Characters: Tatsuki, with references to Ichigo, Orihime, Keigo and others.
Pairings: None
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Fake Karakura Town arc and Chapters 408 and 409.
Timeline: Just before Keigo runs into Tatsuki in Chapter 408.
Author's Note: One has to wonder what Tatsuki was thinking during this time, and I am assuming that she was awake before Keigo.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

The silence was the loudest, most resounding thing she had ever heard.

Beyond the outskirts of town, there was nothing. Nothing Tatsuki was used to seeing, anyway.

Instead of finding the highway that led, at an admittedly meandering pace, to downtown Tokyo, Tatsuki was met with the jarring sight of mountains, majestic and pristine. Tatsuki had never seen mountains before, so she had stared at them when they first met her eyes, gaping, brown eyes uncharacteristically wide.

As Tatsuki wandered the silent, lonely streets of Karakura Town, the leather soles of her shoes hitting the ground being the only sound for miles, she frowned, dipping her chin into the hollow of her throat.

Ichigo. Somehow, when strange things happened, Ichigo always a lot to do with it. And this time, Tatsuki suspected, he had everything to do with why there were people all over passed out, slumping over on the ground as if they had just laid down where they were, on the way to school and work and gone to sleep.

However much the scene in the underground of Urahara's shop had hurt her, it made Tatsuki glad too. Urahara-san, that strange man, had told her after the others had left that Ichigo would bring Orihime home.

Tatsuki went over her memories in her mind.

Unsure how, Tatsuki had always known where Orihime was, from the day they first met so many years ago. She wasn't sure how she knew, and counted it as a sort of sixth sense; it was a comfort, to always know where her naïve, too-innocent friend was, to have a sense of whether she was safe or not, and to run to her if she wasn't.

But then, suddenly, she didn't know anymore.

It was as if Orihime was just gone (Or dead, the whisper came to her, but Tatsuki didn't dare listen anymore), and there was a hole where she had been, sucking in space.

The next thing Tatsuki remembered, it was Ichigo's head smashing through a wide school window. The glass shards had gone flying through the air had been like sunlight reflecting off of rain, prisms of light exploding in the staid school air.

There had been rage in her voice and stark terror in her brown eyes, unreasoning terror that, frankly, Tatsuki had never experienced before. Something had happened, Orihime was gone, and Ichigo knew what had happened. But he wouldn't say a word.

Ichigo seemed strangely unaffected by the sensation of having his head put through a window, and Tatsuki ignored the pain from the glass shard cuts on her face and arms as her blood and Ichigo's blood mingled and puddle on the cool tile floor beneath them.

Someone (Tatsuki couldn't remember anymore) had pulled her off of him, and all she could do as Ichigo walked away was lift her head and scream.

She, Keigo, and Mizuiro had gone to Urahara's shop, and found a door to a back room left open. It bled darkness, stretching out with ghostly, fluid fingers from the door, leaving Tatsuki half-afraid to go any further, but at the same time, it beckoned her on irresistibly, and she'd be damned if she chickened out like that in front of the two boys with her. She'd be damned if she didn't persevere and go on, for Orihime's sake.

The scene that had played out before her confused her to no end, and she didn't just have the strange rip in the air that had opened and closed, swallowing Ichigo, Sado and Ishida within it.

Why were Sado and Ishida going with Ichigo? What did they have to contribute to whatever it was Ichigo was planning on doing?

Ichigo and Sado had been friends since middle school; Tatsuki knew that. But as far as she knew, despite having had the same homeroom for the past five years, Ichigo hadn't known Ishida existed until a few months ago. Children just had instincts for certain things, and what Tatsuki knew by instinct that Ishida was one of those kids who, for whatever reason, didn't like to be noticed and kept as far below the radar as humanly possible. He had, at least, effectively managed to keep out of Ichigo's awareness until recently. Tatsuki hadn't been aware that Ichigo and Ishida knew each other all that well, though she knew that the latter and Orihime had, inexplicably, become significantly closer friends recently.

Soon after the three had left, Tatsuki had been walking to school one morning, in the crisp autumn, the slight cold nipping at her heels, when she'd suddenly been struck with an overwhelming urge to sleep. Tatsuki could barely huddle down on the sidewalk before her heavy eyelids closed and she slumbered on the sidewalk like she was back in bed at home under warm bed sheets.

Tatsuki wasn't sure how long she'd slept. There was an instinct, deep in her, that it had been a very long time. Days, maybe even weeks she had slept, her dreams indistinct and hazy and—as consciousness began to return in full—Tatsuki couldn't quite grasp what they had been about once she woke up. It was like a far distant memory, of faces she could no longer recall. She wasn't sure why, but that bothered her.

The first strange thing she noticed was the air. It was silent; there was no familiar cacophony of bird song, people talking, cars traveling down the roads, the metro speeding from one site to the next… And it was so much cleaner, too. As Tatsuki breathed in deeply, she could detect no hint of the smog and air pollution that had so defined Karakura Town; the air was pure and pristine, crystal-clear, and it amazed Tatsuki how much easier this air was on her lungs.

Then, she had seen the people.

It was alarming, she had to admit. People everywhere, locked in slumber, drooped over railings and park benches, collapsed on the side of the road. People asleep in their stopped, stationary cars, heads pressing down over the steering wheels of their cars. There were traffic guards asleep in traffic.

Tatsuki had wandered the streets, shouting out, screaming for someone else to be awake. It was like she was alone in the world, and the silence was unbearable. Tatsuki prayed she wasn't the only one left awake.

Then, Tatsuki had marched on to the outskirts of Karakura Town, looking for help. That was when she saw the mountains.

Ichigo had something to do with all of this. Tatsuki was sure of it. And when he came back, he would fix it.

Having found Chizuru and Michiru slumped over on the ground near each other, Tatsuki frowned. She wanted to take them to the school (it was familiar, a safe place, and in this strange new world Tatsuki wanted to be somewhere where she knew the contours of every wall), but wasn't quite sure how to manage that. It was going to be difficult just to carry one of them at a time, and Tatsuki wasn't quite willing to leave one of them behind, vulnerable and alone, while she took the other to the high school.

The silence was overwhelming, and terrifying. Tatsuki was growing to hate that absence of sound in just the few short hours that she had been awake. It told her she was alone, that there was no one else, and that it would stay that way.

Then, the silence was broken. Shattered, actually. Keigo had a way of doing that.

Even as her elbow collided with his face and sent him flying down the asphalt, Tatsuki had to admit, if only to herself, that she was glad to see him. Keigo was better company than no company at all. She knew she wasn't alone in that strange, silent world anymore.

Tatsuki silently shook her head.

When Ichigo came back, he'd fix this mess, and get everything back to normal.

Tatsuki had to believe that.