Sad Machine

1

PLEASE READ HEADNOTE!!

I don't own One Piece or Bleach.

Sorry for the slight confusion involving this chapter. Everything will be explained soon. This is talking about Ichigo and how his mind kind of is currently. This starts right after Yawch is killed but I am going to be changing some events in the Winter War and 100 Year Blood War. Like I said it will be explained.

--(xXx)--

He loved that time between the transitions of night and day early in the morning. Where all is peaceful and the earth itself doesn't make a sound.

It couldn't be called sunrise or morning because at this time the sun isn't even showing it's face yet even if its light was starting to appear over the horizon. He couldn't call it night either because it's to bright and the sounds of the night, the chirping of the crickets, the soft snores of the people into the houses around him echoing, are absent. It couldn't really be called anything.

They're many reasons he loved that time, but he also hated it.

Hated it because in its own ways it reminded him of every single failure he had let happen. Every one he had lost.

It let his mind rampage to fill the silence.

But it was the only chance he got to be alone.

He knew it was contradictory and a bit confusing, but he didn't care. That was all his mind seemed to be lately anyways.

He constantly teetered on the thin string that acted as a poor excuse for a barrier between depression and a dull normalcy. It was too easy to cross that barrier. Easier than it should be. And he couldn't stay on the barrier in between the two, because too long in that thin space would give him insanity.

He refused to go insane.

Refused to let himself just fall and do whatever he wanted without a care for the consequences. He couldn't. Not when ten million people looked to him for a savior. For a hero. For a leader and protector.

Not when he had their lives baring down on a frame that looked strong on the outside but held such a world-weary bone-deep ache that would rock it with spasms of pain, a frame that shook with the threat of permanent collapse on the inside from their unwarranted weight.

A frame he had to call his own.

He didn't know what actually still held him up. What held him before was the lives of his family, the others that were family in all but blood along with them. But they were gone. Dead. Ripped away from him by his enemy and thrown out of his reach forever.

There was only one that remained standing, but that one was so broken. Only an echo of his former self covered by fake smiles, a bucket hat, and paper fan.

He didn't know what kept him up. What made him keep moving anymore.

The ones that looked to him as their hero were not his family. Yes they were people he had saved but they weren't family. They treated him as if he was some unstoppable force that could never be broken and would protect them from any threat that ever arose and he was just their celebrity to parade around for a perfect image of strength in their society.

They were nameless to him. Just another face in the crowds that surrounded him trying to be seen with him to raise their own reputation.

None of them seemed to remember he was a eighteen year old human who at barely 15 years old had been pulled into their wars that he otherwise would have had nothing to do with. None of them remembered that he had his life taken away from him. None remembered that he lost people too.

None of them seemed to remember he was human.

None seemed to remember he wasn't unbreakable.

He had met the shinigami. Became one of them. Made a family there formed by blood, sweat, and pain. Fought in two wars to protect that family. Just to loose them throughout those same two wars. By death, rejection, or betrayal all of them were ripped violently away from him.

Every. Single. One.

And as each was taken from him, in one way or another, a deep gorge was slashed into his heart. With each one that left, his smiles came less and less, his face more pinched and cold then before.

By the end of it all he had been the one left standing. Surrounded by darkness in front of him outlined by the bodies of the faceless shinigami that all held greed filled smiles when they looked at him, his ankles covered in a river of blood that held the bodies of his family. His clothes ripped and torn so badly they were rags hanging off his body, showing the skin underneath covered in scars and open wounds that poured blood from his body, all shed to protect but only bore the fruit of the death of his family and the rejection, the betrayal, of those he loved.

His sword covered in the blood of his enemy, but he could hear his sword wailing inside its form. Inside his soul, as they tried to help him by taking some of his pain and burden from his shoulders, only to practically be crushed by the unrelenting weight of everything. Wailing out their pain in their own way, unable to express it fully for just anyone to see and understand. They were cracked as well. Not their weapon form but the souls were. They were tired of constantly fighting in battles they had no will to fight in just as their master felt.

So what kept him going? He honestly did not have an answer.

Thinking on this he realized.

He probably never would.