Uryuu was almost entirely certain that the Espada did not want to be there. He lay at one end of the table, drawing rings on the floor and looking anywhere but at himself, Urahara and Ichigo.

"Tea again?" he asked, the aggravation obvious in his growling voice. "Aizen was always forcing use to drink it...you know it disagrees with us Hollows, right?"

"There's absolutely no evidence to support that, Grimmjow-kun. You must be imagining it."

"Grimmjow-kun? Now listen here you slipper-hatted-freak, I didn't agree to any of this stuff when I came here!"

"Grimmjow!" It was the first word Ichigo had said, and then tension in his voice was clear. The Espada snapped his mouth shut with an audible click, but he still didn't sit up straight, and when Ichigo was done glowering at him he went back to looking at his hands.

"My, my. There's too much tension in this room. It's just a cup of tea." Urahara poured it into bowls, and Grimmjow huffed and sat up when the shopkeeper glowered at him. "First of all, Ishida-kun, I need to inform you of the sad news of your death.

Uryuu was relieved not to have picked up his bowl yet -- if he had done, he might have dropped it. Instead he wrapped his hands tightly around the edge of the table and tried to absorb the statement. Everything seemed to snap into place, all at once. "My death," he said, breathlessly.

"As far as myself, Kurosaki and your friends knew, you died in Hueco Mundo. As you can imagine, it was quite a surprise for me when you walked into my shop; so much so that I alerted your father, Ishida Ryuuken; only he could possibly confirm your identity. If you'd stayed a little longer, I would have taken you to visit your grave, but for some reason you did not trust me." Urahara sipped his hot tea, if only to look out from underneath the brim of his hat and over the brim of the bowl at once, and say mysteriously, "I decided to find out why."

"So you followed me?"

"Not at all. I followed Ryuuken, and Ryuuken followed you."

His father's faint reiatsu in the clearing... He'd looked for him, but of course he had already been gone.

"And you saw what happened with Ichigo?"

Urahara shared a look with Ichigo, then nodded. "That was why I convinced him not to pursue you. You were drunk on power, Ichigo's power. It was quite unlike everything you were used to. I informed Captain Kurotsuchi of where you would be, and then I watched him." Uryuu bristled as Urahara paused, but did not find the words to interfere before he continued. "If your friends had known where you were, Ishida-kun, they would have come for you. Captain Kurotsuchi kept you a secret. He is under a lot of pressure to come up with a way to fight Aizen."

Uryuu set his bowl very carefully down on the table and stood up, glowering at the shopkeeper. His shoulders were shaking. "You're making excuses for him now? For what he's done?! He's a monster!"

"Ishida-kun, please sit down. I am trying to explain..."

"No." He couldn't take much more of this... If he stood here and listened to it, something in his calm resolve was going to shatter. "I need some air."

"Oi, stranger," Grimmjow was standing up now, flexing his muscles as though ready to push him around, "Why don't you just sit down and listen to what the slipper-hatted-freak had to say, and I won't have to make ya!"

Ichigo was standing too, now, taking hold of Grimmjow's elbow and restraining him. "Grimmjow..."

Enough. Uryuu turned and kept walking until there were three sliding doors between himself and the rest of them, and the brisk night air filled his grateful lungs, chasing away the claustrophobia. The door slid open and closed behind him, and when he turned to yell, he found himself face to face with Ichigo.

"Kurosaki..." He turned away, unable to face him. "I want to be alone right now."

"Ishida..." Kurosaki paused, and then it all burbled out of him at once. "We didn't know. You have to forgive us...and if you won't forgive me, you ought to at least forgive Orihime. She refused to mourn for you...she stopped eating. She thought she was the reason you were dead. Even though I knew it must be my fault."

Uryuu scowled, deciding not to answer, or even look at Ichigo. He stared at the brick wall on the opposite side of the courtyard instead. Orihime had blamed herself...no wonder she had looked so upset in the clearing.

"I'm the one who made us split up. If I hadn't done that..." Ichigo began.

"It was a tactical decision, and a correct one," Uryuu interrupted. "I don't resent you for that. I resent you for giving up."

"We searched as long as we could," Ichigo said, seemingly only just keeping his temper. "Soul Society insisted that we retreat."

"And instead of continuing to look for me, you obeyed them," Uryuu hissed. "If it had been anyone else, you'd have stayed."

"But we'd have found nothing!" Now Ichigo was growling - not quite shouting. "That freak Mayuri had already taken you away!"

Uryuu turned, glaring at Ichigo. "I think you miss my point, Kurosaki. Even if it's been stolen, you're not supposed to stop looking for it! You didn't know I wasn't there, but you still stopped searching."

Ichigo glowered for a moment longer, then submitted, dropping his gaze away. "I don't care if you forgive me or not," he sighed. "Just forgive Orihime and Chad. And come back inside. You need to know why..."

"Do you even know what it was like?" Uryuu asked, ignoring Ichigo still. "To sit there day after day and watch the sun rise and fall, sunshine and moonlight, over and over again, the days blurring into nothingness, and nobody comes? You came to Soul Society for the sakura festival. You came, and I was there, waiting for you, but you didn't visit, and you didn't save me..."

His eyes were stinging, and he lifted his hands to take off his glasses and discovered tears on his fingertips. He didn't dare turn toward Ichigo in case he saw, but he could hear the pitch of his voice raise as he struggled to hold the tears in and speak at the same time, "You left me there with the man who had murdered my grandfather, and you stopped looking for me. You declared me dead. If I'm not supposed to hate you for it, Kurosaki, who can I hate for it?

"Because I need to," he went on, desperately, and the tears were pouring down his cheeks now. "I need someone to answer for it...otherwise..." Kurosaki's hand fell on his shoulder and he closed his own hand so tightly around his glasses that he might break them. "Otherwise..." he said, again, and the words faded away. His head was pulled down until it rested against Kurosaki's shoulder, and he felt the the Substitute Shinigami take the weight of his body and all of his woes at once.

"You don't have to forgive me, Ishida...but I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I would have fought everyone in Soul Society at once if I'd known that you'd been taken there...I wouldn't have let it happen."

"But you didn't," Ishida whispered, turning his head to at least dry some of his tears on Ichigo's shoulder before he looked up. "You left me for dead."

Ichigo's eyebrows were turned upward - the look of contempt erased by his concern. "Ishida...I didn't realise until you were gone what you meant..."

Until you were gone.

It was the very worst thing that Kurosaki could have said. That he was more important to him once he realised that he wasn't there any more, and therefore had been superfluous beforehand. The doors snapped closed over his heart, and Uryuu pressed his teeth together firmly, making his jaw ache.

"Enough, Kurosaki. Tell me honestly. The first time you remembered my name was when you read it on my gravestone, wasn't it? Until then, I was just Ishida. And that's just it...you didn't care to get to know me, to even learn my name. You can't even say it now. So how...how can you say these things to me? How can you welcome me back?"

He pulled back, turning away from Ichigo and putting his glasses on to hide his stinging eyes. Ichigo looked hurt, and now he didn't dare look at him. "I longed to hear those things, Kurosaki. I longed to earn them. But I gave up. I gave up when you didn't come for me. Don't think you can change that with an apology."

"Uryuu..."

"Don't!" By the time he had turned toward Kurosaki there was a bow in his hand, and an arrow pointed straight at Ichigo's heart. He didn't move, but Uryuu wished he would -- wanted him to move so he had an excuse to let go of his sanity and release some of this awful tension.

"Oi, Ichigo. If anyone's going to be fighting with the pretty boy it's gonna be me, got it? I still owe him for this." Grimmjow pushed the sliding door open wide beside them, eyeing them ferally. "Slipper-hatted-freak told me to remind you that yer tea's getting cold. He's acting cool, but I reckon that means he's pissed, so take a hint and get back in there before he comes out here himself."

Ichigo did not look at Ishida, merely stepped around Grimmjow and walked away.

"You coming, or do I have to make you cry again?" Grimmjow's sharp teeth curled into a grin, and Uryuu scowled, disarming his bow. Maybe it was time to find out exactly what else Urahara wanted to tell them... Then he could go home and try and forget about Ichigo once and for all.

He disarmed his bow and led the way back into the building.

"Thank you for joining us."

Uryuu settled down at the table once more, and Grimmjow slunk to his end, stretching out disappointedly on the floor again. Clearly he'd been hoping for a fight, and had been denied.

Ichigo, if anything, looked more depressed even than before. He had pulled up the hood so that it concealed his expression, and Urahara seemed to be trying to ignore him. If anything, it made the table all the more unfriendly.

"What I am about to tell you is a secret, Ishida-kun. You must tell nobody."

Uryuu scowled, not impressed.

"Aizen killed the king a long time ago. More than ten years ago, in fact. All this time, with the Arrancar, and the battle in Hueco Mundo...it was all simply for his entertainment. And he has kept us running in circles long enough that his real plans are now solidly set in motion. He found the royal key that Yamamoto had hidden in Karakura town itself -- the one who owned it was not even aware that it was in her possession. Since she was not guarding it, Aizen simply took it and entered through the King's gate while we were fighting."

"Wait..." Uryuu frowned, his brain working to keep up. "You're talking about Orihime?"

Urahara looked down into his undrunk tea, staring at the loose tealeaves at the bottom of the liquid. "I am. Inoue Orihime was the King's daughter, and the guardian of the key after his death. Aizen has known this all along. It was a vital ingredient in all of his plans -- and then to trap Orihime-san in a dimension she could not escape, so that she could not interfere until it was too late. It all went exactly as Aizen meant it to go."

There was some kind of terrible misery that was written over the shopkeeper's face. Uryuu had never seen him like this. Did he consider himself to be responsible for Aizen's treachery somehow? Was that what this was?

"Short of destroying Karakura Town, there is no way to open the gate from this side. All of Soul Society is trying their hardest to come up with a solution...and that...that is why Mayuri Kurotsuchi did what he did. He could tell, as I can tell, that your power is enough to break through the gates and stop Aizen once and for all."

Uryuu sank back, looking at the bowl of cold tea and then at his hands. That was it? That was why he had been locked in a box for a year, forbidden from seeing his friends, fed through a bottle? "You can't be serious," he said, darkly. "You think I can break into Heaven? You think I would, for something so corrupt as Soul Society? Where you experiment on Quincy - on human souls - just because you feel you have the right?! If you want to defeat Aizen, you can do it without my help! I'm through helping!"

He was angry...probably not thinking straight...but if they were all going to depend on him for this, then he was determined to make them crawl to him for help. They deserved no less. How could they ask him for help when they had left him to suffer all this time?

"Ishida-kun, you're the only chance we have of stopping him."

"If you think I'm the only chance," Uryuu growled, standing up, "then you clearly haven't been looking hard enough. You never know," he turned a glare on Ichigo, "perhaps the answer is right in front of your noses?!"

This time he left. He had been filled in. He knew the truth. He knew that to them, he was still not a friend; only a tool; a weapon. There was nothing more to it than that. Perhaps he would forgive them...but they would have to earn that. After everything...after everything, he would make them earn it.