It's close to miiiiiiiidnight, and something evil's lurking in the dark....[backdated]
Characters: the two biggest ghost magnets on the Winding Way Ichigo Kurosaki and Kimihiro Watanuki
Content: Ichigo and Watanuki in the same place on Long Night? RECIPE FOR DISASTER. For those of you who don't know, they both attract spirits. And not just the friendly ones, either.
Setting: Watanuki's cabin
Time: Long Night. Yes, we've been working on this log since December.
Warnings: UST Bickering, language, lots and lots of icky spirits, blood, violence, tentacles
Finally, the wards were up. Watanuki had been on his knees with a piece of chalk for the better part of two hours, carefully drawing the traditional symbols to deflect evil spirits on the Long Night. He had no talent for magic whatsoever, of course, but anyone could draw these symbols; in previous years, they'd been all that stood between him and the hungriest of the murky shapes around him. Already the edges of his vision were starting to show blurs of things that shouldn't have been there.
He glanced out the porthole at the sky - the sun was just slipping behind the horizon. He checked one last time to make sure the sprigs of leaves over the door were securely in place, then stepped into the circle he had drawn and sat down to wait, drawing a deep, shuddering breath. Only nine hours of total darkness to survive. He could make it.
Ichigo wasn't having so great a time, either. In the two hours since the sun had set, he had been approached by over half a dozen restless ghosts, and two less friendly things. Zangetsu was gripped tightly in one hand, ready to be used at a moment's notice in case one of the bastards tried to sneak up on him. He wasn't taking any of this. Long Night was never exactly fun for someone spiritually sensitive, but it had never been quite this bad before.
As he stalked down the corridor, he heard something roar behind a door down the hallway. "What the --?"
Watanuki's yell was drowned out by the roar of the thing that had suddenly materialized right outside his wards. It was squeezed into the meager air between his bunk and the edge of the circle, and he could feel the strain of it against the power of the symbols. He had a feeling he knew which was going to go first, and it wasn't the hunk of evil looking down on him with a single lidless eye almost as big around as its gaping maw, which belched thick black smoke around the small room.
He considered yelling again, but who the hell was going to hear him? Even if someone came, they wouldn't even be able to see the thing, let alone fight it. He was completely alone with it, and he could only hope the wards would hold all night or it would lose interest - though from previous experience, that wasn't likely. Heart hammering, he backed as far away from it as he could within the circle, brandishing his branch like a meager shield. "Stay back!" he snapped at it, completely pointlessly.
That was a person's voice! If Ichigo had had any inclination to take off in the other direction and avoid this mess, that shout had dispelled it. Kicking the door wide open, sword gripped in both hands, Ichigo surveyed the situation in an instant. Darting through the doorway, he thrust Zangetsu forward, straight through the creature's giant eye. "Take that, frog-legs!" he snapped, pulling his sword out and readying it for another swing.
The fact that the damsel in distress was that pushy four-eyed cook hadn't even registered yet.
If there was one thing Watanuki, cowering on the floor, had not been expecting, it had been rescue. He gaped as the monster gave a hideous, high-pitched squeal and burst into a cloud of foul-smelling smoke. The pressure in the room seemed to dissipate with the rapidly-disappearing smoke, and through the haze he saw the damn annoying orange-headed pilot.
Watanuki took a moment to cough the stench of the thing out of his lungs. "What," he gasped, waving the branch in front of him to clear the air, "What are you doing here?!"
Ichigo watched the thing dissolve, resting his sword's tip on the ground and taking a triumphant stance. That'd teach monsters to mess with -- wait a moment.
He turned slowly to look at Watanuki. "Y-you? What're you doing here?!"
"What's it look like?!" Watanuki snapped, waving his branch at the intricate chalk marks covering the floor around him. "Trying to keep them off! Did you-- did you see that thing?!" It wasn't that he wasn't abjectly grateful to Ichigo for driving the thing off, but thanking him took second place to figuring what the hell was going on here.
"Of course I saw it! What the hell are you --" Ichigo stopped dead for a moment as realization hit. "Wait. You're saying you saw it, too?"
"Of course I did! I generally don't hide from things I can't see!" What did the idiot think? What other reason would he have had to be sprawled on the ground clutching shrubbery? "It was trying to get through my wards. I didn't have time to make them any stronger."
Ichigo stared at the chalk-marks. "I've never seen anything like that before," he said. He'd never used things like that himself. The direct approach tended to be enough for him.
The redhead looked back up at Watanuki. "How come you can see spirits?" he asked. He had a couple guesses as to the source of his own ability, but nothing definite. Maybe Watanuki could give him some answers.
"My old boss taught me how to draw them," Watanuki said. He'd have liked to add that he didn't have the luxury of a spirit-killing sword or the ability to use one, but considering that sword had just saved him from getting devoured, it was better not to mention that. "I don't know why I can see the spirits and she wouldn't tell me. I just... born able to see them." He looked at Ichigo suspiciously. "Why can you see them? Are you a magic user?"
"Nah," Ichigo replied, resting his free hand on his hip. "I've always been able to see them, too. I always thought it was because my family ran a medical clinic, so I've been around more death than most people." There was also Sandal-Hat and his mana crystals, who had given Ichigo his sword, but that didn't have anything to do with the ghosts, he thought, so he refrained from mentioning it.
Watanuki frowned, considering this. "I guess it could be different for different people," he said. "I've only met a few other people who could see them." Really there was only Yuuko, Doumeki and Ichigo-- he wondered briefly if this was further proof that the universe hated him and then decided that down that path of thought lay madness. "So what are you doing?" he asked. "I'm sure they bother you on the Long Night, too, right?"
"Yeah," Ichigo said matter-of-factly, "but it's never been this bad before." He wasn't quite sure why -- he actually hadn't had time to think about it in between fighting monsters. And speaking of, one was materializing right behind him.
Watanuki flattened himself against the wall at the edge of the circle, pointing frantically with his branch. "Behind you! There!" It was nowhere as near as large as the other one, but the smell of it already threatened to gag him.
"What? Aw, hell, another one?" Ichigo spun around, sword held blade-out in his right hand. It cut through the creature like butter, almost before Ichigo had fully turned to look at it. "Why are there so damn many?"
Watanuki winced as the spirit vanished. "I..." he began, and sighed. "It's.... not just that I can see them. They follow me." He'd almost forgotten in the flurry of explanation that with Ichigo here by him, he'd be sure to be inconvenienced by them. "I'm here to keep them away from the rest of the crew. You should probably leave, too, actually, if you don't want to see any more - they generally swarm around the wards pretty badly by morning." It wasn't self-pity, simply the truth.
......you too, huh? Ichigo regarded the dark-haired boy seriously, studying him. He hadn't expected anything like this. Being hounded by spirits all the time wasn't exactly what anyone would call fun, and....it went a long way towards explaining why Watanuki was so jumpy.
In any case, he'd decided that he wasn't about to leave Watanuki here, with only some chalk-marks between him and hungry ghosts. He rested his sword-point on the ground and pulled a scowl. "Nah, I think I'll stay here, thanks."
Oh, wonderful. All he needed was company - especially this company. "Thanks," Watanuki said, scowling back, "But I'll be just fine without your help. They're good enough wards to hold off most of the bigger ones, anyway." He didn't want Ichigo sticking around and stabbing every ghost that came along - that would put Watanuki much too far into his debt, an obligation neither of them needed.
"You think I'm gonna run off and let you sit here with some flimsy chicken-scratch as the only thing between you and every spirit in the country?" Ichigo jerked his thumb behind him at the doorway. "Like hell I'd do something like that!"
He paused for a moment, calming down a little. "Look. I attract them too. Always have. If we're both here, then the spirits won't be bothering anyone else on the ship, and I can take them out from behind your chalk if I have to."
Like it or not, what Ichigo was saying made a lot of sense. Watanuki sighed exasperatedly. "Fine." He rubbed the back of his neck irritatedly - it always prickled practically nonstop on the Long Night - and moved grudgingly over within the circle. "They tend to swarm a little less if I'm behind the wards. Might make it a little easier." It was plenty large enough for both of them to sit without touching, or he would have just let them swarm. Either way, he was making it perfectly clear that Ichigo's presence was merely something he was tolerating.
Something in Ichigo's pride bristled at the idea of hiding behind the wards, but a cursory glance around the room showed shadows and blurs that were rapidly coming into focus. He didn't have any doubt that he could handle them, but the barrier might break, exposing Watanuki. So, he stepped into the circle and took a fighting stance, ready to take out the first one solid enough to hit.
Watanuki inched well out of Ichigo's way. "Watch where you're swinging that!" he snapped.
"I am!" Ichigo shot back, gauging the nearest monster. Then, he brought his sword around in a sideways arc, making use of the space above Watanuki's bed (wielding a sword this big in such a small space was always tricky) and cut the monster in two. He turned to the next one almost immediately, jabbing it this time. Dammit, this space was too small to fight in!
Watanuki yelped and ducked lower, trying simultaneously to get farther away and to shield his head with his arms, and failing at both. "HEY!" he bellowed, flinching as Ichigo's ridiculous sword swung by directly overhead to get at the second monster. "STOP THAT! YOU'RE GOING TO KILL SOMETHING!"
"That's the idea! Keep your head down and you'll be fine!" As long as Watanuki didn't stand up fast, there wasn't any danger of him being hit. Hopefully, he'd have enough sense to keep still. That was four down, and five more massing in the shadows.
"Are you going to swing that thing all night?!" Watanuki was practically flat against the floor now and almost wishing he'd forced Ichigo out the door himself. "You IDIOT! They're just going to keep coming! You can't kill them all and you're probably making it WORSE!"
"What, you think they're just going to GO AWAY?" Ichigo snapped back. "The only way to deal with them is to drive them back!" Three....two....one.....zero! He blew out a breath of air and glanced around once more at the deceptively brightly-lit cabin. "There. Room's clear again." He pulled his sword back behind the wards, and safely away from Watanuki. Speaking of... "....what the hell are you doing down there?"
"What the hell do you think?!" Watanuki snapped, untangling his limbs and climbing to his feet, the better to yell at Ichigo. "They're going to keep coming no matter what! Hell, you might have just gotten them more excited! I bet the big ones'll be on us next and by the end of the night you'll have sliced all my wards to ribbons and you'll be completely exhausted from waving that thing around and my cabin will be in ruins and we'll have nothing left to protect us and it'll be ALL YOUR FAULT!" He waved his branch for emphasis on the last three words. "THINK before you start attacking things in other people's wards, why don't you?!"
"They're dead!" Ichigo shot back. "They can't be excited or anything else anymore! I'm not going to sit here and pray that the chalk keeps them back. I'm gonna fight 'em until dawn if I have to! It's better than letting them collect until your little barrier collapses!"
"I'm still here, aren't I?" Watanuki argued. "And I'm sorry not all of us have huge magic swords to fight them off with! Some of us have to make do with chalk whether we like it or not! Besides, I never asked you to protect me!" Ichigo didn't know it, but he'd hit pretty close to home - more than anything, Watanuki hated being helpless, and especially on the Long Night. He always needed somebody to protect him, somebody to take the damage for him and keep the monsters at bay; his wards were all he could manage on his own, but every year before now they'd prevented him having to inconvenience anyone else. Ichigo was an intruder in Watanuki's mind, an intruder who was putting Watanuki deeper into debt with every monster he cut to ribbons.
"Who says I'm protecting you?" Ichigo snapped back. "Look, I gotta face these things down tonight no matter what. I'm just doing it here instead of somewhere else." This wasn't completely true -- he was fighting them here to protect Watanuki. But that didn’t really matter.
Like it or not, this was a valid point. And Watanuki was expending enough of his energy jumping at shadows without having the added helpless panic on his mind. True as these things were, however, it did not prevent him feeling irrationally angry at Ichigo for being right. "Fine," he finally said, with as little agreement in his tone as possible. "But if you wreck my cabin swinging that ridiculous thing around all night I will not forgive you." Somewhere in there was permission to stay. It was Ichigo's problem if he didn't hear it.
"Fine," Ichigo shot back. He wouldn't have left, anyway, even if Watanuki had tried to shove him out physically. He was here for the duration of the night, and for now, the spirits had retreated out of sight. He waited a full minute for them to reappear, but for some reason, they seemed to have quieted.
For now.
The momentary respite was a vast relief. Watanuki managed to relax a tiny fraction, even though the foul smell of the spirits still permeated the room and he did not drop his branch. "Is there anything I can do?" he asked grudgingly, holding up the branch, which gave off a clean smell to counteract the odor. "This holds them off a little. If you need help."
Ichigo stared at it. Might be a good idea. "Can't be too careful," he replied. "Got an extra one?" He'd been dealing with these things for...how many years now? It was best not to take chances, even if you had a sword that could cut them. They were always heaviest right after midnight, and they still had a good hour to go before that.
Watanuki looked cautiously around the room. The air was still clear of spirits. Probably frightened off by Ichigo's enormous sword. "I have a few extra over on the bunk," he said. "But it's outside the wards." It was just far away enough to require him to put one foot outside the chalk circle to reach for it, and he had a feeling if he moved outside the circle even the slightest bit, the spirits would suddenly find new motivation to appear. "I think I can reach it quickly, if you'll watch my back for a moment." Step out, grab the branch, step back in. If he was quick he could do it in three seconds. Hopefully not enough time for them to get excited.
"No way," Ichigo snapped back at him, glaring at the bespectacled cook. "If anyone's going to get that, it's me. You've already got one." And besides, he had his sword. Watanuki didn't have anything to protect him outside the wards. Ichigo usually managed fine without chalk on the ground -- he could handle it.
Watanuki wanted to snap that the fact that Ichigo could get it wasn't the point, the point was that Watanuki was not completely helpless here, whatever the evidence to the contrary might have been, and did not need Ichigo to do every little thing for him because believe it or not he had been making do just fine without Ichigo's help for eighteen years now. Certain things were impossible to explain to stubborn idiots, though - he knew this from long experience - and midnight was getting closer. So he simply snapped, "Then this one will protect me while I get the other one!" and, ignoring Ichigo, planted one foot outside the circle and stretched for the branch lying on the bunk.
Just as he got his fingers around it, the air seemed to tighten.
"What -- no, you stupid -- !" Ichigo saw four spirits ooze out of cracks in the walls, and another from the floor. "Get back!" He reached out, grabbed Watanuki by the back of his shirt collar, and yanked him back into the circle. He left the second branch in Watanuki's hand, and brought his sword up and stepped forward, ready to take on the newcomers. "Stupid!" he barked as one slash took out the closest. Another reached out sharp claws, slashing at Ichigo's shoulder. "Nnngh!" the redhead gritted as blood was drawn. He'd seen the blow coming, but due to another monster on his left, he hadn't been able to sidestep enough to avoid it.
Watanuki choked as he was yanked roughly backward, still clutching both branches. He hit the floor within the wards and fought to regain his breath, which seemed to be hiding in his lungs from the hideous smell that was now overpowering the room. He managed a gasp and looked up to see a spray of blood from Ichigo's shoulder, carried on the monster's sideswipe, and see the other three closing in at the smell of blood. He didn't stop to think, again, but climbed to his feet - still well within the wards this time - and stepped around Ichigo to thrust the branches at the closest of the spirits, hoping if nothing else to buy Ichigo a moment to regroup.
The monster to the left recoiled, but the clawed monster seemed ready to strike again. "You're gonna pay for that," Ichigo growled, right shoulder stinging like nobody’s business and making him about twice as irritable. Shit! That’s my sword arm, too… But he wasn’t about to let a minor injury stop him now, not when there were three more monsters to take out -- and someone behind him to protect. He let out a yell (in true shounen style) and brought the sword crosswise through the not-quite-solid body of the monster. It let out a shriek, claws raking the air in front of him, but could reach nothing. “Like I’d give you another free shot at me,” Ichigo scowled down at its dissolving carcass for a moment, and nearly paid dearly for his moment of posturing. One of the two remaining monsters was quickly pressing past Watanuki’s branch, and the second was floating around the wards. In effect, Ichigo was the target of a monster-sized pincer movement.
“Aw, hell,” Ichigo said as a third appeared in front of him. Maybe he should’ve kept fighting inside the wards…. Oh, well, too late now. There was nothing for it besides taking down every monster that came his way.
Breathing was getting difficult from the crushing presence of the spirits. Any other day of the year the wards would have been enough to hold them off, but no, this was the Long Night, the one night a year that only wards as powerful as the ones around Yuuko's shop had been could keep them at bay. Watanuki raised one arm, both to shield himself and to try to hold off the eye-watering stench; the branches seemed to be doing about as much as the wards, but he had nothing else with which to protect himself or Ichigo. "Get back!" he shouted at them, waving the branch not occupied in guarding his face at the ugly, leering masses. He managed to smack one through the ward and it recoiled, but did not disappear - though it did move back enough to allow Ichigo's arm room enough to take a swing.
And Ichigo took full advantage of this opportunity. He brought the sword around and down through the first creature's head, then used the existing momentum to slice through another. That just left one more, which he dispatched without too much trouble before stepping back behind the wards.
It was then that he remembered that his shoulder was bleeding. Gritting his teeth, he craned his neck around to look at it, shedding his overcoat to get a better view. His white shirt underneath was stained with red.
Watanuki took a very brief moment to die of relief, then spun to face Ichigo, looking at his shoulder with horror. "Are you all right?" he cried, moving closer to look at it but not daring to touch it. "Is it-- is it deep? Is the bleeding slowing? Which one got you? Do you feel all right?"
"The one with the claws," Ichigo answered him through gritted teeth. "It's not as bad as it looks. Doesn't feel too deep, anyway." He rolled his shoulder, managing not to wince at the pain. It wasn't too bad, really -- he'd taken way worse. He pulled his shirt off, bundled it up, and put it over the injury. "Hey, I can't reach too good, so you're going to have to hold it there. Put some pressure on it. That'll slow the bleeding, at least."
Watanuki was very good at handling kitchen implements, raw foods, and all manner of exotic tableware. Makeshift bandages meant to staunch what to him were hideous gaping wounds, however, were not within his realm of expertise. He swallowed hard - it was his fault Ichigo was hurt, the least he could do was patch him up without complaining - and took the shirt, pressing down as hard as he thought he should without making it more painful. He had no idea how far off his instincts were, but it was something, anyway. The shirt immediately grew a red blot, and Watanuki swallowed hard again. "Like this?" he asked, voice worried.
"Put more pressure on! You're not trying to soak up the blood, you're trying to stop it!" Ichigo barked. He obviously wasn't in too much pain to bicker with Watanuki. The injury seriously wasn't that bad -- not too much worse than the one Watanuki had given him on their first meeting. Without consciously realizing what he was doing, Ichigo glanced down at his arm, where the injury had been. There was still a mark there, although the stitches were out. He didn't know if it'd scar for sure -- it could go either way.
"You afraid of blood or something?" he asked, noting Watanuki's discomfort.
"No!" Watanuki snapped. "I just... I usually don't see so much of it, and we're in here where I can't even get anything to wash it out with, and it's-- it’s bleeding a lot!" He applied greater pressure, until he could feel the wound through the shirt. He gritted his teeth as the red blot spread under his fingers - though was it growing more slowly now? - and tried not to think about it, focusing on anything else. His eyes fell on the mark on Ichigo's arm and he remembered with deep shame that that one had been his fault, too. Dammit. "How's... how's that one doing?" he asked stiffly, keeping the pressure on Ichigo's shoulder. "Is it... healing okay?"
"Huh? What, you mean this? Ichigo raised his arm a little. "Yeah, it's fine. Like it never happened." He paused for a moment. Come to think of it, he did seem to get injured a lot around Watanuki. If it wasn't the guy himself, it was spirits after the guy. There was a line or something that came to mind -- "we've got to stop meeting like this," or something like that.
"It was nothing. I got worse fighting monsters pretty much every week," Ichigo said dismissively, working the tough-guy act for all it was worth. He couldn't tell if the bleeding was slowing or not. This guy must really not be used to this sort of thing, for an injury like this to throw him off. "Must be pretty peaceful on a theater ship," he commented, gazing off into the middle distance.
Must be nice to be able to fight monsters, Watanuki did not say. "You clearly weren't here for the sky whale," he said instead.
"The what?" Ichigo said in surprise. "What was that all about?" Maybe if Watanuki launched into this story, it would get his mind off the bleeding cuts under his hands.
"We got chased by a sky whale last year," Watanuki said. The blot was definitely not growing nearly as fast now, and he was both relieved enough to be able to talk about last year's trauma and horrified enough by the blood on his hands to want to talk about something else very badly. "It was huge - it blotted out the sky - and it almost hit us, but then somebody who could fly diverted it and it only took out the main tower on its way by. You can still see where it got repaired." He almost wanted to move the shirt to check on the wound, see how much the bloodflow had slowed, but he wasn't sure he could handle that. This was too much like nursing Doumeki, dammit. "And before that I had all my spoons stolen, and then the lights went out and the doctor got locked in a closet with Haruhi and... it's really not peaceful here. At all."
"......huh." Ichigo hadn't ever seen a skywhale up close. He'd heard of them, and had seen what might have been one, but never anything like this. Okay, so maybe it wasn't peaceful, but it was a different kind of action than he was used to. He still wondered, sometimes, if he was on the right ship. But for now, he....was okay here. It wasn't boring, anyway. And he wasn't the sort of guy who could run out just like that on people who had given him a lift when he needed it.
Suddenly, a sharp ache pierced his chest. "Nnngh!" he groaned, tucking slightly, eyes widening. The ache had grown steadily in the weeks leading up to the Long Night, but when he stepped inside the wards, it had diminished. But now it seemed to be back, and with a vengeance. Ichigo's mouth pulled into a grimace as he fought the ache back down. What was it?!
Watanuki nearly dropped the shirt in alarm. "Are you all right?" he cried, trying to support Ichigo with the arm not occupied with preventing him from bleeding out. "Did it get you somewhere else?" If Ichigo was hurt, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, locked behind the wards - the thought that he might be more hurt than he was already filled Watanuki with growing panic.
"No," he said, after forcing himself to take a breath. "No, it didn't get me. I....it's something....something else...." His left hand went to his chest, gripping at the bare skin, unconsciously trying to reach what was causing the ache beneath it. "I don't know what it is."
He took another deep breath. The pain didn't lessen, but he overcame it, was able to deal with it. Ichigo swallowed hard. "It's probably nothing," he said dismissively.
"No," Watanuki snapped, "It's probably not nothing. It's the Long Night and everything malignant that could possibly be showing its ugly face is, and if it's making you double over when you're already bleeding then it's not nothing!" He looked around but could see no spirits in the air around him; they seemed to have cleared out after Ichigo had taken care of the last four. He turned back to Ichigo, concerned - and saw with a jolt that there was a thin stream of dark-colored smoke coming from under his fist, clenched against his chest.
Watanuki squinted, trying to convince himself it wasn't really there, but a faint spirit odor rose with it, confirming its existence. "I-Ichigo," he said, recoiling slightly, "Y-your chest... it's..."
"What?" For a moment, Ichigo felt a wild urge to ask how Watanuki knew his chest hurt--but then he realized, his hand was clutching at it. "What're you talking about?" Ichigo removed his hand and stared down at his bare chest. He couldn't see anything -- his powers differed from Watanuki in that he didn't see malignant things as smoke, just ghosts or no ghosts. He looked back at Watanuki, a confused frown furrowing his brow.
"It's-- there's something coming from it," Watanuki said, staring at it fearfully. He didn't know how to explain this to someone who clearly couldn't see it - it was too otherworldly, too wrong, to put into words. "It looks like smoke and it smells... almost like a spirit, but it's coming from inside you... has it hurt before? Did that spirit that scratched you put it in you?" He'd seen something similar happen before, back when he had been working for Yuuko. It wasn't pretty.
"What the..." He had no idea what Watanuki was going on about, but the expression on the kid's face said that he wasn't lying. Ichigo looked back down. "No, I don't think it was that spirit." He took a long pause before speaking again. "This isn't the first time. It's been...aching all week."
Watanuki's mind raced through all of Yuuko's long, languid, mostly pointless lectures on How Things Work In The Spirit World. If it were the week building up to a big event like this, it made sense whatever spirit was inside Ichigo would be acting up. He flailed his free arm. "And you didn't say anything before now?! You have no idea what that thing could be! You don't know if it's dangerous or how long it's been there or what it could do - did it not occur to you to find help?!"
"I didn't know it was a spirit thing!" Ichigo snapped back. "I thought I'd pulled a muscle or something! It wasn't a big deal!" He paused for a second, looking down again. "How come you see smoke and I don't?" he wondered.
As he stared down, if Watanuki caught a glimpse of Ichigo's reflection, its left eye was black with a yellow iris, and the expression was...different from the one Ichigo was wearing. It scowled, but the look was more sinister than the confusion on Ichigo's face.
There was hatred in the line of its mouth.
Watanuki did not think that Ichigo's question was particularly important in light of the fact that there was something quite possibly evil and destructive living in his chest, which was clearly not much bothered by the chalk wards it should not have been able to cross. Whatever it was, it was reasonably powerful, or a different kind of spirit than Watanuki had ever encountered before. Neither of these possibilities would improve the situation. "What does it matter how I see it?" Watanuki snapped. "The point is I see it and I have no idea what it is!"
"How the hell am I supposed to find out, then?" Ichigo demanded. "It's not like I..." He paused. There might be one person who could tell him, but Ichigo had no idea how to contact him. Sandal-Hat....Urahara. A pensive look spread across Ichigo's face as he thought hard. Would Urahara know?
Ichigo's sudden silence alarmed Watanuki. "What is it?" he said, eyes going to the trail of smoke, which was still rising gently. "Is it doing something?" Watanuki leaned down to peer into Ichigo's eyes, trying to look for some sign of possession - the dead look was usually the first indicator of an unwelcome visitor. He didn't notice that he still had the cloth pressed against Ichigo's shoulder, so distracted was he by the smoke; the bleeding seemed nearly to have stopped by now, but Ichigo's injury was no longer the cause of concern. "Answer me!"
"What? Hey, get out of my face." Ichigo came back to the present when Watanuki's face obscured his vision. "No, I was thinking," he informed Watanuki, scowling. He didn't know what that said about how zoned out he looked right then that Watanuki thought he was possessed or something. "I'm fine, okay? It's not about to take over, whatever it is." Jeez, could this kid give it a rest? This wasn't the end of the world. Although he couldn't quite deny the little bit of worry that had begun to set in....
"No, it is NOT fine!" Watanuki shouted, pulling back from Ichigo's face irritatedly and flailing his free arm to emphasize his point. "It is the Long Night and there is a SPIRIT inside of you and the wards are completely USELESS against it and who even knows what it's DOING there and how do you KNOW it's not about to take over?! It could be biding its time until right after midnight!" Which was getting perilously close, now that Watanuki thought about it.
"Why the hell would it do that? I dunno what it is, but there's not a heck of a lot I can do about it now, right?" Ichigo all but ranted at the bespectacled boy. "Now, if you've got any bright ideas, let's hear it. If not, I'll deal with it. It's not your problem."
"How am I supposed to know why spirits do anything?! If I knew, I'd have been rid of them a long time ago!" Watanuki snapped back. He was truly agitated now - even normal Long Nights weren't this stressful. He threw a glance over his shoulder, sure that something else ugly and malignant was creeping over their shoulders-- and his eyes fell on the mirror.
It took him nearly half a minute to remember how to talk around the terror that filled him. "I-- Ichigo--" he choked, unable to tear his eyes from the yellow-eyed apparition glaring back at him.
"What?" Ichigo looked at the mirror, but didn't see anything except his face. "What're you staring at?" When Watanuki didn't say anything, he took the kid by the shoulders and shook them. "Snap out of it! What is it?"
In the mirror, the thing-with-Ichigo's-face didn't seem to talk. Rather, it quirked an eyebrow at Watanuki, then began to laugh inaudibly. This was about twice as terrifying as it would have been if he had actually been able to hear the laugh.
Even with Ichigo's shaking, Watanuki could not bring himself to look away. He didn't want to turn his back to it, to give it any opportunity to move, and furthermore there was something hypnotic about its gaze and the terrifying, terrifying way it laughed at him. "It-- it has your face," he said hoarsely, too choked by fear even to scream.
"What?" Ichigo looked from Watanuki to the mirror and back again. He had no idea what it is, and he didn't think Watanuki was acting. He couldn't think of anything to do besides break Watanuki's eye-contact with it. That meant taking out that mirror.
In the mirror, the thing was talking. The words were also inaudible, and unless Watanuki could read lips, they were unintelligible. But whatever it was saying couldn't be good...not with that growing, twisted grin on its face.
Watanuki wanted to yell at the thing to stop, to get out of his face and out of his head, because even though he couldn't hear it he felt like he should, like it was whispering something terrible and that any second he was going to hear it and that would be even worse than seeing it. But he was still frozen in place, barely even comprehending that Ichigo was shouting at him.
"I said," Ichigo growled, volume going up with each syllable, "snap out of it!" With the last word, his sword swung out one-handed, knocking the mirror over and onto the floor. He took Watanuki's shoulders and shook them again, hard. "Look at me!" he commanded, face less than a foot away from Watanuki's.
The face vanished. Watanuki blinked, his right eye flickered, and there was Ichigo again, but with normal eyes only narrowed in annoyance, not like that thing. He sagged with relief, swallowing hard to relieve his suddenly very dry mouth. "That thing in you," he said shakily, trying to put coherent thoughts together, "It's... it's evil."
Ichigo stared at him. "How do you know it's what's in me?" he demanded. If there really was something evil lurking in his soul, he wanted to make absolutely sure of it before he figured out what to do about it. He hadn't even noticed it until now, so it probably wasn't a problem....yet.
"I told you, it had your face!" Watanuki snapped, regaining his vigor through annoyance. "Don't you listen? It had your face, but it had this yellow eye and its hair was white and it was just... wrong..." He shuddered. "And it had your reflection. That doesn't just happen!" He looked furtively around the room, as though it were lurking in a corner, though this was impossible as he knew it was lurking inside Ichigo. "I bet it's what's keeping the rest of them away," he said. "There hasn't been a spirit in here since I saw it."
Ichigo looked down at his chest, still not seeing anything. "You better not be pulling my leg," he muttered angrily, trying to think of what to do. Despite his words, he found himself believing Watanuki. This didn't seem like the kind of thing that a guy like Watanuki would joke about - or at least, if he did, he wouldn't prolong it like this. (And besides, he'd seen Watanuki act. It didn't even come close to being as convincing as this.)
"Why would I lie about this?!" Watanuki all but shouted. "We're in a locked room filled with malevolent spirits! You think I have time to joke?!" Ichigo was getting closer and closer to tying Doumeki's place on the Stupid Bastard list in Watanuki's mind, which was one hell of a feat.
Ichigo gritted his teeth. "Look, I believe you. Okay? Quit being so dramatic -- the door isn't even locked!" Bickering with Watanuki wasn't helping him think. He couldn't take his sword to the ghost in his chest for obvious reasons, but he couldn't think of any other way to deal with it. "There's nothing keeping us here, just wards to keep the spirits -- !!" He paused, eyes going wide as an idea struck him. "Those wards. Could you do them so that they keep spirits in?"
Watanuki paused in his preparation for a sharp retort. He thought hard. "I think so," he said after a moment, "But I'm no good with wards. These are pretty much the only ones I know. You'd have to go to... a witch or something." The image of a very specific witch came to mind, but-- no, Ichigo almost definitely didn't want to go to her. "Maybe there's somebody on board good enough with wards to help you."
"These are going to have to do," Ichigo declared. "If this thing in me's going to pull anything, it's going to be tonight. Do they have to be drawn on the floor?" He needed to find out how they worked before maybe he could adapt them to make sure that whatever was in him stayed there.
Watanuki's safety was his primary concern here. He'd worry about himself when he knew that this thing wasn't about to come out of his chest, sprout talons, and rip into the other person who attracted ghosts.
"You-- you draw them around what you're trying to keep in," Watanuki said, calling from memory what Yuuko had taught him with an effort. "So I don't know if I'd draw them on the floor around you or on your chest. There's not much room here, though." They were already uncomfortably close within the wards, and before Ichigo's arrival there had only been room for Watanuki to sit comfortably. Putting wards around Ichigo would make things even tighter, and neither of them would be sitting for the rest of the night. "I've seen people before - where I used to work - with warding tattoos. That might work." He was speaking totally out of practicality; he sure as hell didn't feel like standing squeezed between two wards all night. And if Ichigo had to fight something off, he'd have to adjust his balance to stay within the circle, which could lead to Watanuki losing limbs; not an outcome he particularly desired.
"It's worth a shot," Ichigo announced finally, after due consideration. "Draw them on me." He already had his shirt off, and peeled the bloody cloth off of his shoulder to inspect the wound. While it looked bloody, it had mostly clotted up already, and as long as he didn't mess with it, it'd heal up in a week or two. "You still got that chalk?"
Watanuki reached for the black chalk laying behind him - broken where he had stepped on it in earlier's skirmish - and considered Ichigo's chest with some trepidation. He hadn't been lying when he said he was no good with wards. He was leery of all things magical to begin with, considering the difficulties the occult gave him, and wards were hard enough when they were on the floor. He had no idea if this would even work.
The possibility was still better than the alternative, though, so he brushed his hair out of his eyes and leaned toward Ichigo. He drew the chalk in a tentative circle under his collarbone, where the thin tendril of smoke still rose, and began to fill in the edges with the necessary symbols. Thankfully, the chalk worked well enough on skin that the ward circle was visible. "You feel anything?" he asked, pausing in his drawing and eyeing Ichigo's chest as though he expected to see that thing leering back at him from the circle.
"Yeah," Ichigo muttered, "that chalk kinda tickles." He was trying to resist the urge to peer down at what Watanuki was doing, but didn't want to get in the way, so he settled for keeping his chin up but looking down. He breathed in and out, waiting for Watanuki to finish. Absently, he wondered what time it was -- it must be nearly midnight......
"You know what I mean," Watanuki muttered, too intent on the wards to berate Ichigo properly. He drew in a particularly complicated bit, darkened a line that his hand had rubbed out, and sat back to look at his work. It wasn't the best ward ever drawn, but the trickle of smoke was struggling to move past it into the air. A good sign. "I think it's working," he said. "Just in time." Midnight was less than fifteen minutes away, as a glance at the clock on the dresser confirmed.
"Still hurts like hell," Ichigo said more matter-of-factly than he had any right to. But it didn't feel like it was about to come out, or explode, or take over his brain, or anything like that. It was just...there. His eyes found the clock, too. But he didn't delude himself into thinking that it'd be over in fifteen minutes -- no, they still had the rest of the night to wait out.
It was just the worst that happened at midnight. But at least, if Watanuki was right, he didn't have to worry about -- oh, hell. A small-ish creature was creeping towards the outer circle of wards, sniffing at them, testing, looking for a weak spot...
Watanuki heard the thing crawling over the chalk - it jarred something in the back of his mind to feel the ward pressing against it. "Dammit," he said, backing away from it (though he had only about three feet to get away from it in). "Must be working. They're coming back."
Ichigo picked up his sword with his left hand. He wasn't quite as strong as with his right, but it'd be good enough to take out this small fry. Stepping forward and in front of Watanuki, he brought the blade down in an arc, slicing it neatly. Unfortunately, he couldn't do this without throwing his right arm out to balance, and the scabs that had been forming over his injury tore and began to bleed again.
Ichigo didn't notice at first, until he felt something wet dripping down his back. He craned his head around to look -- "Aw, dammit!"
Watanuki flinched at the sight of the fresh blood. He picked up Ichigo's shirt, already bloodstained, and held it out to him. "You need me to do it?" he said, fully aware that there probably wasn't much he could do but feeling personally responsible anyway. "You're in worse shape than I am at this point."
"Yeah, you'd better do it. I can't reach from here." For a moment, Ichigo wondered what he looked like -- standing there with chalk scribbles on his chest with his shoulder bleeding and his sword in his left hand. But that wasn't important, not now. His eyes scanned the room, looking for more appearances by their hungry otherworldly guests.
Watanuki still hated the sight of the blood, but he picked up the shirt - still damp, oh god that was disgusting - and pressed it to Ichigo's shoulder, holding it down with both hands and angling the shirt so that the blood didn't get anywhere near the chalk circle on his chest. "That good?"
It was good to have something to put his focus on that wasn't the surrounding room. He was starting to feel an opprssiveness even worse than before; he kept throwing glances over his shoulder, sure something was watching him even as he knew that there was nothing there. Paranoia from a long night, maybe; but he was glad Ichigo wasn't too wounded to swing his sword.
"Yeah, it's fine." From what he could feel, anyway -- the blood had stopped dripping, at any rate, and the shirt was on the cut. It stung a bit, but it wasn't anything Ichigo couldn't handle. He continued to glance around the room. That little thing was only the beginning.
Five minutes to midnight.
There was definite pressure in the air now. Suddenly, in the corner of Watanuki's vision, a dark shape melted out of the air and plastered itself to the wall, crawling around the bare furniture in an attempt to remain unseen. Watanuki jumped as it scurried under the dresser, trying to turn where he could still see it and keep a hold on Ichigo's shoulder at the same time. "There's one," he said, pointing with his free hand. "It's hiding--" Then, behind him, he felt a larger presence and knew another one had appeared, bigger than the one under the dresser. His heart began to pound. The next hour would be the worst of the night, and he wondered briefly how he was going to keep Ichigo from bleeding and keep out of the way at the same time, and cursed his own uselessness again, even as he moved farther away from the edges of the ward in fear.
"I see it," Ichigo muttered, taking an attack stance. "Watch my back, okay? Forget the damn shirt and watch my back." He lunged forward, jabbing his sword under the dresser to get at the little ghost. His clothes would be bloody, yeah, but he could deal with that. The creature dodged, and Ichigo twisted the sword to follow it, slicing it neatly in two. It gave a shrill screech, then disappeared into smoke.
To his credit, Ichigo didn't let his guard down, and scanned the room again. Things were going to be rough for a good half-hour, he knew, and his suspicions were confirmed when two more appeared, besides the one behind him.
Watanuki stooped to grab the branch that he had let fall earlier, a thin barrier between himself and the multiplying spirits. "Can I do anything?" he asked, turning his back to Ichigo's. His knees were shaking but he couldn't make this any harder for Ichigo, who was worse off than he was and still defending him, so he held up the branch and tried to look like he was a force to be reckoned with.
"Yeah!" Ichigo yelled, as he swung at the closest spirit. "Don't die!" He took out the first with a little bit of difficulty, but he disregarded his shoulder injury completely. It'd heal. It always did. Right now, he needed to put everything into attacking, so he ignored the slow, tickling trickle of blood down his back. Ichigo rounded on the second, but then saw the biggest monster of the night looming over Watanuki. It lashed out with its claws, but met the barrier. The claws flexed, and it let out a frustrated growl.
Fear paralyzed Watanuki. His action was not conscious, but completely instinctive: with all the fury usually reserved for swinging a frying pan at Doumeki's head, he took a swipe at the monster and connected, leaving a stripe across what passed for its face.
Unfortunately, this only served to anger it more.
It gave an unearthly howl and brought its clawed paw down onto the wards, causing them to buckle and warp almost visibly. Its breath was foul, seeping around the circle that sheltered Ichigo and Watanuki, and it pushed harder against the invisible barrier.....until Ichigo's zanpakuto curved down through the air so fast it left a crescent after-image in front of their eyes.
The monster shrieked and recoiled, before lumbering forward again. Its left arm had been severed, and there was a gash that was leaking dark smoke across its chest, but it wasn't dead yet. Behind them, the other two monsters pushed at the wards, but Ichigo ignored them for the time being. He could handle them. The wards would keep them at bay long enough for him to finish off this thing.
Through his right eye, Watanuki saw the wards buckle. He had a momentary, horrifying image of the other crewmembers finding his and Ichigo's dismembered bodies within the broken circle in the morning... but then a white crescent blazed across the vision in both eyes, and the monster was without a left arm. Relieved but not out of danger, he turned to deal with the other two, only slightly smaller monsters. This time he only shook the branch at them rather than hitting them with it, and this combined with the wards served to keep them from digging their tentacles into the cracks in the magic and pulling it down around them.
Ichigo didn't miss the stripe across the monster's face, or Watanuki keeping the other monsters at bay, but he had bigger things to deal with. The kid had guts, though. Not really surprising, if he was as used to ghosts as Ichigo was. He sliced the largest monster clean open, and it dissolved into putrid black smoke.
But there was no time to savor the victory. There were two things with....with tentacles trying to push their way inside. Ichigo shifted to deal with one, slicing off one tentacle that had penetrated the wards, just in time for another tentacle to grab his sword arm. The touch alone seemed to drain energy from him; if he hadn't by his very nature had an unusually high amount of spiritual energy, he'd've been severely weakened before he could bring his sword around and slice the thing off.
Unfortunately, wrapped up in this deadly game of whack-a-mole, he hadn't been able to help Watanuki...
Watanuki, aided by the wards, had managed to hold his ground up to this point by swinging wildly at whatever part of the thing came closest to penetrating the barrier. But the stripes he was leaving across its face-area and tentacles were serving only to annoy it, and before he could stop it it coiled a tentacle around his ankle and pulled. He fell backward with a yelp, dropping his only weapon and hitting his head on the floor hard enough to send spots dancing before his vision. He began to slide out of the circle as the monster pulled him toward it, and though he tried his best to struggle, his muscles were beginning to feel like jelly. He had a vague thought that he should yell or something, but he couldn't seem to muster the energy....
Ichigo managed to avoid the second monster's tentacles, slicing through it and bringing it down with energy to spare. He turned around, and his eyes went wide as he saw Watanuki being dragged slowly out of the circle by the ankle. Without a pause, not even to think, Ichigo spun around and sliced off the prehensile appendage, the severed portion wriggling madly for a second before disappearing. Ichigo stood over Watanuki, on the defensive until the latter regained his strength. He wasn't about to launch himself at these creatures only to have another one pick off Watanuki while his back was turned. "Hey!" he yelled. "Are you okay?" You'd better be.
Consciousness returned like a sharp blow to the head, with none of the drowsy slowness of passing out under the creature's power. Quite suddenly, the room was in startling focus, with Ichigo's foot and lower leg featuring very prominently in Watanuki's vision. It took his mind a second to catch up - but it registered the very angry tentacle-monster very quickly. With a yelp, Watanuiki scrabbled backward, crab-like, intent on getting back in the safety of the wards as quickly as possible.
"I'm fine!" He managed to gasp, taking quick stock of his injuries and finding them minimal. But the monster wasn't defeated yet.
Ichigo was working on that. As soon as he glanced down, making sure that Watanuki wasn't about to pass out again and could look after himself, he launched a frontal attack on the monster, cutting tentacles out of his way as needed. He took out one of the two monsters without too much difficulty -- it was dodging the tentacles in a confined space that was difficult. The reason for the delay was the constant assault by appendages: he had to slice each off before he attacked the creature. It wasn't the energy-draining that was the problem, it was that they hindered his movement. "Dammit -- get those things off me!" Ichigo gritted.
Meanwhile, much smaller creatures were amassing on the floor. They crawled on spider-legs, with twisted faces and hundreds of eyes, nosing along the barriers, searching for any cracks or weaknesses.
Watanuki stared, helpless, at Ichigo's dilemma. He didn't know what he could do - his last attempt at helping had ended with him unconscious on the ground. Maybe-- maybe if it got ahold of him it would free up Ichigo to take a hit at it? "I can distract it!" he said, climbing to his feet on shaky legs. "M-move!"
Oh, hell, he wasn't about to throw himself needlessly into -- .....he was. Ichigo stared at him for an instant, dumbfounded, before the tentacles wrapping around Watanuki's already-weakened form galvanized him into action. "YOU IDIOT!" he yelled as he tried to slice Watanuki free. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Ichigo's voice sounded like it was coming from very far away. Watanuki raised his head with difficulty and managed to say with bleary irritation, "Dis...tracting it!" He could feel the tentacles falling away from him; he hoped that meant they were being cut off.
There was no way Ichigo was going to be able to cut them all off Watanuki and keep them off himself at the same time. It looked like his only option was to go for the head. Throwing caution to the winds and praying that Watanuki had enough energy to withstand this, he pressed forward, ignoring the appendages that wrapped around him, and brought his sword clean through the creature's body. He didn't even wait for it to disintegrate before he had whirled around and had Watanuki by the shoulder. "Hey! Hey, get up!" Come on, don’t pass out on me now…! The creatures on the outside were nosing at cracks, but Ichigo wasn't paying attention. Dammit, if Watanuki didn't recover from this --
The world took slightly longer to come back into focus this time, but soon the light on the ceiling was no longer a blur and he was able to get his legs underneath him. "Is is gone?" he asked, looking around frantically for more of the tentacle-things. The spiders were starting to chip at the wards, but they weren't as important right now.
"Yeah. It's gone." Ichigo steadied him with both hands, keeping an eye on him in case he fell. Dammit, that thing took a lot out of the kid. "Doesn't look like there are any more of them, at least for now." He glared at the tiny spider things. "Those things aren't even worth bothering with." He glanced at the clock. 12:15 -- were they past the worst?
The constant smoke at the edges of Watanuki's vision was beginning to fade. "They're-- slowing down," he said with vast relief. "It's always better after midnight." He allowed himself to sink to the ground, too drained to stand. He knew he'd at least be in the wards until sunrise, but all he wanted was to curl up and sleep.
Ichigo crouched down with him, making sure he didn't fall. All Watanuki needed right now would be a concussion. After assuring himself that the boy wasn't about to fall over, Ichigo set about dealing with the tiny spiders. "Go on, get out!" he growled, kicking one of them into the far wall in impatience. It was dull work, but their ranks thinned. No more powerful monsters appeared, at least for now. It was possible, yeah, but they'd gotten through the worst of it, and Ichigo could handle everything that came their way. "Is it always this bad with you?" he asked, slicing another one and impaling its neighbor. "On Long Night, I mean."
Watanuki struggled to remember through a haze of exhaustion. "No," he said after a moment. "Usually it's... pretty manageable. I always draw the wards and there's almost never been anything too big for a branch to handle." He frowned. "I guess... maybe it's worse this year because Doumeki's not here." It galled him to say it, but he'd gotten used to easy Long Nights after spending six of them with Doumeki in Yuuko's warded shop. He could think of no other explanation.
Wsssssh went the black-and-white blade. Ichigo stood on one of them, holding it still with his foot as he cut through it. Dammit, using his sword on these things felt like overkill, but he didn't feel like ineffectually beating them with branches. "Doumeki?" Ichigo took a moment to remember who Watanuki was talking about. "You mean that guy who was with you in the play? What's he got to do with spirits?"
"He repelled them," Watanuki said, too tired even to explain the annoyance that was Doumeki with the volume it usually required. "I have no idea why. Just... they didn't like something about his blood." Lucky bastard, he did not add.
"Lucky bastard," Ichigo muttered, still working his way through the goddamn spider things. Looked like there was only about a dozen or so to go. He hefted his sword, willed his tiring muscles on, and took them out. "There, that oughta do it." He glanced around the room. He didn't have Watanuki's sense for spirits, but he didn't see anything new, and the pain in his chest was easing up, just a little bit. "Don't worry. If anything shows up, I'll take it out."
The easing of pressure from Watanuki's mind with the disappearance of the last of the spirits was an intense relief. The night had felt ten times longer than it had been. He slumped back with a deep sigh, closing his eyes briefly.
He was asleep before he had time to realize he was dozing off.
"Still, he sounds like a pretty useful guy to have aroun --" Ichigo paused, noticing that Watanuki was lying on the floor with his eyes closed. He stared down at the boy for a moment, closing his mouth. For a moment, he felt camaraderie with this weird, noodly kid who saw ghosts like he did. They'd just gotten through a pretty tough fight, and mostly in one piece. Ichigo turned away from him and rested the tip of his blade on the floor, one hand resting easily on the hilt. He could look out for Watanuki for now, at least until sunrise, in case anything came back while Watanuki was sleeping.
"Dammit, why‘d you fall asleep," Ichigo griped to himself as he sat down next to Watanuki. “Now I have sit here by myself and listen to you snore.” The next few hours were gonna be really freaking boring.
Tomorrow, with sunlight to banish the fear of ghosts and the relief of another Long Night gone, Watanuki would undoubtedly remember that he hadn't yet thanked Ichigo properly for saving him from being eaten by unfriendly spirits, and with a great deal of griping set about finding some way to begin repaying the debt he owed him as a result. Yuuko probably would have been amused; not two months after ridding himself of his obligations to Doumeki, Watanuki had gone and gotten himself indebted to another stoic exorcist. She would probably have called it hitsuzen. Watanuki, for his part, would be calling it the biggest damn inconvenience of his life tomorrow, but for now, he was just glad to be able to sleep, without spirits invading his dreams.
Not that any of this made Ichigo any less of an irksome inconsiderate bastard, of course.
Content: Ichigo and Watanuki in the same place on Long Night? RECIPE FOR DISASTER. For those of you who don't know, they both attract spirits. And not just the friendly ones, either.
Setting: Watanuki's cabin
Time: Long Night. Yes, we've been working on this log since December.
Warnings: UST Bickering, language, lots and lots of icky spirits, blood, violence, tentacles
Finally, the wards were up. Watanuki had been on his knees with a piece of chalk for the better part of two hours, carefully drawing the traditional symbols to deflect evil spirits on the Long Night. He had no talent for magic whatsoever, of course, but anyone could draw these symbols; in previous years, they'd been all that stood between him and the hungriest of the murky shapes around him. Already the edges of his vision were starting to show blurs of things that shouldn't have been there.
He glanced out the porthole at the sky - the sun was just slipping behind the horizon. He checked one last time to make sure the sprigs of leaves over the door were securely in place, then stepped into the circle he had drawn and sat down to wait, drawing a deep, shuddering breath. Only nine hours of total darkness to survive. He could make it.
Ichigo wasn't having so great a time, either. In the two hours since the sun had set, he had been approached by over half a dozen restless ghosts, and two less friendly things. Zangetsu was gripped tightly in one hand, ready to be used at a moment's notice in case one of the bastards tried to sneak up on him. He wasn't taking any of this. Long Night was never exactly fun for someone spiritually sensitive, but it had never been quite this bad before.
As he stalked down the corridor, he heard something roar behind a door down the hallway. "What the --?"
Watanuki's yell was drowned out by the roar of the thing that had suddenly materialized right outside his wards. It was squeezed into the meager air between his bunk and the edge of the circle, and he could feel the strain of it against the power of the symbols. He had a feeling he knew which was going to go first, and it wasn't the hunk of evil looking down on him with a single lidless eye almost as big around as its gaping maw, which belched thick black smoke around the small room.
He considered yelling again, but who the hell was going to hear him? Even if someone came, they wouldn't even be able to see the thing, let alone fight it. He was completely alone with it, and he could only hope the wards would hold all night or it would lose interest - though from previous experience, that wasn't likely. Heart hammering, he backed as far away from it as he could within the circle, brandishing his branch like a meager shield. "Stay back!" he snapped at it, completely pointlessly.
That was a person's voice! If Ichigo had had any inclination to take off in the other direction and avoid this mess, that shout had dispelled it. Kicking the door wide open, sword gripped in both hands, Ichigo surveyed the situation in an instant. Darting through the doorway, he thrust Zangetsu forward, straight through the creature's giant eye. "Take that, frog-legs!" he snapped, pulling his sword out and readying it for another swing.
The fact that the damsel in distress was that pushy four-eyed cook hadn't even registered yet.
If there was one thing Watanuki, cowering on the floor, had not been expecting, it had been rescue. He gaped as the monster gave a hideous, high-pitched squeal and burst into a cloud of foul-smelling smoke. The pressure in the room seemed to dissipate with the rapidly-disappearing smoke, and through the haze he saw the damn annoying orange-headed pilot.
Watanuki took a moment to cough the stench of the thing out of his lungs. "What," he gasped, waving the branch in front of him to clear the air, "What are you doing here?!"
Ichigo watched the thing dissolve, resting his sword's tip on the ground and taking a triumphant stance. That'd teach monsters to mess with -- wait a moment.
He turned slowly to look at Watanuki. "Y-you? What're you doing here?!"
"What's it look like?!" Watanuki snapped, waving his branch at the intricate chalk marks covering the floor around him. "Trying to keep them off! Did you-- did you see that thing?!" It wasn't that he wasn't abjectly grateful to Ichigo for driving the thing off, but thanking him took second place to figuring what the hell was going on here.
"Of course I saw it! What the hell are you --" Ichigo stopped dead for a moment as realization hit. "Wait. You're saying you saw it, too?"
"Of course I did! I generally don't hide from things I can't see!" What did the idiot think? What other reason would he have had to be sprawled on the ground clutching shrubbery? "It was trying to get through my wards. I didn't have time to make them any stronger."
Ichigo stared at the chalk-marks. "I've never seen anything like that before," he said. He'd never used things like that himself. The direct approach tended to be enough for him.
The redhead looked back up at Watanuki. "How come you can see spirits?" he asked. He had a couple guesses as to the source of his own ability, but nothing definite. Maybe Watanuki could give him some answers.
"My old boss taught me how to draw them," Watanuki said. He'd have liked to add that he didn't have the luxury of a spirit-killing sword or the ability to use one, but considering that sword had just saved him from getting devoured, it was better not to mention that. "I don't know why I can see the spirits and she wouldn't tell me. I just... born able to see them." He looked at Ichigo suspiciously. "Why can you see them? Are you a magic user?"
"Nah," Ichigo replied, resting his free hand on his hip. "I've always been able to see them, too. I always thought it was because my family ran a medical clinic, so I've been around more death than most people." There was also Sandal-Hat and his mana crystals, who had given Ichigo his sword, but that didn't have anything to do with the ghosts, he thought, so he refrained from mentioning it.
Watanuki frowned, considering this. "I guess it could be different for different people," he said. "I've only met a few other people who could see them." Really there was only Yuuko, Doumeki and Ichigo-- he wondered briefly if this was further proof that the universe hated him and then decided that down that path of thought lay madness. "So what are you doing?" he asked. "I'm sure they bother you on the Long Night, too, right?"
"Yeah," Ichigo said matter-of-factly, "but it's never been this bad before." He wasn't quite sure why -- he actually hadn't had time to think about it in between fighting monsters. And speaking of, one was materializing right behind him.
Watanuki flattened himself against the wall at the edge of the circle, pointing frantically with his branch. "Behind you! There!" It was nowhere as near as large as the other one, but the smell of it already threatened to gag him.
"What? Aw, hell, another one?" Ichigo spun around, sword held blade-out in his right hand. It cut through the creature like butter, almost before Ichigo had fully turned to look at it. "Why are there so damn many?"
Watanuki winced as the spirit vanished. "I..." he began, and sighed. "It's.... not just that I can see them. They follow me." He'd almost forgotten in the flurry of explanation that with Ichigo here by him, he'd be sure to be inconvenienced by them. "I'm here to keep them away from the rest of the crew. You should probably leave, too, actually, if you don't want to see any more - they generally swarm around the wards pretty badly by morning." It wasn't self-pity, simply the truth.
......you too, huh? Ichigo regarded the dark-haired boy seriously, studying him. He hadn't expected anything like this. Being hounded by spirits all the time wasn't exactly what anyone would call fun, and....it went a long way towards explaining why Watanuki was so jumpy.
In any case, he'd decided that he wasn't about to leave Watanuki here, with only some chalk-marks between him and hungry ghosts. He rested his sword-point on the ground and pulled a scowl. "Nah, I think I'll stay here, thanks."
Oh, wonderful. All he needed was company - especially this company. "Thanks," Watanuki said, scowling back, "But I'll be just fine without your help. They're good enough wards to hold off most of the bigger ones, anyway." He didn't want Ichigo sticking around and stabbing every ghost that came along - that would put Watanuki much too far into his debt, an obligation neither of them needed.
"You think I'm gonna run off and let you sit here with some flimsy chicken-scratch as the only thing between you and every spirit in the country?" Ichigo jerked his thumb behind him at the doorway. "Like hell I'd do something like that!"
He paused for a moment, calming down a little. "Look. I attract them too. Always have. If we're both here, then the spirits won't be bothering anyone else on the ship, and I can take them out from behind your chalk if I have to."
Like it or not, what Ichigo was saying made a lot of sense. Watanuki sighed exasperatedly. "Fine." He rubbed the back of his neck irritatedly - it always prickled practically nonstop on the Long Night - and moved grudgingly over within the circle. "They tend to swarm a little less if I'm behind the wards. Might make it a little easier." It was plenty large enough for both of them to sit without touching, or he would have just let them swarm. Either way, he was making it perfectly clear that Ichigo's presence was merely something he was tolerating.
Something in Ichigo's pride bristled at the idea of hiding behind the wards, but a cursory glance around the room showed shadows and blurs that were rapidly coming into focus. He didn't have any doubt that he could handle them, but the barrier might break, exposing Watanuki. So, he stepped into the circle and took a fighting stance, ready to take out the first one solid enough to hit.
Watanuki inched well out of Ichigo's way. "Watch where you're swinging that!" he snapped.
"I am!" Ichigo shot back, gauging the nearest monster. Then, he brought his sword around in a sideways arc, making use of the space above Watanuki's bed (wielding a sword this big in such a small space was always tricky) and cut the monster in two. He turned to the next one almost immediately, jabbing it this time. Dammit, this space was too small to fight in!
Watanuki yelped and ducked lower, trying simultaneously to get farther away and to shield his head with his arms, and failing at both. "HEY!" he bellowed, flinching as Ichigo's ridiculous sword swung by directly overhead to get at the second monster. "STOP THAT! YOU'RE GOING TO KILL SOMETHING!"
"That's the idea! Keep your head down and you'll be fine!" As long as Watanuki didn't stand up fast, there wasn't any danger of him being hit. Hopefully, he'd have enough sense to keep still. That was four down, and five more massing in the shadows.
"Are you going to swing that thing all night?!" Watanuki was practically flat against the floor now and almost wishing he'd forced Ichigo out the door himself. "You IDIOT! They're just going to keep coming! You can't kill them all and you're probably making it WORSE!"
"What, you think they're just going to GO AWAY?" Ichigo snapped back. "The only way to deal with them is to drive them back!" Three....two....one.....zero! He blew out a breath of air and glanced around once more at the deceptively brightly-lit cabin. "There. Room's clear again." He pulled his sword back behind the wards, and safely away from Watanuki. Speaking of... "....what the hell are you doing down there?"
"What the hell do you think?!" Watanuki snapped, untangling his limbs and climbing to his feet, the better to yell at Ichigo. "They're going to keep coming no matter what! Hell, you might have just gotten them more excited! I bet the big ones'll be on us next and by the end of the night you'll have sliced all my wards to ribbons and you'll be completely exhausted from waving that thing around and my cabin will be in ruins and we'll have nothing left to protect us and it'll be ALL YOUR FAULT!" He waved his branch for emphasis on the last three words. "THINK before you start attacking things in other people's wards, why don't you?!"
"They're dead!" Ichigo shot back. "They can't be excited or anything else anymore! I'm not going to sit here and pray that the chalk keeps them back. I'm gonna fight 'em until dawn if I have to! It's better than letting them collect until your little barrier collapses!"
"I'm still here, aren't I?" Watanuki argued. "And I'm sorry not all of us have huge magic swords to fight them off with! Some of us have to make do with chalk whether we like it or not! Besides, I never asked you to protect me!" Ichigo didn't know it, but he'd hit pretty close to home - more than anything, Watanuki hated being helpless, and especially on the Long Night. He always needed somebody to protect him, somebody to take the damage for him and keep the monsters at bay; his wards were all he could manage on his own, but every year before now they'd prevented him having to inconvenience anyone else. Ichigo was an intruder in Watanuki's mind, an intruder who was putting Watanuki deeper into debt with every monster he cut to ribbons.
"Who says I'm protecting you?" Ichigo snapped back. "Look, I gotta face these things down tonight no matter what. I'm just doing it here instead of somewhere else." This wasn't completely true -- he was fighting them here to protect Watanuki. But that didn’t really matter.
Like it or not, this was a valid point. And Watanuki was expending enough of his energy jumping at shadows without having the added helpless panic on his mind. True as these things were, however, it did not prevent him feeling irrationally angry at Ichigo for being right. "Fine," he finally said, with as little agreement in his tone as possible. "But if you wreck my cabin swinging that ridiculous thing around all night I will not forgive you." Somewhere in there was permission to stay. It was Ichigo's problem if he didn't hear it.
"Fine," Ichigo shot back. He wouldn't have left, anyway, even if Watanuki had tried to shove him out physically. He was here for the duration of the night, and for now, the spirits had retreated out of sight. He waited a full minute for them to reappear, but for some reason, they seemed to have quieted.
For now.
The momentary respite was a vast relief. Watanuki managed to relax a tiny fraction, even though the foul smell of the spirits still permeated the room and he did not drop his branch. "Is there anything I can do?" he asked grudgingly, holding up the branch, which gave off a clean smell to counteract the odor. "This holds them off a little. If you need help."
Ichigo stared at it. Might be a good idea. "Can't be too careful," he replied. "Got an extra one?" He'd been dealing with these things for...how many years now? It was best not to take chances, even if you had a sword that could cut them. They were always heaviest right after midnight, and they still had a good hour to go before that.
Watanuki looked cautiously around the room. The air was still clear of spirits. Probably frightened off by Ichigo's enormous sword. "I have a few extra over on the bunk," he said. "But it's outside the wards." It was just far away enough to require him to put one foot outside the chalk circle to reach for it, and he had a feeling if he moved outside the circle even the slightest bit, the spirits would suddenly find new motivation to appear. "I think I can reach it quickly, if you'll watch my back for a moment." Step out, grab the branch, step back in. If he was quick he could do it in three seconds. Hopefully not enough time for them to get excited.
"No way," Ichigo snapped back at him, glaring at the bespectacled cook. "If anyone's going to get that, it's me. You've already got one." And besides, he had his sword. Watanuki didn't have anything to protect him outside the wards. Ichigo usually managed fine without chalk on the ground -- he could handle it.
Watanuki wanted to snap that the fact that Ichigo could get it wasn't the point, the point was that Watanuki was not completely helpless here, whatever the evidence to the contrary might have been, and did not need Ichigo to do every little thing for him because believe it or not he had been making do just fine without Ichigo's help for eighteen years now. Certain things were impossible to explain to stubborn idiots, though - he knew this from long experience - and midnight was getting closer. So he simply snapped, "Then this one will protect me while I get the other one!" and, ignoring Ichigo, planted one foot outside the circle and stretched for the branch lying on the bunk.
Just as he got his fingers around it, the air seemed to tighten.
"What -- no, you stupid -- !" Ichigo saw four spirits ooze out of cracks in the walls, and another from the floor. "Get back!" He reached out, grabbed Watanuki by the back of his shirt collar, and yanked him back into the circle. He left the second branch in Watanuki's hand, and brought his sword up and stepped forward, ready to take on the newcomers. "Stupid!" he barked as one slash took out the closest. Another reached out sharp claws, slashing at Ichigo's shoulder. "Nnngh!" the redhead gritted as blood was drawn. He'd seen the blow coming, but due to another monster on his left, he hadn't been able to sidestep enough to avoid it.
Watanuki choked as he was yanked roughly backward, still clutching both branches. He hit the floor within the wards and fought to regain his breath, which seemed to be hiding in his lungs from the hideous smell that was now overpowering the room. He managed a gasp and looked up to see a spray of blood from Ichigo's shoulder, carried on the monster's sideswipe, and see the other three closing in at the smell of blood. He didn't stop to think, again, but climbed to his feet - still well within the wards this time - and stepped around Ichigo to thrust the branches at the closest of the spirits, hoping if nothing else to buy Ichigo a moment to regroup.
The monster to the left recoiled, but the clawed monster seemed ready to strike again. "You're gonna pay for that," Ichigo growled, right shoulder stinging like nobody’s business and making him about twice as irritable. Shit! That’s my sword arm, too… But he wasn’t about to let a minor injury stop him now, not when there were three more monsters to take out -- and someone behind him to protect. He let out a yell (in true shounen style) and brought the sword crosswise through the not-quite-solid body of the monster. It let out a shriek, claws raking the air in front of him, but could reach nothing. “Like I’d give you another free shot at me,” Ichigo scowled down at its dissolving carcass for a moment, and nearly paid dearly for his moment of posturing. One of the two remaining monsters was quickly pressing past Watanuki’s branch, and the second was floating around the wards. In effect, Ichigo was the target of a monster-sized pincer movement.
“Aw, hell,” Ichigo said as a third appeared in front of him. Maybe he should’ve kept fighting inside the wards…. Oh, well, too late now. There was nothing for it besides taking down every monster that came his way.
Breathing was getting difficult from the crushing presence of the spirits. Any other day of the year the wards would have been enough to hold them off, but no, this was the Long Night, the one night a year that only wards as powerful as the ones around Yuuko's shop had been could keep them at bay. Watanuki raised one arm, both to shield himself and to try to hold off the eye-watering stench; the branches seemed to be doing about as much as the wards, but he had nothing else with which to protect himself or Ichigo. "Get back!" he shouted at them, waving the branch not occupied in guarding his face at the ugly, leering masses. He managed to smack one through the ward and it recoiled, but did not disappear - though it did move back enough to allow Ichigo's arm room enough to take a swing.
And Ichigo took full advantage of this opportunity. He brought the sword around and down through the first creature's head, then used the existing momentum to slice through another. That just left one more, which he dispatched without too much trouble before stepping back behind the wards.
It was then that he remembered that his shoulder was bleeding. Gritting his teeth, he craned his neck around to look at it, shedding his overcoat to get a better view. His white shirt underneath was stained with red.
Watanuki took a very brief moment to die of relief, then spun to face Ichigo, looking at his shoulder with horror. "Are you all right?" he cried, moving closer to look at it but not daring to touch it. "Is it-- is it deep? Is the bleeding slowing? Which one got you? Do you feel all right?"
"The one with the claws," Ichigo answered him through gritted teeth. "It's not as bad as it looks. Doesn't feel too deep, anyway." He rolled his shoulder, managing not to wince at the pain. It wasn't too bad, really -- he'd taken way worse. He pulled his shirt off, bundled it up, and put it over the injury. "Hey, I can't reach too good, so you're going to have to hold it there. Put some pressure on it. That'll slow the bleeding, at least."
Watanuki was very good at handling kitchen implements, raw foods, and all manner of exotic tableware. Makeshift bandages meant to staunch what to him were hideous gaping wounds, however, were not within his realm of expertise. He swallowed hard - it was his fault Ichigo was hurt, the least he could do was patch him up without complaining - and took the shirt, pressing down as hard as he thought he should without making it more painful. He had no idea how far off his instincts were, but it was something, anyway. The shirt immediately grew a red blot, and Watanuki swallowed hard again. "Like this?" he asked, voice worried.
"Put more pressure on! You're not trying to soak up the blood, you're trying to stop it!" Ichigo barked. He obviously wasn't in too much pain to bicker with Watanuki. The injury seriously wasn't that bad -- not too much worse than the one Watanuki had given him on their first meeting. Without consciously realizing what he was doing, Ichigo glanced down at his arm, where the injury had been. There was still a mark there, although the stitches were out. He didn't know if it'd scar for sure -- it could go either way.
"You afraid of blood or something?" he asked, noting Watanuki's discomfort.
"No!" Watanuki snapped. "I just... I usually don't see so much of it, and we're in here where I can't even get anything to wash it out with, and it's-- it’s bleeding a lot!" He applied greater pressure, until he could feel the wound through the shirt. He gritted his teeth as the red blot spread under his fingers - though was it growing more slowly now? - and tried not to think about it, focusing on anything else. His eyes fell on the mark on Ichigo's arm and he remembered with deep shame that that one had been his fault, too. Dammit. "How's... how's that one doing?" he asked stiffly, keeping the pressure on Ichigo's shoulder. "Is it... healing okay?"
"Huh? What, you mean this? Ichigo raised his arm a little. "Yeah, it's fine. Like it never happened." He paused for a moment. Come to think of it, he did seem to get injured a lot around Watanuki. If it wasn't the guy himself, it was spirits after the guy. There was a line or something that came to mind -- "we've got to stop meeting like this," or something like that.
"It was nothing. I got worse fighting monsters pretty much every week," Ichigo said dismissively, working the tough-guy act for all it was worth. He couldn't tell if the bleeding was slowing or not. This guy must really not be used to this sort of thing, for an injury like this to throw him off. "Must be pretty peaceful on a theater ship," he commented, gazing off into the middle distance.
Must be nice to be able to fight monsters, Watanuki did not say. "You clearly weren't here for the sky whale," he said instead.
"The what?" Ichigo said in surprise. "What was that all about?" Maybe if Watanuki launched into this story, it would get his mind off the bleeding cuts under his hands.
"We got chased by a sky whale last year," Watanuki said. The blot was definitely not growing nearly as fast now, and he was both relieved enough to be able to talk about last year's trauma and horrified enough by the blood on his hands to want to talk about something else very badly. "It was huge - it blotted out the sky - and it almost hit us, but then somebody who could fly diverted it and it only took out the main tower on its way by. You can still see where it got repaired." He almost wanted to move the shirt to check on the wound, see how much the bloodflow had slowed, but he wasn't sure he could handle that. This was too much like nursing Doumeki, dammit. "And before that I had all my spoons stolen, and then the lights went out and the doctor got locked in a closet with Haruhi and... it's really not peaceful here. At all."
"......huh." Ichigo hadn't ever seen a skywhale up close. He'd heard of them, and had seen what might have been one, but never anything like this. Okay, so maybe it wasn't peaceful, but it was a different kind of action than he was used to. He still wondered, sometimes, if he was on the right ship. But for now, he....was okay here. It wasn't boring, anyway. And he wasn't the sort of guy who could run out just like that on people who had given him a lift when he needed it.
Suddenly, a sharp ache pierced his chest. "Nnngh!" he groaned, tucking slightly, eyes widening. The ache had grown steadily in the weeks leading up to the Long Night, but when he stepped inside the wards, it had diminished. But now it seemed to be back, and with a vengeance. Ichigo's mouth pulled into a grimace as he fought the ache back down. What was it?!
Watanuki nearly dropped the shirt in alarm. "Are you all right?" he cried, trying to support Ichigo with the arm not occupied with preventing him from bleeding out. "Did it get you somewhere else?" If Ichigo was hurt, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, locked behind the wards - the thought that he might be more hurt than he was already filled Watanuki with growing panic.
"No," he said, after forcing himself to take a breath. "No, it didn't get me. I....it's something....something else...." His left hand went to his chest, gripping at the bare skin, unconsciously trying to reach what was causing the ache beneath it. "I don't know what it is."
He took another deep breath. The pain didn't lessen, but he overcame it, was able to deal with it. Ichigo swallowed hard. "It's probably nothing," he said dismissively.
"No," Watanuki snapped, "It's probably not nothing. It's the Long Night and everything malignant that could possibly be showing its ugly face is, and if it's making you double over when you're already bleeding then it's not nothing!" He looked around but could see no spirits in the air around him; they seemed to have cleared out after Ichigo had taken care of the last four. He turned back to Ichigo, concerned - and saw with a jolt that there was a thin stream of dark-colored smoke coming from under his fist, clenched against his chest.
Watanuki squinted, trying to convince himself it wasn't really there, but a faint spirit odor rose with it, confirming its existence. "I-Ichigo," he said, recoiling slightly, "Y-your chest... it's..."
"What?" For a moment, Ichigo felt a wild urge to ask how Watanuki knew his chest hurt--but then he realized, his hand was clutching at it. "What're you talking about?" Ichigo removed his hand and stared down at his bare chest. He couldn't see anything -- his powers differed from Watanuki in that he didn't see malignant things as smoke, just ghosts or no ghosts. He looked back at Watanuki, a confused frown furrowing his brow.
"It's-- there's something coming from it," Watanuki said, staring at it fearfully. He didn't know how to explain this to someone who clearly couldn't see it - it was too otherworldly, too wrong, to put into words. "It looks like smoke and it smells... almost like a spirit, but it's coming from inside you... has it hurt before? Did that spirit that scratched you put it in you?" He'd seen something similar happen before, back when he had been working for Yuuko. It wasn't pretty.
"What the..." He had no idea what Watanuki was going on about, but the expression on the kid's face said that he wasn't lying. Ichigo looked back down. "No, I don't think it was that spirit." He took a long pause before speaking again. "This isn't the first time. It's been...aching all week."
Watanuki's mind raced through all of Yuuko's long, languid, mostly pointless lectures on How Things Work In The Spirit World. If it were the week building up to a big event like this, it made sense whatever spirit was inside Ichigo would be acting up. He flailed his free arm. "And you didn't say anything before now?! You have no idea what that thing could be! You don't know if it's dangerous or how long it's been there or what it could do - did it not occur to you to find help?!"
"I didn't know it was a spirit thing!" Ichigo snapped back. "I thought I'd pulled a muscle or something! It wasn't a big deal!" He paused for a second, looking down again. "How come you see smoke and I don't?" he wondered.
As he stared down, if Watanuki caught a glimpse of Ichigo's reflection, its left eye was black with a yellow iris, and the expression was...different from the one Ichigo was wearing. It scowled, but the look was more sinister than the confusion on Ichigo's face.
There was hatred in the line of its mouth.
Watanuki did not think that Ichigo's question was particularly important in light of the fact that there was something quite possibly evil and destructive living in his chest, which was clearly not much bothered by the chalk wards it should not have been able to cross. Whatever it was, it was reasonably powerful, or a different kind of spirit than Watanuki had ever encountered before. Neither of these possibilities would improve the situation. "What does it matter how I see it?" Watanuki snapped. "The point is I see it and I have no idea what it is!"
"How the hell am I supposed to find out, then?" Ichigo demanded. "It's not like I..." He paused. There might be one person who could tell him, but Ichigo had no idea how to contact him. Sandal-Hat....Urahara. A pensive look spread across Ichigo's face as he thought hard. Would Urahara know?
Ichigo's sudden silence alarmed Watanuki. "What is it?" he said, eyes going to the trail of smoke, which was still rising gently. "Is it doing something?" Watanuki leaned down to peer into Ichigo's eyes, trying to look for some sign of possession - the dead look was usually the first indicator of an unwelcome visitor. He didn't notice that he still had the cloth pressed against Ichigo's shoulder, so distracted was he by the smoke; the bleeding seemed nearly to have stopped by now, but Ichigo's injury was no longer the cause of concern. "Answer me!"
"What? Hey, get out of my face." Ichigo came back to the present when Watanuki's face obscured his vision. "No, I was thinking," he informed Watanuki, scowling. He didn't know what that said about how zoned out he looked right then that Watanuki thought he was possessed or something. "I'm fine, okay? It's not about to take over, whatever it is." Jeez, could this kid give it a rest? This wasn't the end of the world. Although he couldn't quite deny the little bit of worry that had begun to set in....
"No, it is NOT fine!" Watanuki shouted, pulling back from Ichigo's face irritatedly and flailing his free arm to emphasize his point. "It is the Long Night and there is a SPIRIT inside of you and the wards are completely USELESS against it and who even knows what it's DOING there and how do you KNOW it's not about to take over?! It could be biding its time until right after midnight!" Which was getting perilously close, now that Watanuki thought about it.
"Why the hell would it do that? I dunno what it is, but there's not a heck of a lot I can do about it now, right?" Ichigo all but ranted at the bespectacled boy. "Now, if you've got any bright ideas, let's hear it. If not, I'll deal with it. It's not your problem."
"How am I supposed to know why spirits do anything?! If I knew, I'd have been rid of them a long time ago!" Watanuki snapped back. He was truly agitated now - even normal Long Nights weren't this stressful. He threw a glance over his shoulder, sure that something else ugly and malignant was creeping over their shoulders-- and his eyes fell on the mirror.
It took him nearly half a minute to remember how to talk around the terror that filled him. "I-- Ichigo--" he choked, unable to tear his eyes from the yellow-eyed apparition glaring back at him.
"What?" Ichigo looked at the mirror, but didn't see anything except his face. "What're you staring at?" When Watanuki didn't say anything, he took the kid by the shoulders and shook them. "Snap out of it! What is it?"
In the mirror, the thing-with-Ichigo's-face didn't seem to talk. Rather, it quirked an eyebrow at Watanuki, then began to laugh inaudibly. This was about twice as terrifying as it would have been if he had actually been able to hear the laugh.
Even with Ichigo's shaking, Watanuki could not bring himself to look away. He didn't want to turn his back to it, to give it any opportunity to move, and furthermore there was something hypnotic about its gaze and the terrifying, terrifying way it laughed at him. "It-- it has your face," he said hoarsely, too choked by fear even to scream.
"What?" Ichigo looked from Watanuki to the mirror and back again. He had no idea what it is, and he didn't think Watanuki was acting. He couldn't think of anything to do besides break Watanuki's eye-contact with it. That meant taking out that mirror.
In the mirror, the thing was talking. The words were also inaudible, and unless Watanuki could read lips, they were unintelligible. But whatever it was saying couldn't be good...not with that growing, twisted grin on its face.
Watanuki wanted to yell at the thing to stop, to get out of his face and out of his head, because even though he couldn't hear it he felt like he should, like it was whispering something terrible and that any second he was going to hear it and that would be even worse than seeing it. But he was still frozen in place, barely even comprehending that Ichigo was shouting at him.
"I said," Ichigo growled, volume going up with each syllable, "snap out of it!" With the last word, his sword swung out one-handed, knocking the mirror over and onto the floor. He took Watanuki's shoulders and shook them again, hard. "Look at me!" he commanded, face less than a foot away from Watanuki's.
The face vanished. Watanuki blinked, his right eye flickered, and there was Ichigo again, but with normal eyes only narrowed in annoyance, not like that thing. He sagged with relief, swallowing hard to relieve his suddenly very dry mouth. "That thing in you," he said shakily, trying to put coherent thoughts together, "It's... it's evil."
Ichigo stared at him. "How do you know it's what's in me?" he demanded. If there really was something evil lurking in his soul, he wanted to make absolutely sure of it before he figured out what to do about it. He hadn't even noticed it until now, so it probably wasn't a problem....yet.
"I told you, it had your face!" Watanuki snapped, regaining his vigor through annoyance. "Don't you listen? It had your face, but it had this yellow eye and its hair was white and it was just... wrong..." He shuddered. "And it had your reflection. That doesn't just happen!" He looked furtively around the room, as though it were lurking in a corner, though this was impossible as he knew it was lurking inside Ichigo. "I bet it's what's keeping the rest of them away," he said. "There hasn't been a spirit in here since I saw it."
Ichigo looked down at his chest, still not seeing anything. "You better not be pulling my leg," he muttered angrily, trying to think of what to do. Despite his words, he found himself believing Watanuki. This didn't seem like the kind of thing that a guy like Watanuki would joke about - or at least, if he did, he wouldn't prolong it like this. (And besides, he'd seen Watanuki act. It didn't even come close to being as convincing as this.)
"Why would I lie about this?!" Watanuki all but shouted. "We're in a locked room filled with malevolent spirits! You think I have time to joke?!" Ichigo was getting closer and closer to tying Doumeki's place on the Stupid Bastard list in Watanuki's mind, which was one hell of a feat.
Ichigo gritted his teeth. "Look, I believe you. Okay? Quit being so dramatic -- the door isn't even locked!" Bickering with Watanuki wasn't helping him think. He couldn't take his sword to the ghost in his chest for obvious reasons, but he couldn't think of any other way to deal with it. "There's nothing keeping us here, just wards to keep the spirits -- !!" He paused, eyes going wide as an idea struck him. "Those wards. Could you do them so that they keep spirits in?"
Watanuki paused in his preparation for a sharp retort. He thought hard. "I think so," he said after a moment, "But I'm no good with wards. These are pretty much the only ones I know. You'd have to go to... a witch or something." The image of a very specific witch came to mind, but-- no, Ichigo almost definitely didn't want to go to her. "Maybe there's somebody on board good enough with wards to help you."
"These are going to have to do," Ichigo declared. "If this thing in me's going to pull anything, it's going to be tonight. Do they have to be drawn on the floor?" He needed to find out how they worked before maybe he could adapt them to make sure that whatever was in him stayed there.
Watanuki's safety was his primary concern here. He'd worry about himself when he knew that this thing wasn't about to come out of his chest, sprout talons, and rip into the other person who attracted ghosts.
"You-- you draw them around what you're trying to keep in," Watanuki said, calling from memory what Yuuko had taught him with an effort. "So I don't know if I'd draw them on the floor around you or on your chest. There's not much room here, though." They were already uncomfortably close within the wards, and before Ichigo's arrival there had only been room for Watanuki to sit comfortably. Putting wards around Ichigo would make things even tighter, and neither of them would be sitting for the rest of the night. "I've seen people before - where I used to work - with warding tattoos. That might work." He was speaking totally out of practicality; he sure as hell didn't feel like standing squeezed between two wards all night. And if Ichigo had to fight something off, he'd have to adjust his balance to stay within the circle, which could lead to Watanuki losing limbs; not an outcome he particularly desired.
"It's worth a shot," Ichigo announced finally, after due consideration. "Draw them on me." He already had his shirt off, and peeled the bloody cloth off of his shoulder to inspect the wound. While it looked bloody, it had mostly clotted up already, and as long as he didn't mess with it, it'd heal up in a week or two. "You still got that chalk?"
Watanuki reached for the black chalk laying behind him - broken where he had stepped on it in earlier's skirmish - and considered Ichigo's chest with some trepidation. He hadn't been lying when he said he was no good with wards. He was leery of all things magical to begin with, considering the difficulties the occult gave him, and wards were hard enough when they were on the floor. He had no idea if this would even work.
The possibility was still better than the alternative, though, so he brushed his hair out of his eyes and leaned toward Ichigo. He drew the chalk in a tentative circle under his collarbone, where the thin tendril of smoke still rose, and began to fill in the edges with the necessary symbols. Thankfully, the chalk worked well enough on skin that the ward circle was visible. "You feel anything?" he asked, pausing in his drawing and eyeing Ichigo's chest as though he expected to see that thing leering back at him from the circle.
"Yeah," Ichigo muttered, "that chalk kinda tickles." He was trying to resist the urge to peer down at what Watanuki was doing, but didn't want to get in the way, so he settled for keeping his chin up but looking down. He breathed in and out, waiting for Watanuki to finish. Absently, he wondered what time it was -- it must be nearly midnight......
"You know what I mean," Watanuki muttered, too intent on the wards to berate Ichigo properly. He drew in a particularly complicated bit, darkened a line that his hand had rubbed out, and sat back to look at his work. It wasn't the best ward ever drawn, but the trickle of smoke was struggling to move past it into the air. A good sign. "I think it's working," he said. "Just in time." Midnight was less than fifteen minutes away, as a glance at the clock on the dresser confirmed.
"Still hurts like hell," Ichigo said more matter-of-factly than he had any right to. But it didn't feel like it was about to come out, or explode, or take over his brain, or anything like that. It was just...there. His eyes found the clock, too. But he didn't delude himself into thinking that it'd be over in fifteen minutes -- no, they still had the rest of the night to wait out.
It was just the worst that happened at midnight. But at least, if Watanuki was right, he didn't have to worry about -- oh, hell. A small-ish creature was creeping towards the outer circle of wards, sniffing at them, testing, looking for a weak spot...
Watanuki heard the thing crawling over the chalk - it jarred something in the back of his mind to feel the ward pressing against it. "Dammit," he said, backing away from it (though he had only about three feet to get away from it in). "Must be working. They're coming back."
Ichigo picked up his sword with his left hand. He wasn't quite as strong as with his right, but it'd be good enough to take out this small fry. Stepping forward and in front of Watanuki, he brought the blade down in an arc, slicing it neatly. Unfortunately, he couldn't do this without throwing his right arm out to balance, and the scabs that had been forming over his injury tore and began to bleed again.
Ichigo didn't notice at first, until he felt something wet dripping down his back. He craned his head around to look -- "Aw, dammit!"
Watanuki flinched at the sight of the fresh blood. He picked up Ichigo's shirt, already bloodstained, and held it out to him. "You need me to do it?" he said, fully aware that there probably wasn't much he could do but feeling personally responsible anyway. "You're in worse shape than I am at this point."
"Yeah, you'd better do it. I can't reach from here." For a moment, Ichigo wondered what he looked like -- standing there with chalk scribbles on his chest with his shoulder bleeding and his sword in his left hand. But that wasn't important, not now. His eyes scanned the room, looking for more appearances by their hungry otherworldly guests.
Watanuki still hated the sight of the blood, but he picked up the shirt - still damp, oh god that was disgusting - and pressed it to Ichigo's shoulder, holding it down with both hands and angling the shirt so that the blood didn't get anywhere near the chalk circle on his chest. "That good?"
It was good to have something to put his focus on that wasn't the surrounding room. He was starting to feel an opprssiveness even worse than before; he kept throwing glances over his shoulder, sure something was watching him even as he knew that there was nothing there. Paranoia from a long night, maybe; but he was glad Ichigo wasn't too wounded to swing his sword.
"Yeah, it's fine." From what he could feel, anyway -- the blood had stopped dripping, at any rate, and the shirt was on the cut. It stung a bit, but it wasn't anything Ichigo couldn't handle. He continued to glance around the room. That little thing was only the beginning.
Five minutes to midnight.
There was definite pressure in the air now. Suddenly, in the corner of Watanuki's vision, a dark shape melted out of the air and plastered itself to the wall, crawling around the bare furniture in an attempt to remain unseen. Watanuki jumped as it scurried under the dresser, trying to turn where he could still see it and keep a hold on Ichigo's shoulder at the same time. "There's one," he said, pointing with his free hand. "It's hiding--" Then, behind him, he felt a larger presence and knew another one had appeared, bigger than the one under the dresser. His heart began to pound. The next hour would be the worst of the night, and he wondered briefly how he was going to keep Ichigo from bleeding and keep out of the way at the same time, and cursed his own uselessness again, even as he moved farther away from the edges of the ward in fear.
"I see it," Ichigo muttered, taking an attack stance. "Watch my back, okay? Forget the damn shirt and watch my back." He lunged forward, jabbing his sword under the dresser to get at the little ghost. His clothes would be bloody, yeah, but he could deal with that. The creature dodged, and Ichigo twisted the sword to follow it, slicing it neatly in two. It gave a shrill screech, then disappeared into smoke.
To his credit, Ichigo didn't let his guard down, and scanned the room again. Things were going to be rough for a good half-hour, he knew, and his suspicions were confirmed when two more appeared, besides the one behind him.
Watanuki stooped to grab the branch that he had let fall earlier, a thin barrier between himself and the multiplying spirits. "Can I do anything?" he asked, turning his back to Ichigo's. His knees were shaking but he couldn't make this any harder for Ichigo, who was worse off than he was and still defending him, so he held up the branch and tried to look like he was a force to be reckoned with.
"Yeah!" Ichigo yelled, as he swung at the closest spirit. "Don't die!" He took out the first with a little bit of difficulty, but he disregarded his shoulder injury completely. It'd heal. It always did. Right now, he needed to put everything into attacking, so he ignored the slow, tickling trickle of blood down his back. Ichigo rounded on the second, but then saw the biggest monster of the night looming over Watanuki. It lashed out with its claws, but met the barrier. The claws flexed, and it let out a frustrated growl.
Fear paralyzed Watanuki. His action was not conscious, but completely instinctive: with all the fury usually reserved for swinging a frying pan at Doumeki's head, he took a swipe at the monster and connected, leaving a stripe across what passed for its face.
Unfortunately, this only served to anger it more.
It gave an unearthly howl and brought its clawed paw down onto the wards, causing them to buckle and warp almost visibly. Its breath was foul, seeping around the circle that sheltered Ichigo and Watanuki, and it pushed harder against the invisible barrier.....until Ichigo's zanpakuto curved down through the air so fast it left a crescent after-image in front of their eyes.
The monster shrieked and recoiled, before lumbering forward again. Its left arm had been severed, and there was a gash that was leaking dark smoke across its chest, but it wasn't dead yet. Behind them, the other two monsters pushed at the wards, but Ichigo ignored them for the time being. He could handle them. The wards would keep them at bay long enough for him to finish off this thing.
Through his right eye, Watanuki saw the wards buckle. He had a momentary, horrifying image of the other crewmembers finding his and Ichigo's dismembered bodies within the broken circle in the morning... but then a white crescent blazed across the vision in both eyes, and the monster was without a left arm. Relieved but not out of danger, he turned to deal with the other two, only slightly smaller monsters. This time he only shook the branch at them rather than hitting them with it, and this combined with the wards served to keep them from digging their tentacles into the cracks in the magic and pulling it down around them.
Ichigo didn't miss the stripe across the monster's face, or Watanuki keeping the other monsters at bay, but he had bigger things to deal with. The kid had guts, though. Not really surprising, if he was as used to ghosts as Ichigo was. He sliced the largest monster clean open, and it dissolved into putrid black smoke.
But there was no time to savor the victory. There were two things with....with tentacles trying to push their way inside. Ichigo shifted to deal with one, slicing off one tentacle that had penetrated the wards, just in time for another tentacle to grab his sword arm. The touch alone seemed to drain energy from him; if he hadn't by his very nature had an unusually high amount of spiritual energy, he'd've been severely weakened before he could bring his sword around and slice the thing off.
Unfortunately, wrapped up in this deadly game of whack-a-mole, he hadn't been able to help Watanuki...
Watanuki, aided by the wards, had managed to hold his ground up to this point by swinging wildly at whatever part of the thing came closest to penetrating the barrier. But the stripes he was leaving across its face-area and tentacles were serving only to annoy it, and before he could stop it it coiled a tentacle around his ankle and pulled. He fell backward with a yelp, dropping his only weapon and hitting his head on the floor hard enough to send spots dancing before his vision. He began to slide out of the circle as the monster pulled him toward it, and though he tried his best to struggle, his muscles were beginning to feel like jelly. He had a vague thought that he should yell or something, but he couldn't seem to muster the energy....
Ichigo managed to avoid the second monster's tentacles, slicing through it and bringing it down with energy to spare. He turned around, and his eyes went wide as he saw Watanuki being dragged slowly out of the circle by the ankle. Without a pause, not even to think, Ichigo spun around and sliced off the prehensile appendage, the severed portion wriggling madly for a second before disappearing. Ichigo stood over Watanuki, on the defensive until the latter regained his strength. He wasn't about to launch himself at these creatures only to have another one pick off Watanuki while his back was turned. "Hey!" he yelled. "Are you okay?" You'd better be.
Consciousness returned like a sharp blow to the head, with none of the drowsy slowness of passing out under the creature's power. Quite suddenly, the room was in startling focus, with Ichigo's foot and lower leg featuring very prominently in Watanuki's vision. It took his mind a second to catch up - but it registered the very angry tentacle-monster very quickly. With a yelp, Watanuiki scrabbled backward, crab-like, intent on getting back in the safety of the wards as quickly as possible.
"I'm fine!" He managed to gasp, taking quick stock of his injuries and finding them minimal. But the monster wasn't defeated yet.
Ichigo was working on that. As soon as he glanced down, making sure that Watanuki wasn't about to pass out again and could look after himself, he launched a frontal attack on the monster, cutting tentacles out of his way as needed. He took out one of the two monsters without too much difficulty -- it was dodging the tentacles in a confined space that was difficult. The reason for the delay was the constant assault by appendages: he had to slice each off before he attacked the creature. It wasn't the energy-draining that was the problem, it was that they hindered his movement. "Dammit -- get those things off me!" Ichigo gritted.
Meanwhile, much smaller creatures were amassing on the floor. They crawled on spider-legs, with twisted faces and hundreds of eyes, nosing along the barriers, searching for any cracks or weaknesses.
Watanuki stared, helpless, at Ichigo's dilemma. He didn't know what he could do - his last attempt at helping had ended with him unconscious on the ground. Maybe-- maybe if it got ahold of him it would free up Ichigo to take a hit at it? "I can distract it!" he said, climbing to his feet on shaky legs. "M-move!"
Oh, hell, he wasn't about to throw himself needlessly into -- .....he was. Ichigo stared at him for an instant, dumbfounded, before the tentacles wrapping around Watanuki's already-weakened form galvanized him into action. "YOU IDIOT!" he yelled as he tried to slice Watanuki free. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Ichigo's voice sounded like it was coming from very far away. Watanuki raised his head with difficulty and managed to say with bleary irritation, "Dis...tracting it!" He could feel the tentacles falling away from him; he hoped that meant they were being cut off.
There was no way Ichigo was going to be able to cut them all off Watanuki and keep them off himself at the same time. It looked like his only option was to go for the head. Throwing caution to the winds and praying that Watanuki had enough energy to withstand this, he pressed forward, ignoring the appendages that wrapped around him, and brought his sword clean through the creature's body. He didn't even wait for it to disintegrate before he had whirled around and had Watanuki by the shoulder. "Hey! Hey, get up!" Come on, don’t pass out on me now…! The creatures on the outside were nosing at cracks, but Ichigo wasn't paying attention. Dammit, if Watanuki didn't recover from this --
The world took slightly longer to come back into focus this time, but soon the light on the ceiling was no longer a blur and he was able to get his legs underneath him. "Is is gone?" he asked, looking around frantically for more of the tentacle-things. The spiders were starting to chip at the wards, but they weren't as important right now.
"Yeah. It's gone." Ichigo steadied him with both hands, keeping an eye on him in case he fell. Dammit, that thing took a lot out of the kid. "Doesn't look like there are any more of them, at least for now." He glared at the tiny spider things. "Those things aren't even worth bothering with." He glanced at the clock. 12:15 -- were they past the worst?
The constant smoke at the edges of Watanuki's vision was beginning to fade. "They're-- slowing down," he said with vast relief. "It's always better after midnight." He allowed himself to sink to the ground, too drained to stand. He knew he'd at least be in the wards until sunrise, but all he wanted was to curl up and sleep.
Ichigo crouched down with him, making sure he didn't fall. All Watanuki needed right now would be a concussion. After assuring himself that the boy wasn't about to fall over, Ichigo set about dealing with the tiny spiders. "Go on, get out!" he growled, kicking one of them into the far wall in impatience. It was dull work, but their ranks thinned. No more powerful monsters appeared, at least for now. It was possible, yeah, but they'd gotten through the worst of it, and Ichigo could handle everything that came their way. "Is it always this bad with you?" he asked, slicing another one and impaling its neighbor. "On Long Night, I mean."
Watanuki struggled to remember through a haze of exhaustion. "No," he said after a moment. "Usually it's... pretty manageable. I always draw the wards and there's almost never been anything too big for a branch to handle." He frowned. "I guess... maybe it's worse this year because Doumeki's not here." It galled him to say it, but he'd gotten used to easy Long Nights after spending six of them with Doumeki in Yuuko's warded shop. He could think of no other explanation.
Wsssssh went the black-and-white blade. Ichigo stood on one of them, holding it still with his foot as he cut through it. Dammit, using his sword on these things felt like overkill, but he didn't feel like ineffectually beating them with branches. "Doumeki?" Ichigo took a moment to remember who Watanuki was talking about. "You mean that guy who was with you in the play? What's he got to do with spirits?"
"He repelled them," Watanuki said, too tired even to explain the annoyance that was Doumeki with the volume it usually required. "I have no idea why. Just... they didn't like something about his blood." Lucky bastard, he did not add.
"Lucky bastard," Ichigo muttered, still working his way through the goddamn spider things. Looked like there was only about a dozen or so to go. He hefted his sword, willed his tiring muscles on, and took them out. "There, that oughta do it." He glanced around the room. He didn't have Watanuki's sense for spirits, but he didn't see anything new, and the pain in his chest was easing up, just a little bit. "Don't worry. If anything shows up, I'll take it out."
The easing of pressure from Watanuki's mind with the disappearance of the last of the spirits was an intense relief. The night had felt ten times longer than it had been. He slumped back with a deep sigh, closing his eyes briefly.
He was asleep before he had time to realize he was dozing off.
"Still, he sounds like a pretty useful guy to have aroun --" Ichigo paused, noticing that Watanuki was lying on the floor with his eyes closed. He stared down at the boy for a moment, closing his mouth. For a moment, he felt camaraderie with this weird, noodly kid who saw ghosts like he did. They'd just gotten through a pretty tough fight, and mostly in one piece. Ichigo turned away from him and rested the tip of his blade on the floor, one hand resting easily on the hilt. He could look out for Watanuki for now, at least until sunrise, in case anything came back while Watanuki was sleeping.
"Dammit, why‘d you fall asleep," Ichigo griped to himself as he sat down next to Watanuki. “Now I have sit here by myself and listen to you snore.” The next few hours were gonna be really freaking boring.
Tomorrow, with sunlight to banish the fear of ghosts and the relief of another Long Night gone, Watanuki would undoubtedly remember that he hadn't yet thanked Ichigo properly for saving him from being eaten by unfriendly spirits, and with a great deal of griping set about finding some way to begin repaying the debt he owed him as a result. Yuuko probably would have been amused; not two months after ridding himself of his obligations to Doumeki, Watanuki had gone and gotten himself indebted to another stoic exorcist. She would probably have called it hitsuzen. Watanuki, for his part, would be calling it the biggest damn inconvenience of his life tomorrow, but for now, he was just glad to be able to sleep, without spirits invading his dreams.
Not that any of this made Ichigo any less of an irksome inconsiderate bastard, of course.