Have a Bleach snippet from a world where Urahara has empathy but it doesn't stop him from doing what's necessary, Aizen is an apocalyptic threat, Ichigo is a girl because reasons, and Ururu is a rescue from a Central 46 lab.
Also this snippet is kind of predicated on the assumption that Urahara is responsible for Ichigo turning out as an utter science experiment of a person. (If you know me IRL, you have all my disclaimers.) ______________
Kisuke's throat tightens and his eyes start to burn.
He looks away from the baby, up at the blank wall of the clinic. He forces his expression to go neutral.
It takes longer than it should, for someone raised in the Shihouin household.
In and out, even and quiet, he breathes. The little girl in his arms breathes, too. He can feel her little rib cage expand and contract in his arms, can hear her soft exhales.
He tunes it out, and grows ice in his heart.
When he has regained himself, he looks back down.
This little girl, he decides — she does not need to be lied to just yet. He will make it clear, in this moment, hidden in the shadows of a clinic no human may enter, that he is her enemy, and she is not safe with him.
“I am going to make you hurt yourself very badly, one day,” he confesses softly, cradling her. “I am going to twist you up so horribly that you will volunteer to destroy your own soul. And then you will experience agony beyond what any being was meant to endure, and then you will die.”
In his arms, she stays sleeping.
More words push at the back of his mouth, the specifics of it all, the worst of the crimes he will commit against her. He has never had the urge to tell a target his plans, before, but he finds it difficult to not do so, now.
He bites it all back, swallows it all down.
He lowers her, slowly, back down into her crib. Before he pulls his hands back, he finds himself rubbing his thumb across her forehead, and then brushing her tiny little cheek with the back of a finger.
He crouches so that he is on her level, looking at her through the bars of the crib. “If you ever see me, little one,” he breathes out, “run, and do not look back.”
And then he stands up and leaves.
He does not make it back to the Shoten before he breaks. The warmth of her against his chest, the slight pressure of her in his arms as he held her, it all stays with him — a phantom that his brain cannot let go of.
It reminds him of the first time he held Ururu, carrying her away from the monsters who had abused her. Rescuing her from the facility where she was seen only as a weapon, not as the child she was, not as a scared and hurting little girl who needed help.
The parallels are impossible to not see.
Without consciously deciding to do so, he finds himself in a liquor store. He takes three bottles of soju and leaves without paying. He does not permit the humans to notice him.
Human alcohol cannot kill shinigami, and he does not want to be awake to the world any longer. So he stops, right in the middle of the street, invisible to all who would see his shame, and he slices off the tops of the bottles.
A quick flash of power from Benihime, severing glass from glass, and then he is drinking - drinking like a dying man drinking water in the desert: quickly and without regard for the damage too much can do.
Six minutes find every drop gone.
Before it hits, he shunpos back to the shop, seals himself in his room, and lies down to suffer. _____
He wakes up to cat fangs in his ear.
He hisses, and the noise hurts.
A second later, he starts registering input from his nose, and is promptly assaulted by the stench of sweat and vomit. He can dimly feel both fluids seeped into his shirt, sticking to his skin.
He cracks his eyes open. The light coming through the window feels like daggers stabbed into the meat of his brain. He closes them again instantly.
The cat fangs retreat, now that he has proven he is awake and not dead. Yoruichi says, “The name.” She is angry, and before she continues, Kisuke assumes she is angry at him.
“It’s Kurosaki Ichigo,” she continues.
It takes a moment for it to register.
Ichigo. First protector.
First to protect, and thus never to be protected by others.
First to risk herself. First to the thick of the fighting. First to die.
In essence, Shiba Isshin and Kurosaki Masaki have named their infant child self-sacrifice.
His response comes like sap, slow and sticking in his throat. “There was a time, not too long ago,” he croaks out, “that we would have killed someone for that.”
His mind flashes back to what it felt like to hold Ichigo — Ichigo, gods, they are all going to hell — and then back to what it felt like to meet Ururu, and what they did to protect Ururu, and what they needed to protect Ururu from, and what they are planning on doing to Ichigo — and he starts to laugh.
It hurts. The sound, the movement, the air in his throat. The being awake. But he can’t stop.
Yoruichi’s head butts under his chin. Her tiny skull is a source of gentle pressure, of muted warmth.
The small comfort cracks him straight through, and he rolls over to hide his face in her fur, crying. _________________ … And then a decade and some years later Ichigo sits Kisuke down to lecture him on the Trolley Problem. She goes on a long rant about how pulling the lever doesn’t make him guilty for the trolley existing in the first place, and also how she would have been pissed if he hadn't pulled the lever considering that a good chunk of existence and her sisters were on the opposite track, and also can he stop acting guilty for figuring out how to save the world, please.
The lecture doesn't exactly stick, but that's okay, she can repeat it whenever necessary, on account of the fact that the world didn't end because the plan worked.
