Resentment...
A Bleach Fanfiction by Nelarun
I own neither Bleach nor any recognisable characters
Inhale, taste the smoke, feel the comforting burn, exhale.
Ishida Ryuuken was leaning against the wall of his home watching the moon travel through the night sky. He should have been sleeping. The night was clear – the promised coolness beginning to settle on the mostly still streets of Karakura Town, Autumn was coming early, frost already covered the ground. "Father, why do you hate being a Quincy?"
Inhale, taste the smoke, feel the comforting burn, exhale.
How could he explain things to his son?
Knock the ash from the end of the cigarette. Begin again.
How could he justify that once he had taken his role as a Quincy as seriously as Uryuu's grandfather to the boy who lived now for only two things – the Quincy and his fathers approval. How could he say that when he had met a woman and fallen in love that his priorities changed.
Inhale, taste the smoke, feel the comforting burn, exhale.
First he had skipped a planned date to save a soul. Then it was almost failing his end of semester exams. Then it was falling asleep when she had taken him to meet her parents. The beginning of arguments with his father and uncles regarding what a Quincies duty was and that all else came second. Then he was ignoring souls in help for dates, topping his classes, making new impressions with her family and more and more intense arguments with his own.
Inhale, taste the smoke, feel the comforting burn, exhale.
It had been a night much like this night when he had sworn off Quincy activities where possible. The look in her eyes – the horror on her face – when he had leaned on her doorbell, in too much pain to remain standing without help. She warily, sleepily, opened her door and the emotions flew across her face. First surprise, then warmth that faded into horror as the extent of his injuries became clear.
Knock the ash from the end of his cigarette. Begin again.
She had hurried him into the apartment and sat him at her kitchen table – the obvious question not spoken, and all the louder for being so. She hurried to pull his ruined once white shirt off and he heard her soft but sharp intake of breath. She worked tirelessly – a seamstress by trade – and had stitched, with neat even stitches, the gouges in his back and side shut – never once asking why or how.
Inhale, taste the smoke, feel the comforting burn, exhale.
She had bandaged him up and knocked up a simple shirt for him to wear. He slept that night on the couch, his head resting on her lap, her hands smoothing his hair, her tears falling onto his face. He swore then that he would never again make her cry. The next morning, he told her everything – about Shinigami and Quincy and Hollow and Souls. About a world she was blind to but, by association, had been brought into. He swore to her that he was finished with the Quincy Arts, that he would now only take them up in order to defend his family.
Inhale, taste the smoke, feel the comforting burn, exhale.
His uncles were furious, but his father... Ryuuken believed that his father understood why he was putting aside his bow. Two months later he was engaged, eight months after that he graduated from Medicine, and another four he was married. There was more to life than defending the dead. He had a family to support, his wife and an unborn child on the way. And yet, sometimes he still found himself drawing his bow to defend a helpless soul – honestly the Shinigami were beyond useless. His wife laughs when he comes home late from work saying that were it anyone else, she would think he was having an affair.
Knock the ash from the end of the cigarette. Begin again.
Her laugh was the thing he missed the most when he returned home late having slain a few hollows. She wasn't there to greet him, the lights were off and Uryuu – Uryuu was screaming in his bassinet. The rain poured the day they buried her, yet Ryuuken couldn't bring himself to cry. He tried, dear God, he tried. But the only thing he felt from his wife's murder was guilt. He had broken his oath to his wife, returned to his Quincy heritage, and Hollows had murdered his wife in return.
Inhale, taste the smoke, feel the comforting burn, exhale.
In retrospect, the Hollows had probably been after Uryuu, the child had a strong reiatsu even as a babe. And where had the Shinigami been? There had been faint traces of a Shinigami's reiatsu in his home – they had cleansed the Hollow after it had murdered his wife – if they had been doing their duty he would have been home and able to kill the Hollow himself... Holding his son, he had vowed that he would never again pick up the Quincy Cross except to defend his family.
Inhale, taste the smoke, feel the comforting burn, exhale.
How could he tell his son that it was a promise made to a sleeping babe that kept him from accepting the Quincy? How could he tell his son that it was because of his own failings as a Quincy... no – not as a Quincy, rather as a husband and a father – that caused his wife's, Uryuu's mothers, death. That because he had broken an oath his mother had been slashed, bleeding out on the floor in front of Uryuu's bassinet?
Inhale, taste the smoke, feel the comforting burn, exhale.
He couldn't, and so he wouldn't. He had simple told Uryuu that being a Quincy didn't pay. Uryuu would ask his grandfather and his grandfather would respond in his own cryptic way that what Ryuuken said wasn't the entire truth – that there was more to it. He would explain in point blank honesty that a Quincy no longer had the ability to live off their own abilities, that in this era, only the insane or the conmen claimed to see ghosts and hunt demons.
Knock the ash from the end of the cigarette...
His son would grow to resent him, and Ryuuken knew that – so it was alright.
...watch it fall to the frost carpeted ground...
Perhaps if Uryuu knew why Ryuuken felt no need to hunt Hollows, he would understand – but most likely he would hate him.
...Set the smoke to curling in the night sky...
So he would stay silent. Resentment after all, was better than hate.
...Begin again.
A/N:
A big thanks to Fushiko for confirming the smoking parts for me (I don't smoke so thought I'd better confirm those parts with Fushiko who does. ^_^).