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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
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Author's Notes: There will be a slight delay in chapter posting for the next week or so due to one of my co-workers being injured and me having to cover her shifts as well as my own. *sigh* Twelve to fourteen hour days are not fun even if they do get me extra cash.

This chapter will hopefully clear up a few questions on Kisuke's motives/actions. If not, well, a nice bash to the back of the head would be a blessing this week.

And still no winner on the threesome game.

* * *

"Kisuke! Kisuke, are you here? Kisuke!" called Benihime, racing across the bridge and into the foggy world of Kisuke's soul. There were hints of how things should have been, glimpses of familiar walls and paths, they were quickly swallowed by the fog though. She glanced around, hating this alien place that had once been her home, hating the fog that covered and concealed everything she had once known.

"Kisuke!" she called again, growing worried. She could feel the pain radiating through their link, feel the utter despair of her master - and couldn't reconcile it to the calm, cool discussion she had seen in Ichigo's memories. Something was wrong.

"Kisuke!"

"You don't need to yell, my crimson princess. I can hear you just fine," murmured Kisuke, appearing from the fog. Only it wasn't him. Or rather it was him, not as he should have been, but as he had been. It was Kisuke as he had been all those centuries ago when he was a young Shinigami, dressed in his robes with his captain's haori around his shoulders. That casual arrogance and complete self-assurance that he had lost years ago, were once more in his bearing and a certain hungry gleam lingered in his eyes. It was Kisuke as he had been when she first met him, not as she remembered him, weighed down by guilt and sorrow. It was the young captain who had thought he could take on the world and do anything.

"Kisuke?" she asked, puzzled and unsure of what could be happening. Her home was an alien place and her master was an unknown once more. It was not how she had imagined her homecoming, her reunion with her beloved. She had imagined that he would remember her and reclaim her once more. But Kisuke was not ready to take her up and yet the Captain - her master - stood before her.

"Not quite. Come with me, Benihime," Kisuke murmured, holding out his hand for her. She hesitantly took it, wanting to wrap her arms around her lord and cry at the oh so familiar feeling of joy that touching him brought.

Kisuke led her through the fog as if unaffected by it, as if he could see all the old corridors and paths. "Not all of them, but the ones that are mine," he told her softly, shocking her and making her smile. He had always been brilliant, five steps ahead of everyone else. He led her to a clearing in the fog, a crossroads where a young man lay curled up in the fetal position, clearly having cried himself to sleep.

She watched in fascinated horror as the young man's image wavered and changed. He grew older and dark circles formed under his eyes, his shoulders - his whole body - sagged under the weight of his sins. His clothing shifted to the green haori and hat she knew so well. This was Kisuke as she remembered him, as he had been when he died. Then Kisuke was once more young, no older than his mortal age of seventeen and dressed in the white kimono the healers had placed him in. He slept on as the image fluctuated between the two versions, one moment Urahara and one moment Mizuno.

"What...what's happening? Why is he like that? What's going on?" she demanded, jerking her hand away from the version of Kisuke at her side and backing away from him, frightened by this horrible fracturing of her master. What had happened to him? Had he gone mad?

"I can merely guess as I only truly awakened a short while ago, myself. I suspect however, that one of those is our current incarnation, his thoughts and feelings and emotions. The other is likely a later version of myself, still slumbering in the recesses of our soul, Urahara as he was when he died. I am likely his early life, his memories up until he left Soul Society, or perhaps just until our current age. I'm unsure which of us has what memories or how many there might be," murmured the Captain.

"You awakened?" she asked softly, looking between the three versions of Kisuke with shock.

"Yes, when we did battle with the Hollow. I was forced to awaken in order to save us. It drew me from my slumber and since then I've been trying to protect us and to speak to our current self. I am able to merge with him for a short time but not lastingly. And he has been less than receptive," murmured the Captain with a slight look of distaste for the figure at the crossroads. She recognized that look, it was the same look Kisuke had used to get when he was forced to explain something for a second or even third time to a particularly slow underling when he was working on a project. In the past it had been funny, but without the laughter and light, Kisuke's boyish charm, it was just chilling.

"You were the one in the medical ward!" she realized.

"Of course. Our human self was endangering us," murmured the Captain with a slight shrug.

"Wait! If he and Hat-n-Clogs' are merged then why doesn't he remember?" she demanded, staring at the still fluctuating Kisuke.

"They are not merged, I would guess because this Hat-n-Clogs as you call him, is still asleep. His memories are still buried but his feelings carry through to our host in dreams. That is only a theory, but it seems sound and would explain his...attachment to the captain of the Fifth."

"Wait! He remembers? He remembers Ichigo? He remembers what Urahara felt for him? Why did he say he didn't? Why lie about it?" she exclaimed, not understanding. Kisuke had loved Ichigo beyond all reason, would have walked through Hell on nothing more than his command. There was no way he would have let Ichigo be hurt.

"You! You did this," she breathed, starting at the Captain in shocked horror.

"I protect them," he replied with a shrug. "Our host couldn't handle the feelings, was terrified of them. I am unable to reach the later version of myself and awaken him to deal with this and I have no stake in this relationship we are alleged to have - it is not part of my memories. No one else was able to handle the situation so I stepped in and dealt with it."

"You shattered both of them!" she snapped at him, earning a sharp frown.

"I protected both of them," A gesture for the men in the clearing, "And myself. This relationship is dangerous and counterproductive to us while we are still divided." Benihime frowned as she tried to remember Kisuke as a young Shinigami, without his later burdens and without his love for Ichigo. It was hard, Ichigo had become so integral to him, his first love - she tried to imagine what a younger and hungrier Urahara would make of those feelings. The closest he could come to understanding them was his feelings for Yoruichi but there would always be a certain bitter resentment buried there, a certain hatred for not being good enough. There was none of that with Ichigo. The young man had snuck in under his defenses and stolen Kisuke's heart before her master had realized it - and he had been absolutely charmed and terrified by it. From the outside, Kisuke's devotion had to seem like madness - especially to the Captain who had only found pain and heartache in his few, fumbling attempts at romance.

"You're ruining their lives!"

She quailed as the Captain drew himself up tall and straight, not used to this colder and harder version of her master. She had grown used to Urahara's laughter and affection. The Captain had laughed but he had always been able to be more...ruthless than Hat-n-Clogs, because he had believed in himself with the faith of the young. Time and tragedy had sapped that blind confidence from him in later years, but this man still had it. He could still do terrible things for what he perceived to be the greater good. Hat-n-Clogs had been able to do those things, but the difference was that he regretted them. He knew they stole pieces of his humanity and he mourned it. The Captain hadn't reached that point yet.

"I am doing what I think is best for us, all of us, Benihime," he told her firmly and she knew that tone, it was the tone of the man who had created Hougyoku. The Captain would not be moved on the issue of Ichigo or their feelings for him.
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A Shadow of What Was