This is a tumblr prompt from Anon: "AU where Kisuke effectively adopts Uuryu, Ichigo and sisters when they lose their respective loved ones."

It's completed at around 9 chapters and was originally posted in an unedited form on my tumblr, and the newly edited chapters will be posted one chapter a week until everything is up! I hope y'all enjoy!

He never meant to disrupt everything so thoroughly, and Kisuke would defend that statement till the day he died. He'd known there was a chance his actions could affect things, but… it had been a small one. Too small to worry about, he'd thought. Too unlikely to occur.

Besides, he wasn't about to let a kid sulk about in the rain next to a river. Not after he'd already failed the kid once by letting down his guard.

(He was just as much to blame for Masaki's death as anyone was.)

(And so much more to blame than Kurosaki Ichigo was or could ever be.)

Coaxing the young Kurosaki from the water's edge was as difficult as he'd expected; the boy was a Shiba at heart, stubborn and willful and determined even in the face of despair. That he didn't know his heritage only made the resemblance more stark.

But he managed, coaxing the boy away with promises of stories and anecdotes about Masaki's life. He didn't have many, but… he had enough to work with, mostly from listening to Isshin ramble about the 'love of his life' every so often.

Kisuked expected that to be it; a single afternoon of only slightly embellished stories, with tea and snacks and just letting the child be.

(He wasn't certain he was doing it right. Was he supposed to encourage the boy to move on? Was the storytelling too much? Should he try to engage Kurosaki more, instead of leaving him be?)

(He didn't know.)

(Surely it wouldn't matter. It was just a single afternoon's diversion, after all.)

Except the next week Kurosaki Ichigo crept back to the shoten, holding one of his baby sisters tight while the other trailed after him, wringing her hands and fretting away.

"Can you help?" Kurosaki asked, holding out his sister's hand to show Kisuke her burn.

Kisuke took the girl's hand in his, examining the burn while he asked, "Why come to me?" Hadn't Shiba Isshin opened a clinic? Surely he knew how to treat a minor burn like this.

"Tou-san's busy," Kurosaki said with all the aggrieved sulkiness a child could display. "So can you?"

"Maa, of course I can," Kisuke answered with a smile, rising to his feet and shooing the three through the back. He called for Tessai, sat the three down, and went about caring for the small burn on the little girl's hand.

Once the burn was dealt with and the bandage secured, Kisuke applied a touch of reiatsu to coax her tiny stores to help her heal. Her powers responded beautifully to his urging, rising to the surface without a fight and setting about fixing the problem at once.

(He had to wonder if all of the siblings had such malleable power.)

(And if so, was it a result of their age or their heritage.)

By the time Kisuke released Yuzu's hand, Tessai had brought out treats and sat with them. Bribes in hand, it didn't take Tessai long to gently pry an answer from the other two children about what they'd been up to.

(Cooking. Little Yuzu had been trying to cook with Ichigo's help.)

(She was barely four. He was barely ten. What was their father doing?)

Which of course led to Tessai offering cooking lessons, and to Ichigo accepting with grudging relief.

Which led to all three visiting the shoten day after day for snacks and lessons. They even began to do their homework around the common room table, with Ichigo helping his sisters and Kisuke leaning over every so often to help Ichigo out.

(He needed to brush up on his human-world subjects but… it wasn't like he had all that much else to occupy his time. Not when he was playing a waiting game with Aizen and all of Seireitei.)

It wasn't long before the children became comfortable with him and Tessai, their shy smiles and watchful eyes fading away the longer they spent around him. And the more they relaxed, the more their grief came to the fore.

Kisuke found himself trying desperately to remember everything Yoruichi had ever told him about children, of which… very little was actually useful. He knew everything an assassin or saboteur needed to know — how to capture, how to drug, how to control while leaving the children still useful as captives — but nothing about how to care for them beyond the obvious.

(He and Yoruichi had never intended to have children, even back when they'd once daydreamed of marrying and living together forever.)

(Before they realized what 'marrying' meant, and decided that living together forever was good enough.)

For lack of any other idea, Kisuke let them do what they wanted. They clambered into his lap and he held them close, letting them cling and soak his jinbei with their tears. He held them and listened and let them cry themselves out, answering whatever he could and telling them when he had no answer.

It seemed to help.

(At the very least, it didn't seem to hurt anything.)

(Kisuke would take what he could get.)

Ichigo's best — only? — friend began to visit as well. She was a little spitfire who stomped up to Kisuke her first time over, focused and intent and stubborn like Yoruichi. She planted her hands on her hips, stared up at him, and thanked him for helping her friend.

(Kisuke had no idea what to do with her thanks. He'd not meant to do this, but now that he'd begun… well. He'd always hated leaving something unfinished.)

Things settled into a routine of visits and lessons and silly stories woven out of fragments of the lives of people he had once spied upon. On rare days when the children didn't come around, the shoten felt colder, emptier than ever.

(He was getting attached. Oh dear.)

It all came to a head months later, when Isshin finally noticed how late his children stayed out every day. When he finally took offense at Kisuke interacting with them.

He stormed into the shoten long after the children had gone, teeth bared and shoulders squared and every inch the offended Captain and Clan Head. "You leave my children out of your damn schemes, Kisuke!"

"And what schemes would you be referring to this time?" Kisuke asked lightly, playing with his fan and wondering what grand plot Isshin had conjured up that required Kisuke to play nice with three small children. They had spoken about training Ichigo to defeat Aizen due to his strength even with the seal in place, but that plan wouldn't come in to play for years yet. "I'm doing nothing but giving them a place to come after school where they can relax and work in peace."

Isshin scoffed. "Is that all? Then why are they always here instead of home?"

Kisuke bit back his immediate response — 'because you never give them the time of day, much less the attention they need' — and shrugged. "Maa, who knows how children think. I'm sure they'll grow out of it in time. Maybe they just need some time away from the place that reminds them of their mother?"

His words scored a hit; Isshin hunched in on himself and glanced away, hands clenched at his side and brows furrowed. "Fine. But don't you dare drag them into trouble with you."

"I won't, I won't," Kisuke reassured with a cheerful smile. He had, after all, no intention of doing any such thing.

(Intentions meant so little in the grand scheme of things.)

(His past could catch up to him at any moment, but he was selfish enough to cling to what fragments of happiness he'd found.)

Isshin left, and Kisuke stood in his deserted shop and tried to gather his thoughts and sooth his urge to destroy. He'd not expected the low burn of anger at the sight of Isshin, nor the sheer possessiveness that Isshin's words — 'my children' — had provoked within him.

(They weren't Isshin's. He'd lost all right to that claim months ago.)

Kisuke snapped his fan closed and strode out of the shoten, mind whirling with everything he'd just discovered.

He needed space. Needed to clear his head and settle his emotions and make a plan. Because if he could be so surprised by his own reactions then he'd let this mess go on for too long without one.

He meandered this way and that, down sidewalks and through alleys and finally into a park, ignoring the handful of humans he crossed paths with in the process. He didn't want company, he just… needed to be somewhere else. Somewhere that didn't remind him of the Kurosaki siblings, or Isshin, or anything resembling the mess he'd gotten himself into.

Kisuke breathed in. Tapped his fan against his leg. Considered the wending paths deeper into the park and chose his direction.

He had plans to make.

Come visit me at akaluan over on tumblr if you'd like! There's a fairly large collection of drabbles and other oneshots available there - do a search for Masterpost By Month and most of it will come up!

If you'd like to read other stories that I'm currently working on, check out my wordpress at akaluan . silveredmagic . com . I've currently got four stories running that update on Wednesdays, all Bleach or Bleach crossovers.