A/N: English is not my first lenguagge so be easy on me, please. I'm sorry for grammar errors (that I'm sure are there)... I did my best!...
This story is dedicated to ncfan, who's wonderfull stories inspared me to write this one.
Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
Immutable
One of Uryuu's most confusing and patent memories of his childhood was a voice... Soft. Sweet. Conforting... A male's voice saying: "It's alright... I'm right here... It's alright...".
He didn't know where that voice came from. He didn't know to whom it belonged. He didn't even know if it was a real memory, if it had ever existed. He wasn't sure but... it sounded so familiar, that voice, and he couldn't place where it was that he had heard it before.
When his grandfather died Uryuu was ten, and with him the only person in his whole empty life who had ever cared for him was gone and he had been left alone.
Back then Uryuu hadn't been expecting his father to be terribly sad or devastated but he certanly hadn't expected his father to react the way he did: immutable, as if nothing had happend, as if he didn't care at all that his own father had passed away.
He had to admit that he was very ofended by that at the time. He had been for a very long time and the anger it had provoked him, perhaps, never really went away.
His grandfather, his sensei, the greatest man he had ever known (will ever know) had died and he had felt like evereyone should had been mourning him, because he had died protecting them from the hollows, he had given his life to them and for them... And if Uryuu had though that way about mere strangers, how could he have not think that his father (his grandfather's only son) should have shed at least a tear for him... But Ryuuken hadn't and never would... He had remained immutable.
Uryuu hadn't been able (would never be able) to understand his father. Not only back then, but always. In fact, he rarely understood him at all. Being a child he had wondered thousands of times, how could his father be so cold. How could he be so... hollow...
There was a time when Uryuu started to suspect that maybe his father couldn't feel anything at all, that maybe he was incapable of doing so. (Except for anger and disapointment... That ones Uryuu knew very well his father felt them). Because if he could, if he did, then that would mean that he was a monster, a monster that couldn't bring himself to feel sadness for the death of his own father or the pain of his own son. And Uryuu didn't want to believe that beacuse that would also mean that he didn't love them either, neither of them... Uryuu didn't want to believe that (obligued himself everyday not to believe that) because, despite all, he loved him and wanted him to love him too... Even if every day it got harder and hader to keep on doing so...
His father had never conforted him for Sonken's death, not even once. He had just said: "It's of no use to cry over the consecuences of someone else's choices", so Uryuu couldn't even mourn him for as long as he had wanted to, at least not in front of his father. But when it was time to go to bed and Ryuuken rested in his bedroom where he couldn't see him, Uryuu allowed himself to cry for his grandfather. Uryuu cried that he didn't do anything to try to save him, to help him. Cried his cowardice and the weight of surviving unscrateched. Cried the lonliness he felt. Cried the need to have him with him, by his side, because he missed him so much and he felt so lost without him... Uryuu let himself cry until he fell asleep and, sometimes, even when he was sleeping. That was the only moment in which his father couldn't reprimand him for doing so, and it was simply because he didn't know... And if he did, (wich Uryuu doubetd), he hadn't shown it, he had remained as always: immutable.
Those had been long and dark nights that Uryuu had to learn to overcome alone. Those had been the most difficult times he had ever had to live, the greatest obstacle that he had ever had to surpass, and he had been too young to do so without help, but he had done it, all by himself, night after night, until one night he didn't cry anymore.
He had been alone, he knew that but, when Uryuu thought back about those nights he could almost swear he could recall a voice, a male's voice, always wishpering right when he was about to fell asleep: "It's alright... I'm right here... It's alright..."
Uryuu couldn't place that voice. He couldn't then and he couldn't now. He didn't even know if it had been real.
Back then, he had liked to think that maybe it was his grandfather's, telling him that he was right there with him, would always be, that he hadn't abandon him and he would never be alone, but he knew better than to think that. Besides, if Uryuu was sure of something it was that it wasn't his grandfather's voice, it certainly didn't sound like him. But it had been a happy thought back then... A reconforting one...
From then on , the sound of that voice had never left him. Nowadays, in those nights that followed a difficult or bad day, right when Uryuu was about to fell asleep the memory of that voice would come to him and when it did he would always sleep peacefully and serene to wake up in the morning with a faint smell of cigarette in his nose that would come to him with the reminiscence of that voice, but by the time he totally awoke himself it would always fade away, he unconciously forgetting it was ever there, until the only thing that remains is the voice...
"It's alright... I'm right here... It's alright..."