Chapter Text
Funny enough, it was a human that ended his life.
For all his reflexes and battle experience against monsters looking to tear apart the fabric of reality, he didn't see the bullet from the kid looking for enough money to eat. It ripped through his chest, irreparable damage to the soft organs just behind the cage of his ribs. He doesn't register what has happened at first, breath punched out of him, eyes going wide in shock. He turns his head and sees the kid, no older than he was when his view of the world shifted, tears carving tracks through grime-covered cheeks. He chokes on the first inhale as blood floods his airway, only seconds have elapsed but it feels like minutes as he crumples to the asphalt of the dark parking lot. Stone and sand cut into his cheek, the contents of his bag scatter like dice on a tabletop. His heart valiantly spasms in his chest, one of the chambers shredded, his body twitches, nervous system overloaded as the brain registers the damage. He coughs on a watery exhale tastebuds coated with sticky copper when the pain hits. It overwhelms everything, his vision blurs and he hears a deafening ring long and drawn out, the tolling of death's bell. He fights for every breath, the watercolor kid jogs over, choking out meaningless apologies through his own tears as he goes through Ichigo's pockets.
The kid is rambling his fingers shaking against the pins and needles of his waist, something about initiation and family and-
His heart, the studdering gallop it fought to maintain, seizes, and stops. His body flexes in one last burst of movement, curling in on itself with one last choked attempt to breathe. The pain vanishes, the ringing clears then the watercolors go black. By the time a cacophony of sirens and red-yellow-blue light up the blood-soaked asphalt in a flashing beacon of hope, Ichigo isn't there to see it.