If Sayuri was transported to Bleach canon alone (assuming the same premise of the lightning mist au, where Sousuke is dead so she doesn’t seek to find a way back), what would she do?
Well in the lightning mist AU, she basically went into a deep, deep depression and didn’t come out of it until she found Sakumo and Kakashi. I don’t think she would bother seeking out canon!Aizen-- she wouldn’t be able to bear having him look at her without any of the warmth, love, and recognition her Sousuke looked at her with. She’d wander the world lost, grieving, not wanting to live but not having the energy to die either.
Ichigo first meets the woman in white when he is nine years old. He sees her standing by the river as he’s walking to karate practice, staring blankly into the distance.
She’s not the first person Ichigo’s found wandering around Karakura Town looking a little lost. The others, they’d mainly looked confused, unsure of who they were or what they were supposed to be doing. This one, though...this one just looked sad.
“Hey!” He calls out. She doesn’t respond and so he runs up to her. “Hey, are you alright? Do you need help?”
Close up, Ichigo can’t help but notice that the woman looks...really, really thin. He swallows, looking up at her sunken eyes, the dark bruise-like shadows underlining them, her hollowed-out cheeks...
“Are-- are you hungry?” He asks the stranger hesitantly. “Do you want to come home with me? Mom would be okay with it, she loves having guests over! And she’s a really good cook, everyone says so. You should come! I think we’re having curry tonight.”
Her eyes flicker down towards him, gaze sharpening for the briefest moment as she takes in his face. Then she turns away, walking off. Ichigo watches her go, expression thoughtful. When he gets home that night, he makes sure to sneak some extra snacks into his backpack for tomorrow.
Ichigo seeks out the woman in white every day for the next three weeks. It isn’t always easy to find her but something about the water seems to calm her, and so more often than not Ichigo can find her standing by the river. He still hasn’t managed to convince her to take any food but on the bright side, she seems to be tolerating his presence more. She hasn’t walked away from him since that first day and although she still hasn’t spoken, she’s starting to listen more-- her focus on him rather than the water’s depths.
One day in mid-June, it starts raining really hard and so Ichigo sneaks an extra umbrella into his backpack in addition to the multitude of untouched snacks. He doesn’t get a chance to look for her after school-- the rain had started really coming down and Isshin had showed up to take him straight to karate-- and so once karate practice ends, he hardly even waits for Masaki before sprinting out the door.
“Hey, hey, slow down!” Masaki laughs, chasing after him. “What’s the rush?”
“I’m looking for a friend,” Ichigo replies, scanning the riverside for a hint of white. “She’s got brown hair and she always wears white. Do you see her?”
Masaki pauses, pulling Ichigo under her umbrella.
“I don’t think so,” she says after a moment, peering into the rain. “With it raining this much, your friend is probably inside, Ichigo.”
“Maybe,” Ichigo says dubiously, cupping his eyes with his hands in an attempt to see better. Masaki looks at him, a fond smile on her lips.
“Tell you what. We’ll come back and look for her together tomorrow, okay?” She says warmly. “For now though, let’s go home. I don’t want you to get a cold.”
“Fine,” Ichigo says begrudgingly. “But tomorrow, I definitely wanna-- wait, I think I see her!” Before Masaki can stop him, he runs towards the faint figure he sees in the distance, where the rising water is especially turbulent.
As he gets closer, he can tell that the figure isn’t the woman in white-- instead it’s a kid, a little girl probably around Yuzu and Karin’s age. She’s crying, clutching onto a stuffed bear, eyes swollen shut with tears.
“Hey,” Ichigo says softly, so as not to scare her. Behind him, Ichigo can hear Masaki shouting his name. “Hey, are you alright? Do you need help?”
At the sound of his voice, the girl stops crying for a moment. She blinks, looking up at him with large, teary eyes.
“The water is especially high today,” she whispers, so quietly Ichigo can barely hear her. She smiles, squeezing her teddy bear with both arms. “I love to swim. Will you swim with me, nii-san?”
The girl turns back towards the river, bending her legs as if preparing to jump. His heart leaping into his throat, Ichigo lunges towards her with one arm outstretched.
He never makes it. Instead, he feels a pair of arms encircle him from behind, pulling him into a secure embrace.
“Look away, Ichigo-kun,” an unfamiliar voice murmurs, even as a strange tiredness spreads through his entire body, causing his eyelids to droop. “This is not for you to see.”
The last thing Ichigo hears before his vision goes dark is a sickening squelch, not unlike the sound of a butcher knife slicing through a fresh cut of meat.
“Forgive me, I don’t think I introduced myself last night.” Sayuri opens her eyes to find the same red-haired woman from last night in front of her, a kind smile on her face. “I’m Kurosaki Masaki, Ichigo’s mother.”
“...Sayuri,” Sayuri answers, after a sluggish pause. She blinks, gathering her thoughts-- she remembers the weight of Ichigo’s body in her arms, handing him over to his frantic mother, the scent of blood in the rain. “How...how is he doing?”
She has a general idea of Ichigo’s wellbeing-- his spiritual energy is bright enough to sense clear across town, even at this age-- but it’s always better to confirm.
“Asking for you,” Masaki replies, her lips quirking up. “It was all I could do to keep him from following me here-- but then, I wanted to speak with you first.”
Her smile fades, expression sobering.
“You know, I spent hours rehearsing what I was going to say to you this morning?” Masaki asks. “I don’t even know where to start. You saved my son’s life.” She exhales shakily. “I mean, how do I even begin to thank you for something like that?”
There’s another pause before Sayuri figures out she’s expecting an answer. She rewinds the last minute of their conversation and comes up blank.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” She asks after a moment. Masaki’s expression softens.
“I said, I would very much like to thank you,” she says gently.
“Oh.” Sayuri thinks about that for a moment. There was a time where she would have held on to the favor. It’s what Sousuke would have done, collecting debts and loyalties until--
It isn’t like those debts had done much good in the end, anyway.
“Then at the very least, come over for lunch,” Masaki implores. “Allow me to do that much. Please.”
Sayuri closes her eyes for a brief moment, focusing on the other woman’s spiritual energy. Even that is a struggle, and the fact that she has to think about it at all...there was a time when she would have scanned it automatically, when the act would have come as naturally as breathing to her.
But then, it is so very hard to concentrate these days.
“I can’t eat,” she says finally, a statement that should have seemed obvious to her in retrospect.
“You leave that to me,” Masaki says, eyes warm. “I’ll figure something out. All I need is for you to come with me.” She extends her hand to Sayuri. “Shall we?”
There was a time when Sayuri would have analyzed every possible meaning and connotation behind such a gesture before accepting. Now, though...now it’s difficult to think, hurts to remember, and Sayuri is oh so tired.
And well, it was just lunch. What could it hurt?
(What could possibly cause her more pain at this point?)
She reaches up and takes Masaki’s hand.
Sayuri, six months later, wearing a Kurosaki family sweater, sitting on the bleachers squished between Masaki and Yuzu at one of Karin’s soccer matches: ...I feel like I’ve been tricked, somehow
(idk I just like the thought of Sayuri getting aggressively adopted into the Kurosaki family. No, she did not have any say in the matter)
