AN- So, once upon a time when I was eleven, I thought I was a fucking literary genius and wrote a pretty contrived, somewhat love-triangle-centric fanfic.
Fast forward many years and I'm revisiting some story notes. I find that this story could, actually, be pretty easily reworked into something decent- I did actually have a pretty good plot, even if I didn't use it to its full potential, and my central OC is actually a well-rounded character, even if I didn't show it too well. And not to mention my writing skills have undoubtedly improved, because, again, I was a dumb middle schooler.
So TL;DR- This is a rewrite of "The Eyes of Summer,"
He met her in the street, in front of his shop where no human would be. She didn't say a word for a good five minutes, just staring at his face and counting the changes. He did the same. She nodded at him, sad but understanding, and then began to walk away. She didn't have to say it- he knew what she had come to ask and his silence had been an answer. But he had other things to say.
"You can't fight Aizen!" The shopkeeper called after her, voice echoing thinly in the empty street. "You can't even go near him!"
"I think we're a little past that," the girl (a woman now, he supposed, she'd been a woman when he'd seen her last, but so kind and so painfully young he wanted her to have been a girl) called over her shoulder, not even pausing to turn back.
"If Aizen catches even a hint of your reiatsu, you know he'll-" She laughed, bitterly, abruptly, and cut him off.
"He already knows, Kisuke. He's known for a hundred years." She did stop, then. Reached up to wipe half a tear from her eye before it could fall.
"After the sacrifices you've made, after everything you've done..." Urahara paused, twisting his striped hat in his hands. "Natsumi..." she nodded, still refusing to look back at him.
"Believe me," she laughed again, the strain in her voice snapping taut. "I know."
"So you're giving up? Natsumi, you've always been a lot of things, but you were never weak." He searched her, traced her stiffened shoulders, the hunch to her back.
"I'm not giving up." She turned back at that, to look him in the eye. "I'm giving in." She spread her arms out wide, took a few slow steps backwards. "Aizen is going o get what he wants."
"You don't have to do this," Urahara pleaded, something in his tone she couldn't read. She just kept walking, never looking ahead, her eyes locked on his. They had changed, over the century they'd been apart. He'd grown more pedestrian, softened by his life among the humans. She hadn't. Her eyes were colder now, more hopeless. More hard. Still beautiful, he'd admit. Still soft in her sadness and her love, but something harsh was lurking there, a darkness Aizen, no doubt, had grown in her soul.
Only when she was too far for his eyes to catch the color of hers did she turn. She kept walking.