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A Shadow of What Was	By : katami Category: Bleach > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 49594 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 14
- 15
- 16
Author's Notes: I don't know how many of you have ever tried to argue with a Kurosaki, let alone two, but let me tell you that it is an exercise in futility. Two of the Kurosaki siblings insisted that this scene was needed and that it be written immediately. Who the heck let these people in my head?

Anyway, if you like the story, please review. To those who have reviewed, many thanks. I get a kick out of knowing people like this insanity.

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Ichigo awoke to white walls, a white kimono and the strangest feeling of being surrounded by water. It was hard to move, hard to think, and his body felt sluggish and strangely distant. He wondered what the heck was happening, knowing there was something important he was forgetting but unable to recall just what it was. Something to do with Kisuke his befuddled brain finally supplied.

He had been searching for the other man, he realized. There was something important about finding him. He remembered a junior officer from the 10th finding him and insisting he return to base. He wouldn't have gone if it had been anyone but a 10th Division officer, but Hitsugaya was nominally in command of the real world forces as the longest serving commander. Meaning he was the one person in the real world able to pull rank on Ichigo, so he had returned to base to see what the young captain wanted, intent on returning to his hunt for Kisuke as soon as he had seen Hitsugaya.

He made a few weak attempts to sit up, wondering what had happened between his return to base and the present. His mind was hazy on the details and each time he tried to sit up, his body fell back into the futon. He couldn't get his limbs working right, although the longer he struggled the more alert his mind seemed to become.

"It's the power inhibitor. Toushirou said it takes some getting used to," murmured Karin from the doorway, staring at him solemnly, a tea tray in her hands. He wondered when his little sister had been converted to the Shinigami cult of tea, but realized that after six years with Toushirou he shouldn't have been surprised.

"Inhibitor?" he asked dazedly, reaching up and touching a band that encircled his neck.

"Yes, inhibitor. We talked it over and decided that you needed to think rationally for once, Ichi-nii, not go running off into danger the first chance you get. I'm not going to lose my big brother, Ichigo," murmured Karin, sitting down next to him. She poured them both some tea and helped him sit up, his body still sluggish.

"Karin," he began as she handed him some tea.

"We're going to talk, Ichi-nii. All of us," she murmured, a hint of steel in her voice. Ichigo knew that tone, it meant bad things.

The door slid open, Yuzu and his father standing there. His father looked baffled but Yuzu just looked determined. They were well and truly fucked. Karin could be reasoned with - sometimes. And Yuzu could be won with emotional pleas. They two of them together were a different story, they were an unstoppable force.

"When were you going to tell everyone about Mizuno Hideaki? When were you going to tell us, tell your family, about Urahara?" she demanded and he could hear the hurt in her voice. The betrayal.

"Karin," he tried again, earning a glare that promised a sharp kick to the head the next time he said something stupid. He sighed and took a sip of the tea. He had learned to appreciate tea from Kisuke, sitting on the porch of the shop with the other man after patrols, drinking tea and talking about whatever crossed his mind. Looking back on things, he thought that had been when he'd stared falling in love with the blonde.

"My squad...I have duties."

"Rukia is handling the fifth, Toushirou is handling the report to Soul Society and Renji and Ishida are handling the search for Mizuno Hideaki. You are talking to us, Ichi-nii. All of us," she said with a stern look at their father. Yuzu deftly steered their father to a cushion before claiming one herself.

"Is that my pager? I'll just run and check," began Isshin, jumping up.

"Sit!" commanded Karin, drawing baffled looks from everyone but Yuzu. "We are going to talk about this! I'm sick of you two dummies playing 'Let's pretend!' We are not going to ignore this any more!"

Ichigo ducked his head slightly, noting his father looked rather abashed as well. "Karin, we don't...," he began, shutting up as an angry glare pinned him.

"We are talking." Firm, quiet, and said in a tone that was absolutely inflexible.

"We are going to talk about the fact that you never told us you were in love. We are going to talk about the fact that we had to find out about one of the most important relationships of your life after the fact, in bits and pieces that you let slip out to friends. We are going to talk about the fact that you and dad have never once addressed the fact that he was a Shinigami. We are going to clear the air of all your damned secrets! Both of you!"

Yuzu smiled faintly and poured herself and their father some tea. "Who wants to start?" she asked brightly.

"What the hell am I supposed to say?" demanded Ichigo, suddenly angry at being cornered like this. There was a reason he didn't talk about Urahara. It hurt too much to remember what he'd had and lost.

"We want to know...no, we deserve to know, why you never told us about someone who was obviously important to you, Ichi-nii," whispered Yuzu, pinning him with soft, pleading eyes, begging to understand. She should have been too old to get to him like that, thought Ichigo morosely. But she did.

He sighed, shoulders slumping, trying to find the words to explain Kisuke to his family. "It wasn't serious, not at the beginning." How to explain their beginning to someone outside? From within it made perfect sense and was as natural as breathing; but how to make someone looking in at them understand the gradual and subtle change from student and teacher to lovers.

"The first time just sort of happened." And kept happening. "I didn't see any point in getting everyone all riled up over something that didn't really...," he paused, because it had meant something, even back then, that first time. He and Urahara had never been just a one off and it was stupid to pretend otherwise. He just hadn't wanted to admit that he was sleeping with a man physically old enough to be his father and realistically several centuries his elder. There was no good way to break someone like that to any family. And that didn't take Kisuke, himself in to account, the man had always been completely incorrigible. He didn't need his sisters, or worse, his father hearing about their sex life.

He sighed and tried to get himself back on track, trying once again to find a way to put into words what Urahara had meant to him, the peace the other man had brought him. "It was important, it was always important. I just didn't know...how to break him to you guys. Kisuke was always...eccentric." He caught the faint smile on his father's face and grinned. "I guess I was just scared."

"Eccentric? That would certainly describe him," murmured his father with a chuckle.

Silence fell, heavy and awkward, no one sure what to say. "Why him, Ichigo? Why?" his father offered tentatively into the silence and Ichigo winced. And there was the real reason he had never brought Kisuke home. He had never wanted to confront the fact that his father was a Shinigami, never wanted to discover that he and Kisuke had known each other.

It was one thing to know in the abstract that he was dating a man twice his age, but it was another to be confronted with the fact that he was sleeping with one of his father's old friends. He glanced up and sighed. "I can't really explain it...We were just good together. Everything was easy with him...He understood. Even when I said something stupid or didn't want to talk, he understood.

"He...He was never afraid of me, the power I had or what I could do." Half of Soul Society was afraid of him, how strong he was; but Kisuke had never looked at him as anything more than a young man. He had never been afraid of Shirosaki or doubted for one second that Ichigo couldn't contain the hollow. "He never saw me as anything other than who I was. He would tease me and make stupid jokes...he would make me smile," whispered Ichigo, suddenly understanding some of Urahara's behavior much more clearly. He had done it to make Ichigo smile. He felt tears prickle his eyes and a dull ache seize his heart.

Kisuke.

He wanted his lover, his Kisuke, not this lost child, but the man who had made him smile and had wiped away his tears. The man he still woke up looking for at odd times in the night. The man he could sit on the porch drinking tea with and talking about nothing with and still come away feeling better for it.

Yuzu was the first to touch him, hugging him tight and crying into his shoulder. Karin quickly followed, wrapping her arms around him. Her eyes were dry and Ichigo couldn't help but think how amazing she would be when she became an officer. No one in the entire Thirteen would cross her. Ishhin touched his shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze and met his eyes for a long moment. He understood. He understood what it was to have your heart die with another person, to struggle on day after day because there were people counting on you, but to wake up in the middle of the night alone and longing for the missing piece of your soul.

"He made you happy? You really loved him?" murmured the older Kurosaki.

Ichigo nodded.

"And he loved you?"

He flushed a little, but nodded. At least he thought Kisuke had loved him. It felt like love, not that he had much to compare it to. But watching Renji and Uryuu and Toushirou and Karin he thought what he and Kisuke had was love. "I think so. We...We never said it," he admitted, tears stinging his eyes at the admission. The words Kisuke had most deserved to hear and he had held them back. "We felt it though. We loved each other."

"Oh Masaki! Our dearest son found love! Protect his love until they can be reunited!" crowed Ishhin throwing his arms around them all.

"Shut up," snarled Ichigo and Karin, matching frowns on their faces.

Yuzu giggled and then grew somber. "Why didn't you ever tell us about him...after? After you came home," she asked carefully. And there was no mistaking the homecoming she was referring to. That first time after Urahara had died. He barely remembered it. All it was for him was a twisted nightmare of pain and loss.

He had held together long enough to get Kisuke into the ground, but the second the first handful of dirt had fallen on his lover he had broken. He'd begun sobbing, falling to his knees and keening. All the pain and grief he had been holding back had flooded through him and there had been nothing anyone could do to make it better. Benihime had joined her grief with his in a high wailing song of pain and despair, bringing tears to every eye present and cutting Ichigo to ribbons all over again.

It had been Renji to drag him to his feet and understand just where his grief was coming from. The redhead had stared at him in disbelief for a second before ruby eyes had softened with sympathy. The redhead had helped him home, supported him between Toushirou and himself. Ichigo didn't remember any of the trip, all he remembered was Urahara lying there in the hole, cold and still. Gone forever.

That image had been seared into his psyche, a raw bleeding wound that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Yuzu had been the one to open the door, to see the blood covering him. She had begun screaming before Renji got through to her and made her understand the blood wasn't his. He hadn't understood why the redhead had bothered. The blood might not have been from any wound to his body but it was his, it was his heart's blood.

It had taken Renji, Toushirou, his father and Karin to wash Urahara's blood away and he had fought them tooth and nail, overcome with grief, unable to part with that last piece of his lover. They had won though, ripping his robes from his body and forcing him into the shower, Renji, Toushirou and his father all restraining him. He remembered being put to bed after that, not that he had cared, by then his misery had been such that all he wanted to do was curl up and die, to follow Kisuke into oblivion.

He had laid in bed for three days, not eating or speaking, too heartbroken to even cry. He would have stayed in bed if Renji and Ishida hadn't dragged him out of bed and kicked his ass. And kept kicking it until he remembered how to live.

"It hurt too much. It hurt too much to remember him and know that...that he was gone. I couldn't talk about it. It was some horrible nightmare that I wanted to go away. Talking about it would have made it real and I didn't want it to be real. I wanted Kisuke to come back and tell me it was just a dream.

"And we had never told anyone. He...I never told him how I felt, or told anyone else how important he was to me and he was gone," whispered Ichigo, the tears breaking free and beginning to fall. A soft, comforting song drifted through the air.

"It felt like a kind of betrayal. I loved him so much, but I never did anything about it."

"Karin, Yuzu, let Ichigo and I talk for a minute," ordered his father, all hints of foolishness dropping away to reveal the man Ichigo so rarely saw, the captain his father had been.

Isshin hugged him, holding him and letting him cry like he hadn't done since he was a child. "It's alright, Ichigo. It's alright," murmured the older man, soothing hands moving gently up and down his back. "Kisuke wouldn't want you to be so miserable. You did the best you could and I'm sure he knew that."

"I miss him so much," he whispered softly, staring up into his father's face, looking for hope, for guidance, looking for anything to make the pain stop.

"I know. There's not a day that goes by that I don't miss your mother." And somehow, looking into his father's knowing eyes, helped with the pain, because there was someone else who understood.
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A Shadow of What Was