs someplace like Tokyo or New York. He feels a moment of panic but reminds himself: this is just a dream. "Nah, doesn't look familiar."

The woman's eyes widen slightly. "It was raining when I arrived," she admits. "When the rain stopped, I made it snow, as it does in my true home. But perhaps –" She gestures, and the snow is blown away by an icy wind, leaving only the skyscrapers and a gray sky. "Do you see it now, Kurosaki-san?"

Ichigo raises a hand to the back of his neck, rubbing it uneasily. He slouches, noticing only then that he is not in his t-shirt and boxers but in his shihakusho, though both his sword and its sheath are missing. "No, I don't. And you didn't answer my questions."

She hides her mouth and chin behind her sleeve again for a moment before answering. "This is your inner world, Kurosaki-san. Or your mind if you prefer. And I am /." Her voice warps and muffles on the last word, as though someone has suddenly put thick headphones over Ichigo's ears.

Ichigo straightens, amber eyes narrowing. "Sorry, what? I didn't catch that." His voice is gruff, but he's a little relieved that after all the weirdness of the past weeks he's just in his own mind (which is somehow different than a dream) and not…elsewhere.

"/ki," she repeats, and this time Ichigo can make out the last syllable. He sticks one finger in his ear to try and clear it, ignoring the woman's moue of disgust.

"Sorry, still can't hear whatever it is you're saying. Where'd you come from anyway, if you're not part of my mind?"

At this, the woman's eyes look away, and Ichigo thinks there is a suspicion of tears in them. "I belong with Kuchiki Rukia, but she…loaned me to you." Though her voice cracks on the last word, when the woman looks at him again her gaze has softened. "To protect your family."

It takes him a moment, but Ichigo catches on to what she is saying. "You're her powers. You're her…sword?"

"Zanpakutō." The word is sharp in her mouth. "There is a difference, you know. I am not just a dead piece of metal for you to swing around."

Ichigo's cheeks flush a dull red at the reprimand, and he rubs the back of his neck again. In this uniform, in this place, he feels the absence of his zanpakutō on his back keenly, for all that he's only had it a few weeks. "Rukia shared her powers with me but she didn't tell me any of that. And she didn't mean to just hand you over, you know. She said she only wanted to give me half." Given what he knows now, what this woman has said, he's not sure how that was ever going to work.

That statement earns him another stern look, but then the woman's eyes grow distant as she looks around the false city in his mind. "There is someone else here," she allows, "Who will allow you to protect those whom you wish to shield, if you can awaken them."

The world shakes, then, and the woman looks up. "It is time for you to go, Kurosaki-san."

Before Ichigo can say anything else he is awake again, and Rukia – Rukia is gone.

Later, when Abarai Renji and Kuchiki Byakuya have appeared, when his weapon breaks under the onslaught and his blood is pooling on the ground, he hears the woman's voice in his head again.

I am sorry, she whispers. Without meaning to, he drops back into that place of skyscrapers and gray skies. The windows of every building are shattered and several have collapsed entirely. She is nearly gone, half-transparent in front of him, but when she sees him, her lavender eyes widen and Ichigo smells snow again.

He is dripping blood on the ground from his shoulder, from his chest. Ichigo knows that he is dying, both here and in the real world. Still, he asks, "What happens now?"

The woman does not speak. Instead, her obi falls from around her waist with a touch, turning snow white as it does. She wraps it around his chest, and hysterically Ichigo thinks that his blood is going to ruin it. Her eyes are ineffably sad; they look just like Rukia's in that moment and Ichigo thinks, how did I not know who she was in the first minute?

Her ice-cold lips brush his cheek and she whispers, "Thank you for trying to protect her." Then between one breath and another, she vanishes in a fall of ice and snow. The fabric around him stretches impossibly long, leading into the distance like a long, white ribbon. For a moment, Ichigo thinks he can feel Rukia – feel her shock as the woman returns to her, feel her anguish at knowing that he is probably dead, feel the moment when she pushes everything down to become an emotionless husk and await her own death. Then there is nothing, and he knows that he must have imagined it.

His eyes close as the rain starts to pour down amongst the ruined skyscrapers, melting away the snow.

In the real world, when Urahara finds him and offers to give him the powers he needs to save Rukia, Ichigo doesn't hesitate. And when the gates open to take him to Soul Society, he leaps forward and follows the white ribbon that only he can see.

This fic was inspired by Ron The True Fan and SkywalkerT-65's works, which respond to a challenge that, in part, poses the question of "What would happen if Ichigo learned Sode no Shirayuki's name during the Agent of the Shinigami arc?" While this one-shot does not claim to be a response to the full challenge, I was intrigued by the idea that Ichigo was hosting Sode no Shirayuki for a time, not just using Rukia's powers to swing a big sword around.

If you arrived here because you've been following Harry Potter and the Baroness, I am truly sorry for the long wait. 2019 was extremely busy and stressful for me and 2020 hasn't been off to a great start either (I imagine I don't have to explain that second part...). I have not abandoned HPB and do hope to update that work soon. I wrote this fic in part as a way of trying to give my creative juices a jump.