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Powerless. Again. Forever. The explosions around him were not loud enough to smother his thoughts. He looked around at the faces of his comrades, whose names he barely knew. The skinny one was Yamada, the one with the cracked glasses – Shimura, the one always joking went only by first name but right now it escaped Ichigo’s mind. They were sitting in the mud as the rain drummed on their helmets and soaked into their boots, quietly listening to the gunshots and grenades. It was cold, so cold the rain would certainly turn to snow soon. Yamada was shivering; or was he trembling? In their souls they were all trembling – some with fear, others – with despair. The soul did not matter here – they were sacks of blood and meat, all of them a dot on a map.
Ichigo liked to think of himself as a warrior for he had been at war. He fought Gods of Death, he fought demons and devils, he bled, he lost, but he managed to protect those he loved and he lived, somehow, anyhow. But now he was a soldier and this was not his war. He was powerless against men, as powerless as the other boys in the trench with him. As if everything he had lived up until now was a dream, a useless dream.
His numb fingers clenched around the rifle’s cold steel barrel as the cold was settling inside of him. They needed food, ammunitions and more clothes, more warmth. The usual delivery and the medics were late. Late by days. A man whose name Ichigo could not remember had had to be transported to the infirmary; now his corpse sat stiff beside them. He saw the nameless man pass through the stages of death – his skin became paler and paler as his blood froze still in his veins. Pallor mortis, his mind chanted. His skin was as cold as steel when each one of them took what they needed – his boots, his knife, some cigarettes and his scarf. Algor mortis.
As his comrade had gone through the stages of death Ichigo had found himself intently waiting for something, staring at the corpse sitting among them. The dead man was a soldier who had died in the trenches – a miserable, cruel, untimely death. His spirit must have been wandering around, the fear and the injustice could turn him into a hollow. Then she could come. Days passed since then and he had not closed his eyes for more than mere seconds but he never caught a glimpse of her starry eyes and the solemn expression she had while being on duty.
Suddenly the boy stared at the corpse with bloodshot eyes full of hatred. He could not even do him the favour of dying a proper death, fit for a soldier; instead, it seemed he went right away to the Soul Society. While Ichigo was lost in his thoughts, it had started snowing. The snowflakes were falling slowly, silently amongst the deafening thunder of the grenades and cannons. She would not come but the sleep he had lost was here. His eyelids dropped shut and he let the snow cover him like a blanket.
Ichigo dreamed of her or was it a dream? He couldn’t see her face but he knew in the marrow of his bones that it was her. Rukia was drifting through the snowstorm, gliding on the ground while he struggled with every step, falling to his knees in the piles of snow before standing up again, desperate to reach her. She was clad in white from head to toe, even her hair seemed white under the veil she wore. He grasped and reached for her again and again until the cold air hurt his lungs and his fingertips turned black from the cold. It was so cold. So, so cold. Ichigo fell in the snow, unable to move anymore. His human body was weak. He looked up and saw her standing above him. He couldn’t see her face except for her lips, bloody red and impassive, silent, mocking the pure whiteness of her skin, of her satin kimono and the winter around them.
“Stand.”
The word came out of her lips as an order but there was not a drop of strength left in his body; still, he stood up to his knees and leapt forward, trying to grab the layered ends of her kimono. His fingers ran just through the fabrics, as if made out of winter air, leaving his hand numb from the cold.
“Rukia, please…” Ichigo begged as one would beg for his lover’s life but she slipped away from his reach until he moved forward, then again and again, as if they were dancing a torturous waltz. He finally dropped on his back, half-dead from exhaustion and torture. It was then when Rukia sat by his side and took his head to lie on her lap.
A veil the colour of storms, shadows and rain covered her head, hiding her eyes from him. The skin on her bare hands and collarbones was as if made out of porcelain, white as the moon, veinless and impeccable. Pallor mortis, his mind chimed in. His lips repeated her name like a prayer but she remained silent, the only sound around them was the wind howling. A sharp pain shot through his chest and for a moment he thought her touch had frozen him to the bones. Ichigo tore his eyes from her veiled face and looked down. Her hand was holding a dagger made of glass, going straight through his ribcage, into his heart. Glass couldn’t be so cold – it was ice, but the dagger in her hand was not melting. Then he noticed that she was cold. Cold as the grave. Algor mortis. The blood started lazily oozing from Ichigo's chest, slowed down by the cold. It hurt like hell, the searing pain of cold, and his brain went into overdrive, his hands fervently trying to press down the hole around the dagger, to somehow stop the life from draining out of him. He grabbed her hands and put them on his chest - steam rose when the blood covered them.
"It's only blood, Ichigo. You're only dying." Rukia stated unfazed. Why was she so impassive? The boy realized she had died more than 150 years ago. She had been dead as long as she remembered.
"I've always wanted to die in the arms of the woman I love." Ichigo said, his voice still loud with panic but slowly fading.
"I cannot let Orihime witness this." He tore away the veil obscuring her face, staining the delicate fabric with his blood. Frost nested in her lashes and her high cheekbones glimmered frozen with a thin film of ice. It was her eyes that stopped the tremors of his body. They were the colour of stormy winter nights, just as deadly and unforgiving, devoid of hatred or love. Of life. Ice flowed in her veins and shone in her eyes.
“It is you. All along I have loved you and you alone.” Ichigo watched her expressionless face as his hands weakly grasped the dagger’s hilt. The pain was starting to subdue. It seemed the blade was so cold it would rather freeze him from the inside out than melt into his heart. The man felt something cold upon his cheek, leaving a wet trace. The rain. The rain was falling, falling, falling, and yet again he was bleeding, bleeding, bleeding but now it was not summer. He belonged to the winter. Sleet was falling from Rukia’s eyes and melting on his cheeks.
“Let not life divide what death can join together.”
He twisted the dagger inside his chest.