Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach. That honor belongs to people a lot smarter and more talented than me.

This is the prologue to a story I've had on my mental back burner for over a year now (Really, it's the sum of three distinct plot bunnies, but shh; don't tell anyone). I'm very interested in any reaction anyone may have to it, and if I evoked the emotions I had hoped as it is read. This will probably turn out to be epic length (with much longer chapters to come).

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Kurosaki Ichigo snapped into consciousness to find himself staring up at an unfamiliar white ceiling, bright lights glaring down into his oddly sensitive eyes. He squinted in a vain attempt to clear his vision, but even then his view of the world remained unfocused and his ears rung with the insistent beat of his own heart. He realized distantly that he was lying on a slightly bumpy mattress with only thin starched sheets keeping away the chill air.

Once his sluggish mind processed these stray bits of information he tensed in the bed, then groaned as his entire body protested even that slight movement. When the ache died down enough for him to again focus on the world beyond his own skin, he worked to prop himself up on his elbows to gain a better vantage point to assess his surroundings.

And failed miserably.

It wasn't until he had attempted the larger movement that he noticed the weakness in his limbs. Experimentally, he fisted the stiff sheets in one hand, but the action only served to unnerve him further. His grip wouldn't even be strong enough to lift the light covers. And that was assuming his arm had the strength to even attempt such a maneuver.

Ichigo clamped down on his rising panic, trying vainly to bring his harsh breathing under some semblance of control. 'This isn't good. I'm way too vulnerable like this; my whole torso's exposed. Damnit, what if someone attacks!-" Ichigo's racing mind immediately screeched to a halt. '…Why would I think something like that? What the hell's going on with me?'

Heart in his throat, Ichigo made a concerted effort to relax back into the mattress beneath him. With his goal—figuring out his location—still firmly in mind, he did the simplest thing he could think of. Beyond even the point of trying to turn his neck, he just let his head roll limply to the side.

It was a fair sized room, he assessed quickly, with other beds—all empty—spread over most of the floor. A privacy screen stood open around his cot. It took him a few beats to realize he was in his father's clinic. It was a new perspective for him—he had never laid in one of the patients' beds before.

'Why am I down here?' Ichigo wondered, aching to run a hand through his hair as was his usual habit but finding himself too tired to bother, 'I always stay in my own bed when I get sick.'

He tried to shift his position again only to realize with a start that there were wires connected to his chest. Wires that hooked up to the heart monitor beeping steadily at his side.

Well, that explained that, then.

'I don't understand… What happened? Why's all this necessary? Did I get in an accident? Did one of those gangs finally get the drop on me? I hurt all over, but I don't feel like I'm actually injured anywhere….' He made the effort to smile feebly, 'Oh man, is this going to be one of those things where I pull the blankets aside and realize my leg's been amputated?' The poor joke did little to cheer him. Contrary to Orihime's opinion, he'd never been very funny.

He tried to puzzle through the situation, but now that he had noticed the insistent bleating of the heart monitor past the white noise in his ears he was hard pressed to focus on anything else. And the noise was beginning to make his head throb behind his temples.

Furrowing his brows against the pain, he weakly reached up to his chest and pulled the wires free. His efforts were rewarded with a screeching flat-line that only succeeded in aggravating his head further.

With a tired groan he reached deep inside himself for the strength necessary to clap his hands over his ears and wait it out. It had to stop eventually, right?

His half-desperate question was answered not by the end of the mechanical wail, but with the sound of pounding footsteps.

Just as Ichigo craned his neck in the direction of the sound, the interior clinic door crashed against the wall and his father's form came barreling through. The man was moving at such speed that he slid several feet in the direction he had initially been running before tripping over his own feet as he spun and continued forward in his mad dash to reach him.

Isshin skidded to a halt at the foot of his son's bed when he noticed that the boy was conscious.

"Ichigo!" came the cry, followed shortly by all six feet and two hundred twenty pounds of the man as he threw himself at the convalescent teen.

Ichigo moved to shove the larger man away—violently—only to still as he realized that this wasn't just another of his father's usual brand of overly affectionate embraces.

The last time his father had hugged him so tight… it had been on that horrible night when he was nine. He had been sitting—shivering in some bright room he could never quite recall and never cared to, still soaked to the bone in frigid rainwater and his mother's bright red blood—when his father had swooped down on him like a mad thing. Had grabbed him up and held him so tightly against his body that it almost hurt, that he could feel the furious, unsteady pounding of his father's heart—as if the man had known that his son was liable disappear on the next slight breeze except for the strength in his own two arms.

Slowly, as he had on that night all those long years past, Ichigo brought his hands up…and clung back.

All the while, the heart monitor continued it's mournful wail.

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