To Protect

Burden of the Past


His marriage had been arranged by his father when Souken has decided he had had enough of his son's ways and determined it was time for him to settle down to have a family. Ryuuken had known that the man had strictly wanted him to settle and have a wife to bear him children which his father had lofty ideas of turning into Quincy. It was his father's dream to see not his own.

Instead Ryuuken had wanted to pursue something as frivolous, at least in his father's opinion, as medicine. He had still been young, barely twenty then and already his father had wanted him to settle and plant his roots. As a young man he had wanted to see and experience the world, places outside of the bit of the islands of Japan that he knew. His interests as a Quincy had long since dwindled to nothing more than seven years before then, fighting he had a flare and passion for but his father had forced the ideology of their ancestors on him too strictly. Not to mention the few friends he had acquired featured several shinigami. This had been before Souken had learned his tolerance and forgiven, it had been the days when Souken had beaten him to the ground when he caught his boy associating with shinigami.

Really it had been harmless fun that the man had caught them at. Ryuuken had been with Isshin talking about their medical classes and a hollow had appeared. They had gone back and forth with it, careful of innocents, but trying to draw out the encounter. It had been the last time he had ever felt any exhilaration from battle.

Souken's ultimatum had come shortly thereafter. He was to cease his contact with the shinigami, marry and produce an heir to his powers or he would be disowned. At first he had wanted to deny the man who he had come to loathe, that had once been the person he admired most, but the threat of disownment had stopped his mouth from speaking too quickly. In the end his logic won out and he agreed with great disdain to his father's terms, gritting his teeth the whole while.

Parting company from Isshin and Kisuke had been easier than he thought it would be. Bluntly and coldly with words to start, but as he suspected they persisted on him to explain to them. It had been when he shot Isshin when the man laid a hand on his shoulder to try and persuade him that they had taken him seriously. It was the only time he had ever injured either of them and he had made sure it was neither serious nor minor. Then it had only been a matter of walking away.

So Ryuuken had been allowed to continue medical school so long as he avoided Isshin Kurosaki.

Then he had been arranged to marry to his discontent. The woman was pretty enough, dark hair and soft spoken. Had he met her and decided on his own he had feelings for her he may have been happy, but his father had chosen her not unlike the way a man chose a mare for breeding. Looking back on it he had felt sorry for her but at the time he had just been angry. He married her. He lived with her only after his marriage and contented himself to pretend she did not exist for the majority of the time oblivious to the pain she suffered for it. To the present it was something he never understood, how she had not simply hated him.

He'd managed to string things along for two years ignoring his home life before his father had forced his way in again. Not yet done with medical school he had had no choice unless he wanted to have wasted the past two years to concede to the old man's demands. This time he wanted children to his son's disgust, but he agreed.

It was one of the few things he could ever recall that his wife had seemed happy about while they had been trying to conceive. She had talked about it, he had pretended not to listen. Somehow he knew that she hoped a child would change him, could maybe soften him the way she couldn't in those years. It was about then that Ryuuken had wondered very briefly if that poor woman had loved him, but he pushed those thoughts away quickly because he did not think he could live with them were it true.

A few months later his wife was pregnant. Nine months after that he had a son which they had named Uryuu.

Souken was overjoyed to have a grandson and immediately Ryuuken had seen a look of something like hope on his face. It had in truth terrified him. With his own childhood in mind he had wanted his son far away from his father as possible. It had been that, that had prompted him to drive the old man away again to protect the boy while he could. There was resistance but not as much as he expected, what he knew without doubt would come once Uryuu was no longer an infant. For that time he could comfort himself with the thought his father was not already whispering lofty morals to his son.

His wife had been a happy mother and loved their son. It was one of the few things Ryuuken had ever been thankful for her for, she could offer the boy the attention and love he could not. She had even tried to help him to be a father. If he had ever loved her it had been then.

Ryuuken's own feelings about his son had been conflicted. There had been an immediate draw and curiosity when the boy was born. He had seen the process before from his choice of work but it was different when you were one of the parents. Undoubtedly his life had changed that day. The small, fragile child had been his and there had been a connection that flared an fierce protectiveness he had never felt for his family before. As a doctor he knew he would be able to provide financially with ease but this new surge of protectiveness had roared in his being that no one would ever lay hands on his son. It had even extended to his wife, a woman he now felt he owed a debt of gratitude to.

Uryuu had been a small finicky thing. Pale as snow and with his mother's dark hair. He grew as all children did from infant to toddler quickly. When he took his first steps Ryuuken had not been there. When he spoke his first words Ryuuken had not been there. When he had started school Ryuuken had not been there. The boy had mostly been raised by his mother with the sparse attention from his father.

Ryuuken had been there when his son's powers first manifested themselves though. If he had not been there he shuddered to think what would have occurred. It was a night that he would never forget and he was all too happy his son had been too young to remember.

Only six his son was afraid of the dark as many children were. Ryuuken had not been there to hear the stories about monsters in his room or outside his windows. Of course his wife had thought them little more than the common fears of a child and had simply tried to soothe him. There had been no way his wife could have known the truth, known that those monsters were real. His wife had been a human after all, plain and ordinary without even the ability to sense the supernatural. There was no way his wife could have known about hollows.

After a long shift he had come home intent on getting some sleep before the entire process was due to begin again. The house had been dark and silent so he had gone straight up to bed. Sleep had come for awhile but he had been woken by screams that had started him to his feet and had him bolting as fast as he could move to his son's room, wife not far behind him. The screams had not been the startled or frightened cries that followed a nightmare or a simple scare. Those screams he could hear were pure and unadulterated fear and panic.

They found Uryuu pressing himself against a corner or his room, arms over his head trying to make himself as small as possible while screaming and shaking. Unlike his wife he hadn't frozen in the door to stare at the large black serpentine beast slithering closer to their boy and ran forward yanking the child out of his nook to drag him away from danger. Ryuuken had not even had to think to put himself between the hollow and his son. Unarmed there was not much more else he could do than that.

Without a weapon and unprepared for a fight it had been too easy to knock him aside, he had fallen out of practice. A long tail snapped at him and sent him back out through the open door and into a hall's wall. The collision with the wall had left him strongly dazed from the force alone. When it had cleared enough for him to understand what was going on again the collar of his shirt was specked with red and the hair on the back of his head as streaked with lines of red.

Clear thought took a moment longer and he tore from his place to the master bedroom tearing the closet open and pulling out an old box, knocking it from the shelf and spilling the contents across the floor. Papers and letters scattered along with a few other things, keepsakes mostly. He saw what he was looking for in an instant even in the dim light from the moon. The silver cross shone and he snagged it on his way from the room to his wife and son.

His heart in his throat he could not help but to pause with wide eyes to what he returned to. His wife pressed back against the jamb of the door starting aghast at not the hollow but their son. Uryuu was on the floor and curled up again, arms over himself to try and shield himself. His body was trying to protect itself on instinct and for a human that meant little more than perhaps being able to sacrifice as limb and live, his son was not a normal human. Instinct had flared and the boy was trying to draw on the reishi about them to shield himself. The glow was dull and the energy raw but it was about survival not skill.

Raising his hands he had drawn up his bow now with his cross in his possession, energy flaring over him in a way it had not in years now and he fired. It only took one shot but in the time it took to fire that one shot he had never felt so terrified. The hollow had reared and lunged toward Uryuu, but the arrow had flown true and pierced the mask doing more than just divert it but destroyed the beast's head entirely. The arrows was more raw than it should have been but he had been panicked, hurried and desperate.

All the commotion had drawn more of them in and despite his driving need to make sure his son was alright, he had to destroy what was still a threat to him before he could see to him. It did not take long, he hurried the process ignoring the cuts on his fingers this caused. A part of him hoped his wife had taken the boy away to at least not see was spectacle but when he had turned feeling exhausted in a way he could not recall being since before his marriage they had both not moved. His son was still on the floor pressed back against the nearest piece of furniture looking at his father with wide and terrified eyes. His wife's expression was much the same and she had not budged, looking pale as death.

Ignoring the woman he went to his son to check on him relieved to see no bites and that he was not simply a spirit with his chain of fate severed. Adrenaline made him oblivious to his own injuries and he had crushed his son to himself. It was one of the few times he could ever recall Uryuu clinging to him as if his life depended upon it. Not sure what to do to comfort him he just held his son, thinking that it may had been as much for the boy as it was for him. They were both shaking, for mostly different reasons, and his son was sobbing against his shoulder.

Once the adrenaline had worn off the rest of that night was a haze to him. He had woken in his bed with his son in his arms, boy still holding onto him but they were alone. His body ached from his hands, to his arm, to his head. The blood had caked in his hair and the back of his shirt was stuck to him. His hands looked more of a mess than they were thankfully. His son was still uninjured though he looked exhausted and drawn from his experience.

When he had managed to rise from the bed with his sleeping son, he refused to let him leave his sight for now, his wife had been gone. Some of her things were missing so it had not been a great leap of logic to know she had left. The woman Souken had picked had been weak. She had not tried to save her son, not that he thought she'd spare the energy on him, but on her own son she had not been able to simply grab the boy and run to hide them both. Then in light of their powers she had fled. Any love he had for her died and disappeared without any chance of resurrection.

They were better off without her, he decided quickly if she was so useless.

Of all people Urahara had shown up, a bit of a mess looking between father and son relieved to see them alive. The exile had tended to him and explained he would have come sooner but between a small surge of hollows and the responding shinigami it had been unsafe to do so. Ryuuken would have been spiteful about that but he knew Kisuke's presence remaining a secret was not just about that man's life alone but others as well. More than the two he and his son made. The slew of apologies and assistance made forgiving him a bit easier as well.

That night many things had happened quickly. He had learned his son was indeed a Quincy and that his wife was a spineless coward. He had also learned he needed to be a Quincy still to keep Uryuu safe, so he would do as much.

He carried his cross again from that day onward.

When Souken reappeared he allowed the man to start with Uryuu's lessons in their heritage. The boy had been reluctant at first but soon grew eager to learn. Ryuuken watched closely to make sure his father never raised a hand to him, and he never saw the man do so so he allowed himself to slowly relax.

Life at home had changed with just the two of them. Being a single father was not something he was accustomed to nor that he was good at. His son went without the love and attention he used to have without his mother there to provide it. Regret bloomed heavily in Ryuuken's heart in a way it had not even when he was forced to leave his only friends behind.

Souken had swept in then and filled that void. The old man became a grandfather and shared the legacy of Quincy with Uryuu. Souken had offered the boy attention and praise, eventually love and affection. Days were spent talking about things like dignity and honor, stories shared that his son ate up with childish wonder. Souken had gotten the chance to make his prodigy again.

Ryuuken on the other hand watched his son drift away from him. After the night of the hollow attack his son had shown him a strange new kind of adoration and dependence but it was gone now. His son had someone else to cling to. The void between them had started then. The doctor had not known how to bridge it but the few times he tried to drive Souken away again to reclaim Uryuu, the boy always sought the older man out again. In the end he had to accept that Souken was now a grandfather but it dredged up all his old hate.

Time passed, Uryuu grew. Ryuuken's time away from home had returned to the hours of when he's first been married. The physician still managed to make sure that Souken never harmed his boy but that was all he could do, or all he could manage.

And it only got worse.

The older Uryuu got the less Ryuuken could relate to him. They spoke little, saw each other seldom. The time he spent with the boy was filled with talk of Quincy and Souken, two things Ryuuken had come to despise. It had struck a cord and he had struck out with his words for the first time. His son had gone to his grandfather of course. Then it sunk in that he lost his son to the man.

The heart that had begun to thaw froze again and Ryuuken prepared to close the door on that part of his life again.

Swearing to never become a Quincy again he broke Souken's ultimatum at long last. There was no freedom though instead he only felt defeated.

It was a small consolation that he could see the faces of his friends again but it was not the same. Ryuuken had changed, they had changed. Isshin had a family of his own with a son and more coming on the way, but he was happy for his friend. Kisuke was a merchant and had opened up dealings with Soul Society of all places.

That was about the time the position for staff director had come up and Ryuuken had taken it seeing as he had nothing left but his work.




AN: This is my attempt to explain the fucked-up that is the relationship between the three Ishida men. It's in no way true or reinforced but just my own idea of what may have led things to have passed as they would from Ryuuken's denial of his powers to Uryuu's mother being unhappy and fading away. I didn't include Souken's death since I didn't want it happening in the understood time-line just yet, though this is just even though this is just something like a flashback. It was supposed to just explain the rift between Ryuuken and Uryuu.

And I am still alive and updating. Hopefully it won't be too long before I do this again.

While it may be late I would like to say thank you for all the reviews I had gotten. Thank you.