The Illusion of Fear

Ami’s days are never very eventful; some would even call them boring. Ami wouldn’t go as far as to say that, though. She liked normalcy, and she would take as much of it as she could get during the day because she knew exactly what would happen when she went home. Any normalcy that she ever knew stopped right at her front door and chaos and pain and misery took its place. So what if nobody ever talked to her at school? So what if all of the teachers looked at her with so much pity in their eyes that it almost nauseated her? As long as nobody bothered her and caused her anymore pain, she would be perfectly fine with her normal, boring days.

She wasn’t exactly alone, though. She couldn’t see them when she was really young, but ever since her abuse started around the time she was seven or eight, Ami had been able to see the spirits of the dead. She didn’t know why she could see them, or why she had started seeing them when her abuse began; at one point she thought that she had taken one too many blows to the head and some permanent damage had been caused, but that thought didn’t last long. It may have been true to some extent, but Ami couldn’t find it in herself to believe it. She liked the spirits too much to believe it. They were nice to her. They actually spoke to her. They never hit her. They were perfect.

The spirits were the only things that actually knew what Ami was going through at home. They didn’t try treat her like a fragile doll because of it, though. Instead of pity, they looked at her with hope, like they believed that maybe one day someone or something would come along to end her suffering. The spirits treated her like she was an actual person instead of the hollow and emotionless being that everyone else saw her as. Being around the spirits eased Ami’s pain, if only for a short time, and because of that, she would be forever grateful to them. 

One day, Ami lost all of her normalcy. At the surface it looked like any other day for her, but there was an ominous wind that seemed to follow her wherever she went. It sent chills down her spine and made her hands shake, and even the spirits seemed to be able to feel it. They seemed to be avoiding her like the plague that day, and Ami couldn’t deny that a little part of her was sad about that. Still, it let her know that she wasn’t just imagining the foreboding presence about her. None of her classmates seemed to feel it, but she was painfully aware of it, and as the day dragged on, it seemed to get worse and worse.

She carried on like she normally did, though, even with the nagging feeling in the back of her head that something bad was about to happen (something worse than usual, that is). The ominous feeling never went away, and by the time that she was walking home from school she was shaking so bad that she could hardly walk and there was a lump in her throat that felt like it was suffocating her. Part of her wanted to go somewhere else, anywhere else, to some place other than that house, but she knew that that wasn’t possible. She knew that she didn’t have anywhere else to go, so she just carried on.

Just as she shut the front door and started to reach down to take her shoes off, Ami felt a rough, calloused, large hand wrap around her throat. In an instant she couldn’t breathe; the hand squeezed around her throat tighter than it ever had before. She knew that her father was shouting something at her as she fought to breathe, but she didn’t pay any attention to it. The need for air was her most prominent thought, but with the way that his hand was wrapped around her neck, it didn’t seem like she would get that air anytime soon. Her father was a particularly strong man, especially when he was drunk, so there wasn’t much hope that she would actually break his hold from her neck.

In the end, she didn’t have to. When he was seemingly done screaming at her, he threw Ami against the wall and stormed off like a mad man. Ami’s hand immediately went to her throat as she gasped for breath. From the corner of her eye, she saw a pair of feet, and as she looked up, she saw her younger brother staring down at her. There was something different about the look in his eyes; he usually looked at her with such a deep callousness, but not this time. This time, it was something much different and perhaps even worse. That cold blank look was replaced with something akin to the look that a starving wolf has when it has finally found prey to kill and devour. It was unsettling, to say the least, but her brother walked off before she could ask what was wrong.

Ami turned her face back to the floor once he left and shut her eyes as she continued to try to catch her breath. She couldn’t claim that that had been the first time that her father had choked her, and she doubted that it would be the last. Something was different this time, though. So much more hate seemed to have radiated from him, and his grip had never been so tight. And then her brother…he had never had that look in his eyes before. She couldn’t wrap her mind around it, and she didn’t have the time to try to, either.

Heavy footsteps soon filled her ears, and as she looked up, something strange happened. Ami had given up feeling fear a long time ago. She found it to be pointless; fear never stopped her pain, it never stayed the hand of her father, and it just plainly did nothing. It was pointless and a waste of time. Ami had resigned herself to never fearing anything again, but on that day, on that fateful day, fear spread its way throughout her soul once again. She knew fear again because as soon as she looked up, she met the murderous eyes of her father, and this time, he had a knife.

She had to have blacked out for a moment, because the next thing that Ami knew, she was running down the street. She felt light-headed and nauseated, and pain radiated throughout her torso. Her shirt was covered in something warm and wet, and a metallic scent flooded into her nose. She couldn’t think of why she was running, but she knew that she couldn’t stop. She didn’t know why it was there, but fear was still sitting heavily on her.

And then she slowly began to remember. She remembered the hand wrapped around her throat, and being thrown against the wall like she was trash. She remembered struggling to breathe, and she remembered the look of the ravenous wolf that had taken over her brother. She remembered the footsteps and then…then she remembered the knife. The knife had brought fear back to her, and she was shocked to feel it again after so long. She was so shocked that she couldn’t even run, and she could hardly blink before he had grabbed her and brought the knife down…

Everything was a little blurry after that. She remembered someone screaming, and now that she thinks about it, it was probably her. She remembered him bringing the knife down a second time, but after that, she remembered being dropped. In the short moment that it took for her to hit the ground, Ami realized something. She realized that she did not want to die. She realized that she was scared and that she wanted to run. So as soon as she hit the ground, she got up and ran.

The blackness took over after that, and when she found consciousness again, she was running down the street. She wasn’t sure how she was still running; it may have been adrenaline, but when she looked at how much blood was covering her, she just couldn’t believe that any amount of adrenaline could have made up for that blood loss. She didn’t question it too much more, though. She wasn’t safe, not yet anyways. She wasn’t far away enough from that man to think about anything other than running.

The world was not completely oblivious to Ami’s plight that night. Her bloodied and adrenaline-fueled run did not go unnoticed by many, living or dead. Spirits watched her from a distance, knowing that there was nothing that they could do, but still hoping that someone would help her. People watched her from their homes, too shocked by the sight of the bloody girl to try to run after her, but some of them had mind enough to grab their phones and call the nearest medical facility.

Isshin Kurosaki had been receiving calls constantly for the past ten minutes. Some of the people’s voices sounded shaky, others were obviously crying, but they all told him the same thing: there was a girl running down the street towards his clinic and she was covered in blood and leaving a trail of it behind her. By the sound of things, it wasn’t likely that she would make it through the night.

"Ichigo! Go outside and watch for her!” Isshin called to his son. He couldn’t go out to look for her just yet; he honestly wasn’t really sure what to do for her. If she was as bad off as she sounded, then it was doubtful that he had the resources to save her. But he was still her only hope, because there was no way that he could get her to the hospital before she bled out.

“Dad, she’s coming!” his daughter Karin called out. As Isshin ran towards the door, Yuzu rushed past him holding her hands over her mouth and Karin was quick to follow her. When he was finally outside, he couldn’t blame his daughters one bit for running away. The sight was gruesome.

Ichigo Kurosaki was in complete shock. He didn’t know what to expect when his father told him the there was a girl running down the street towards them covered in blood, but this he was expecting least of all. He knew this girl, she was one of his classmates. Her name was Ami Gamo, and he couldn’t for the life of him think of why anyone would want to hurt her. Sure, she may have seemed weird at points, but he figured that she was just shy and quiet. She had never done anything to anybody, so why was she the one running towards him?

She wasn’t running for much longer. She had almost reached the clinic, but her blood loss had finally gotten to her. Right before Ichigo’s eyes, the bloodied girl collapsed onto the street and didn’t get back up. To his credit, Ichigo was quick to shake off his shock and run to the girl, although his shock quickly came back once he got a closer look to her. She was covered in so much blood, and he could see exactly where it was coming from. It wasn’t difficult for him to figure out that they were stab wounds; one started right above her left hip and dragged up to the bottom of her ribs, and the other was a slash that started at her left shoulder and went to her sternum. It was gruesome, and he knew that she shouldn’t be alive.

Isshin saw that his son was frozen as he stood by the girl, and Isshin was as well, but for different reasons. He had lost the ability to see spirits a long time ago, and because of that he couldn’t sense people’s reiatsu anymore, either, but he was also far from ignorant. Physically speaking, this girl should have been dead, but there was something, something not human, keeping her alive. Even in his state, he could see that there was something different about the girl. It may have had nothing to do with spirits or reiatsu, but there was something strange around her. It gave him hope, though, because an idea suddenly came to him.

Isshin quickly ran back into his clinic to grab a few things and ran back outside to his son. He had to act quickly; he knew it was a longshot, but he hoped like hell that his idea would work. He quickly ran past Ichigo and knelt down to pick the girl up, only turning to his son for a quick moment to tell him to go inside and look after his sisters. After that, Isshin took off running down the street.

He had never run so fast in his life, and if he had, then it had been a very long time ago. He knew he didn’t have much time, and better yet, that she didn’t have much time. He recognized the uniform that she was wearing, and he knew that she was from Ichigo’s school. He couldn’t deny that a certain amount of anger bubbled inside him at the thought of someone hurting a girl around his son’s age this badly, but he knew he couldn’t dwell on it just yet. She didn’t have much time left, but maybe, just maybe, his plan would work. He could only hope that the shopkeeper was where he was supposed to be.

And thankfully, he was. Isshin could see Kisuke Urahara standing outside of his shop, like he was waiting for him. The shopkeeper’s eyes were blocked from view by his hat, but Isshin could tell by looking at him that the man was in a beyond serious state and that he knew why Isshin was coming to him.

No words were exchanged between the two. As Isshin reached him, Kisuke merely turned back towards his shop and led Isshin inside. He brought him to a room in the back that had a mat laid out on the floor. Tessai Tsukabishi was already in the room, and as soon as Isshin laid the girl on the mat, the large man held his hands over her and began to try to heal her with Kido.

“Can you save her?” Isshin asked, breaking the silence that had momentarily taken over the room. It took a moment for Tessai to reply.

"I believe so, but it may take some time,” he finally answered. Isshin couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief, but now that the girl’s chances of survival were actually existent, he couldn’t help but let anger and speculation take over him.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen blade wounds like this,” he commented, looking over to Kisuke.

“Especially in the World of the Living,” Kisuke agreed.

“Who would do something like this?” Isshin muttered.

“She didn’t tell you anything?” Kisuke asked him.

“No, she collapsed before I could reach her,” he told him. “Kisuke…am I crazy or…?”

“You’re not crazy,” the shopkeeper told him. “I don’t what it is, but there’s something around her. It’s like…like it’s being pulled into her soul or something.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was like some kind of haze was settled around her, but as soon as Tessai started healing her, it looked like it started to be pulled into her,” the shopkeeper explained. “I’ve never seen anything like it, but it may have very well saved her.”

“She’s healing faster than I thought,” Tessai commented.

“I wonder why,” Isshin hummed. “Do you think it has something to do with the haze?”

“It could,” Kisuke told him. “But there’s no way to find out at this point. It’s almost completely gone.”

“It looks like it’s disappearing in time with her wounds healing,” Tessai informed them.

“I’ve never seen a normal human heal this fast,” Kisuke pointed out.

“A normal human would have been dead by now,” Isshin reminded him. At that, the three men grew quiet again. The whole thing only took about ten minutes, but those were the longest ten minutes of Isshin’s life. In the end, though, it worked.

Ami had never felt so sore in her entire life. At first, she didn’t know why she was in pain, but it wasn’t long before she remembered. Remembering everything just confused her, though. Why wasn’t she in excruciating pain instead of just being sore? Better yet, why was she still alive?

She couldn’t even begin to guess where she was. It certainly did not smell like home, but that was a good thing at this point. Instead of smelling like alcohol, this place smelled sweet, almost like candy, with a certain fresh edge to it that she couldn’t distinguish. She knew she wasn’t lying on a bed; what she was laying on wasn’t uncomfortable by any means, but it was too hard to be a bed. She also noticed a certain warmth radiating throughout her torso. She actually felt strangely calm wherever she was, even if she had no clue was where that was.

Her confusion only grew when she opened her eyes. The first thing she noticed was a green light covering her chest and stomach. She followed that green light to a pair of hands hovering over her, hands that belong to a rather large, darkly tanned man with glasses. There were two other people in the room, one man in full green and another in what looked to be a doctor’s coat. She had no clue who they were, but the man in the doctor’s coat had a familiar presence about him.

“Ami,” was the first word that came out of her mouth. She had said it because she thought she heard one of them ask for her name. She wasn’t too sure, though, because she was still a bit dazed, not to mention confused as well.

“Ami, do you know who did this to you?” the man in green asked her. She didn’t want to answer that question, so she asked them one instead.

“Who are you?” she muttered.

“Ah, how rude of me. My name is Kisuke Urahara. The one healing you is Tessai, and this is Isshin Kurosaki,” the man in green told her, pointing to the other men as he named them.

“Kurosaki? Are you…related to Ichigo?” Ami wondered.

“Ah, so you do know him,” Isshin mumbled. “Yes, I’m his father, actually.”

"Ami, do you know who did this to you?” Kisuke repeated. Ami was quiet for a moment, thinking whether she should tell them or not.

“Ami, you can trust us,” Isshin assured her. “We-“

“M-my father,” she whispered, cutting Isshin’s next statement off. Isshin felt like he wanted to puke, and Kisuke and Tessai weren’t doing much better.

Ami wasn’t really sure why she told them, but she felt like she could trust them. Obviously they were helping her, which is more than anyone else ever did, so she decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. Plus, there was the slight chance that maybe, by some miracle, they could help her get away from her family. There was no way she could go back home now, because they would surely kill her the next time.

“Your f-father?” Isshin repeated. Ami only nodded. More silence filled the room.

“It’s done,” Tessai solemnly announced, and the suddenly the green light over Ami stopped. She looked down, seeing her bloody shirt, but there were no longer any wounds to go with that blood.

“A-amazing,” she muttered. “T-thank you.”

“It was nothing,” Tessai assured her, and once again the room was quiet again. There was an obvious tension in the room, and Ami felt like it was suffocating her.

“Can I…go outside?” Ami asked them. “I need some…air.”

“Of course we can,” Kisuke told her, trying to give her a smile, but it looked more sad than anything. He held out his hand to her, and Ami took it wordlessly.

“Care to join us, Isshin?” Kisuke called, knocking the man out of stupor.

“Ah, yeah, I will,” Isshin replied, following Kisuke as he led the girl through his shop.

Ami took a deep breath as she stepped outside. It was a relatively warm night, but rain clouds were starting to form in the sky, threatening to unleash torrents at any moment. It was nice, though, and to Ami, it seemed to make the air smell fresh and clean. She was oddly at peace considering what had just happened to her. For some reason, she felt like a weight had just been lifted off of her shoulders.

“Is that smoke?” she heard Isshin mutter, and as she looked off into the distance, sure enough, a black mass was curling its way through the air. It was thick and moving fast, as if something large was burning.

“I-is that…the direction I came from?” Ami asked Isshin, and nodded in reply. She knew that the chances of it were unlikely, but she couldn’t shake the feeling, maybe even the hope, that it was her house that was burning. There was certainly enough smoke for it to be coming from a burning house, but it was impossible for her to tell from where she was.

“Can…we go see?” she asked them. She didn’t even say what she wanted to see, but Isshin knew where she wanted to go. He could tell how apprehensive she got when asked them the question, as if she was scared of something. If her father had really attacked her, then the only thing that she should have been scared of at the moment was him, and to see him she would have to go home.

“Are you sure?” he asked her. It took her a moment, but she finally nodded in agreement. He looked over to Kisuke and the shopkeeper nodded his head, as well. While they doubted that the fire was burning anything important, they still figured that if they went in the direction of Ami’s home, they might run into her father, and if they did, they fully intended to give him a taste of his own medicine. 

That ominous feeling was following Ami again, but it was different this time. Instead of trying to hold her back from going home, this time it seemed to push her forward, like it knew something that she didn’t. She felt safe with the two men that were accompanying her, so maybe that was why she wasn’t affected so badly by the feeling as she had been before. Instead of shaking in apprehension, she felt like she was shaking with anticipation, and the shiver that ran down her spine was one of sheer excitement.

The smoke cloud kept getting closer and closer, until they finally reached the source. Isshin and Kisuke couldn’t believe the sight before them, especially when Ami pointed out what the pile of ash used to be. As it turned out, that little ominous cloud did know something that Ami didn’t.

She couldn’t have been gone for much more than an hour, but they said that the fire was more intense than anything they had ever seen before. It spread quickly and turned everything it touched to ashes just as fast. They said that the people inside hadn’t been able to escape, and as she looked over the ashes that had once been her home, Ami felt relieved. She knew that she shouldn’t have felt that way; her family had just died. Maybe she was truly emotionless; maybe she was a psychopath. Either way, Ami still felt like the world had just crawled off of her shoulders. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but she knew that they could no longer hurt her. She felt free. No, she didn’t just feel free, she was free. It was as if the very fire that killed her family had also lit another fire within her soul, but this fire cleansed her soul instead of destroying it. For the first time in her life, Ami’s future actually looked bright.