Bleach/Firefly: Don't Go Without Me
Mal stopped short when he felt something brush past him on his way to the bridge. He spun around, fixing the empty hallway behind him with a fierce glare.
“I know you’re there,” he said quietly. “Get off my ship. You are not welcome here. I will not lose any more of my crew.” The sense of an otherworldly presence retreated and Mal moved on. There was a battle coming. He didn’t have time for this, anyway.
Behind him, Ichigo slumped against the wall. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
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Wash stared numbly at his wife’s back, then at his body, pinned to the pilot’s chair by a Reaver’s spike. He felt a hand on his shoulder and slowly turned to look at the stranger in black who stood next to him.
“I’ll protect them,” the boy said firmly. “You have my word on that. But it’s time for you to go.”
Wash was briefly confused before the words penetrated. Somehow, he couldn’t find it in him to disbelieve what the boy told him. His eyes narrowed.
“If you don’t protect them, I’ll come back and kick your ass.”
The stranger smiled at that. “It’s a promise. Ready?”
“Never,” Wash replied sadly. When facing the messenger of death, all his sarcasm dried up. He was left with nothing less than absolute truth. It was too late for regrets. The last thing Hoban Washburne heard in the living world was the rattle of the chain attached to the hilt of the stranger’s sword.
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“Will you tell me their names?” River asked curiously, toying with the cloth at the end of Zangetsu’s hilt. Ichigo tried to shut out the intermittent sense of her reiatsu the contact gave him.
“Whose names?” he asked.
“The ghosts,” River said firmly, giving him her best no-nonsense look. He wasn’t going to be diverting her tonight, he knew. Purging Miranda’s horrible secret from her mind had finally given her some much-needed stability. She wasn’t distracted by the chaos in her own mind anymore. Still…he really didn’t want to talk about this.
“There are no ghosts aboard Serenity right now,” he said, looking away.
“You made sure of that, didn’t you, shinigami?” River said lightly, almost playfully. Ichigo was not fooled.
“It’s my job,” Ichigo said defensively. It’s the only one I have now, he didn’t add.
“I know,” she said simply. She giggled unexpectedly, drawing Ichigo’s eyes up to her face. “So you’re Serenity’s death god mascot, then.”
Ichigo gave a short, bitter laugh, cutting off sharply with a shiver when River stroked a hand down Zangetsu’s cloth-covered blade. “I didn’t mean you,” she said sternly. “I didn’t mean Wash, either. Or Zangetsu or Shirosaki.”
“Well, that’s pretty much all the ghosts in residence,” Ichigo returned sharply, trying not to think about the look on Wash’s face at the end.
“Except yours.” If River wasn’t the only person on Serenity with enough spiritual power to see and interact with him, he’d have gotten up and left right then.
“Zangetsu and Shirosaki. We covered them,” Ichigo responded, deliberately misunderstanding River’s meaning.
“Denial won’t help, Ichigo.” Ichigo hung his head and closed his eyes, unable to bear the reminder of who he was missing.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said heavily. “They think I’m dead. Even if they could find me, they wouldn’t have any reason to look.”
“Would that stop you?” River asked quietly. Ichigo didn’t have an answer for that. Silently, he named the faces that haunted him, knowing that River would hear him anyway.
Rukia. Renji.
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River woke in the middle of the ship’s night to a strange sound outside her door. It sounded like Ichigo was…laughing? Really laughing, not that painfully bitter sound he usually made? Curious. She cautiously extended her senses.
Biting cold. Graceful, sweeping whiteness. Determination, elegance, pride, strength. Dance.
Heat and life. Fierce, deadly power. Loyalty, protectiveness, courage, unyielding resolve. Howl.
They’re here.
Suddenly much more awake than she had been just moments before, River walked noiselessly out into the hall. Ichigo was laughing, and smiling and crying, all at once. He was hugging-clinging to, really-two people River had only seen in his memories until now. One was a slight young woman with black hair, large blue eyes and delicate features. The other was a tall man with a shock of red hair tied into a messy ponytail and intricate tattoos that made River’s fingers itch to touch. River smiled and named them in her mind as Ichigo had that night on the bridge.
Rukia. Renji.
River cleared her throat, bringing the newly-reunited trio’s attention sharply to her. “You two,” she firmly declared to Rukia and Renji, “are late.” Then she turned to Ichigo and smiled triumphantly. “I told you they’d come.” With that, she turned and went back to bed. Ichigo’s unfettered laughter followed her into her dreams.