This was… probably a bad idea, Uryuu acknowledged, as he made his slow way to the window and peered out of it. It seemed to be early in the day, judging by the angle of the sunlight across the walls and roofs of Seireitei, but not too early. The view also served to reinforce what a terrible idea this was; he was on at least the third story, if not the fourth, and, even if he had been on the first floor, escaping out the window was… very anime-cliche of him. Wasn’t it?

Uryuu glanced over his shoulder at the partially open door to his room. Back to the view out the window.

They would hunt him down if he escaped. Hunt him down and likely tie him to that bed. He had just enough medical knowledge to know that he was in no way recovered. But… Uryuu was tired of the stares, and the constant presence of at least one of Ichigo’s friends, all cloying-sweet and worried.

(Why were they worried about him? They were Ichigo’s friends, not his! Especially the Shinigami amongst them!)

(A bitter, furious part of his soul was certain they only pretended to care, in order to have a chance to reach Ichigo within him.)

Resolute, Uryuu slid open the window and hopped up onto the sill, one hand clutching at the frame as his body protested the action.

(*I’m going to kill myself with this shit,*) Uryuu thought blankly, as he stared down at the ground so far below him. (*I’m going to trip, and fall, and crack my idiot head open. I should go back to bed and lay back down.*)

But no voices replied to him, and while he knew this was a horrible idea, he also knew he needed to escape, even if only for a few minutes.

Uryuu reinforced himself as much as his pitifully depleted reserves would allow and gave a leap of faith, aiming for a roof a bit below and to one side. He went sprawling across the red tiles, the breath driven from his body and his limbs as shaky as a newborn foal’s, but he had made it.

It felt like an eternity before he could gather the strength to rise back to his feet and begin his shambling process across the tightly packed roofs of Seireitei. He didn’t know where he was going, didn’t have even the vaguest idea of a goal, he just… knew he needed to move. Needed to be out of that white-white room and away from the constant watch of others.

(White walls and white ceilings and a blue, blue sky with a bright-bright sun that was fake-fake-/fake/.)

(Sometimes he wondered if he could only trust the night sky to be real.)

Eventually, though, he had to stop. His limbs wouldn’t stop trembling, his bare feet protested every step he took, and his breathing was ragged. He’d long since lost the ability to reinforce his body, and all that was driving him onwards was his will and his inability to admit defeat. So when he found a small, sun-drenched nook made by the meeting of two buildings, Uryuu was quite content to curl himself into the spot and rest, tucked away and hopefully hidden.

He remained there, half-dozing and half awake, as the sun traveled across the sky. It was so peaceful in his little nook, even with the various Shinigami that he could sense wandering by. Uryuu wondered if they were ignoring him, or if his reiryoku was so depleted that he wasn’t even producing any reiatsu to be sensed.

“Ishida Uryuu.”

Uryuu started, head jerking up from where it had been resting against the wall, and he stared in mute shock at Kuchiki Byakuya. The Captain was as put together as usual, looking like the injuries he had gained in Hueco Mundo had never happened. A tiny frown crossed the man’s expression when Uryuu didn’t respond to him, and he took a small step closer.

“I do not believe you were released from the Fourth yet,” Kuchiki prompted.

Uryuu gave an awkward shrug and looked away. What was he supposed to say? He hadn’t been released, and was probably doing himself more harm by being out here instead of resting in a bed.

A tiny breath of air escaped the stoic Captain, and Uryuu turned his gaze back on Kuchiki in confusion. Had that… had that been a sigh?

“Come along then,” Kuchiki told him imperiously, turning away from Uryuu and moving towards the edge of the roof. “It will soon be afternoon, and this is no place for someone to convalesce.”

Uryuu sighed and slowly unfolded his body. Well, at least he’d managed a few hours outside of the hospital. That was something, right? He reluctantly moved to follow the other man, and grimaced down at the street the moment he came to the edge of the roof. Getting down was… going to be exciting. He could already feel that in his bones.

But before he could do more than try to gather himself to jump down, a powerful arm was around his waist and the world /blurred/. Suddenly he was on the ground, one hand gripping Kuchiki’s arm as tightly as he could (which wasn’t very), and biting back a startled sound that he /refused/ to acknowledge possibly giving voice to.

Kuchiki released him the moment Uryuu was steady once more, and began to walk away with another imperious gesture to follow.

Uryuu paused, staring at Kuchiki in confusion, then over his shoulder at what he was /sure/ was the actual direction of the hospital. Was… was the Captain not going to bring him back? Wasn’t Kuchiki /all about/ following the law to the letter? That was the impression Uryuu had gained through his short exposure to the man, but… well, maybe this was just another path through the maze that was Seireitei’s streets.

So Uryuu followed, not seeing a point in protesting. He had been caught, after all, and he really didn’t have the energy to be more rebellious than he already had been this morning. Kuchiki was even polite enough to temper his pace to one that Uryuu’s tired limbs could keep up with. Uryuu fell into a trance of simply placing one foot in front of the other, trailing along after Kuchiki like some stray animal, even if the comparison would have normally sent him into a fury.

That trance shattered the moment they came to a gate that was /definitely/ not the entrance to the Fourth Division, and Uryuu shot Kuchiki a confused look as a servant opened the door and bowed deeply to the Captain.

“See him to the gardens,” Kuchiki ordered the servant with an absent tone, as he swapped his outside shoes for softer indoor versions. He looked at Uryuu for a moment, then said, “You may rest here for the afternoon. My servants will provide you with a meal, as well.”

Uncertain of what to do with this unlooked for kindness, Uryuu just nodded and watched the man walk off down a hallway and deeper into the mansion.

“This way, please, sir,” the servant told him, gesturing for Uryuu to follow.

Feeling entirely out of his depth, Uryuu followed along, through the mansion and out another set of doors into the elaborate garden at the heart of the residence. It was surreal to take the three steps down to the smooth stone path. Surreal to think that he was here, staring at a garden straight out of the history books. A noble’s garden, full of delicate trees and even more delicate plants, all in carefully maintained beds. Even the grass looked perfectly maintained, with no blade reaching beyond a certain length.

When Uryuu glanced behind him he noticed that the servant had vanished once more, leaving him alone with a garden that made Uryuu feel like tiptoeing.

He took a breath, held it for a moment, then shook his head and made his unsteady way down the path. He needed to lay down soon, based on the way his limbs were starting to tremble again, and he just hoped there was a good place to do so. The porch was a possibility, but it was entirely shadowed and right now Uryuu wanted to be out in the sunlight.

He gave up searching for a good spot, and simply settled down on the grass next to the koi pond before his limbs gave out on him. The hospital yukata kept the grass from being prickly, the sun was pleasingly warm, and the only thing he could hear was the gentle rustle of tree leaves and the sound of moving water.

Uryuu turned to stare coldly at Ryuuken, at the man who had sired him and given him back his powers and told him cease having any dealings with Shinigami. Who was now standing, stiff and out of place, in this world of Shinigami but yet was still comfortable enough to frown disapprovingly at him. As if everything was his fault. As if he was still, still so wanting, so hopeless, even after all he’d done, all he’d survived.

“I have,” Uryuu said, just as stiff and cold as Ryuuken’s words.

“Good. Then it’s time for us to return to the living world, to your proper place.” Ryuuken spoke confidently, as if taking for granted that Uryuu would agree, would willingly leave with him. “They should have never placed you with Kurosaki Isshin. He’s a brilliant doctor for being an idiot, but he runs a home clinic, not a hospital. Given your condition at the time, and given that the Shinigami apparently decided to abandon you with—”

“Get out,” Uryuu snarled, as he glared up at Ryuuken. How dare he. How /dare/ he? “Get. Out.”

Ryuuken blinked, startled and wary and still so heartbreakingly frigid that Uryuu wondered how the man’s reiatsu still felt alive. Even Rukia’s reiatsu was warmer, filled with ice and snow and yet so much /joy/ at his living that it /hurt/ because /what was he to her/.

“Uryuu..?”

“I won’t have you just… just coming in here and belittling those who kept me alive!” Uryuu clenched his hands, trying to stop the trembling from betraying him. “Would you have done any better? Or would you have ignored me, left me to rot in my own inner world because of your goddamn /pride/ and /unwillingness/ to deal with Shinigami?”

“Quincy don’t have inner worlds,” Ryuuken stated firmly, implacably, his eyes narrowed and his body stiff. “And as the director of the hospital I have many duties that need to be seen to day to day. It is also not my place to try to do everything; that is why I have other doctors and nurses on staff, to take care of all the things I cannot.”

Uryuu slumped back into his pile of pillows and gave a hollow, brittle laugh. His father was so /blind/. Had he really once looked up to this man? This empty shell of a person who stood and spoke of duty and saving the living and /ignored the changes in his own son/. Had he really wanted to /prove Ryuuken wrong?/

Orange-striped hair fell across his face. He didn’t bother to sweep it aside. Stared up at the man through two-toned hair and let his laughter die a broken death. “That’s where you’re wrong. I’m not a Quincy. Or a Shinigami. I don’t know what I am, but I’m /something/ and that /something/ is no longer human. Could your nurses even see me, Ryuuken?”

Ryuuken’s silence would have hurt at one point, would have made Uryuu turn away and reassess his approach, but right now… Right now he had never wanted to see the man who had sired him dead more than he did in that instant. His silent, empty mind echoed with a fury that couldn’t quite touch the core of his soul, but still blazed through his body and made his clenched fingers tremble with restrained emotion.

“I doubt they could,” Uryuu spoke, voice cutting and teeth bared in an unnatural grin. “Urahara pulled a trick when we left, turned us humans into reishi constructs. And then, while in that state, I merged with a Shinigami soul. With /Ichigo’s/ soul. Somehow I doubt they wanted to take their chances on turning my /barely living body/ physical again.”

Ryuuken’s breath caught in his throat, and once upon a time Uryuu would have pounced upon that sign of weakness, on that shred of /possibly he cares/, but that was a long time ago and now all he felt was that trembling rage and empty fury that drove him to his limits.

“I’m not a Quincy anymore,” Uryuu told Ryuuken coldly, ignoring the way the words tried to catch in his throat. “I’m not a Quincy, and I’m not a human, so I guess I’m not an Ishida anymore. Go away, Ryuuken. Go back to your hospital, to your /living humans/. I may not belong with the Shinigami, but I certainly don’t belong in your narrow little world anymore.”

With that, he turned away, stared out the window, ignored the man who had sired him. Fought to keep himself from tensing up as Ryuuken’s expression, reflected in the glass, grew stormy, and the man stalked closer. He was essentially at the other’s mercy, too weak to rise, too weak to fight… where were his watchers? Would they leave him to the non-existent mercy of his father, or…

“I think that’s enough,” Kurosaki Isshin’s firm voice broke the silence, as the ex-Shinigami appeared next to Ryuuken and held him back. “You can talk with him later, Ryuuken. Let’s just… go back home, okay?”

Uryuu breathed a sigh of relief as the door closed behind the two, leaving him alone with his thoughts. With his memories. With the silence.

“Where’s all that vaunted power now?” Ichigo asked, as he darted after Aizen, forcing his sword back into a bow briefly so Uryuu could aim and fire another Getsuga Tenshou straight into the monster’s torso.

“I will admit to some surprise,” Aizen said, as he struck again, sword singing as it clove the air. “You work so well together, one might even think you had hope to defeat me!”

“We will defeat you!” Ichigo roared back, as he lashed out with his free hand and grabbed Aizen’s sword, a trickle of blood running down his palm from the edge. He sneered in the man’s face, at Aizen’s dumbfounded expression, and thrust forward with his sword.

They danced across the sky, cutting and striking at each other. Uryuu lurked in the background, manipulating their reiatsu to resist Aizen’s blows, to force the other to constantly exert more and more effort. And whenever they had a moment, Ichigo forced his sword into a bow, and Uryuu shot a black arrow at Aizen.

It was wearing on the man, they could tell. Their tag-teaming was coming smoother, with Zangetsu having to step in less and less as they continued to fight. The Getsuga arrows were everything they had hoped — Aizen, in his hubris, had allowed the first to land, and blood still marred his right shoulder, even though the wound had long closed.

(*The Ginto,*) Uryuu murmured, as he hardened their reiatsu to resist another of Aizen’s strikes.

Ichigo grunted in acknowledgment, and reached back with his left hand to pull one of the tubes free of Uryuu’s belt. He didn’t do anything with it, not yet, merely held it ready as he felt Uryuu feeding a trickle of their power into it in preparation for its use.

“Your foolish defiance will end here!” Aizen proclaimed, as he retreated momentarily and raised a hand to the sky. “All your strength is worthless against kidou!

“Seeping crest of turbidity. Arrogant vessel of lunacy! Boil forth and deny!”

Ichigo grit his teeth, as he gave way before Uryuu’s prompting. The Ginto erupted into black light in their hand, and he felt muscles straining as Uryuu pulled his bow to a full draw.

“Grow numb and flicker! Disrupt sleep! Crawling queen of iron! Eternally self-destructing doll of mud!”

The Ginto-empowered Getsuga Tenshou arrow lanced forth from their bow, leaving a slash of pitch black in its wake.

“Unite! Repulse!”

Aizen’s eyes widened in shock, as the arrow pierced his torso. Blood dribbled down the corner of his mouth. The power gathered around his hand flickered, wavered, as the man choked out the last of the incantation, “F-fill with s-soil an-and know your own powerl-lessn-ness! H-hado nin-nety, K-kurohi-hitsugi!”

“Shit!” Ichigo shouted, as huge black boxes with leaning spears atop them began to multiply around them. He remembered when Komamura had been hit with a version of this, and how Aizen had said it was barely a third of its strength without the incantation.

Frantic, he glanced around, looking for an escape and finding none.

(*Ichigo!*) Uryuu’s sharp voice cut through his panic, even as Ichigo felt his left hand going for one of the remaining Ginto. It snapped to life as Uryuu forced it open, shedding bright green light over the darkening world. (*Ginto sever the bonds of reiatsu!*)

“Right!” Ichigo slung the bow over his back as if it was his sword, and switched the Ginto to his right hand. They had no time for finesse, not when the space remaining around them was growing smaller with every second. With a shout, he poured everything he had into striking out, cutting through walls and severing spears as quickly as they appeared.

Sweat dripped down his forehead. The Ginto was dragging through the kidou, shattering pieces of it haphazardly, and he could feel the weight of power pressing in on them, fluctuating constantly.

Finally, with a shout that Uryuu echoed, the two of them pulsed their reiatsu as high as possible, making the Ginto flare nearly white with power as the kidou shattered into a million fragments around them, exploding outwards in a rush of power and unchained destruction.

Ichigo bit back a cry of pain, as shards dug into their shared body, gouging wounds that they couldn’t defend against. So much of their power had been directed towards the purpose of escape, of destroying the kidou they were trapped within, that they had nothing left to defend with.

They stayed on their feet through force of will alone, and Uryuu clumsily wove the ransoutengai over their entire body, supporting it with puppetry. Blood dripped into their eyes from a gouge across their forehead, and Ichigo clumsily wiped it away, squinting through the pain and dispersing fragments of reishi to find Aizen. Even as damaged as they were, they *couldn’t* give up, not when they had come this far, fought him so well, *wounded him* the way they had.

(*Oh.*) Uryuu said, as they finally spotted their enemy, a rush of relief flooding them at the sight.

Aizen was on his knees, wounded gravely by both the ginto skewered through his chest and the shards of exploding kidou, and Urahara, his face set in a snarl of concentration, was applying… something… to the traitor. The more Urahara worked, the less inhuman Aizen looked, until he looked no different from the smug bastard that had taunted them so long ago, as he left Soul Society through a negacion.

They were both viciously pleased to note that the ginto remained even through the change, the lingering black reiatsu that clung to it lashing out any time Urahara attempted to pull it free, until the shopkeeper finally gave up and just let it be.

But finding that their battle was over, the fight won and the monster defeated — if not killed, but perhaps that would come later, and they both hoped they were invited to the execution — their energy flagged. Adrenaline started to flush from their system, and the sting of their wounds blossomed into sheer *agony* as the world dimmed and flickered around them.

Ichigo groaned softly, as Uryuu allowed their body to settle onto the broken ground. He just… wanted to sleep. That sounded like a wonderful plan.

“Ishida..? Damn!” Urahara’s voice broke through the gathering fog in their mind, and Ichigo forced their head up slightly to squint in Urahara’s direction. The panic in the man’s voice was… concerning. But… he could deal with it later. Apologize for failing. For falling, on that rooftop in Hueco Mundo.

“Hold on, kid. Don’t die on me now, damnit!” Urahara snarled.

A rush of healing kidou rippled through their body, and Ichigo sighed at the relief it brought. As the pain eased off a bit, he felt the call of sleep rising up, until it was all he could do to cling to consciousness.

“Shit, just hold on. I’m going to get Inoue.”

Inoue? But… she was in Hueco Mundo still. Wasn’t she?

He just… wanted to sleep.

Uryuu slipped away. The ransoutengai faltered. Failed. Leaving Ichigo to slump over on the broken ground. It was… uncomfortable. But he was just… so tired.

He closed his eyes.

||||

“*… I reject!*”

||||

Uryuu swam to consciousness, feeling worse than the time his father had pushed him to his limit, and then *beyond it*, in order to reawaken his powers. His entire body ached, and he felt too tired to even force his eyes open.

But… the longer he rested, the better he felt, though nothing seemed to touch on that bone-deep weariness at his core. It made him just want to go back to sleep, to sleep and sleep until nothing hurt and he could just pretend that this was just a figment of his imagination.

The ground was uncomfortable under his body, and Uryuu tried to gather up the will to move, knowing that he’d regret not doing so if he fell back asleep at this point.

“Don’t you dare move!” Inoue’s voice cut through his thoughts, deflating what little will he had gathered. She sounded… worried. Terrified and barely holding back tears. “Don’t you *dare move!* I almost… I almost… NO! *I refuse to lose you too!*”

At her panicked declaration, Uryuu finally managed to force his eyes open, and shifted his head until he could see Inoue through the glowing golden dome that she had erected over him. Her palms were pressed tight against it, tear tracks stark upon her pale cheeks and her eyes red from crying.

“Inoue..?” Uryuu forced out, as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. He was just tired, just needed sleep… wasn’t he?

“Don’t you ‘Inoue’ me!” she practically yelled at him, her voice breaking halfway through as she choked on a sob. “When I arrived, you were almost *dead!* *I almost couldn’t heal you!* You… you *idiot!* If Kuchiki-sama hadn’t agreed, and wasn’t so fast, *I wouldn’t have made it!*”

At the Captain’s name, Uryuu shifted his head slightly, trying to spot the man. He wouldn’t have thought that Kuchiki Byakuya would agree to ferry anyone anywhere, no matter the emergency, but if Inoue was speaking truthfully…

He spotted the Captain finally, sitting on a piece of ground that had been thrust upwards during the combat. The man looked worse for wear, missing his haori and nearly all of his left sleeve, while the rest of his shihakushou was torn and tattered. Blood dripped from open wounds, already drying in place if the slight expression of distaste on Kuchiki’s face was an indication. Urahara was moving around the other Captain, his hands glowing green with healing kidou, though he kept glancing over his shoulder and towards Uryuu as he worked.

“Everyone..?” Uryuu managed to force out, wondering what else had happened while he was apparently unconscious.

“They’re fine,” Inoue told him through her tears. “Even… even Tatsuki and Chizuru and /everyone/, even Kurosaki-sensei! So just… just get better!”

Uryuu sighed slightly, allowing his eyes to slip closed once more, and hoped that he wasn’t going to regret falling asleep once more. But even with Inoue’s healing, even with the energy flowing into him, exhaustion was clawing at his mind and dragging him back down into the darkness.