A/N: Okay, as promised, here's part two… of part one xD Sorry it took longer than anticipated, but responsibilities and a flash cold were working against me.

I wanted to post the first two outtakes along with this chapter, but I've been horribly stuck and I realized there was no sense in allowing them to hold the main chapter hostage. Just bear in mind that they will be uploaded in a separate fic, and that one of the two will be an exclusive update for AO3. I'm really sorry about this, but the reason I can't upload it to ffnet is due to formatting rules. Because that specific outtake is written in epistolary form, it relies heavily on formatting as a storytelling device, the kind that isn't allowed on ffnet.

The other one delves a little deeper into Yoruichi's character and offers more insight into the background that is the root of her dilemma in this chapter. But as it detracts from the plot and the chapter focuses on her heavily as it is, I felt it was best suited for an outtake. Sorry I can't upload them together; I'll try to finish it in time for the 14th for, uh… reasons xD

Hope you enjoy the read!

15/02/2016 EDIT: Outtake #1 is up, the order goes: Chapter 2 up to (and including) June 26th - The Ties That Bind - the rest of Chapter 2 - Chapter 3

25/02/2016 EDIT: Outtake #2 is also up, but only on AO3. Due to formatting reasons, it wouldn't work on ffnet, so if you'd like to read it, head on over to my tumblr (link in profile) and there will be a link for it there. 'The journal of Kuchiki Byakuya' takes place during the nine-year-span of TBTP. It's not directly related to TEF like the first outtake, but it covers a couple of scenes that have been referenced in TEF and adds a bit more to the Byakuya & Yoruichi relationship. Also the Byakuya & Kisuke relationship, which I plan on exploring in the future.

CHAPTER 3: Equilibrium Pt.I – Asunder (2)

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AUGUST 15TH, 2003 A.D., SHIBA KūKAKU RESIDENCE, RUKONGAI, SOUL SOCIETY

.

As the damp, cool cloth was pressed against her clammy forehead, Yoruichi swallowed hard, breathing in through her nose, arms wrapped weakly around the wooden bucket.

"So… Third time today, was it?"

Forking her fingers through her hair, she glared up at Kūkaku only half-heartedly. "Don't."

"Just saying it might be time to face facts, kiddo," Kūkaku said, patting her on the shoulder and stepping out of the washroom, taking the bucket with her.

Groaning, Yoruichi pushed herself onto a sitting position on the floor, back pressed against the wall. A half-empty cup of ginger tea Kūkaku had brewed earlier sat next to her, by now undoubtedly lukewarm. The concoction had helped, somewhat, but Yoruichi was beginning to suspect even the best home remedy would do little more than merely stall the constant wave of nausea that plagued her day in and day out.

Try as she might to deny it for days, Kūkaku was right: it was time to face the music.

There had been signs for a while now, but it wasn't until the incident in Sakahone that she'd well and truly began to piece it all together. Following that debacle at the shrine, she had entered her inner world in a surge of fury, with every intention of demanding answers from her zanpakutō spirit.

Instead of finding a taciturn or even guilty-looking Maya, however, Yoruichi had been nearly knocked over by the big cat pouncing on her joyously, not a speck of regret or apology in her. A curious sensation had been coursing throughout the small body. Yoruichi was used to bouts of excitement, playfulness, even downright aggression from Maya, but for the first time that day, the cat's reiatsu, warm and jubilant, had held an undercurrent that took Yoruichi by surprise: protectiveness.

Maya hadn't allowed the transformation to take place for her sake.

Before Yoruichi could even begin to guess as to what she had been protected from, Maya had made herself comfortable against her, affectionately rubbing her muzzle against Yoruichi's belly before she'd drifted off to sleep.

A couple of days later, the nausea had come knocking with a vengeance.

Yoruichi let out a sigh. One hundred and eleven years of being careful, and she was being punished for a sole night of frivolity. In retrospect, she shouldn't have underestimated the lethal combination of a romantic atmosphere and Kisuke's ability to be devastatingly corny.

"Here."

Yoruichi looked up. Kūkaku had returned, now holding a jar containing thin strips of a pink-colored substance submerged in liquid.

"If tea isn't working, try this," she said.

Yoruichi took the proffered jar and twisted it open, then took a sniff of the contents. Pickled ginger. As Kūkaku took a seat on the floor opposite her, Yoruichi plucked out a piece and nibbled on one corner warily. The taste wasn't bad; a little stronger than the tea itself, sweeter and spicier, but it wasn't upsetting her stomach thus far, so she began to take a few braver bites.

"So… Had a good time in Thailand, then?"

Yoruichi wished she could find it in her to glare at Kūkaku and her smirking face, but all she could do was keep on suckling on the pickled ginger. "How did you even—?"

"Well, you've been distracted ever since you came here, constantly tired, and now this. Plus the fact that you couldn't transform a few days ago," Kūkaku said. "I put two and two together; I remember what my mom was like when she was carrying Ganju."

Yoruichi didn't ask how Kūkaku knew about the failed transformation. Hiyori had obviously let it slip, and Yoruichi was now immensely thankful both she and Lisa were out for the day. Dealing with one witness to this was bad enough, but if she'd had to listen to Hiyori prattle on about her swollen breasts again –They really did get bigger- or have Lisa start making up limericks about things that rhymed with Bangkok, she might've gone on the rampage.

Sighing, Yoruichi ran a hand through her hair. "This is helping, by the way. Thanks."

"Good. So…?"

"…So?"

"What, we're just gonna ignore this?" Kūkaku said, letting out a bemused scoff. "You don't wanna… talk?"

Working out and understanding the issue was one thing. Actually acknowledging it and speaking the words out loud would only serve to give it a kind of finality she was not prepared to face. And yet she found her frustration at the ridiculous timing of it all frothing and spewing out of her with the inevitability of scorching lava spilling out of a volcano.

"What's there to talk about?" she snapped, the pickled ginger sloshing about in the jar as she threw her arms out in exasperation. "I've been fucking the same person for one hundred and eleven years, always been careful, even before that—"

"Ooookay—"

"—then one night, just the one, because we sure as hell couldn't get another moment to ourselves with the kids and Yūshirō hounding me every step of the way –'Neeee-sama come watch our volleyball match', 'Neeeeeeee-sama let's go explore the mountain'- I mean I asked him to come, I know I did, but he can't read the fucking atmosphere, he just can't and we manage to sneak away for a little bit, then Kisuke starts talking and that jerk is just…" Yoruichi came to a halt, out of breath, both unable and unwilling to articulate the power Kisuke's words held over her when their masks were down and he was being no more and no less than his true self.

Turning to Kūkaku, Yoruichi shook her head.

"You have no idea how he can… and it's just… the beach, and the sky and he's being all…" Realizing that she simply didn't have the words to phrase this, she focused on her own feelings at the time, though she still found her eloquence lacking. "And I'm just beyond horny because with all the crap that's been happening we hadn't had a moment's peace in a while and then it's just… we just…"

"You jumped him."

Gathering her legs close to her chest, Yoruichi wrapped her arms around them and bumped her forehead against her knees. "Basically," she said. "Though it… it might've been a bit later."

"Hmm?"

"Well, we… we went back to the bungalow after," she said, looking up. "And everyone was asleep, so…" She shrugged.

"Nice," Kūkaku said, grinning.

And despite her mounting frustration and all the nameless, confounding feelings that were swimming in her chest at the moment, when she thought back on that night, a surge of warmth and affection cut through the noise in her head and settled over her heart. "It was," she said quietly.

Perhaps sensing the shift in her demeanor, Kūkaku dropped the taunting smirk. "Does Urahara know yet?"

Yoruichi shook her head. Logic and even her inner spirit itself told her it was all but undeniable by this point, but she wasn't willing to say anything until she'd made certain.

"He's probably gonna be happy about it," said Kūkaku.

Happy… was an understatement. Yoruichi felt her empty stomach contract painfully at the mere thought. "He's gonna be ecstatic. That's the problem."

"And… you're not… you don't feel the same?"

Yoruichi opened her mouth to speak, but her voice died on her throat as her mind was assaulted with images of bloodstained sheets, of the nameless, heart-wrenching pain in her mother's eyes. She'd never allowed herself to think about this, believing it would never be a possibility for her. Rather, that she would never place herself in a position where it might be a possibility.

What would be the point, after all? She had always enjoyed her independence, the luxury to take off at a moment's notice and answer the call of the wanderlust that pulled at her with all its might. And even though she'd found the power of that siren's call had waned, somewhat, lost its luster as of late, she hadn't felt this was reason enough to upset the balance of the life they'd all built together.

"I was considering it," she said after a lengthy pause.

Kūkaku said nothing, merely sat up and waited until Yoruichi could find the words to continue.

"Not… not this…specifically," Yoruichi said with a grimace, pointing at her still flat belly. "But… the kids back home… and Yūshirō… and my parents…" Yoruichi let out a deep sigh. It was only now that she was starting to come to terms with the family she did have, trying to repair the damage of a hundred-year-long absence and the centuries of a strained, difficult relationship that had preceded it.

And this complication… might've been less of one if it had happened a few years down the road. Or decades, even.

There was even a time when she had actually considered this, specifically, back when they still lived in Soul Society, when their life was infinitely less complicated, when she would catch herself smiling at the sight of Yūshirō riding on Kisuke's shoulders, of his ever-present smile in response to Suì-Fēng's antics, her chest swelling up with a foreign, all-consuming yearning.

But those days were long past.

Taking in a deep breath, Kūkaku pushed herself up to her feet. "Okay… Just this once, I'm going to get off my ass and do your grunt work," she said. "You stay here and rest. When I come back, we can talk more, if you want."

"You're going?"

"Well one of us should take care of the situation with the Mimihagi priests," she said. "Might even be better if they deal with someone new—"

"Who says I'm not coming?"

"Kid, I will smack you if you so much as—"

Yoruichi rose up to full height as well, fighting through the wave of light-headedness, ostentatiously munching on a strip of ginger and determined to stay up on her feet. Somehow, through sheer force of willpower alone, she managed it.

Still, Kūkaku was not impressed. "You know what? Fine, come along," she said. "But if you get tired and start complaining, begging for a nap, I'm not even gonna say 'I told you so,' I'm just gonna ditch your pregnant ass in the woods."

Kūkaku's words hadn't been enough to dissuade her as she'd clearly hoped, and before long, they were leaving her Rukongai home on foot, Yoruichi wearing a canteen full of tea strapped across her chest and clutching the jar of pickled ginger, munching on strips non-stop.

Meanwhile, Kūkaku kept shaking her head at her, readjusting the strap of a bag stuffed with all the scrolls Hiyori had pilfered from the shrine. She said nothing for many long minutes other than mutter that she was overdoing it, or murmuring about what on earth she was even trying to prove by coming along.

Yoruichi knew the answer to this already, even if she chose not to share it out loud. Going on with her daily routine as scheduled would serve to quiet one of her biggest misgivings: the fear that she would have to change her life completely, if she chose to become a mother.

She wasn't naïve; she knew that there were certain realities that she simply could not ignore –and frankly wouldn't want to. But if motherhood meant that she had to change everything about herself and her life that made her happy, reverse every single decision she'd made when choosing to follow Kisuke and Tessai into the human world, then she was certain she wanted no part of it.

"Do you want to do the talking or should I?" Kūkaku asked, breaking the long silence and pulling Yoruichi out of her reverie.

"Well, I'm the one who should apologize," Yoruichi said. "Formally and all. As for the rest… let's see how it goes. If you sense they're not warming up to me, feel free to step in."

"You think they'll be willing to talk? Even if they forgive the whole incident."

"I'm not leaving that damn place without some answers," Yoruichi said, chewing on a piece of ginger savagely, with determination to both live up to her words and stave off the renewed wave of nausea.

A rudimentary examination of the scrolls had revealed little that might be of use to them. Kisuke, working remotely from Karakura, was still poring over the scans the SRDI had procured for him, but had impressed upon them the need to press forward. With the Mimihagi angle all but exhausted, it was essential to move on to the remaining parts of the Soul King, and on that front, they had no more than a brief note to work with: the mere mention of two additional shrines within the Seireitei, but no further details on their location.

"Why only two shrines?" Yoruichi said, voicing the trail end of her thoughts out loud. "With the Mimihagi source pinned down, there should be four more total. I need to know what the hell happened to the remaining two."

"Perhaps they don't know," Kūkaku said. "If the Quincy managed to get a hold of the heart and the left hand a long time ago, there might not even exist any records to account for the theft."

"The only other time the Quincy ever managed to breach Soul Society was a thousand years ago," Yoruichi said. "And we know that Captain Ukitake became a vessel nearly two thousand years ago. So one of two things is happening here: either a past infiltration that was never made public knowledge, or…"

"Or there was never a theft to begin with," Kūkaku said. "Which begs the question: why the hell would the Quincy ever be entrusted with two parts of the Soul King?"

Why, indeed.

The trip to the Sakahone district seemed longer this time around, the fatigue and nausea weighing on Yoruichi to the point that she had to force herself to place one foot after the other. Judging by the furtive, smug glances Kūkaku kept shooting her, she must've been well aware of this by now, but didn't press the matter, which only made Yoruichi all the more determined to prove her wrong.

Chugging down a big gulp of tea off her canteen, she marched on, singing a silent song of triumph when they reached the final stretch, the shrine looming straight ahead at the end of the stairway.

Her elation didn't last long, however, as they were greeted by the sight of two priests marching down the steps, defiant. Clearly, they'd spotted her approaching and had already put their walls up, ready to send them away without letting them get a word in edgewise.

Standing at the foot of the stairway, Yoruichi took a deep breath in, stomach churning. She mustered whatever poise and politeness had stuck with her through her childhood etiquette lessons, opened her mouth… then promptly threw up all over the priests' sandals.

Next to her, Kūkaku fell into a fit of hysterical laughter.

.

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' `-' `.-' `-' `-' `-' `-.' `-' `

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AUGUST 18TH, 2003 A.D., FOURTH DIVISION RELIEF STATION, SEIREITEI, SOUL SOCIETY

.

Isane watched closely as the strong, thick fingers worked with dexterity and precision she wouldn't have thought possible, coaxing the remnants of Quincy reiatsu out of the wound on the young man's arm. A limb she had previously written off as irreparable, at least not in any way comparable to its former mobility, and yet she had never before been more pleased to find herself in the wrong.

"Amazing," she gasped out, shaking her head. "Your precision is…"

Tsukabishi Tessai peered down at her over the rim of his glasses, a soft smile appearing underneath his thick mustache. "Would you like to give it a try, Isane-dono?"

Her immediate answer in the past might've been negative, but when the opportunity was right within her grasp, presenting itself so readily, Isane found that she could not resist. Biting down on her lower lip, she didn't even waste time getting into their usual, good-natured argument over honorifics; getting him down from Kotetsu-dono to Isane-dono was achievement enough, and it seemed he would never drop the honorific no matter how many times she asked.

"I… Do you think—?" she began, and in silent response, Tessai stepped aside to make room for her.

Taking in a deep breath, Isane approached, holding out her hand. A film of cold sweat coated her back; though praised for her reiatsu control from both Tessai and the late— No, don't. Not now, don't think about the Captain now- her former colleague, her precision had always been lacking. Over the past week, she had watched Tessai closely, did her best to incorporate his advice into her spellcasting, and she knew she had improved, but—

You'll never know until you try.

Confident that he wouldn't have offered her a shot if he could not reverse any possible damage, Isane swallowed her fear, buried it into the depths of her chest, then slowly, carefully, allowed her reiatsu to seep into the cut, working on siphoning out the foreign particles one by one. She wasn't even aware she'd been holding her breath until the delicate operation was over, and she let out a joyous gasp of air.

"Excellent work," Tessai said, moving in to close up the wound and cover it with a fresh set of dressings.

Outside the operation room, Isane allowed herself to half-collapse against the wall, pulling down her surgical mask to gulp in the air by the lungful. Though her body was crying out for rest, her mind was running a mile a second, still high on her latest breakthrough.

Half-lidded eyes took in the nearly deserted corridor. If asked back in late June, she would've said she never thought she'd ever see the Relief Center in any state other than complete and utter chaos again. Short-staffed and overworked, the men and women of the Fourth Division had toiled tirelessly over the wounded that never seemed to stop pouring in through their doors. Triage had lost all meaning, as the realities of treating patients whose bodies had been embedded with foreign reiatsu had forced them to reprioritize and make their peace with long-term care even for some of the least emergent cases.

At long last, daily routine within the Relief Station seemed to have returned to its former pace, with few patients still receiving treatment, the majority of them out of immediate danger. Captain Ukitake had been relegated a special case, requiring round-the-clock supervision, his status deemed confidential and only ever revealed to select few. Not even Isane herself knew the specifics, and as much as she wanted to believe in a medical miracle, her heart told her that they were doing little more than prolonging his suffering.

Her train of thought was disrupted when the door to the operating room creaked open, Tessai's head peeking out. "Isane-dono?"

Following the trajectory of his eyes, Isane realized she hadn't changed or washed up, and hurried back inside to clean up properly. Once out of her scrubs, her hands stinging after the vigorous wash, she stretched, relishing the feel of the cricks in her spine giving way one at a time.

"I think we're just about done for tonight, Tessai-san," she said. "You should go rest, you've been in surgery for hours now."

Tessai busied himself cleaning out his glasses on his green slacks, then held them up before the light. "Any word on Harribel-dono's condition?" he asked, slipping his glasses back on.

Isane leaned back against the sinks, arms folded before her chest. "The truth?"

Tessai blinked at her behind his –now clean- spectacles. "Yes, of course."

"I have no idea why we're still treating her," Isane said, a surge of warmth creeping its way up her cheeks.

She didn't think she would've shared her thoughts so brazenly with another colleague, and the fact that Tessai was not a member of the Gotei made her feel more at ease right at this moment.

"She wasn't grievously injured to begin with, she mostly required rest and recuperation. She's been in perfectly adequate shape to travel for weeks now, but… the Captain Commander…" Isane scraped the floor with her shoe, taking in a deep breath. "He insists we extend her stay for as long as possible. And quite frankly, I'm running out of different ways to tell the Arrancar that she just needs to regain some weight and color. She's fine, and they can see it, too; they know we're lying."

If she were being entirely honest, Isane was beginning to lose her patience with the Captain Commander on a number of issues. Captain Ukitake and Tier Harribel's continued treatment, the unannounced introduction of three outsiders to the Relief Station…

She wasn't ungrateful, she knew all too well that Yadōmaru Lisa and Ushoda Hachigen had helped lessen their load considerably. Hachigen, in particular, had been instrumental in Tier Harribel's successful treatment back when she'd needed it, as someone who possessed a unique understanding of her reiatsu makeup, hers being so similar to his own. And Tessai… Tessai had become a friend and a mentor in tremendously little time.

But Isane was no fool. She knew they had been brought in to cover the gaping holes left in the Gotei ranks. Quite frankly, she would have zero objections to Tessai taking over the Fourth Division. She knew better than anyone that she was not ready to assume Captaincy, and she bore no ill will toward the newcomers, but all the secrecy and only hesitant cooperation from the First Division was driving her up the wall.

"I would imagine this is an attempt to keep the Arrancar pleased," Tessai said, making his way to the door. "Showing them that their Queen will receive only the best of care in our hands, in honor of our latest alliance."

"Agreed, but…" Isane said, following him out into the corridor. "Why the pretence? Why go through all this trouble, unless they— Oh, rats. Speak of the devil…"

The two Arrancar in question were currently making their way down the corridor, the young, green-haired woman striding forward full of purpose, while her blue-haired companion followed along, looking dreadfully bored and so very over it all. Isane swallowed hard; the last time Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez had been bored, it had taken half the cafeteria food to appease him and keep him from trashing half the cots in the hallway.

In an attempt to nip an oncoming argument in the bud, Isane held up her hands at once. "I'm afraid I have no new updates for you—"

"That is fine," the woman, Nelliel, said. "We're just here to see Harribel-sama."

"You. You're here to see Harribel-sama," Grimmjow spat out, in a mocking imitation of her voice. "I'm here for the free food."

"I'm afraid visiting hours are over for the day, Nelliel-dono, Grimmjow-dono," Tessai said, his eyes narrowing as he addressed the latter. "But feel free to come again tomorrow morning after 10 am."

Grimmjow glared back at him, something about the inflection in Tessai's voice visibly putting him on his guard. Isane knew Grimmjow was somehow affiliated with Urahara Kisuke, same as Tessai, but she was clearly missing some context in this silent interaction.

"Tch, like I care," Grimmjow muttered, looking away. "I don't give a damn about Harribel, but you shitheads are using this one—" He jutted his thumb toward Nelliel. "—As an excuse to keep from opening the damn Garganta, like I can't get back home on my own—"

"Grimmjow, for the last time, Queen Harribel—" Nelliel began.

"Queen Harribel can suck a bag of—"

Whatever he was going to say next was cut off when Nelliel whacked him upside the head; Isane knew at once, the way prey sensed an incoming predator right in their very bones only when it was too late, that she had gone overboard. At least as far as Grimmjow was concerned. His blue eyes burned like butane, nostrils flared, and he moved so fast that Isane could only close her eyes and wait for the scream that never came.

"Now, now… What have we said about whipping our claws out? Scratching posts only."

Still holding her breath, Isane cracked one eye open, then another, the words dying on her lips. She prided herself in her ability to sense reiatsu from miles away, and yet Shihōin Yoruichi had somehow managed to sneak up on them within the blink of an eye without anyone noticing.

Her hand firmly grasping Grimmjow's wrist, she smirked at him when he looked over his shoulder and gave her a glare of pure loathing. He yanked his arm away, then stalked down the corridor, muttering obscenities.

"Tomorrow at ten?" Nelliel said, her eyes on Grimmjow's retreating form.

"Yes, Nelliel-san. Apologies for the inconvenience," Isane said, giving a weak wave when the Arrancar woman followed in Grimmjow's wake.

"Yoruichi-dono, is everything all right?"

Isane turned to Shihōin Yoruichi just in time to spot the momentary glimmer of surprise in her eyes. Clearly, she hadn't expected to run into Tessai.

Her recovery was lightning-fast. "I'm fine, but Hiyori wanted a talk with Lieutenant Kotetsu," she said. "She's waiting for you in a room at the clinic."

Tessai didn't look convinced, and neither was Isane. For one thing, Shihōin Yoruichi was still suppressing her spiritual pressure down to near non-existence, a feat not only immensely taxing, but also rather peculiar for anyone not actively seeking to sneak up on someone.

"It's a delicate matter. Shall we?" she said, and before Isane could argue, she found herself being dragged down the corridor, Shihōin Yoruichi bidding goodnight to Tessai as they strode away.

Isane didn't manage to get a word in until she was all but shoved into an examination room in the clinic. Predictably, Sarugaki Hiyori was nowhere to be found.

Shihōin Yoruichi closed the door behind them, now looking mildly apologetic. "Sorry about that," she said. "I just didn't want to…" she trailed off, her eyes seeking out Isane's. "I asked around. You're… you have some experience with, erm… female matters?" she said, cringing.

Female matters? "Are you… looking for hygiene products?"

"No, I—" Taking in a deep breath, as though she were preparing herself to utter something distasteful, she looked away when she spoke next. "Obstetrics. I meant obstetrics."

It took a second for her words to click. "Oh. Ohhhhh… Er, yes, of course!" Isane said, standing up to full height and trying to look dignified after that ridiculous display of open gaping. "Why don't we head into— Oh, hey, would you look at that, we're already in a proper examination room; lucky!" she said, taking in her surroundings. There was a beat, during which her own words and the situation all gelled together, and she felt like the world's biggest idiot. "Which… you clearly already knew, because you chose it with that in mind. I just got that now."

"I did."

"…I swear I'm a good doctor."

"It's all right, I ambushed you."

"Right, well… Shihōin-sama, if you'll just—"

"Oh gods, please, just call me Yoruichi-san or something," she said, shuddering. "Shihōin-sama is my father."

"Right then, Yoruichi-san," Isane said with a chuckle. "There are gowns in the cabinet over there. Please get changed and we'll start the examination."

It took a bit of coaxing to get Yoruichi to speak plainly about the precise reason for her visit, not that it had been necessary, but Isane had wanted there to be no misunderstandings. When Yoruichi was comfortably laid out on the table, or as comfortable as she was going to get, Isane placed her hand over her stomach, her fingers glowing with green energy, and she reached out.

After a few seconds of silent concentration, she broke into a broad smile. At long last, after all the pain, the blood and loss of the past couple of months, she was finally in a position to give someone genuinely good news. "There it is," she said. "Feels about… Oh, there's a heartbeat! Then you're at least six weeks along—"

"A heartbeat?" Yoruichi repeated, her mouth growing slack.

Isane met her wide, disbelieving eyes and smiled even more broadly, nodding. "Hmmm… I'd say it feels exactly the expected size for a six week old fetus. Which would put your conception date around—"

"The sixth of July."

"Oh? You know the precise date?"

"…I have a hunch."

"Well, I'd say it's more than a hunch; you're right on the mark, give or take a couple of days," Isane said, withdrawing her hand. "I'm afraid it's a little too soon to give you more details on the fetus's vitals, but I'm very pleased to say: congratulations, you're going to be a mother!"

Her enthusiastic announcement didn't receive the reaction she'd been expecting. In fact, it was now becoming clear to Isane that the demeanor she had originally attributed to mere nerves was not going to be changing for the better any time soon. Yoruichi took in a deep, calming breath, her face still stuck in an expression of not only disbelief, but something akin to resignation as well.

Oh… crap. "I, um… I'm sorry to put it bluntly, but I need to ask: is there a possibility you may wish to terminate the pregnancy?"

Yoruichi shut her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I… I don't…"

"You know what? It's— You have plenty of time to decide," Isane hurried to say, not meaning to put her on the spot when it was clear she hadn't yet made up her mind. "Well, not plenty, about a month and a half tops, but—" OH MY GOD SHUT UP NOW.

By now she was well and truly wishing Yoruichi had asked for a different doctor, one specializing in obstetrics, who had given this speech a thousand times over and knew how to cover the important details while sidestepping all the potential pitfalls Isane herself seemed to be aiming straight for.

"Sorry… foot… mouth…" she muttered, then took a steadying breath, pulling herself together. "Whatever your decision, it should be made by early October at the latest," she said. "I'm here for any questions you may have. Just… in case you decide you do want to… proceed with the pregnancy, there are a few things I need to go over quickly. You probably already know most of it, but I'm obligated to say it. I'm sure you already know that smoking, drinking and engaging in recreational drug use is very harmful for the baby," she said. "Exercise is fine, so long as you don't push yourself to your limits. I would also caution against Shunpō, because it puts a strain on the body—"

At the sound of this, Yoruichi reacted for the first time since Isane had begun speaking, looking genuinely fearful. "Shunpō is—?"

"It's okay if you've used it up until now," Isane said. "I just examined you and the fetus is fine. But in the future, it's best to avoid it unless absolutely necessary, and even then, try to keep the jumps small. Other than that… At this point in your pregnancy, you should be experiencing fatigue, perhaps some nausea—"

Yoruichi let out a scoff.

"Anything too severe?"

"Er, I dunno… What's too severe?"

"Being unable to keep any meal down."

"No, I'm good."

"All right then," Isane said. "It's a good idea to stick to food that's easily digestible and to eat as often as you can, even if it seems counter-productive. The nausea is a by-product of hunger, so keeping your stomach from going empty is a good way to stave it off. Some home remedies might help, ginger in particular."

Yoruichi nodded, staying silent and in wait, presumably for Isane to finish her speech. When no further advice was forthcoming, she broke the silence. "Are we, uh… done?"

"Well, normally I'd give you a more thorough exam, take a detailed history, but until you make your decision…"

"Right, yes," Yoruichi said, pushing herself up into a sitting position on the table. "I'll… I'll let you know as soon as—" Something seemed to occur to her at that moment, and she turned to Isane again, wearing the same fearful expression she had when she'd been cautioned against Shunpō. "You mentioned history. Family history, too, I assume?"

"Yes. Is there a problem?"

Hands on her lap, Yoruichi stared at her knees and her fidgeting fingers. "My mother… She had great difficulty both conceiving and carrying me and my brother to term. She, um… she miscarried many times before she was successful. Is that sort of thing… hereditary?"

"Hmmm, yes and no," Isane said. "As in, yes it can be, but I can tell you right now that it won't be an issue for you."

Yoruichi looked up at her hesitantly, as though she didn't dare feel too hopeful. "Are you sure?"

"It's all in your reiatsu. Carrying a child to term successfully is a problem for women who have more erratic, unstable reiatsu by nature," Isane said, thankful for the opportunity to delve into the more technical aspects where she felt truly comfortable. "I have never met your Lady mother, but my first guess would be that this was what caused her problems. There are certain ways to help an expecting mother along the way if that is the case, but you will not be needing them; yours is perfectly stable. As for conception itself, again, reiatsu matters. It takes a great amount of spiritual energy from both parties to create life, which is why it's rare for Rukongai citizens to procreate; most of them are simply unable to. The bigger the reiatsu pool, the easier it becomes to conceive. In your case, given who you are and who the father is—"

…Well, that didn't take long.

"Er… I mean…" Isane stammered, trying to salvage this. "Who I assume… That is… I don't mean to pry—"

Yoruichi seemed almost amused by her spluttering by this point, giving her a half smile. "It is who you think it is."

"Right. Well… Then in your case, there was never any question about whether or not you would be able to conceive eventually, should you choose to try."

As much as she may wish to witness her patient leave the examination room wearing a smile, Isane knew it wasn't her place to say any more, not until Yoruichi had made her decision. When she changed back into her clothes and big her farewell, Isane was all too relieved to see her go, marvelling at just how far she still had to go in order to live up to even a morsel of Captain Unohana's greatness.

And for the first time that day, as she sank deep into her chair, she allowed herself to think of her erstwhile mentor, of the woman whose shoes she may never be able to adequately fill.

.

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AUGUST 20TH, 2003 A.D., FIRST DIVISION BARRACKS, SEIREITEI, SOUL SOCIETY

.

She knew her already long day was far from over the second she opened the door to his office, only to hear:

"Nanao-chan… I've been baaad."

Oh boy. "I shudder to ask," she muttered.

Steeling herself for the worst, Nanao pushed the door open, taking a careful peek inside. Past experience had taught her that even knocking wasn't a surefire way to prevent an unpleasant shock upon entering the Captain Commander's office, so she made a habit of entering cautiously even after express permission to enter.

Still, she reasoned she was unlikely to find him half-naked, tied up against the foot of the desk, the words, "I can explain," tumbling out of his mouth before she could even blink. Again.

Mercifully, the Captain Commander appeared to be fully clothed. He sat draped over his chair, limp and deflated like a discarded piece of clothing, holding up the incriminating evidence of his alleged slip-up: a bottle of sake.

At the sight of it, Nanao could only scoff. "Please; I left that out for you to find."

The Captain Commander made a futile effort to sit up, only managing to crane his neck up a little higher, gaping at her. "You did?"

"It's a reward for all the good work you've done lately," she said, ambling into the office, shutting the door behind her.

She'd figured keeping him happy every now and then was the best way to get him to do any amount of work. Much to her surprise, he'd come forward on his own out of a guilty conscience instead of hiding the bottle as he might have in the past. Progress, indeed.

"I'm just going to leave these here for you to read and sign tomorrow, sir," she said, laying down a stack of documents on his desk with a thud.

Though clearly inebriated, the Captain Commander glanced at the top of the stack with mild interest. Nanao supposed if he hadn't perfected the art of maintaining some grasp on reality even when drunk, he would never had made it to Captain to begin with.

"What are those?" he said, glancing at her.

"More paperwork from the SRDI," Nanao said. "Expense reports, mostly, and projected costs for the next phase of construction."

"Right. The containment chamber," he said and turned away, a mild look of distaste curling his lip.

"Everything all right, sir?"

"I— Yes, Nanao-chan. Go get some rest. You've worked plenty for today."

Nanao's eyes stayed on him. All lights in the office were out, and as he sat there, illuminated by the moonlight, she could count every single line on his face, which seemed to have aged overnight post-war. Even his teasing had lost some of its past luster, resembling something he did out of habit by now as a coping mechanism, one more step in getting through the day: wake up, have breakfast, work, tease Nanao, more work, dinner, sleep.

In another life, the notion that some of her own discipline seemed to have rubbed off on him would have thrilled her, but now that it had come to pass, she'd found that there was no joy to derive from this. Order and discipline did not suit him. She had enough of it for the both of them.

More than once, she'd felt the need to offer him some words of comfort for the heavy losses he had sustained in this war, but nothing ever felt quite right, or non-patronizing. What was there to say, really, other than: "I'm so sorry; I grieve with you."

Perhaps even something as small would be appreciated, but every time she opened her mouth to speak, she was gripped with the need to say something profound and always came up short. Best say nothing at all, she'd reasoned, when the alternative was an empty platitude he'd already heard a thousand times over from both friends and sycophants.

"Yes, sir. Goodn—"

"He never had a say in what happened to his own body."

The palpable pain, the brittleness in his voice stopped her on her tracks. Looking over her shoulder, Nanao met her Captain's limpid eyes, and there was a silent plea written there. He wasn't asking her to say anything, but he was asking her to listen, and Nanao's feet closed the distance without so much as a second thought. Walking around the desk, she hovered uncertainly for a moment, coming to sit up on the desktop.

The Captain shifted in his chair, his eyes still locked on hers in supplication.

"Captain Ukitake?" she said.

He nodded. "Ever since… ever since he was a boy, he never…" Closing his eyes momentarily, he tapped his fingers against his brow. "He'd always say… He'd always be thankful for the second chance, for the… but at what cost? He always suffered, always…"

"Not always."

The Captain opened his grey eyes slowly. "You know… Yama-ji tried to impress on us the difficulty of this job, the responsibility. One of the hardest things, he said, was knowing when to let things go. Taking action, jumping into the fray… that's a soldier's natural reaction. But it's the opposite that makes a leader."

"You think you ought to have let him die?"

The Captain let out a wry scoff. "Isn't he already—?" He pursed his lips. "How can I call myself his friend if I'm no better than those who did this to him? How can I make this decision to… to use him like a husk—?" He was unable to continue until he took a swig of sake, and Nanao didn't admonish him for it, merely stayed silent, waiting for him to find the right words. "If the best way we can come up with to keep this world intact is sacrificing an innocent, maybe it's not a world worth saving in the first place."

Nanao said nothing for a long while, allowing the silence to stretch, a little unsure of her own thoughts. Deciding to follow her Captain's lead for once, she did the one thing she had sworn she'd never do in his presence and reached out for the bottle.

To hell with her schedule.

In her mind's eye, she pictured herself drawing a big, red arrow over her crisp, perfectly lettered schedule, right between SRDI rotation – 6pm and Sleep – 11pm:

Drinking with the Captain – 10:59 pm.

The sake burned her throat, but she welcomed it, the dash of the unexpected that made her eyes water and her sinuses come to life. With a slight gasp, she set the bottle down with a loud clang, then met the Captain's gaze, now nearly comical in its complete and utter shock.

"Captain Ukitake gave up his life believing it would make a difference," she said. "That it would turn the tide of the war. He was a man who believed in making a sacrifice for the greater good. And you're right: our world is not worth saving if we're unwilling to move forward, to change."

She was beginning to understand now, why they called it liquid courage, as she reached out to place one hand over his.

"And if you let it end now, like this, then his sacrifice was in vain. And I think he was worth a lot more than this… don't you?"

Lips parted, the Captain threaded his fingers with hers, his posture straightening up, the glimmer of hope returning in his eyes, as if he were drawing strength from the warmth of her hand.

"Yes, Nanao-chan."

Saving the world – 11:01 pm.

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AUGUST 21ST, 2003 A.D., URAHARA SHOP, KARAKURA TOWN, JAPAN

.

It had started out innocuously enough. If anything, she had been relieved to find luck had been on her side: having long ago run out of excuses for her prolonged stay in Soul Society, Yoruichi had returned home that morning with dread gripping her insides, only to be informed that Kisuke had been locked up in his study for hours now and was unlikely to emerge for many more.

That very stroke of luck should've been her first clue that the rest of the day was going to get progressively worse.

"Oh my god, will you quit your whining already?"

"You knew I was saving up the episodes for later and you still taped over it—"

"Who the hell even uses VHS anymore? Go get the damn DVD—"

"Language, Jinta-dono!"

"—and watch your stupid k-drama—"

"It's not stupid! And I don't care if there's a DVD; you did it on purpose, I know you did—"

"Ohhhhhhh, Min Soo Yeooooooon!"

"STOP IT!"

Her eyes flitting from Jinta to Ururu and back again rapidly, as though watching a particularly intense tennis match, Yoruichi lamented the fact that she had even intervened to begin with. She was grateful, at the very least, that Tessai was in the kitchen, no longer throwing her infuriatingly knowing looks like he had since she'd gotten home. But she could've used his help right about now, aside from the occasional yell from the other room.

Then again, she'd gotten herself into this mess out of her own volition, in a seriously misguided attempt to… What, exactly? What were you trying to prove?

Still, there was little point in admonishing herself for what was already a done deal. And if she didn't put an end to this soon, the gentle throbbing in her temple was threatening to build up into a full-blown migraine.

"Which… which show was it again?" she said, in an effort to curtail the fight before it well and truly blew up, buying herself some time to come up with something of actual essence to contribute.

"Or-In," Ururu said, looking at her hopefully, as though she expected Yoruichi to take her side.

Before she could think better of it, Yoruichi cringed.

"HA! SEE? Yoruichi-san thinks it's lame, too!"

"No, I don't— Wait— Ururu!"

But before she could do more than sputter out an excuse, Ururu burst into tears and thundered up the stairs, howling. Cackling, Jinta skipped out of the foyer without another word, leaving Yoruichi sitting there by the chabudai, feeling wretched.

In the ringing silence, Tessai peeked around the threshold, checking out the coast before he stepped inside, ladle in hand. "Well… at least they've stopped shouting."

Letting out a sigh, Yoruichi hugged her shins tightly and bumped her head against her knees. "Yup. Go me."

For the longest time, Tessai said nothing, leading her to believe he'd returned to cooking dinner, until Yoruichi heard a muted thud. She looked up just in time to see Tessai deposit a bowl of rice and a cup of tea on the table. Realizing she had eaten nothing for hours, Yoruichi lunged for the bowl at once, wary of an incriminating wave of nausea rearing its ugly head if she waited too long. As she washed down the uncomfortably large first mouthful with some tea, Yoruichi found that the taste was eerily familiar.

Ginger.

Freezing in mid-chew, she directed her wide-eyed gaze to Tessai, who did no more than give her a sympathetic smile. "It'll get easier, Yoruichi-dono."

Whether he meant the nausea, or her pitiful attempt to try and settle an argument between two hormonal teenagers, she never got to find out. At that precise moment, Kisuke came stumbling out of his study, clutching his coffee mug and looking like he hadn't slept in about a week.

"Did I hear yelling?" he said, scratching the back of his head. "Did someth—? Yoruichi-san! You're back!"

Well, at the very least, masking her spiritual signature had been a resounding success. Her stomach plummeting at the sight of him, Yoruichi could do no more than nod, her mouth still full with rice.

Wearing a pleasantly bemused expression, Kisuke gave her the one-over, his eyebrows twitching close together for just the briefest of moments, as though in confusion. He shook it off quickly, but she hadn't missed it. "Oh, are we eating now?" he said, noticing Yoruichi's supper on the table. "I was hoping to run outside real quick and refill Ninja-Pirate's bowl."

"Refill whose bowl?" Yoruichi said.

Grinning broadly, Kisuke dug into his pocket. "You're going to get a kick out of this—"

"Er… Tenchō, I don't think now is the best—"

"I found her a little over a week ago, wandering around the back alley. Behold!" Kisuke said, gleeful, holding out his phone right in front of her. A small black cat graced the screen, one whose left eye was noticeably missing. "Ninja-Pirate Shihōin: our lovechild."

All the ginger tea in the world couldn't have kept her dinner down.

The last thing Yoruichi heard before she skidded away from the table, hand over her mouth, was Tessai's deep sigh, and Kisuke's confused: "What? What did I say?"

Immensely thankful that he didn't get any bright ideas about following her into the bathroom, Yoruichi dragged herself upstairs once her stomach had settled down, crawling under the futon and curling up into a tight little ball of misery.

The room next door was completely silent, meaning that Ururu was no longer crying. Wonderful. You only made a little girl cry for two to three minutes tops, congratulations, Yoruichi thought, burying her head under the pillow. If nothing else, today was proof enough that one of her greatest fears concerning this pregnancy was absolutely, one hundred percent justified.

She wasn't cut out for this.

She tried to summon up some relief, any kind of positive feeling that, at the very least, she no longer had to torture herself and wonder about the right call to make, but all she felt was hollow and exhausted.

Which, given how her day was going so far, was naturally the exact moment Kisuke chose enter the room, after giving the door a gentle rap. "Yoruichi-san?"

With a groan that sounded a lot more like a whimper, Yoruichi pulled her head out from under the pillow and looked up.

Smiling tentatively, Kisuke approached the futon, tray in hand. "Tessai sent this up," he said, setting down a cup and steaming teapot. "Thought you could use it."

Yoruichi combed her hand quickly through her hair and sat up on the futon. "Thanks."

Kisuke crouched down, filling up the cup for her and set the teapot aside before taking a seat next to her on the futon. He said nothing, arms wrapped loosely around his shins, avoiding her gaze as she began sipping her tea.

"You okay?"

"Mmm."

"You know I… You know I was kidding, right? About the, uh… lovechild thing?" he said, venturing an apologetic glance her way.

"I know."

"But… we need to talk, don't we?" His voice was quiet, guarded, but in the silence of the room, it sounded deafening.

The answer escaped her lips before she had time to reconsider: "Yes."

With a somber nod, Kisuke rubbed the back of his neck, very deliberately staring at his feet. "Am I about to discover why you've been so eager to stay in Soul Society lately? And why you've spent the whole day subtly regulating your spiritual pressure?"

Yoruichi felt her jaw tighten, clenching under the weight of every unspoken word. It really was no use trying to conceal anything from Kisuke, which was the precise reason she'd stayed away for as long as she could before her absence became conspicuous. "You noticed."

"I did," he said, and Yoruichi couldn't help but wonder whether his palms were as clammy as hers at this very moment. "Were you concerned I'd pick up on your moods?"

"Something like that…"

Every time she'd imagined telling Kisuke, she could only ever see him ecstatic at the news, in contrast to her own gnawing worries. Facing his unrestrained happiness when she wasn't quite ready to reciprocate it yet –If ever- when she knew how much her own lukewarm reaction would hurt him, had been a fear that had kept her up every single night since she'd first begun to suspect she might be pregnant.

She couldn't have imagined that by the end of this day, she would be wishing for this reaction.

Lips slightly pursed, Kisuke nodded again, a sad smile forming on his lips. "Guess this conversation has been a long time coming… Probably should've had it when you came back after Kuchiki-san was arrested… But there were more pressing matters and afterward we just… never got around to it."

Despite the warm summer night, Yoruichi clutched her tea cup close to her chest, hoping the heat would radiate out into her numb, frozen limbs.

"Tessai told me what happened," Kisuke said, looking up at long last. "Though I had noticed it myself a while ago."

"Noticed…?" Yoruichi said, her back breaking out in cold sweat.

"You. Trying," he said, smiling softly. "With the kids."

"Oh. I, uh… I—"

"You don't have to say anything," Kisuke cut her off, his expression unwavering. "I never expected— There was never any pressure for you to… adopt some sort of role you didn't want. I think it's why you've stayed away for a few weeks now—"

Mouth falling slack, Yoruichi now well and truly lamented the fact that she hadn't insisted she go first.

"—And I just wanted to tell you that it's okay if you needed a break. You don't have to—"

"Kisuke—"

"— force yourself into doing anything you don't want to—"

"Kisuke."

Her sharp interjection had the desired effect. Falling silent at long last, Kisuke stared at her as though he were deathly afraid of what he might hear next.

With a deep breath, Yoruichi set her cup down by the floor, bracing her hands against her knees. "I wasn't avoiding the kids," she said, her insides swarming like a nest of vipers. "I just needed some time to think. And… I didn't want you to notice the change."

"The change," Kisuke said, having no problem connecting the dots. "In your reiatsu."

"Yes."

Face clouding, Kisuke's eyes flitted from the teacup to her and back again.

It was like a single drop of ink had fallen into a clear pool of water, contaminating it: the merest hint of something different broke through the clouded gray, until it consumed his stare entirely. Suddenly, he was terrified.

And with that single shift in his eyes, she remembered the only other time in living memory she had ever seen him as upset. With recollection came understanding, and the growing, tightening knot in her stomach loosened at once.

"I'm not sick," she hurried to say, realizing that from his point of view, her furtiveness must've been a terrible reminder of his past experience with his mother, who had hidden her own illness in a similar fashion until it was too late.

"Yoruichi, please don't—"

"I'm not."

"—do this. Don't make me—"

"God, once you get an idea stuck in that damn head of yours, it's impossible to—"

"Well, what I am supposed to assume—?"

"I'm not sick, you idiot, I'm pregnant."

The moment she said it, out loud, there was no taking it back. That simple declaration would split their conversations, their every interaction down to two sides: before and after. She knew, could feel it down to her very bones, that no matter what her ultimate decision might be, this would forever be a turning point in their lives.

For the longest time, Kisuke's face seemed to be stuck in the same perplexed look. Confusion looked alien on him, more like a facsimile of what he thought the expression should look like, an experimental product he had pieced together through observation but couldn't quite pull off convincingly. "…you're…?"

It shouldn't have bothered her as much as it did; it was a shock, after all, but Yoruichi still found herself rolling her eyes at him impatiently. "Preg-nant. Knocked up. With child."

"Are you… serious?"

Letting out a sigh, Yoruichi finally released her reiatsu in silent demonstration, allowing it to flow free and permeate the room.

Confusion gave way to curiosity. She had no idea if he had ever been exposed to a pregnant woman's reiatsu before, but she could see it in his eyes, the way he was slowly coming to ascertain the second presence within her, bundled up under layer after layer. Her spiritual signature had changed fundamentally, no longer an 'I' but a 'we.'

Mercifully, Kisuke's expression began to shift, his eyes softening. "That night in Thailand."

Worrying her lower lip with her teeth, Yoruichi felt the heat rush up to her cheeks. "Yeah, that's… my guess as well."

"I'm sorry I got a little— I just thought—"

"I know what you thought. It's okay."

And there it was; the part she had been least looking forward to. Kisuke's face fell, his half-formed smile turning into a frown she could see he was struggling to keep from deepening. "But this is… an unwanted development?"

The mere hint of brittleness in his voice cut sharper than a serrated knife. "I… I don't know," she said, unable to hide the tone of apology in her voice, and it was the most honest thing she could say at that moment. "Maybe not? I…"

Kisuke scooted forward on the futon, reaching out for her hand. The supplication in his eyes was not what she had been expecting; as much as she knew how he'd longed for this, his silent request was not a plea to come around to his way of thinking, but rather a plea for honesty.

Taking a deep breath, Yoruichi tightened her grip on his hand. "It's not… it's not the kid itself I— I mean… I'm not entirely convinced I could— But still, that's not the part I…"

"Nothing has to change."

Yoruichi stared at him, long and hard, a miniscule smile breaking through her stone mask at the fact that he had known at once, with so little context, what had been troubling her the most. "Some things have to change."

"True," Kisuke said, nodding as he stroked her hand. "But I don't expect you to change yourself. You know this, right?"

The honest answer was 'yes,' but as she opened her mouth to respond, her jaw trembling, Yoruichi found herself blurting out something else, hating how small her voice sounded as she said, "I can't even be a half-way decent sister."

"Hey, hey, don't say that…" Kisuke said, cupping her cheek with his other hand.

And though her first instinct was to shake him off, to suck it up and exert some control over her tremulous voice, she found herself leaning into his touch. "It's true. What's the point of having a kid if I'm just gonna screw it up?"

"You think you screwed up your brother?"

The disbelief in his voice injected some warmth back into her, and she couldn't help the wry grin that tugged on her lips. "I don't think it's physically possible to screw up Yūshirō; that kid could find a silver lining in a cloud of black, toxic smoke."

Kisuke laughed, and for a brief, joyous moment, so did she. Yet even as she welcomed the short respite, it hadn't been enough to banish the thoughts away.

"It's not just Yūshirō," she said. "I mean, look at my track record: absentee sister, mentor, and awkward guardian of two teenagers. Yeah, I'd make a great mom."

His expression plainly stated that he didn't agree, but before he could say anything, she shook her head at him.

"You don't get it," she said.

"Yoruichi—"

"You don't," she exclaimed, and this time around, she did pull away from his touch. "Because you had a mother who was sweet and warm and affectionate, who fussed over you and couldn't wait to spend time with you, who braided my hair and sat with us by the fire—"

Shutting her eyes for a moment, taking in a deep breath, Yoruichi felt her throat constrict as the memory of Urahara Kaede's fingers combing through her hair came to her. The gentle voice, the warm hands, the soft smile as she'd held up a mirror before her to showcase the work of her clever fingers. She remembered, with perfect clarity, the tightening sensation gripping her small chest, and the sudden, pervasive thought: "Oh. So this is what it's supposed to feel like."

"You had a mother," Yoruichi said, her jaw stiff. "I had… nobles who procreated."

It wasn't until she felt Kisuke's breath caressing her neck that she realized she had somehow found her way into his embrace, fingers tracing the arms that wrapped around her waist from behind. "We both know that's not entirely true," he said.

And even as the more stubborn, bitter parts of her prepared to rise up in unison for a rebuttal, she saw it again, in her mind's eye, the frail, exhausted body, the bony hand clutching hers, the pale blue lips uttering an apology.

"They expect so much… I wanted to give you someone to share the burden with."

Sighing, Yoruichi bumped the back of her head against Kisuke's collarbone, staring at the ceiling blankly. "Kids… kids want more out of their parents. And it's not fair to them— Some people just aren't cut out for parenthood."

Kisuke offered no counter-argument to this, the silence between them stretching on as she absently threaded her fingers with his, reveling in the soothing effect of his cheek against her temple, his heartbeat against her back.

"I will say this," Kisuke said. "You are neither your father nor your mother—"

Yoruichi let out a scoff; for all her scathing commentary on her parents and their many inadequacies, she was all too aware of the similarities between them. It was a universally accepted fact that growing up to resemble one's parents, in ways both small and significant, was often, if not always, an inescapable blessing and tragedy.

"—And even if you were," Kisuke went on, his voice rising in volume just a notch. "I think you're underestimating both theirs and your capacity for affection."

Craning her neck up to look at him, Yoruichi searched herself for something, anything, to say in response, but came up short.

"The real question is… whether you want this or not," Kisuke said. "And that…" He took a deep breath in, his jaw set, and for the first time since revealing her secret to him, Yoruichi could fully appreciate what it took for him to say the words, "That is entirely your call." Laying a soft, lingering kiss on her temple, he extricated himself from the embrace, holding on to her hand for one last, gentle squeeze. "Think about it."

The knot in her stomach returning full-force, Yoruichi gripped his fingers in reflex as he made a move to get up. "You're not gonna…?"

"Try to convince you?" Kisuke said with a soft grin, then shook his head. "No."

"Maybe I want to be convinced," she muttered, fully aware of how infantile she sounded and finding that she didn't care.

"Not for this," he said. "Sleep on it. Take your time."

And as much as she appreciated the fact that he was willing to keep his distance and give her some space, she couldn't think of anything she wanted less at that moment. She clung to his hand as his fingers began to slip away from her grasp, her gaze resolutely trained on the floor, and he knew, without a word spoken, what she needed right now.

Laying down on the futon next to her, he held his arms out for her to crawl into them, as generous and open with his embraces as he'd always been with his heart, at least where she was concerned. Time lost all meaning, the hours bleeding into one another as she slipped her eyes open every now and then, just to confirm visually that he was still there, still holding her.

The sky had turned a deep, muted blue when she spoke again, unsure whether she was still awake or dreaming, the shape of him a hazy, dark silhouette in the darkness.

"Would you hate me? If I decided I didn't—"

"No." His voice was firm, the single, candid word punctuated by the tightening of his arms around her shoulders.

"But you would be upset." Even with her eyes closed, she could feel the oncoming protest, and she opened them at once to meet his gaze, fingers closing into a fist around the fabric of his top. "Be honest."

His protracted silence spoke louder than the most desperate cry, bright eyes standing out in stark contrast to the swath of darkness that veiled the rest of him in the semigloom of the room.

"I would be sad," he said, smiling softly at her. "For a little while. Not upset. Not ever."

And as she fell silent once more, burying her face in the broad expanse of his chest, she knew, that worst decision would not be the one that would hurt him the most now, but the one she may come to resent him for in the future.

.

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AUGUST 25TH, 2003 A.D., SECOND DIVISION BARRACKS, SEIREITEI, SOUL SOCIETY

.

Ankles locked together under the bar, she pushed herself up one last time, fighting against gravity, her abs on fire. Her body reveled in the burn, muscles taut and hard and singing until she let go with a long, luxurious exhale.

Suì-Fēng let her arms drop as she hung upside down, caching her breath. The delectable soreness spread throughout her from head to toes, a trickle of sweat zig-zagging between the muscles of her abdomen, tracing the seam of flesh down her middle all the way to her chin. Pressing her hands against the floor, she kicked the wall and brought her legs down in a graceful arc.

There was little point in checking the time. Like a finely tuned clock, her body knew she was right on schedule, her morning routine by now second nature. Suì-Fēng went through the motions: cool-down, quick breakfast, shower.

Just as they had every single day since she'd entered the Onmitsukidō, the sun's first rays filtered in through the half-open blinds to illuminate the washroom as she wiped a clear streak on the seam-covered mirror.

Towel in hand, Suì-Fēng began to buff her hair dry, her reflection staring back at her.

"There are only two types of soldiers, Suì-Fēng: born and trained. Trained fighters seek out discipline and structure, either to further their own needs or simply because their former lives lacked it. They can be taught to follow, they can be made to fight, but they remain forever fickle and flexible, a mercenary in all but name.

A born fighter seeks out the kind of structure that resonates with what already exists in their own hearts. Their true master is their own blood, and their loyalty is as absolute as the concept of right and wrong in their minds. A born fighter will never need to be forced to fight: they accept war as an inevitability of life. Steadfast, tenacious, loyal and inflexible, they are the true soldiers of the bunch.

The difference between born and made soldiers is the difference between quicksilver and steel."

"Which one am I, Yoruichi-sama?"

It had been an inane enough question even at a young age, but she'd wanted to hear the words, childish though it was. And just as she had for the past few days, Suì-Fēng paused, thumb absently stroking the irises of the girl in the mirror.

Steel grey.

Steadfast, tenacious, loyal—

Inflexible.

With a jerk of her head, Suì-Fēng resumed her morning routine, beating Ōmaeda to the punch by exiting her quarters dressed and ready just as he was making his way up the steps. Perfectly content to prattle on without reciprocation, he serenaded their walk to the official Senkaimon with a constant stream of babble she didn't need to acknowledge beyond the occasional nod.

Her mood wasn't showing any promise of improvement in the near future, either. Even with the majority of the Gotei roster between them, standing in close proximity to Hirako was unearthing memories of a conversation she had no desire to relive. And yet even without his presence, she knew she would've been hard-pressed to think of anything else, with the three Arrancar standing before the open Garganta.

The Captain Commander was addressing Tier Harribel directly, expressing his hope that their alliance during this war, however temporary, would serve as the springboard to a lifelong one.

Suì-Fēng had to mentally restrain herself from scoffing out loud.

A trained soldier if there ever was one, Kyōraku seemed to be hell-bent on setting the Gotei into a path that went against everything they stood for. It was clear there was an agenda behind this request, even if it wasn't apparent quite yet, but for the life of her, Suì-Fēng couldn't even begin to guess what it might be.

Steadfast, tenacious, loyal.

Inflexible.

Looking away from the grotesque sight of Kyōraku's deference to the Arrancar, Suì-Fēng bit down on her cheek, staring at the ground resolutely. Whatever sympathy she may have had for Tier Harribel's former situation didn't change the fact that Shinigami and Hollows were enemies by nature. There was a clear line between duty and needless cruelty, and her ability to recognize the latter, to have some measure of empathy couldn't and shouldn't ever change that simple truth.

"Don't kid yourself, Suì-Fēng. There was a time, not too long ago, when we would've done the same."

Lifting her eyes off the ground, Suì-Fēng directed them at Hirako, wondering if he could sense the spike of rage in her reiatsu she could only barely contain. The fury for planting the merest seed of doubt in her mind, one that hadn't existed months ago and was triggered every time she recalled the staggering flash of pain in Tier Harribel's startlingly green eyes.

It had only been for a moment, but the rawness, the reality of that pain had struck Suì-Fēng with the force of a tidal wave. She hadn't been the first one to look away.

Nor did she this time around, when she looked up, only to find Tier Harribel staring straight at as she half-listened to Kyōraku's words.

A sudden, inexplicable rush of heat licked its way up her neck as more pairs of eyes followed the trajectory of the Arrancar's gaze and settled upon her questioningly. By the time Kyōraku himself glanced at her over his shoulder, Suì-Fēng was debating venting her mounting discomfort on the closest available target. Namely Ōmaeda.

To her utter relief, Tier Harribel looked away and so did Kyōraku, exchanging one last round of platitudes before the much delayed departure of the Arrancar. Tier Harribel adjusted the cloak around her shoulders with the effortless poise of royalty, turning to face the Garganta. Behind her, the green-haired woman looked eager to go, while the blue-haired savage displayed all the grace and civility normally expected by his kind: hands in his pockets, back slouched, wearing an ungrateful expression that made Suì-Fēng regret she hadn't unleashed the entire body of the Onmitsukidō on him while she still had the chance.

For one of the few times in her life, Suì-Fēng was grateful for Ōmaeda's eagerness to clear out once the Garganta closed behind the three Arrancar.

"Captain Suì-Fēng! A moment, please!"

Freezing in her tracks, Suì-Fēng had a sudden sense of foreboding, as though she could see it clearly, an incoming disaster she couldn't identify and was powerless to stop. Clenching her jaw, she turned around, Ōmaeda following suit, his snack bag in hand. "Yes, Captain Commander?"

Lieutenant Ise on his heels, Kyōraku approached the two of them, smiling what Suì-Fēng was certain he considered to be a winning smile. Unfoundedly so. "No need to look so tense," he said. "I merely wanted a quick word before you resume your duties. You may have noticed Queen Harribel and I displayed a certain, ah, interest in you earlier on?"

"…I may have."

"In the coming months," he said. "Soul Society has a need for a dedicated envoy traveling to and from Hueco Mundo to liaise with Queen Harribel. And we agreed that you would fit the bill quite nicely."

Next to her, Ōmaeda began to choke on a prawn chip.

"An env— Hueco Mundo?" Suì-Fēng spluttered. "What do you mean liaise—?"

Putting one hand up to placate her, Kyōraku went on. "We can discuss the precise nature of those visits in due time, for now I merely wished to inform you—"

"I have no say in this?" Suì-Fēng went on, and even as the words left her mouth, she felt a sudden stab of discomfort in the pit of her stomach, an involuntary reaction to a lifelong struggle of suppressing objections to superiors.

"Well…" Kyōraku trailed off, his formerly genial smile taking on a peculiar note of iciness. "I would, of course, prefer not to force you. But I confess I am somewhat puzzled by your reaction. Queen Harribel was disinclined to keep an open line of communication between us until I mentioned your name."

"I— What?"

"When it was suggested to me that I offer your name up for consideration," Kyōraku went on. "I assumed it meant you had built some sort of rapport with the Queen I was not aware of. Naturally, I hoped you would thus welcome the assignment, and when the Queen herself agreed, I was confident you would accept."

"Sugges— Suggested by whom?"

It was a redundant question, because deep down she already knew, she could see him as clear as day, obnoxious smirk stretching his lips wide, beneath the shade of his hat his eyes a glinting, quicksilver grey.

The fickle, self-serving mercenary.

"Urahara Kisuke."

.

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.

SEPTEMBER 2ND, 2003 A.D., URAHARA SHOP, KARAKURA TOWN, JAPAN

.

"There ya go."

Reaching out for the glass of ice tea Urahara-san's assistant had set on the table, Ichigo looked up at the boy with a polite smile and a nod. "Thanks."

"No problem. Guess we'd better start stocking ice tea in the shop—" Jinta muttered, setting the second glass on the other side of the table.

"Thank you, Jinta," Urahara-san said in a pointed tone, waving his fan gently before his face.

It occurred to Ichigo that this was the first time he had ever seen the ubiquitous fan be used for its actual purpose and not merely for show.

The day was warm enough that Urahara-san had even forgone his signature hat, damp tendrils of hair draped over the strap of the eyepatch that seemed to have become a near-permanent accessory. The only time Ichigo could recall seeing him without it as of late was when Urahara-san occasionally exchanged it for his newly minted artificial eye; the invention might've passed off as the real thing, if not for the fainter, but ever-present scars that now marked his mentor's face.

"Not that I'm not thrilled to be sent running off to the super market to buy gallon after gallon every week—"

"Thank you, Jinta."

As the kid slipped the tray under his arm and walked away, still muttering, Ichigo found that the cool beverage did nothing to help alleviate the sudden, pervasive warmth that crawled up his cheeks.

"I've been bugging you too much lately," he said with a cringe, not meeting Urahara-san's eye. "I'm sorry—"

"Nonsense!" the older man said, furling and unfurling his fan with a flick of his wrist. "Though in the spirit of honesty, I must confess I would prefer you visit just because you felt like making a social call and not because there's something wrong with the reiatsu dampeners. It's a matter of scientific pride, you see."

He knew it was little more than a playful jab, but Ichigo felt himself growing redder all the same. There was no denying he had spent an inordinate amount of time in the shop lately, under the pretense of having his –infuriatingly durable- reiatsu dampeners maintained.

"There's nothing wrong with them," he admitted in a low mutter, still not making eye contact.

"Excellent! Then we can have our tea and catch up without any distractions."

Urahara-san's encouraging words were met with a rush of affection for his tact, for his willingness to so generously and patiently receive him time and time again as of late, never pressing, never giving him the kind of furtive looks everyone else did when they thought he wasn't looking, never making any demands of h—

Choking on his mouthful, Ichigo banged his chest and set the glass down, eyes watering as he looked up at Urahara-san with a sense of foreboding. "Ugh, you want something."

"Kurosaki-san, you wound me. Have I displayed anything other than hospitality? Have I extended anything but a hand of friendship these past—?"

"Oh gods, you really want something."

"Nothing other than your company, I assure you."

There was a beat, in which Ichigo quietly sipped his tea while staring at Urahara-san through squinted eyes, and trying very, very hard not to call bullshit on the old man.

Entirely unfazed by his intense gaze, Urahara-san continued to smile pleasantly. "So… How is school?"

"Fine."

"Your father and sisters? All faring well, I hope?"

"Fine."

"Your classmates? Sado-san, Inoue-san, Ishida-san?"

"All fine."

"Was there perhaps something you wished to discuss?"

"Fi— Er… No. No, I'm…"

Urahara-san's smirk grew broader. "Fine?"

Touché. "I guess," Ichigo said with a shrug.

The damned thing had become his automatic response to nearly every question as of late, to the point that it no longer resembled an actual word. Instead, it was now something akin to a mantra, the incantation of a warding spell he would blurt out to circumvent any follow-up questions. Urahara-san wasn't the first to ask, nor would he be the last.

And yet, there was an infuriating, and simultaneously gratifying quality about the way Urahara-san dealt with his student's pricklier disposition as of late, one that kept Ichigo returning to the shōten with what could only be described as obsessive obstinacy. The evasive maneuvers he employed in dodging the doleful, beseeching looks of his peers and family functioned as much as a shield as they did a coping mechanism. In their concerned eyes he saw the clear outlines of emotions that only flickered within him fleetingly, half-formed, vanishing before they ever reached maturity. And much like a vampire, he would feed off of these rich morsels in a desperate attempt to access emotion vicariously.

Urahara-san afforded him no such pleasure.

Contrary to Ishida, whose more confrontational attitude seemed to ignite reactions within him that lingered just a touch longer, the shopkeeper's easy-going attitude both frustrated and made Ichigo feel at ease. While Ichigo would never explicitly be called upon to answer for his behavior, Urahara-san's questions and seemingly offhand statements were delivered with the pinpoint accuracy of a homing missile: all the good intentions of a friend, conveyed in the nondescript tone of someone discussing a subject as mundane as the weather.

No bells, no whistles. No visible concern to leech upon.

It made Ichigo furious.

"And your cousins? Have you heard from them?" Urahara-san asked.

Case in point.

Ichigo set the glass down very slowly, his eyes boring into Urahara-san's. There was no misreading the cool, grey stare as anything but the challenge it was. "You knew. This whole time," he said, a little taken aback to hear the slight undercurrent of betrayal coloring his tone when had tried his best to restrain it.

To his credit, Urahara-san offered no transparent lies, nor did her avoid the question. "I did."

"Is there a point in asking why you never said anything?

"I rather…" Urahara-san trailed off, snapping his fan shut and fiddling with it as he paused to choose his words carefully. "Felt that was your father's story to tell."

Excuse or no, Ichigo couldn't deny it was a fair point. His relationship to the Shibas was not something he should've expected Urahara-san to reveal or discuss, not until his own father had taken the plunge first. "I haven't spoken to them," Ichigo said, propping his elbow against the table and resting his cheek against his fist. "Probably… probably should."

"Do you want to?"

With some measure of reluctance, Ichigo nodded. As confounding as the situation was with his family tree, he knew he both needed and wanted to clear the air sooner or later. "What does that… even mean? Being nobility in Soul Society? The Shibas are nobles, right?"

"Former nobility," Urahara-san said. "But still highly respected in certain circles. And influential."

"So am I, like… their heir or something?" Even as he spoke the words, Ichigo mentally cringed at both the infantile tone and the question itself, one that was better directed at someone like Yoruichi-san. He had grown so used to Urahara-san having all the answers that it felt natural to seek his counsel, whatever the subject may be.

To his surprise, however, he answered before Ichigo had time to recant the question, and did so with the indisputable authority of someone with personal experience on the matter.

"Hmmm, that is debatable," he said, tapping his fan against his chin as his eyes rolled toward the ceiling. "With your father being the last head of the Clan while the Shibas still enjoyed their former status, you would normally be one of the top contenders for the title," he said. "But Clan politics and lines of succession are rarely that simple. Of course, this only applies to Clans that put any weight into such matters. I don't believe Kūkaku-san and Ganju-san are in any hurry to become reacquainted with High Society."

"You called them by their first names," Ichigo said, voicing his disbelief out loud.

"Pardon?"

"Ganju and Kūkaku. You used their names. I thought it was Yoruichi-san who knew them," Ichigo said. "Guess… guess I should've realized you would, too."

"I do know them, yes," Urahara-san said. "Ganju-san less so. But I was on good terms with his sister back in the day. And their brother Kaien."

Ichigo's astonishment at the revelation that Urahara-san knew more about the world of nobility than he had previously suspected was overtaken by a second bombshell: the mention of Shiba Kaien's name. For a man he had never, nor would he ever meet, whose name and past Ichigo had only ever heard in brief, cryptic exchanges, Shiba Kaien cast a shadow that extended far. Far enough to steer the conversation into a tangent Ichigo had been reluctant to address even in the safety of solitary musings.

"The one who…? Rukia's former…?"

"Yes."

Before he could stop himself, Ichigo asked the question he hadn't even realized had been brewing in his chest for years now. "What was he like?"

"Kind. Very pleasant. Good sense of humor. Talented, intelligent…" Urahara-san said, voice trailing off. "I must admit it's Yoruichi-san who knew him far better; I may have oversold the strength of my relationship to him. You could always ask her when she returns, if you're curious. Or… you could go directly to the source."

The suggestion was met with a snort and a grin. "If Kūkaku hasn't already moved."

Urahara-san chuckled at that. "I have her current address and number if you want it," he said. "But if you'd like to reach Ganju-san, you should ask her for his address; I hear he can be found gallivanting with the former Fullbringers most of the time."

"Yeah, I… I never really got a chance to thank them— I guess… It might be nice to reach out…"

Urahara-san jumped on this offhand suggestion with suspicious, and ultimately predictable eagerness. "A capital idea! And while you're at it—"

Slamming a hand against the table, Ichigo half-rose off his seat to point an accusatory finger at the shopkeeper. "I KNEW IT!"

"I haven't even—"

"What do you want?" Ichigo said, plopping back onto the pillow, arms folded before his chest.

With a gentle sigh, Urahara-san conceded and dropped the act. "Nothing you're not willing to do. I merely require a messenger."

"To the Fullbringers?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you give your message to Yoruichi-san?" Ichigo asked.

"Because if past failed attempts to make contact are any indication, they wouldn't trust her or anyone they don't already know well enough," Urahara-san said. "But if you're unwilling to visit Soul Society, I can assign this to someone else."

A curious sensation gripped Ichigo's insides at the prospect of being passed over for the opportunity. "Didn't say I was unwilling…" he muttered, eyes drawn to his lap.

"I'm glad to hear it," Urahara-san said. "Earlier attempts to establish contact have been unsuccessful so far."

Still unable to make eye-contact, and feeling more than a little foolish for his knee-jerk reaction, Ichigo hurried to dispel any assumption that his mind was made up. "I don't even know if… when…"

"That's quite all right, I'm in no hurry. Whenever you make your decision about whether you'd like to visit Soul Society again, we can revisit this matter."

"I do," Ichigo said, looking up. "I want to… visit. I just— There are… things to consider."

Urahara-san nodded, as though in understanding; much to Ichigo's relief –and barely acknowledged disappointment- any further discussion of visiting Soul Society was summarily dropped. In an attempt to keep the conversation alive and distract himself from any aforementioned things to consider, Ichigo allowed his gaze to fall upon Urahara-san's eyepatch once more.

With a pang of guilt, he realized that for every single one of his latest visits to the store, he hadn't once expressed interest in Urahara-san's affairs. At least not vocally. In private, he had mulled over the subject often, but had no words to address it out loud, feeling like the attempt would be akin to trying to speak a language he had never been taught.

"How have… how have you been?" Ichigo said, pointing vaguely toward the object of his scrutiny. "With the, uh… the whole thing."

Mentally cursing his own ineloquence, Ichigo was immediately –and painfully- reminded that learning a foreign language had never been his forte.

Urahara-san took his clumsy attempt in stride, but was still unable to resist the briefest of taunts. "Fine," he said, lips stretching out into a grin.

Rolling his eyes at him, Ichigo returned the grin. "Yeah, I've noticed. It's just— You seem… A little… too okay with it."

The irony of that statement didn't escape Urahara-san, either. And as Ichigo had come to expect from his mentor, the response was delivered with the familiar pinpoint accuracy and explosive power:

"Ah, well… You know what they say," Urahara-san said, twirling the folded fan between his fingers with an elegant idleness that could only be deliberate. "Grief takes many forms. Including, most disturbingly, the absence of grief."

.

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SEPTEMBER 7TH, 2003 A.D., KUCHIKI MANOR, SEIREITEI, SOUL SOCIETY

.

As far as Yoruichi was concerned, sweet senbei were an affront to everything that was good and wholesome about this world. Savory was the way to go when it came to snacks, but lately, she had alarmingly found herself growing a sweet tooth she had never before possessed.

Like with most things in her life, this was totally Kisuke's fault.

"You are your father's spawn," she muttered thickly to her flat belly as she munched on a cracker and continued perusing the book in her hand, spraying the waxy, ancient-looking pages with crumbs. Ooops.

Giving the book a vigorous shake to get rid of incriminating evidence of her presence, she reached into her travel pouch for another cracker.

On top of affecting her tastebuds for the worse, the little tadpole –Mother of the year award, right here- had taken to making her mutter to herself lately. Or rather, to it. Which she realized wasn't the most maternal of way to refer to one's fetus, but she didn't have the faintest idea what –if anything- to call it. She did, however, have the sneaking suspicion it was a boy. She may or may not have taken a quick glance in one of the more out-of-place tomes in the library, an anatomy book that stated that boys naturally drew upon more of the body's resources while in the womb. A daughter would've understood her pain, eased up on the nausea and constant exhaustion.

No, this here was a man, sapping the life out of her from Day One.

The fact that she had begun to think of it in terms of possible daughter or possible son was not doing wonders for her concentration, either. Focus. Back to work.

The book in question was a ponderous, tedious volume, much like everything else in the Kuchiki Library, which specialized in genealogical charts and history books. But for all their boasts of being the Keepers of History, they, too, seemed to have no clue how the original distribution of the parts of the Soul King might've taken place. There was no mention of Mimihagi, even, much less of the shrine where the Right Hand's essence had been hidden for eons.

At every turn, the trail of available information seemed to turn cold just as the story got interesting, and Yoruichi was beginning to share Kisuke's frustration. The Kuchiki archives were just as bafflingly in the dark as the Mimihagi priests had been, having no answers for any of the important questions. Namely, the location of the other two shrines, and the puzzling absence of so much as a mention to the origins of the two parts that had found their way into the Quincy camp at some indeterminable point in the past.

It was beginning to look as though her suspicion was correct: perhaps there had been no theft, after all.

"Yoruichi-san?"

Freezing on the spot, mouth hanging slack over a cracker, she looked up, coming face-to-face with none other than Rukia.

Wearing her shihakushō and an utterly bemused expression, it looked as though she had just returned from work. "Were you…? Are you see to see nii-sama?" Rukia asked.

"Er… Your brother doesn't exactly know I'm here," Yoruichi said. "But he did say the clan's archives were at our disposal so…"

Shoulders relaxing, Rukia approached her and crouched down, glancing at the many scattered volumes surrounding Yoruichi on the floor. "Oh, you're doing research for Urahara?"

"Yup. That okay with you?"

"Yes, of course. Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Not really," Yoruichi said, plopping the cracker into her mouth, looking somewhat helplessly at the bulking bookcases that rose tall around her. "I figured it was a long shot anyway, but I wanted to check, just in case."

Rukia took a seat on the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees. "Is this… about Captain Ukitake?"

Yoruichi held her tongue, unsure of how much she was at liberty to say. Ukitake's condition and possible future were on a need-to-know basis for the time being, and though she thought Rukia deserved the right to know, she wasn't certain how the girl would take the news. Perhaps it wasn't prudent to upset her at a time when she was already under a great deal of pressure.

"I heard rumors," Rukia said, staring at her knees. "And everyone's just— I don't really know what to believe anymore. Everything feels so unresolved, that… thing is still barricaded right in the middle of the debris… Guess you're not allowed to talk about it?"

"Sorry, kiddo," Yoruichi said, placing her snack pouch on the floor between them. "Like you said; everything's still in flux, so—"

"That's okay," Rukia said, plucking a cracker out of the bag and toying with it between her slim fingers. "I've seen you around a lot lately. Been a while since you've been back to Karakura?"

"It's been back and forth for a while, yeah. Mostly… forth these days. But it hasn't been too long."

Nodding, Rukia nibbled on the rim of the cracker absently, avoiding her gaze. "Everyone doing okay? Back… back home?"

…I hate it when Kisuke is right. "Asking about anyone in particular?" Yoruichi said, smirking.

With an exaggerated shake of her head, Rukia continued to fake nonchalance –badly at that- and kept on nibbling on the cracker, still resolutely not meeting her eye.

Children, Yoruichi thought with a deep-sated, internal sigh. Here she's got a veritable hunk of a man mooning after her, and she's going for the kid who had to be forced to notice Inoue's cleavage. They really do deserve each other.

"Just making conversation," Rukia said. "These taste kind of familiar, by the way—"

"Rukia? Are you in there?"

Yoruichi only had a second's warning, but knew it was futile to get into a scramble. Even her own legendary speed wouldn't have bought her enough time to put every tome back in its place and swipe away the crumb-littered floor.

Byakuya entered into her field of vision, turning the corner and making his way down the aisle she and Rukia were occupying, and Yoruichi could've sworn she'd never before seen him shift expressions so fast.

"What are you doing h— What is she doing here?" It was clear he was making an effort not to fling any accusations Rukia's way, but he was making zero effort masking his displeasure all the same.

"Nice to see you, too, Byakuya-bō," Yoruichi said. She couldn't help it; she gave him a girlish, dainty little wave, to boot.

Striding over to them in heavy, thundering footsteps, Byakuya stared at Rukia in stunned disbelief, as though she had betrayed him in some deep, immeasurable way.

"Oh, keep your panties on," Yoruichi said, before Rukia could launch into an excuse to spare her from any further outbursts. "She didn't let me in, I… let myself in."

The revelation didn't seem to surprise him one bit, though the verbal confirmation set his eyes ablaze. "So you broke into my ancestral home, bold as brass, thinking you could just—" Scowling, his gaze travelled down the length of her torso and came to focus down below. "What are you sitting on?"

Leaning to the side to lift one cheek slightly, Yoruichi glanced at the title half-obscured by her ass. "History of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Kuchiki—" She lifted the other cheek. "–third volume."

"OUT!"

"Nii-sama!"

"No, Rukia, this I cannot allow—"

"Yoruichi-san needs our help—"

"Then she can ask for it," Byakuya said, turning to glare at the offending party. "Like any civilized, sane person would've done."

Yoruichi supposed she wasn't making things any easier for herself by refusing to sit elsewhere, but in her defense, her lower back really had been killing her since morning. Still, Byakuya's rant felt a little over-dramatic, as that boy always had been, not to mention completely untruthful. "To which you would've said…?"

"No, of course," he said, not missing a beat, as if the mere suggestion that he would do otherwise offended him deeply. Which it probably did.

"My point exactly," Yoruichi said

Nostrils flaring, Byakuya took in a deep, calming breath and said, in as dignified a voice as he could muster, "I have graciously provided Lieutenant Ise with all the materials Urahara Kisuke asked for. If there is need for more, he can make a formal request. Himself."

"But isn't my way quicker? No muss, no fuss."

"I can see plenty of muss from right here," Byakuya said, his lip curling. And even though she knew he was referring to the mess of books and crumbs littering the otherwise pristine floor, his line of sight made it impossible to resist teasing him.

"You an upskirt kind of man, Byakuya-bō?" she said, tugging at the hem of her short, form-fitting dress. "I never would've guessed—"

The rest of her sentence never came into being, as Byakuya proceeded to march forward, looking as though he had every intention of physically kicking her out. Recognizing her cue to stop piling on the taunts –amusing though it might be- Yoruichi grabbed the snack bag and scurried on her feet, diving right under Byakuya's arm to slip past him.

"ARE THOSE MY PERSONAL COOK'S SENBEI YOU'RE SCARFING DOWN?"

"Rukia, thanks for the company!" Yoruichi said, waving at the girl with a flourish while the vein on Byakuya's temple threatened to pop. "Byakuya-bō, you're way too pretty to get scowl lines so young; turn that frown upside-do—"

"Why don't I show Yoruichi-san to the door?" Rukia said in one breath, her voice loud enough to drown out any of Byakuya's protests as she moved between them.

To her immense surprise, Byakuya didn't make a dive for the senbei, not even when she slipped one out of the pouch as ostentatiously as she could, making constant eye-contact over her shoulder. The last thing she saw before Rukia gently ushered her around the corner was Byakuya's twitching eyebrow, which really, served as a rather satisfactory end to an otherwise fruitless, uneventful day.

"You can contact me directly for any future material you may need," Rukia told her in a quiet, almost conspiratorial voice.

Yoruichi chose not to voice the thought that breaking into the Kuchiki estate was half the appeal of this part of research. Instead, she nodded at Rukia before popping the senbei into her waiting mouth.

In the great hall, they came across Renji, who seemed to be biding the time somewhat impatiently, examining an elaborate vase.

"So I guess no-one is running the squad today? Then again, if nii-sama is unavailable, that might be preferable," Rukia said, smirking.

Renji looked up in mild surprise, but recovered quickly. "Ho-ho. I just came here with the Captain to pick up some documents; then it's back to the barracks. Hey, Yoruichi-san," he said, pausing for a second before coming to the visible realization that her presence there was not exactly a common occurrence. "Uh, did I just hear—?"

Rukia dropped her voice, giving a sideways glance toward the direction of the library. "Do your best to calm him down, won't you?" she said.

Renji didn't seem to share his friend's confidence that he held the power to pull this off, but he nodded all the same, an almost imperceptible flush on his cheeks at the mere notion of the difficult task ahead. Yoruichi privately agreed, voicing as much to Rukia once they were making their way down the hallway leading to the exit.

"Renji's actually gotten pretty good at reading nii-sama's moods," Rukia said in a tone that betrayed she, too, was surprised by the turn of events. "I guess two years of daily interaction will do that."

"Has he?" Yoruichi said, quirking one eyebrow.

She could scarcely picture spending two hours with Byakuya without sending him into a fit of rage, even inadvertently. More to the point, from what little she had picked up on the relationship between Byakuya and his Lieutenant two years ago, it had seemed there was a great deal of tension to resolve. Especially given the boy's insatiable desire to surpass his superior.

A fleeting, half-formed thought occurred to her then, Rukia's words and Renji's subtle blush coming to mind under a different light, and she nearly lost her footing at the notion that perhaps she had bet on Renji mooning after the wrong Kuchiki after all.

…Damn. Go, Byakuya-bō.

"I gotta admit," Yoruichi said. "Your brother does seem more mellow these days. Then again, I only have his hormonal teenage self to compare him to."

"Oh, he can't have been that bad," she said, smiling at her. "I mean, I've heard stories, but—"

"They're all true," Yoruichi said, munching on another cracker. "I remember I took him to the Rukongai one time to train and he looked so personally offended."

Rukia laughed. "Well, he must've gotten used to it at some point," she said. "Probably around the time he met my sister."

"They met in the Rukongai? How come?"

For a moment, Yoruichi feared Rukia may have misunderstood her, but the younger girl's frown didn't seem to be one of offense, but rather confusion. "That's where my sister lived."

"Your sister was a commoner?" Yoruichi said. "I… had no idea."

She had been aware of Rukia's existence as a member of the Kuchiki clan for a few decades now, but somewhere along the way, the information that Hisana herself had been a commoner had somehow never reached Yoruichi. For the longest time, she had assumed Rukia's reported resemblance to her sister and abandonment had meant that Rukia had been the product of a scandal that had been quickly hushed up and not. The revelation that Hisana herself had been a commoner did make a lot more sense, but the notion that Byakuya would've ever married so beneath him was even more outlandish to Yoruichi than the idea of Rukia being secretly Hisana's daughter.

"We lived in the Rukongai together for a while—I don't remember any of it. And she asked nii-sama to look for me shortly before her passing," Rukia said.

Mouth still agape, Yoruichi shook her head. "I'm sorry, I just… your brother marrying a non-noble is seriously throwing me," she said.

As she had hoped, Rukia took no offense; Yoruichi's own life choices should've made it perfectly clear to everyone where she stood on the issue of the class divide. And thankfully, the girl merely shrugged, a gentle smile on her lips.

"People change," she said. "I asked nii-sama about it myself a year ago. He told me that making the choice was not easy, but after meeting my sister, he decided that when it came to marriage, he was determined to choose his own spouse. He said that he believed having someone by his side who complemented and understood him would make all the difference in the world." Rukia's cheeks flushed gently as she recalled her brother's words, a beatific smile on her face, like she were unearthing one of her most treasured memories. "Make him a better leader. A better person. And that no-one knew who that someone was better than he di— Yoruichi-san?"

Rukia's words suddenly adopted a strange, muted quality, as though they were coming from far away. Yoruichi, now rooted on the spot, stared at the girl, unseeing. "He— Your brother said this? Those are his words you're quoting? His exact words?"

"I— Yes. Nearly verbatim, I think," Rukia said, the dainty blush on her cheeks turning redder. "I… sort of… memorized them. They, uh… made an impression."

"Yeah, I… they're… they're nice words…"

"You're not going to tease nii-sama about this, are you?" Rukia said, half in jest, half in seriousness. "Because I only—"

With a sharp inhale and a quick jerk of her head, Yoruichi willed herself to return to reality in full, forcing a smile on her lips. "Of course not; don't worry, my lips are sealed," she said. "And sorry about spacing out, I just realized I forgot to check up on something at the SRDI."

Rukia still looked unconvinced of Yoruichi's promise as the two said their goodbyes at the gate, but for the first time in her life, she found that she was entirely unwilling to tease Byakuya.

And as her hand irresistibly snaked down to her stomach, Yoruichi swore she would never reveal to Rukia that Byakuya's words were, in fact, borrowed. That they had first been spoken a long time ago, by a young woman who had wrestled with her own feelings for countless decades; a woman certain that whatever little wisdom she possessed would fall on deaf ears when directed at her ill-tempered teenage student, who thought little of her as it was.

But in a moment of genuine concern, she had tried.

And to her immense surprise, he had listened.

.

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.

SEPTEMBER 10TH, 2003 A.D., URAHARA SHOP, KARAKURA TOWN, JAPAN

.

"So… unless you have any new ideas, any new directions worth exploring, that's about as much intel as I can provide on my end."

Kisuke stared at the ceiling, arms folded behind his head as he lay on the futon, listening to Yoruichi's brief oral report of her latest findings in Soul Society. In all honesty, he hadn't expected to hear anything different, but exhausting their most solid source of information before moving on to murkier waters had seemed like a prudent strategy.

"No, I think we're done on the Mimihagi front," he said. "For the time being, that is."

Taking a seat on the windowsill, Yoruichi palmed the brush in her hands. "You're not surprised."

"Well, I… I've shared my theory with you."

"Bet you're feeling pretty smug right about now," she said, smirking.

Kisuke responded with a smirk of his own, taking in the sight of her in the thin, overlarge yukata, her hair still damp from her bath. Though they'd spoken on the phone regularly, this was the first he was seeing of her in person ever since the revelation about her condition. Keeping himself from bringing up the subject, even in passing, had arguably been one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do. But it had still hung between them in every conversation, like a specter, even with an entire dimension separating them.

He'd tried not to read too much into it, but having her back, speaking and acting as though not a single thing had changed was both a blessing and a curse. For one of the few times in his long life, in their shared life, he didn't have a single clue as to what she might be thinking, about whether she'd made a decision yet.

Or what that decision might be.

And yet, despite the torture of being in the dark, he couldn't help but smile at the mere fact that she was there, in their room, the summer breeze carrying the scent of her over to him in fragrant wafts. His intense scrutiny hadn't escaped her notice, either, and instead of shying away from it, she seemed to be basking in it instead, making a show out of dabbing her trademark jasmine oil on her scalp and running the brush through her hair leisurely.

It occurred to him at that point that he hadn't kissed her once she'd arrived, and had a mind to remedy that as soon as possible, but Yoruichi didn't seem to be done talking business.

"So what's the next step?" she asked.

Letting out a sigh, Kisuke toyed absently with the soft, careworn belt of his own yukata. "Well, I guess there's no helping it anymore."

Yoruichi's eyes widened at the sound of his words. "You're not—?"

"—I guess we have to start exploring the Quincy angle."

In the silent beat that followed, Yoruichi stared at him as though she were unsure whether to laugh or scream. Eventually, she settled on the former. "You will actually talk about this to the guy we buy okonomiyaki from before you deign to visit my father, won't you?"

That, Kisuke felt, was a blow below the belt. Daichi gave excellent advice.

"Now, now, I'm only trying to be efficient," he said, in a bare-faced lie she clearly had no trouble discerning. "Since I won't be returning to Soul Society until next week, I figured I'd capitalize on the opportunity to gather as much information as possible before I seek out your father's counsel."

"Mmmm-hm. Or you're just prolonging the inevitable."

Kisuke chose not to dignify her perfectly astute observation with a response, watching as she pushed herself off the windowsill and approached the futon, toying with the brush in her hand.

"I hope you weren't thinking I'd be joining you," she said, shooting him a warning look as she dropped the brush onto the nightstand and took a seat next to him. "I'm pretty certain my mother can smell these things from miles away and I'm not setting foot in that place until October."

"October? What's happening on Oct—?" Kisuke began, but as the words came out, he did the mental math, and came to the heart-stopping realization: October marked the end of the first trimester. Sitting up on the futon at once, his mouth flopped about soundlessly for a few seconds before he could speak. "Are you saying—?"

"I will never marry you."

If there was a visual equivalent of a record scratch, Kisuke was certain it would look very much like pathetic manner in which he deflated within milliseconds of hearing her response.

Perhaps realizing she had been too brusque, Yoruichi hurried to add. "Not because of you. It's the principle of the thing."

"…All right."

Her eyes softened, but she severed eye-contact when she spoke next, color rising on her cheeks. "If I ever did marry someone… it would be you. But I don't want to. I want to do this my way. Our way."

As someone who had been introduced to the concept of marriage through the lens of future responsibility alone, Yoruichi had always displayed a violently negative reaction to its mere mention. The pressure to choose one of her many suitors, to further the Shihōin line, had always weighed heavily on her. And the fact alone that she was admitting this to him, that she had finally managed to see the notion of a family as something separate from the looming threat it had once been, meant more to him than any arbitrary ceremony ever could.

He had witnessed the change in her long ago from the small, hesitant steps she'd taken in bonding with Ururu and Jinta, in reconnecting with Yūshirō, but he hadn't dared hope for more. Not until now.

"So... are we… doing this?"

Yoruichi met his eyes again, and his heart skipped a beat when her lips twitched upward just the tiniest bit. "I won't be a housewife and it's not… it won't be— it'll be different. But… I'm committed to this. Fully. And you—"

"Am yours. Always."

The tentative grin turned broader as she rolled her eyes at him, the flush in her cheeks now more pronounced than ever. "It's corny crap like this that led to me getting knocked up in the first place."

And in that moment her smile was so radiant that he could not help but respond in kind, cradling her face in his hands, one last, tiny morsel of doubt lingering in his chest. "Are you sure? Absolutely—?"

"Yes," Yoruichi said, her smile unwavering.

Yet as he pulled her in, she wrapped her hands around his wrists and held herself at bay.

"Though I'm warning you right now," she said. "I've been pretty damn unimpressed by this whole process so far; everyone keeps going on about getting to stuff your face while you're pregnant, but it hasn't been happening yet and I am not happy about it. And you… are gonna have to deal with all… this," she said, gesturing vaguely at herself.

He nodded, fairly certain that nothing she could say or do right now would ever wipe the smile off his face. "All right."

"And… Kisuke?" As she pressed her fingers against his lips, her own smile became fractured, a flicker of fear clouding her eyes. "Try not to… not to get too excited about this, okay? Isane said my family history probably won't be an issue, but still…" She tried to sound casual, but the brief, pained grimace in her expression spoke volumes of how much the idea tormented her. "There's always a possibility that it might not… take."

Slipping her hands into his, Kisuke met her gaze earnestly. "Promise you won't worry about it too much?" There was a pause, Yoruichi's breath hitching in her throat, but she nodded. "Then I promise I won't get too excited," he said, a grin tugging at the edge of his lips.

When he saw it mirrored in Yoruichi's face, he knew she had finally relieved herself of everything that weighed heavily in her chest. "Liar."

"I'm allowed to be a little happy about it, aren't I?" he said, tucking one curled finger under her chin. "And for the record… so are you."

This time around, he never even got the chance to make the first move. Yoruichi closed the distance herself, reaching out to cup his jaw and pulled him to her, slanting her lips against his.

And for the first time in months, the notion that there was now one more person to protect, one more person he could not afford to disappoint, no longer felt like a burden, but was pure, unadulterated joy.

.

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.

SEPTEMBER 7TH, 2003 A.D., KUCHIKI MANOR, SEIREITEI, SOUL SOCIETY

.

"I said I was sorry."

"…no consideration whatsoever. If you cannot be bothered to take this seriously, then I might as well stop wasting my time—"

"Oh my god it was a mistake. LET. IT. GO."

"—tutoring you and instead focus on my own rev—"

"You know what? Fine. Suit yourself. Go study alone, see if I care."

"Wha—?! Kurosaki! We already spent half an hour in that bus—"

"During which you wouldn't shut the hell up—"

"All right, all right! It's forgotten. I won't say another word. Can we just…?"

"Fine. Lead the way."

With a sigh, Uryū straightened up the strap of his messenger bag and crossed the street, motioning at Kurosaki to follow him. The walk from the bus station to his –Ryūken's; Ryūken's- home was a short one, but he had the sneaking suspicion it was bound to feel twice as long while he struggled to keep his tongue in check.

Next to him, Kurosaki dragged his feet along, a decided slump on his shoulders, hands tucked into his pockets. Brief argument aside, his mood appeared to be neither sourer or in any way improved than it had been earlier in the day.

As with everything else lately, their spat didn't seem to have affected him one bit. Day in and day out, Kurosaki would do little more than go through the motions, his temperament hitting the occasional high spike, only to drop back down at once, like a rubber band bouncing back to assume its former shape. Uryū had to wonder if it was even possible to push him to a breaking point anymore.

Kurosaki's attitude wasn't exactly a surprise. For what little time they'd been on amiable terms, this was thrice now that Uryū had witnessed him close in on himself and maintain only the barest appearance of coping.

"Don't see why you're making a fuss anyway," Kurosaki muttered, breaking the silence.

"What?" Uryū said, turning to him.

"Studying," Kurosaki said, kicking a stray rock out of his path. "You never offered to tutor me before. And it's not like we've ever been in any sort of competition: you've always been top of the class, I've made the top twenty, fifteen occasionally. Aren't Inoue and Kunieda your actual competition?"

"This isn't about competition—"

"Then what is it about?"

Uryū's steps faltered as Kurosaki stared him down with a defiant expression. The confronting question was one Uryū had hoped would've gone unacknowledged; making sense of his reasons even to his own self was hard enough, but having to articulate them out loud under Kurosaki's persistent stare was nigh impossible.

"What do you mean what's it about?" Uryū said, stalling for time to collect his thoughts. "It's… I just… You've been slacking off!"

Kurosaki didn't bother denying this. "So? What's it to you?"

"I…"

Try as he might to find fault with it, it was a fair question. Kurosaki's paltry attempts to keep up with schoolwork were hurting no-one but himself. He wasn't actively trying to get any of his friends to skive off, he wasn't trying to tempt them away from studying, he was simply… indifferent.

If he were being entirely honest with himself, this, more than anything was what had prompted Uryū into action. Anger, frustration, despondence… they were all feelings he would've understood and sympathized with, much like he had in the aftermath of the Winter War. But watching someone like Kurosaki simply give up…

You promised me. You promised me we were going to live. This isn't living; this is barely existing.

"Well… we do openly associate," Uryū said, pushing his glasses up his nose and letting his gaze drop to the side. "And Professor Ochi relies on me to set a good example. When you slack off, it also reflects badly on me." Bolstered by the ease with which the lie tumbled out of his mouth, Uryū returned Kurosaki's defiant gaze unflinchingly. "And I won't have it."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Kurosaki quipped, a smirk tugging at the edge of his lips. "Have I been sabotaging your efforts to pursue a career you had previously sworn off?"

Uryū might've taken pleasure in seeing Kurosaki openly engage him instead of shrugging off the conversation as unimportant, if only the latter wasn't in such a confrontational mood. Today seemed to be a day of acknowledging uncomfortable truths, and he could tell Kurosaki had been saving this comment for such a day, indeed.

"I never claimed I didn't always plan on attending university—"

"That's not what I'm talking about," Kurosaki said, swatting away the poor attempt at derailing the conversation with ease. "You telling me if I go through your school bag right now there won't be any brochures of Tokyo Medical University lying around?"

"You've been going through—?"

"Didn't have to. The other day when you dropped your bag, I caught a glimpse of them right before you tried to shove it all back in."

"…So? What's it to you?"

Even momentarily, Kurosaki seemed to be taken aback at having his own words thrown back at him. The silence that followed was a long one. Uryū didn't avert his eyes from Kurosaki's burning gaze, certain that he, too, was barely holding back every retort that was going through his mind. If he had expected Kurosaki to take the bait, however, he was dead wrong.

With a grunt, Kurosaki gripped the strap of his school bag and yanked it up, continuing down the road without another word. It took Uryū a couple of seconds to realize he wasn't marching away, but rather toward the undetermined path he'd set them on, and he quickly followed, teeth grinding together in an effort to keep his mouth shut.

"How far—?"

"Almost there."

"Mmm."

Kurosaki really did have the singular talent of leaving him feeling like an exposed nerve, Uryū mused as he put one foot after the other. Part of him was already wishing he'd let go and tell Kurosaki everything he'd been really thinking about; if he had, perhaps he wouldn't feel like his patience was being tried with every clop of Kurosaki's feet and his inordinately loud breathing.

"Your apartment's still being fumigated, then?" Kurosaki muttered.

"Yes."

"For three weeks now?"

"…Yes."

"That's convenient."

"What are you sa—?"

"I'm saying that this whole change of heart started when you went back to living with your dad. And it's great that you're back to talking and all, but you're letting him get to you!"

"Get to me?"

"Yes, get to you. You said you didn't want to be a doctor—"

"I'm not allowed to change my mind?"

"Ha! So you have changed—"

"I never said that, but the fact that you assume I would ever allow my—"

"Dad?"

"Yes, my father, you just said so only seconds ago—"

"No, it's… my dad."

"I— What?"

Still wearing an expression appropriate to having been smacked over the head, Kurosaki pointed straight behind Uryū. "Is that your dad's place?"

Turning around, Uryū was startled to see his father's home, indeed. In between their argument, he hadn't even realized they'd covered the distance so quickly. "Er, yes. Why are you—?"

"That's my dad's car right next to that Mercedes."

Surely enough, there was a second car parked out front right next to Ryūken's glossy black sedan. Uryū hadn't paid it any mind upon first glance, but a second look revealed it to be a familiar car, indeed. One he had seen parked outside the Kurosaki residence often enough.

The earlier tension forgotten at once, the two boys shared an identical look of utter confusion, an undercurrent of terror evident in Kurosaki's brown eyes that Uryū knew must also be present in his. Without another word, they seemed to have reached both the same conclusion and a silent agreement to sprint up to the entrance, Uryū digging into his pocket for his keys.

As soon as he unlocked the door, Kurosaki burst in, not even bothering to remove his shoes, and made for the living room. Slamming the door shut, Uryū followed on his heels, bumping straight into Kurosaki's back when he came to an abrupt halt.

"Dad? Urahara-san?"

Kurosaki's voice was only the last in a series of noises that must've alerted the adults to their presence. Sitting imperiously on his favourite armchair, Ryūken wore an expression of only mild surprise; his face was mostly dominated by resigned irritation. Right across him sat Urahara-san, his hat laid out beside him on the couch, and next to him, Kurosaki's father. Uryū had half-expected to see him clad in full Soul Reaper regalia, but he was instead dressed in every day clothes.

Setting his teacup down on the mahogany table, Kurosaki's dad leaned forward, his face screwed up into what Uryū could only describe as half-hearted anger. "Weren't you supposed to be studying?"

It was Uryū himself who responded. "We were. But Kurosaki forgot his textbook at school, so we decided to study here— Wait, you wanted us out of the way?"

Letting out a sigh, Ryūken straightened himself up on his armchair, taking a sip off his cup. "For the record, I had no plans to receive any guests today. And yet…"

"Did something happen?" Kurosaki said, his voice carrying a distinct edge of hysteria. "In Soul Society?"

"No, there's no need to worry," Urahara-san said, leaning back against the couch, as sanguine as ever. "We're simply here to have a discussion with Ishida-san, er, Senior, that is. I was hoping he could be of help in filling in some of the gaps in my research."

There was no lie in Urahara-san's eyes, and yet Uryū knew him to be an accomplished enough liar when he needed to be. His eyes strayed at once to both his and Kurosaki's father, looking for any signs of a different story there, but found none. Still, the fact that this so-called conversation had been planned out without their knowledge was cause enough for suspicion. Especially since Urahara-san, of all people, hadn't considered inviting the one person who had spent more time than anyone among the Wandenreich army.

"As a former member of the Sternritter," Uryū said, feigning nonchalance. "I assume my input might also be of help?"

"Well, I…" Urahara-san began, but trailed off once he caught a glimpse of Ryūken. He'd looked interested enough at the proposal, but his hesitation only confirmed what Uryū had suspected: they had been deliberately left out of this meeting. "I will leave this up to your fathers to decide—"

"Absolutely not," Ryūken said at once.

"Oh, we're good enough to face Yhwach head-on," Uryū quipped. "But when it comes to an actual discussion—?"

"There is nothing to discuss; this matter is over and done with—"

"Doesn't look done to me," Kurosaki piped in. "Soul King position still vacant?" he said, turning to Urahara-san. The older man merely shrugged and gave a somewhat apologetic jerk of his head. "We're staying," Kurosaki said, his tone leaving no room for argument.

Next to him, Uryū gave a firm nod, winding his arms against his chest tightly.

In a clear effort to nip an oncoming argument in the bud, Urahara-san spoke up the second he saw Ryūken gearing up for a rebuttal. "If I may…" he said. "The only living soul who may know anything about Pernida-san other than Captain Kurotsuchi is Ishida-san himself. And I already have a copy of all of Captain Kurotsuchi's notes."

At the sound of this, Uryū nearly did a double take. "Pernida? You want to know—? I thought this was about Yhwach."

"Also germane to the discussion," Urahara-san said with a nod. "But at the moment, Pernida-san's… nature poses a more immediate concern. And whereas Ishida-san Senior most likely has much to share about Yhwach himself, I don't expect—"

"And that, is where you are mistaken," Ryūken cut him off. "Uryū has already involved himself more than enough in the affairs of Soul Reapers; there is no need for him to sit in on this meeting when I could easily fill in the blanks—"

"Excuse me, I think I'm plenty qualified to talk about the rest of the Sternritter, far more qualified than you—"

"Are you now?" Ryūken said as he steepled his hands, an infuriatingly smug expression curling his lip. "Then I assume you were aware Pernida was not actually a Quincy?"

His statement plunged the room into immediate silence. As Uryū tried to look for support for his own disbelief, he met nothing but blank stares all around, save for Urahara-san. Only he seemed to be unsurprised by Ryūken's words, but there was an added layer to his enigmatic expression, something akin to vindication. Uryū had the distinct feeling his father had just unknowingly taken Urahara-san's bait. He wouldn't be surprised if their unexpected arrival had proved to be fortuitous to Urahara-san, allowing him to use his rivalry with his father to draw the latter into saying more than he would have under different circumstances.

To be honest, he wouldn't be surprised to hear Urahara-san himself had planted Kurosaki's book back at the school, but that seemed to be a stretch even for the cunning shopkeeper.

Whatever Urahara-san's plan had been, Uryū did not allow himself to dwell on it any longer, far more interested in what his father had just uttered.

"What do you—? Of course Pernida was a Quincy," Uryū said. "I can tell Quincy reiatsu apart from—"

"Let me rephrase: were you aware that Pernida was not originally a Quincy?"

As much as he took it as a personal insult, the implication that he could've missed something as significant as this, Uryū felt the stirrings of doubt bubble up in his chest, contaminating his every thought and forcing him to re-examine certain things he'd found puzzling from the beginning. With a start, he realized that not only had he never heard Pernida speak, he had also never once gotten a glimpse under their –His, her?- ever-present hood.

Even so, his father's statement still made no sense. "How does one even become a—?" Uryū began, before realizing that this wasn't the most important question right now. "Wait… if they weren't originally a Quincy, then what…?"

To his immense surprise, his father didn't take this opportunity to lord his ignorance over him. Instead, he seemed to have come to the same realization his son had only seconds ago, and turned to the shopkeeper. "Well, Urahara? You didn't seem surprised by the revelation. Surely you can answer his question?"

Urahara-san's clever, gray gaze swept from his father to Kurosaki's and back again. "Are we allowing Ishida-san and Kurosaki-san to stay, then?"

Kurosaki's father merely shrugged, plucking a manjū off the ornate bowl on the table and plopping it into his mouth. "Fine by me."

Ryūken held out a little longer, seemingly at war with himself, but eventually, he rolled his eyes and gave an airy wave of his hand.

Sharing identical looks of foreboding, the two boys hurried over to the genkan to take off their shoes and marched back to the living room, wary of missing anything in the interim. Uryū took his seat on an armchair adjacent to the couch, while Kurosaki took a seat next to Urahara-san. The adults seemed to have kept their word and said nothing in their absence, save for Ryūken muttering in his butler's ear to bring another set of teacups.

Urahara-san went on as if there had been no pause in conversation, addressing him. "As your father quite astutely pointed out, Pernida-san was not always a Quincy; at least to my estimation," he said, then turned to Kurosaki. "Yoruichi-san told me your encounter with Pernida-san was very brief, so what you may not know is that Pernida-san never displayed the kind of behavior one expects from… well… an intelligent being."

Kurosaki acknowledged this with a curt nod, his brow knit.

"Pernida could understand and execute commands perfectly, but I never once heard them speak," Uryū said, drawing the attention of the room to himself. "It was clear that whoever was under that hood was powerful, though no more powerful than other members of the Sternritter. And despite never voicing an opinion or anything of the sort, Pernida seemed to command a great amount of respect even among the Schutzstaffel. Soon enough, I came to understand why: Pernida was said to be the Left Hand of the Soul King."

Kurosaki's eyes widened in recognition. "I… I've heard about this. The Hand of the Soul King, the Heart of the Soul King…" He turned to Urahara-san. "What does that even mean?"

To both their surprise, it was Kurosaki's father who answered. "It means that Pernida was the vessel for a part of the Soul King's power," he said.

Uryū was suddenly reminded of the fact that Kurosaki Isshin had not only been a high-ranked member of the Gotei in his day, but also a scion of a noble family; a Shiba. Much like Yoruichi-san, he seemed to know more about the inner workings of Soul Society than any round-of-the-mill Soul Reaper would.

"Think of it like an emergency back-up, like what Ukitake did," Kurosaki's father said. "He was the vessel for the Soul King's Right Hand, and he's the reason the worlds remained intact even after the Soul King was slain."

"But if the Soul King is… was… a Soul Reaper…" Kurosaki said. "Why would a part of them be stored within a Quincy?"

At the sound of that, Urahara-san gave his former student a smile behind the rim of his teacup. "That… is an excellent question. The very one I've been trying to answer myself," he said. "Ukitake-san makes sense. But the two Quincy, Pernida-san and Gerard-san? Less so. And even between the two, Pernida-san seemed to be… special. Different somehow."

No arguments there.

"Captain Kurotsuchi and former Lieutenant Kurotsuchi were the ones who took down Pernida-san," Urahara-san went on. "And everything in Captain Kurotsuchi's report seemed to point toward a being capable of tremendously fast-paced evolution. There is this saying in Soul Society that the Left Hand of the Soul King governs progress, evolution. And according to Captain Kurotsuchi, Pernida-san exhibited constantly improving speech patterns the longer the battle went on. More importantly… under the hood, it had the appearance of a literal hand."

This time, even Kurosaki's father seemed to be stunned into silence. Uryū himself was far too preoccupied with replaying the words in his head, trying to make certain he'd heard correctly, to chance a look at his father.

"…An actual…?" Kusosaki Isshin said.

At this, Urahara-san gave a grin and a nod of understanding. "I admit I thought Captain Kurotsuchi was having me on at first," he said. "But Madarame-san, Ayasegawa-san and Yamada-san all corroborated his story down to the very last detail. I do quite literally mean a giant hand," Urahara-san said, meeting every pair of eyes in the room for confirmation. "It is very strange, isn't it? Strange even by the standards of everything we've seen over the past few months. As soon as I was able to ascertain that this wasn't some sort of group hallucination, however, I began to form a theory."

This time, Uryū did venture a glance toward his father, prompted by Urahara-san himself who did the very same.

"You see it now, don't you, Ishida-san?"

Surely enough, the near-constant look of annoyance in Ryūken's features had been replaced with one of dawning realization.

"See what?" Uryū said.

"Ukitake-san was the Right Hand of the Soul King," Urahara-san said. "However, his own form never changed similarly, not even after releasing the seal that kept the Soul King's power inside him. But Pernida-san's did. Why the discrepancy? If whatever happened to rob Pernida of their speech and original form was the result of becoming the Soul King's hand, why would it not have happened to Ukitake-san as well?"

"Time?" Kurosaki supplied.

"A good first guess in most circumstances," Urahara-san said with an approving nod. "But no, not possible. Ukitake-san was well over two thousand years old. If he was meant to change form due to his status as a part of the Soul King, it would've happened long ago. Gerard-san who was actually a Quincy and a vessel of the Soul King's reiatsu also displayed no such change either. The only reasonable explanation is that Pernida-san was different to begin with. Not a Soul Reaper, nor a Quincy, but something more bestial than anthropomorphic, something whose very nature dictates that their form will shift to reflect aspects and characteristics of their unique reiatsu. Namely, assuming the appearance of a literal hand."

Uryū realized at that point that he had personally witnessed several Soul Reapers –Kurosaki himself even- change form upon releasing the bankai state of their weapons, but the change, if applicable at all, was always limited to their outfit, or the weapon itself. Perhaps even a minor change in appearance, but never, ever a fundamental change in their humanoid form.

And yet what Urahara was saying sounded eerily familiar, like something Uryū himself should be intimately familiar with—

The dawning realization hit him with the sudden force of a bolt of lightning. "A Hollow."

"That is my assumption, yes," Urahara-san said.

Uryū couldn't help a quick glance toward his father, childish though it made him feel. As much as Urahara-san's theory made sense, it tread upon every single thing he had ever been taught about the very nature of both Quincy and Hollows. Even more worryingly, his father, who undoubtedly knew all of this as well, did not seem to share his confusion.

What am I missing here?

"Pernida… was a Hollow? But… They really did become a Quincy eventually," Uryū said, convinced that his own senses couldn't have betrayed him so blatantly, not when he had been trained to identify the nature of any and all types of reiatsu since childhood. "Quincy and Hollow reiatsu can't mix— How is that even poss—?"

Oh, but they can, said a small voice in the back of his mind. And the living proof is sitting right across you, in this very room.

Uryū felt his back break out in cold sweat as his eyes fell upon Kurosaki. Soul Reaper, Quincy, Hollow and Human, all rolled into one.

Urahara-san seemed to have spotted this at once. His own eyes flitting over his student momentarily, he addressed the room at large without missing a beat. "It makes more sense once you understand who, or rather what the Soul King is," he said. "And Yhwach, for that matter."

And… Kurosaki?

"I mean no offense, but…" Uryū said, his eyebrows drawn together. As much as this conversation was challenging everything he'd taken for granted in the past, making him eager to learn more, his earlier suspicion was now all but confirmed. "You seem to know plenty already, Urahara-san. What exactly is it that you wanted me or my father to contribute to your research?"

For once, Ryūken seemed to find nothing to criticize in his words. With a scoff, he turned to Urahara-san. "Confirmation for what he already suspects. Among other things," he said. "If information was all he was seeking he wouldn't be here. I am well acquainted with Urahara's… methods. He could have asked you to dig through the family archives and you would've done it."

I stand corrected, Uryū thought, glaring daggers at his father.

There was no denying he probably would have, but the way Ryūken had phrased it made it sound as though he would've blindly followed any order issued by Urahara-san. As much as he trusted the shopkeeper to work toward a noble goal in the long run, his methods were often something Uryū had also found fault with. Including his decision to use his rivalry with his father to play them against each other. Thankfully, his father himself had realized this as well.

"No, the reason he's here in person is because he also has a request of a different nature in mind," Ryūken said.

Urahara-san did not challenge this, smiling his ubiquitous polite smile.

"A request?" Uryū said.

Ryūken ignored his question, never tearing his eyes off Urahara-san. "Can I assume this is the same request you've made via envoys that have been traveling to and from Hueco Mundo lately? And the same message you've been attempting to convey to the remaining Fullbringers?"

"Sharp as ever, Ishida-san," Urahara-san said with an inclination of his head. "Not to mention well-informed. You are, of course, right on all accounts."

"What's weird about that?" Kurosaki said; there was an odd wrinkle in his brow, as though he wasn't entirely in the dark where this so-called message was concerned, but unable to piece together its meaning all the same. "Urahara-san is friendly with some Arrancar, and so am I. And the Fullbringers helped us out, too—"

"It's weird," Uryū said, his eyes trained on the shopkeeper. "Because aside from forming a brief alliance with Soul Reapers, there aren't exactly many things the Quincy, the Arrancar and the Fullbringers all have in common. If anything at all."

Urahara-san gave him a rare smile, turning to his father. "He really does take after you."

"Not quite as much as I'd like, unfortunately, otherwise he wouldn't still be wearing that ridiculous expression," Ryūken said with an infuriating, long-suffering sigh. "Come on, boy, isn't it obvious?"

Fists and teeth clenched, Uryū willed himself to keep his voice from betraying his mounting anger. "Isn't what obvious?"

Ever the Drama Queen, his father steepled his hands once more, his cool, blue gaze focused straight on Urahara-san over the rim of his glasses. "Urahara wants to create a new Hōgyoku."

.

A/N: *DRAMATIC CHIPMUNK CLIP* Okay, okay, I know what y'all are thinking: why a new Hōgyoku? Why not use the existing one? More importantly, why would the guy who tried for a century to destroy the first NopeJewel create a second one? WHY, INDEED. Which is my way of saying… stay tuned; I will address all these perfectly legit concerns in the next chapter.

Hint for the impatient: the answer can actually be found within the two instalments for this chapter, but you'd either have to be passingly familiar with my overall Bleach theory, or share said theory yourself, or otherwise have guessed it from certain things left unsaid in the chapter. Aaaand that's all I'm going to say on this matter till next time.

The following chapter should start featuring more characters. The first part had such an intense focus on Kisuke and Yoruichi because I couldn't just handwave the difficulties she faced in making this decision. They'll still feature prominently until the end of this mini arc, ie the ascension of the new Soul King and the birth of their child, but now I can start letting more players in and give meatier roles to some other fan favorites.

Thanks for reading, and let me know what you thought! Till next time.