Vigil

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

Author's Notes: For some reason I just happened to remember a somewhat funny riddle from an old joke book of mine, and then I realized how fitting it was for Bleach. The last part demanded to be written, and I am ever victim to the whims of my muse.


When he turns off the light and climbs into bed, Ichigo is not expecting sleep. When he closes his eyes in mimicry of rest, he is not expecting silence because there is always a riddle waiting to be solved. He takes this as gospel; he knows it for a fact.

"The more you take away, the bigger it gets."

In this world the buildings slant sideways and the leaves fall up. The mind corrects the logic and he can keep himself from going insane. He visits this place nightly but he can never seem to remember why, a question he regularly attempts to ask the man in the distance, shrouded in his dark cloak and sunglasses and obscure riddles.

"What is it?"

He has never been here by himself; the man in the distance is ever-present, reluctant to give too much away. Somehow he knows that the way out lies in his answer and he tries to make sense of the paradox, to unlock the sphinx. But before he can, the image of himself appears; a perverse imitation that laughs cruelly at his ignorance. Its voice disturbs him most; it is the voice that haunts his thoughts, the voice that haunts his soul, but it is always his voice, his, and he is afraid because he can't control what it says or to whom. It knows this too and laughs all the more even as it dissipates and scatters to the wind.

In this reality Zangetsu's name never reaches him and gravity suddenly rights itself so that he is falling and falling past faces that silently watch his descent from the windows: Ishida's first, then Inoue's, and a few floors later there is Chad. The expanse of sky seems endless and he thinks for a brief moment that he is merely resting on air and the sharp edge of concrete obscuring the sky is out of place. It is when the butterfly passes him that recognition hits, and he flails wildly to get a look at Rukia's face observing stoically from the building behind. Before the ground can rush to meet him, the other is there again – it grabs him by the collar and pulls him close, rushing them both up to meet the infinite sky. He remembers being confused by this rescue; but then the other will whisper the answer in his ear and push him away, and it takes Ichigo a moment to realize that there is

"A hole."

something wrong, and that the thing in its hand, the bloody, writhing thing wearing a mask is actually the remains of his decapitated heart.

Ichigo always wakes up screaming, clutching wildly at his chest to make sure that he is still whole, to make sure that his heart is there, intact and beating.


owari