Chapter Text
Ichigo has had the key for as long as he can remember. It hangs around his neck by a worn leather strap that always seems about to break but never does. The key is black iron and rough in his hands, even after years of worrying it with his thumb. He can’t quite tell the shape, but it always fits whatever lock he needs it to, whatever door’s on hand.
The key opens the locks of many places. When he was younger, he traveled more, jumping between worlds of glass and taffy with a thought and the click of a lock. Now that he’s older, though, he tends to stick to more practical travel— things like school and home and work.
There’s a lot of work, nowadays. He’s got nothing better to do, what with his already minimal social life shrinking to nothing thanks to uppity ghosts and a family that’s afraid to admit they regularly see said ghosts around the dinner table.
He’s not bitter. Of course not.
His favorite place to go is the Palace. It’s not the most creative name, he knows, but he made it up when he was nine, and anyway, there’s not many more fitting titles for the high stone arches and tall windows that make up the throne room Ichigo always ends up in. It’s a beautiful place, built into a cliff face and overlooking a blue sea and white sand beaches. It never rains, winter never comes, and no matter how far Ichigo walks along the shore, the Palace is always in sight, and Ichigo is always alone.
The Palace kitchens are always stocked. Despite a lack of cooks, there’s always fresh bread and roasted chicken. There’s always eggs for breakfast and cakes for dessert, and bowls of fresh fruit when he’s feeling peckish. There’s no fish, or rice, but if Ichigo really wants it, he can always go home.
Time stops, when Ichigo goes to the Palace. It stops whenever he leaves his world, really, but the Palace is where it matter most. Ichigo has spent years in its halls, studying this particular language or honing that particular skill. He spent six years mastering the piano, another three on guitar and eight on the violin. He only has a guitar in his father’s house, but the Palace always has what he needs.
If he were to count his true age— not whatever age he returns to when he comes back the his world, his real age, including all the time he’s spent in the Palace and other worlds— he’d probably be closer to three hundred. Give or take.
The Palace is his favorite place, though, and the only place he visits with any frequency anymore. It goes something like this:
He’s at school at eight, he gets out at three. Once he’s out, he goes to the Palace for lunch, gorging himself on warm, buttered bread and whatever else strikes his fancy while he does his homework. After that, he has a quick nap on the lounge chair on the balcony overlooking the sea. Once he wakes up, he swims for half an hour, showers, changes into his work shirt, stuffs his school uniform into his bag, and leaves the Palace for Unagiya’s. He stays until eleven, often until after dinner, then heads for home. He makes sure his father hears him come in, slipping into his bedroom and locking the door. He draws the curtains (you can never be too careful these days, not with shinigami and their inherent need to ignore doors) and goes to the Palace for a proper, eight to twelve hour rest. When he wakes up, he has a breakfast of raspberries, buns, and milk, puts on his work uniform, and leaves the Palace for his night job at eleven-thirty, coming out a block from the twenty-four hour gas station. He works until seven, goes back to the Palace, showers, finishes his homework, spends some time in the library (it always has what he wants to read, whether it’s a trashy romance novel or the latest medical journal), maybe sleeps some more, then goes back to his room to get ready for school.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
He’s never tired, he’s never bored, and he always has more money than he knows what to do with. Sometimes, yes, he admits he gets lonely, but that’s easily cured by being busy.
Boredom is the true enemy here. Ichigo learned that quickly.
About six months into his… Exile, maybe? Punishment? Whatever it is that caused his sudden case of lone wolf, his biology class turns to the subject of genetics. His homework is to create a family tree and to map out some more obvious genetic traits. Ichigo’s at a loss. He obviously can’t do his father’s line, and he has nothing to work with on his mother’s. He’s going to fail, and he’s going to fail hard.
When he goes to the Palace after school, he decides to spend a day or two moping, eating chocolate, and drinking sweet wine before making his way towards the library for something to take his mind of his impending failing grade.
When he finally reaches the library (he tripped on the stairs twice thanks to the constant state of drunkenness, sue him), there’s a stack of books waiting for him by his favorite armchair. It’s strange, he thinks. The Palace has never done anything like that for him before.
Curiosity peaked, Ichigo flops into the armchair, reaching for the topmost text. It’s as thick as his fist, bound in rough black leather, with a small, five-point cross stamped into the cover.
The Book of Gold .
"It isn’t gold, though," he murmurs to himself, flipping it open. The title page is yellowed from age, but the ink is legible— The Book of Gold . In smaller lettering underneath, the subtitle reads A Brief History of Sacred Quincy Lineage .
Ichigo pauses.
"Huh."
Flipping to the index, he finds a list of twenty-five names, all broken up by main families and branch families. He feels himself go cold when he reads Kurosaki.
He flips through the book, careless of its age, until he finds the right chapter, skimming names and titles and noble deeds until he finds it, until he finds her.
He does.
'Kurosaki Masaki (1964-1996), the last pureblood princess of the First Line. She is survived by her half-blood son, Kurosaki Ichigo-oji, and her daughters, Kurosaki Yuzu-hime and Kurosaki Karin-hime. Due to her marriage to a shinigami noble, children of her line are ineligible for the throne.'
Three sentences. His mother has three sentences in this giant goddamn book, and two of them aren’t even about her. Ichigo doesn’t know what he wants to do more: tear this book in half, or tear his father in half for keeping Ichigo in the dark (again).
The book’s within reach. In minutes, it’s confetti, and Ichigo has nothing to do but fume as he picks up the next one.
Noble Women of Purest Blood is the title.
Great.
It’s like a car wreck, reading about the Kurosaki line, but once Ichigo starts, he can’t stop, devouring each book like it was made of chocolate. His mother’s side is a mess of murderers and assassins, tyrannical lords and silver-tongued ladies, all fighting to keep their blood untarnished through arranged marriages and— in a pinch— inbreeding. His mother’s sister (dead, now, complications during childbirth) was married to her father’s first cousin, for fuck’s sake. By the time he’s done the stack, he thinks she’s probably lucky her parents died before she was marrying age— thirteen, according to apparent Quincy law.
Ichigo wants to cry. He wants to throw up. Eventually he does both, settling into a restless sleep in one of the parlors in the East wing.
He stays in the tower for three weeks, mood fluctuating between sorrow, disgust, and impotent rage. He hates secrets. He hates his father for keeping this from him. In his darker moments, he hates his mother, too.
He usually feels guilty when that happens.
Sometime at the end of that three weeks, though, he buckles down to do his homework. He finds a helpful tapestry right around then, outlining the Kurosaki lineage all the way back to the apparent Quincy King (Ywach, dates unspecified. Ichigo thinks he might still be alive). There are photographs in some of the texts, which Ichigo cuts out and glues to a poster board next to small blocks of text listing names, dates, and obvious genetic traits. Ichigo’s orange hair is an apparent recessive gene, only appearing three times in the entire line— his still-living great-great-great-uncle (a war general), his great-grandmother (a suspected black widow), and his mother’s elder brother (also named Ichigo). The work is methodical, and maybe even calming, once he beings to accept that his family is essentially a chapter from Game of Thrones.
(It helps that he finds some good ones in the mix. Kurosaki Aohime took in impure Quincy orphans. Kurosaki Takeo served as an advisor to the king, helping push forward marriage rights laws in an effort to stop the high suicide rates among young brides. Not all so bad, really.)
He settles on five generations, to illustrate the point of his hair, sets it aside to dry, then gets dressed for work.
He doesn’t think he’ll be speaking to his father anytime soon.