almondinflower | Commendaces [Bleach; Ichigo, Zangetsu]

Title: Commendaces
Fandom: Bleach
Character: Ichigo, Zangetsu
Word Count: ~300
Notes: originally for the third round of Prompt Battle on dreamwidth.

Ichigo doesn't get why dead people hold funerals. They're already dead, after all - dying is just what happens before they're reborn. At least, he thinks that's how it happens. His training was on the job, and so long as it all works, it doesn't really matter if he understands.

Everyone else goes to the ceremony, so he goes along too. Rukia would drag him if he didn't, after all. None of his friends have fallen but Komamura was a decent sort if a bit... odd.

Next to him, Orihime is choking back sobs. Carefully, he wraps an arm around her thin shoulders. Even more carefully, he squeezes her reassuringly. Rukia he hugs until she claims she can't breath but Orihime seems more delicate than ever after her time in Hueco Mundo.

All around him, he can see spaces. Ichigo isn't completely insensitive. He can see that the spaces are person-sized. Or more-than-one-person-sized, in a lot of cases. The sorts of spaces you leave because for the last few hundred years there has been someone filling them. He can't quite comprehend doing the same thing for that long or what it would mean to miss someone like that.

"We endured," Zangetsu whispers in his mind. At the front of the hall, Byakuya's face is stony as ever but there's a slowness to his movements that suggests something isn't right, and Ichigo knows it isn't his wounds. Kyouraku is next to Byakuya, but there's a hole between them. Not a Komamura-sized hole, but one that looks like they've tried to fill it and not quite managed to bring themselves to.

"Yeah," Ichigo murmurs back, too quiet for Orihime to hear. "Can't get rid of us that easily."