Warning: Spoilers for 423. And also, copious amounts of angst up ahead. Proceed with caution and possibly a box of tissues.

The Motions

After several years, Ichigo has fine-tuned a routine so perfect, so foolproof, that going through the motions day to day—without his powers, without her, without them, together—has become as natural as breathing.

He wakes up at dawn, watches the sun burst through the gaps of Karakura's buildings like a furious fire, and then takes a cold shower to soak in the reality of the here and now and the hole that distinctly exists somewhere inside of him.

He gets dressed in a uniform that doesn't feel like it fits anymore, that doesn't feel like the correct uniform anymore, and walks to school along a path that seems foreign and empty even though, on any given morning to school, it is always filled with people going to and fro.

He goes to class, goes to work, goes to see a movie with his friends even though seeing movies always leaves a bitter, jealous feeling in his mouth; oh, he knows what it's like to be the hero, knows what sacrifice is, but he doesn't know, will never know, what it feels like to get the girl in the end—how it would have felt to gaze into her large violet eyes and kiss her all too tiny heart-shaped face and hold her with no intention of ever letting go.

He does his homework in his room, alone and silently and sometimes even furiously, with only the scribbles of his pen to accompany him. The closet remains shut, untouched; he doesn't even look at it when he finally slides off to bed, weary for reasons that go well beyond questions on paper or words in books or numbers on calculators.

He smiles just enough that no one says anything anymore. He laughs just enough that he has fooled even himself into believing that he is okay and that life is fine and that he has seamlessly transitioned into normalcy—that he doesn't miss her, that he doesn't need the turbulent life that they built together.

Deep down he knows nothing is just fine about the situation—he knew the minute she left him it never will be. But in the beginning he had hope to combat this pessimism, hope that drove him to ask Orihime and Uryu and Chad constantly if anyone was there with them—specifically, if she was there with them—hovering around like a delicate rare butterfly that he could not see or touch but wanted to so desperately. The first few weeks, it was hope that kept him undeterred from their head shakes, by Orihime's I'm sorry Kurosaki-kun's and Uryu's downcast eyes and Chad's avoidance altogether.

After the days seemlessly morphed into months, and those months into years, one morning Ichigo woke up to a storm and realized the hope had finally run dry.

It wasn't a particularly heavy rainfall, but the droplets felt cold and gray; they seemed to phase right through his ceiling and chilled him to the bone, making him shiver and shake and realize finally with numbing clarity his true reality—the reality that she was happy where she was, without him, happy enough to move on and forget him, tuck him in some corner of her mind; that she was there and he was here and—

And it was time to move on.

Anger was expected, but it never came; hatred was plausible, but the thought didn't even cross his mind.

In the end, in the distinct imprint Soul Society left on his soul—in the distinct Rukia-shaped hole in his heart—there was only acceptance.

Sweet, sour, everlasting acceptance.

So he began. He established. He set a routine that his body could handle, that his mind could easily follow without deviating or going to faraway lands that he no longer had a right of wandering to—of thinking of her when he no longer had the right to—and committed to it without pause, without hesitation, without conscious thought. He set a routine he could survive to, daily, weekly, monthly, a routine he could fall back to for as long as it was needed—for as long as it took to push her to the corner-most part of his mind.

It's a new kind of battle, one Ichigo isn't sure he'll win.

He is graduating college, looking into med-school—and hasn't thought of her for some time now, not really—when the first ripple comes. He sees Orihime and Uryu arguing as he rounds the corner of the block, and even though he is still a good distance away from them, he can see the puffy redness in Orihime's eyes, can see the anger and heartbreak written in the contours of her face as clearly as if they were inscribed with a dark permanent marker.

His first instinct is that it's a lover's quarrel and he almost wants to leave—the sight of broken relationships reminds him of the rift she has left between them—but he steels his resolve and keeps going, keeps advancing despite the desire to flee.

Like with everything else, he pushes on, barrels forward.

Chad, standing near the couple like an unwavering shadow, utters something he cannot hear, but whatever it is, it effectively ends the argument because both Orihime and Uryu look up with startled looks at his advancing figure, as if caught discussing something that should not be discussed, a secret that is not to be shared. Only, for Orihime—as he comes to a rolling, slowing stop in front of them—that expression quickly reverts back to anger and she swiftly turns and stalks off in the opposite direction, her orange hair waving furiously behind her like a cape.

He has never seen her so livid before so he scowls flatly at Uryu. "What did you do?"

Uryu pushes up his glasses and tries to glare but the look is heavy with guilt and doubt and some indistinguishable emotion that flutters briefly, curiously, with the fluttering of a breeze. "Nothing," he grumbles. "As always, you have a way of complicating things, Kurosaki."

Ichigo is baffled. Confused. "What?"

He was not expecting this, he thinks, as Uryu walks away without another word, the absence of his words echoing clear enough the content and extent of the Quincy's feelings. Inside, the accusation stings and swells and the betrayal almost feels familiar on his tongue—like the bitter aftertaste from when he first realized she wasn't coming back.

Left with Chad's looming presence—a presence that hasn't quite felt the same for years now—Ichigo turns to the tall, dark man for answers. The two of them have exchanged direct conversation only a handful number of times since normalcy, and Ichigo can't place exactly what the reason for this is, only that some foreign force has wedged itself in between them like a tall brick wall, a wall that Chad has made no effort of tearing.

"Well?"

Chad says nothing for a long time. The wind rustles his shirt and hair and, for a moment, Ichigo can see his friend's eyes glancing off in the distance, so very evidently torn between two choices.

Then: "You should stay away from Inoue for a while."

Then, Chad too walks away. Then, the bitterness in his mouth spreads.

The second ripple comes with ravaging vengeance. At first, he wants to confront his friends, wants to demand answers (because he needs to amend this fracture in his routine), but when he catches sight of Orihime several days later, there are bags under her eyes and she looks weary and he can't help but feel guilty, like he has done something that has caused this.

So, he avoids her.

And when he finds Uryu sulking moodily, he decides to avoid him too, for his own good. And when Chad no longer comes to hang out, he finds he has begun avoiding him as well, inadvertently, by some default response.

In this manner, he ends up avoiding all of his friends, first for a day and then, suddenly, for an entire month—a month that comes abruptly and sharply and with the biting chill of snow, a month that then is spent alone with nostalgia nipping dangerously at his shins, chipping away the steel armor of his routine, bit by bit.

Before he knows it, there is an phantom tingle in his palms where a sword once rested, on his back where a friend once rode, at the soles of his feet that once walked on air; before he knows it, he has succumbed and finds himself in his old room, standing in front of his closet—looking at his closet—for the first time in years. It hasn't changed, even though the world around it has, even though he has—even though she probably has wherever she is doing whatever she is doing.

When his fingers touch it, he is surprised the closet doesn't shatter into a million pieces like he thinks his heart will. When his hand wraps around the handle and he tugs it open, he is surprised it opens smoothly, without resistance, even though every muscle in his body protests, resists, and is at the verge of completely shutting down.

The closet is like a window to the past. There is dust, there is darkness—and he inhales sharply—there is her scent.

An ache in his chest explodes like a thousand fireworks, like an electric shock that then runs to the ends of his fingers and to the tips of his toes and straight to his brain. He heaves, sinks to the wooden floor that has touched a pair of dainty feet so many times before but carries no trace of them now and wonders, idly, why he's doing this—wonders why he's putting himself through the torture of openly and wholeheartedly missing her.

Oh, he knows why. He knows, deep down, it is to remind himself of who he is and where he is and why he is giving up his friends.

Why it's time to go.

He knows because he is the hero and, as such, he is full of sacrifices.

He is preparing for his move to the United States when the third, final ripple comes to tear apart the remaining threads of his routine, of the little bit of solitude he has left.

One night, without warning, Orihime comes to his apartment. There are tear stains on her cheeks and disbelief in her eyes and she's panting, as if she just ran great distances to reach him.

"You're leaving," she whispers.

He nods and goes back to packing. "So you've heard."

"Why?" Her voice trembles, near-broken, almost-shattered, echoing in the new emptiness of his living quarters. He can't face her so he focuses on folding his shirts into neat little squares and putting them into suitcases and repeating the mantra "sacrifice, sacrifice" in his mind.

"Kurosaki-kun, why?"

Ichigo sighs. "Because Inoue," he starts and wants to just leave it at that—because it's something he has to do and must be done and because he can no longer handle how she's no longer here—but continues, "I was accepted into a good medical program overseas. I have to go."

She shakes her head. "No, you don't."

Firmly, he closes his suitcase. Firmly, he says, "Yes. Yes I do."

Somewhere off in the distance, he can hear lightning crack and thunder roar and rain hiss as it hits pavement. Somewhere in the past, he can hear the screech of a hollow and the swing of a sword—and the voice of a girl several years his senior. Somewhere nearby, in the present now, he can hear Orihime begin to sob.

"Inoue," he says, finally turning to her, deciding that he needs to make amends before he goes, needs to fix what he has so evidently messed up before flying away. He tries to be as gentle as possible, as convincing as he can. "I know you liked me in high school, but Ishida loves you and I don't think I—"

"Kuchiki-san is getting married!"

This time when the lightning cracks and the thunder roars and the rain hisses as it hits pavement, it is much louder, much closer to where he stands in his suddenly claustrophobic apartment, in an apartment where the words just uttered sound foreign to his ears and there is only numbness.

"What?" he murmurs, the muscles in his face going slack.

Orihime looks up at him and he realizes with a startling shock that the pain he sees in her eyes, the pain he thought he caused, was, in fact, not because of him but for him. "Kurosaki-kun," she whispers, taking a step forward and pressing a hand against his cheek as way of apology, and he can only mutely hear the storm get closer, can only mutely feel the coolness of her palm, "I'm so sorry we lied to you for so long."

His senses come rushing back in time for another howl of thunder. Ichigo's gut contracts into a knot so excruciating that he feels like he's going to throw up all of his organs in one go. Burned beyond comprehension, he pulls away sharply, takes so many steps back that he bumps into the arm of his couch and nearly topples backwards.

He glares at her, shaking, breathing hard and hardly breathing, clutching at his chest where the ache is pulsing and threatening to break through flesh and bone. "What are you talking about?"

Orihime retracts her hands and bites her lip. "I…"

Her words, her hesitance—her utterance of Rukia's name—are incomprehensible; they confuse him and scare him and tear at him with claws, and every time he attempts to figure out what was said, a coil inside Ichigo grows that much tighter, that much more unbearable.

"What are you talking about, Inoue?" he hisses.

"No need to yell at her, Kurosaki," Uryu voices as he enters the apartment. Seeing Uryu's expressionless, hard face—so well-masked and controlled as usual—opens the lid to a container of emotions Ichigo has carefully locked shut, and he can't help but feel furious looking at the new occupant of his apartment, can't help it when he rushes forward and grabs his friend by the collar.

"What is she talking about, Ishida?"

Lightening shrieks again and illuminates the room for a brief, gut-wrenching moment. Uryu tries to remain impassive, but the guilt is there, Ichigo can see it and feel it and smell it like the pungent odor of blood, and he is about to punch Uryu in the face when Chad comes down on them like the hand of God, separates both of them just in the nick of time.

"Ichigo—"

"Explain," is all he can say through his clenched teeth and barely contained anger. There is no routine now, no control over how his mind wanders or who it wanders to—just a steady stream of Rukia, over and over again, endlessly, as if to make up for the years he muted out all thoughts of her—just a trembling that takes over his body like a leaf hovering between life and death in autumn.

His three friends exchange a look.

Quietly, Chad begins. Quietly, Chad says, "That first day you could no longer see her, she made us promise." Chad pauses, hesitates, and in that millisecond, Ichigo braces himself for what is undoubtedly going to hurt. "She made us promise never to tell you when she visited."

The room spins with vertigo. Inhale, he tells himself; exhale, he commands himself. "Why?"

"She wanted you to live a normal life," Uryu simply supplies.

This time when anger sparks again, it is not at his friends who were forced into this secret but at the fact that someone went off and made decisions about his life when no one but he had the right to—when she didn't even, at the bare minimum, make an effort to at least ask—when the last thing he really wanted was anything remotely normal.

Uryu sees the emotions play on Ichigo's face, can tell what Ichigo is thinking, for he adds, pityingly, "It wouldn't have worked out."

Ichigo scoffs. "She could have used a gigai—"

"A temporary solution," Uryu sighs. "Neither of you would have been happy with just that."

Comprehension dawns him like lava down the nape of his neck, and Ichigo realizes Uryu is right. Tiptoeing between two worlds, dancing between life and death, being together but not really—not in the way he wanted to be with her, anyway, not in the true sense of the word—would have made anyone, in the end, wanting more.

And wanting more when there was none would have been excruciating, torture of the most excruciating and bittersweet kind.

"So she decided to avoid me," he murmurs brokenly, looking at the dark indigo carpet on his floor—and he doesn't even stop the next train of thought that comes then, comparing the deep color to Rukia's hair and how much he should have touched it that last meeting of theirs.

Silence follows his declaration, pounds in his ears.

"No," Orihime finally replies in a hushed tone of voice. Ichigo looks up to the sad smile she gives him, a smile that is like the cool salty lapse of an ocean wave. "Kuchiki-san was strong but she was still very much in love with you." The delicate string that connects his heart to the rest of him twangs a low note in his chest, a note that bounces off his ribs, unsure of what to do itself, before crashing as Orihime continues, "She was with you very often."

"So all those times I asked you…if she was here…" Slowly, Ichigo connects the dots.

Orihime nods, and at the realization, Ichigo falls against the wall, raises an arm to cover his eyes as he slides down to a heap on the ground.

"How long?" His mouth feels thick; words are next to impossible to form. All he can think of is of a slight figure standing next to him, invisible to him, unable to talk to him—unaware of how much he wanted to see her, how much he wanted to talk to her, how much he simply wanted her—and feels his loneliness mirrored back to him tenfold, feels hatred wrap its coils around him. Hatred at himself for ever giving up and losing hope—and thinking she hadn't cared.

"For the first few months," Chad utters, "it was almost every day."

Ichigo's stomach tightens.

"But you started asking less frequently," Uryu adds, "and so she started visiting less frequently."

Ichigo's stomach drops.

"And then," Orihime concludes, "one day, she told us that you seemed to have moved on and that she needed to as well and so—" Her voice cracks under the weight, softens to a volume so minuscule he almost doesn't hear her under the storm outside and the storm inside and the storm all around them. "—so she stopped, Kurosaki-kun. She just stopped."

Ichigo's stomach dives to the darkest depths, and Ichigo almost laughs at the irony of it all, a bitter, self-loathing laugh.

Instead, he feels tears scorch a path of vengeance down his cheeks and agony clog his throat with a fist-sized pebble and resorts to clutching the now reminiscent threads of his carpet; the polyester rips at the sheer desperation of his grip and he grits out between tightly locked lips the only phrase that resonates in his mind, the only thing he can say to the throbbing in his chest and weariness in his heart:

"That stupid bitch."

They are a pair of idiots.

Uryu is unsurprised when he hears, a few days later, that Ichigo not only missed his flight and the subsequent meeting with the dean that was to follow, but has resorted to barring himself in his apartment in complete and utter isolation. No one has seen or heard from him since the night the truth was revealed—since the night everything Ichigo thought he knew was blown to shreds—and frankly, Uryu cannot say he did not expect this.

He is not surprised the former shinigami is taking the news so hard. He is not surprised because Uryu has seen the expressions on Ichigo's face throughout the years, during all the times he asked for Rukia and all the times he didn't; he has seen Ichigo shatter and reassemble and commit to an illusion, has seen Ichigo harden and retreat despite all his efforts to display otherwise.

He has seen, despite all of Ichigo's hard work, how Rukia persevered in his heart and perseveres to this day.

Therefore, Uryu is not at all surprised. He knew, from the moment Rukia asked them to keep Ichigo out of the loop—knew, from all the times she visited and stood there, looking at him, unbeknownst to him mirroring the same disappointed, broken look on his face—that Ichigo wouldn't be able to handle it. He knew, from the moment he and Orihime and Chad heard from Urahara Kisuke of Rukia's engagement—of what was undoubtedly Rukia's last attempt to move on—that Ichigo was doomed.

It is for this reason Uryu fought so hard to keep it a secret from Ichigo, why he argued with Orihime that one day in front of the movie theater in spite of his own feelings for the orange-haired girl and their own delicate, tremulous relationship.

Helplessness, Uryu knows, is Ichigo's greatest enemy.

So when he gets the call from Orihime that it's been four days and that she is getting worried, Uryu sighs and heads over to the lonely apartment on the outskirts of town, because he is a guy and, alone, Orihime wouldn't quite get the workings of another man's heart. Chad is already there, and it only takes Orihime a few minutes to join them.

They exchange looks, nod, and then Orihime steps forward to knock on the door.

Only, it opens before her knuckles can make contact. And the person that greets them is not the 22-year-old Ichigo they saw last, not the Ichigo they left splintered and bruised and half-coherent. They expected darkness and hopelessness and despair, but this Ichigo, that answers the door and is chewing on a piece of toast while simultaneously pulling on a jacket, is bright, is glowing, is whole—is seventeen again.

Orihime and Uryu and Chad all stare in shock.

"Yo," Ichigo says in between his chewing. "I'm on my way out."

Orihime's mouth moves for a few seconds before words actually come out, and Uryu finds that this is an apt representation of the disbelief that blankets the three of them, disorients them like early morning mist on a windshield. "Kurosaki-kun, where—" Ichigo closes the door and moves past them, speedy and energetic and smelling of rebirth. "—where are you going?"

When Ichigo turns and grins at them, a full true smile—a smile that the three of them haven't seen in years and distinctly pangs of nostalgia—Uryu cannot help but feel his jaw drop with the force of a two-ton anchor; the sun is bright behind Ichigo, illuminates Ichigo with a flame not unlike his long-gone shinigami powers, and Uryu realizes, right then and there, that he knows nothing at all.

Half on the steps right outside of his apartment, half on the road that stretches before him, Ichigo takes in what seems like his first breath of fresh air, eyes ablaze as he turns to the expanse of extremely blue sky above them. He consumes the sky, conquers the gray clouds that hang near the horizon.

Then: "I'm going to save Rukia."

Then, Uryu is convinced.

A new motion begins.

And if this be our last conversation
If this be the last time that we speak for awhile
Don't lose hope and don't let go
Cause you should know

If it makes you sad
If it makes you sad at me
Then it's all my fault and let me fix it please
Cause you know that I'm always all for you

A/n: Egads, what a chapter 423 was. I could not not write a response fic to the immense love-gazing that went on in the manga, but of course my cynical mind had to go put a depressing twist to it. At least the end is hopeful?

Speaking of the end, I wrote this with the goal that it would be a one-shot, but clearly, that's giving me way too much credit. A sequel/Ichigo-attempts-to-save-Rukia-from-the-clutches-of-marriage one-shot may be written, but for all intents and purposes, I'll leave it up to you (for now) as to how Ichigo saves his dearly beloved (if he does at all).

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think.

Disclaimer: Characters © Tite Kubo; lyrics © Safetysuit, "What If."