Characters: Uryuu, Ryuuken, Soken
Summary: And miles to go before I sleep. Uryuu, Ryuuken. AU. Pre-series.
Pairings: None
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Timeline: About ten or eleven years pre-series
Author's Note: The horror isn't graphic or anything; it's more an ominous feeling. Either way, if you think about it, this will (at least I hope so; that's what I was aiming for; and if it didn't, please let me know) creep you out. Also, there's an indirect Beowulf reference in here; see if you can spot it out. Please let me know if you liked it when you finish reading.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
The summer night was calm and quiet, humidity lying like a soft, all-encompassing shroud, lulling all under it into security. Any foreign sound became loud and jarring in the darkness, disturbing the silence; the wail of a car from far off down the road became a scream, the caterwauling of a stray alley cat an eerie moan.
Uryuu, never a particularly deep sleeper, was drifting in and out of light sleep, not dreaming, neither awake nor really asleep. Half-conscious, he listened to the silence, and felt the imprint of jail stripes caused by the blinds on his window press against his closed eyes.
All was silent.
Then, whispering voices, strangely dry and rattling, penetrated the glass of the window.
Uryuu's eyes snapped open, his heart pounding.
Deadly silent, afraid to even breathe, he laid, now wide awake, staring up at the ceiling while the voices continued to softly emanate. Uryuu tried desperately to block them out, to not listen, but found that he could not, and was left to listen in terrified fascination.
There were many outside. Were there two voices? No, more than two, but beyond that Uryuu couldn't tell. Mercifully, he couldn't make out any of what was being said. The voices were hushed and strangely urgent, but unintelligible.
Uryuu rammed the pillow over his ear, rolled over, and prayed desperately for the voices to stop.
Eventually, he fell asleep, and by morning, convinced himself that it had all been a dream.
.
By the time morning came and Ryuuken left Uryuu with his grandfather, Uryuu was more or less back to normal. Still a bit jumpy, but that was hardly unusual for him and he was no more jumpy than usual. And being with his grandfather was pretty much guaranteed to make Uryuu more cheerful than he otherwise would have been.
Soken was too tired for training that day, so Uryuu was left to content himself by playing in his grandfather's front yard. Namely, by proving that all small children were possessed by more curiosity than what was good for them, peering closely at a caterpillar wriggling up the trunk of the oak tree in front of Soken's house.
The caterpillar, with its black spines, made its slow up the oak tree while Uryuu watched, gaze intent. He was vaguely aware of the sound of Soken laughing from the stoop, and of his grandfather calling to him.
"Don't pick it up, Uryuu. Some insects are harmful to the skin."
"Yes, Sensei," came the absent response.
About five more minutes passed. Uryuu lost interest in the caterpillar and moved on, wandering the yard and wading through tall grasses.
Then, he felt eyes on him, and looked up.
Soken's house was on a dirt road and mostly surrounded by other small houses that had been left empty; it was out of the way from the rest of Karakura Town. The road was a straight stretch back to the main highway, about a mile long, and roughly one hundred feet up the road, Uryuu could see four people, three men and a woman, staring at him.
There was something… strange about them. Uryuu frowned as he peered against the sun and the blazing heat at the four newcomers. Something was off, but he couldn't put his finger on what.
"Sensei, look." Uryuu pointed towards the strangers as Soken, with difficulty, got up from his sitting position on the concrete stoop and crossed the yard.
He pushed Uryuu's hand down. "Don't point, Uryuu," Soken chided him gently.
Uryuu winced. "Sorry."
Soken adjusted his glasses, thick lenses glistening in the sunlight, as he peered down the road at the strangers, saying nothing, frowning pensively. He seemed…tense, almost, something that made Uryuu nervous.
"Sensei?" He tugged on Soken's sleeve, staring up at him. "Who are they? Do you know them?"
The old man shook his head distractedly. "No, I don't. It's just that…" His eyes clouded.
"What is it, Sensei?" Uryuu felt a sharp tug of worry in his stomach. He grabbed Soken's hand, more insistent. "Sensei?"
Soken's eyes cleared as he drew in a deep breath. "Nothing. It's nothing, Uryuu."
"Do you suppose they could be thinking of buying the vacant house?"
"Perhaps." Soken rested a hand on Uryuu's shoulder and forced himself to smile. "Why don't we go inside? It's getting too hot to be out here now."
"Okay."
.
That night, Uryuu didn't hear voices outside of his window.
Instead, he heard footsteps.
Footsteps reverberated through the walls, neither heavy nor light, but simply there. Beating on the roof of Uryuu's skull, keeping him from sleep and keeping his heart from thumping in any semblance of steadiness.
Tonight, he would not lie on his side and simply wait for the sounds outside his window to stop. Uryuu couldn't ignore the stripes of darkness perpendicular to the jail stripes cast by the blinds as they cast dancing shadows on the wall.
Trying not to make any sound, the small boy slipped out of bed, crept into the hall, and, with some difficulty, pushed open the door to his father's bedroom.
Ryuuken had told him, only a few weeks before, not to do this anymore, but Uryuu was willing to brave the scolding that would most likely come in the morning. His father was a deep sleeper; if Uryuu was careful about it, he could do this without Ryuuken even waking up.
Lying next to his father in the dark, Uryuu could still hear the sounds of footsteps outside. But, eventually, he managed to fall asleep.
.
"Uryuu?" Uryuu was roused from heavy sleep by the sound of his father's voice, bearing both incredulity and the sharp beginnings of cold anger. Uryuu opened bleary eyes to see Ryuuken propping himself up in bed on the palms of his hands. Early morning sunlight, still gentle, was pouring through the cracks in the blinds instead of moonlight.
Brown eyes, unbearably veiled to block any emotion from reaching through, met Uryuu as he sat up in bed and forced himself to meet his father's eyes.
"I told you. You can't come in here at night just because of nightmares anymore. Why did you—"
"I heard…" Uryuu spoke up in defense of himself, pale and earnest, and momentarily fell silent under his father's searing gaze. "I heard…people walking around on the porch last night." His voice cracked and trembled. "I'm sorry; I was scared." Uryuu licked dry lips. "Couldn't…couldn't you hear it too?"
The silence that passed between them in that moment was almost unbearable, as Ryuuken seemed to measure his response.
"Yes." Ryuuken nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing. "I could."
Uryuu squeezed his eyes shut. No longer could he tell himself that he was only imagining things.
.
For another week or so, nothing happened. Though Uryuu still jumped a little at loud noises, everything seemed to be getting back to normal.
A few things were off, though. Both his father and his grandfather seemed to be distinctly on-edge, as if they, though they had barely interacted with each other at all that week, were carrying a secret that they shared. Soken had on one occasion snapped at Uryuu (which was unusual for him, though he almost immediately apologized for overreacting); Ryuuken barely seemed to notice Uryuu was there (which, conversely, was not in any way unusual), but he was also taking special care to make sure the doors and windows were locked at night. More so than usual.
But things were mostly normal.
Until one afternoon, late in the day, when they were coming home, Ryuuken from work at the hospital and Uryuu from another day at his grandfather's house.
The front door was wide open.
Bracing his arms on the steering wheel of his car, Ryuuken gaped slightly at the door, and then turned back to his son, shooting a slightly (and highly uncharacteristic) bewildered look at his son. "I didn't leave the front door open this morning, did I?"
Uryuu shook his head silently from the back seat, eyes open wide.
Ryuuken took this as all the assurance he needed. His jaw tightened. The key jerked out of the ignition. "Stay in the car."
It took a few minutes for Ryuuken to re-emerge from the house after disappearing inside. When he came back and opened the back door of the car, Uryuu could see that his face was pale and taut.
"Come inside." The look on Ryuuken's face made Uryuu's stomach churn.
Silently, not accustomed to disobedience even when anxious, Uryuu did.
Once inside, he couldn't understand why his father seemed so shaken. Nothing had been stolen. Nothing was out of place at all.
.
Grandfather's house was empty. The door was unlocked, but no one was there. It seemed as if he had simply vanished in the middle of making his breakfast.
"He must have felt a Hollow's reiatsu and decided to be a hero or something." Uryuu and his father were standing in the vacant kitchen as early morning sunlight poured in weakly through the windows. Ryuuken's tone was decidedly derisive, and Uryuu winced under it.
Somehow, Uryuu didn't think that was it. He had no reason to believe this; despite advancing age and increasing physical infirmity, Soken remained perfectly incapable of leaving off on "the family profession", as Ryuuken so mockingly referred to it. But he just couldn't give up the thought that that wasn't why Soken was gone.
And apparently, Ryuuken wasn't so sure about it himself.
Ryuuken was peering closely at the old (and, incredibly, still functional) wood-burning stove his father used. A battered pot was still boiling on the eye of the stove, and the smell of eggs came from inside. "He usually," he commented absently, "remembers to take the pot off of the stove, at least." Walking over, he, in an unusually considerate gesture, took the pot off of the stove and set it down on the countertop. "The old man must finally be going senile," Ryuuken muttered, though he didn't sound entirely convinced.
Uryuu didn't know what the word "senile" meant, but from the scathing note that rose in Ryuuken's voice when he said it, he got the impression that it was disrespectful.
"Come on." Ryuuken started to walk out of the house, and gestured for Uryuu to follow him. "You'll have to come with me today."
He left the house, Uryuu noticed, as though the place had made him nervous.
.
"You're late, Ishida. That's not like…you."
Ryuuken grimaced inwardly at the look on his supervisor's face as his eyes fell upon Uryuu, who had been trailing so close behind him that he occasionally stepped on his heels.
The older man's reaction was immediate. Gray eyes snapped on Ryuuken's face, glaring exasperatedly. "Ishida, this is not "Bring You Kid to Work" day."
Uryuu flinched, and Ryuuken cast an eye towards his young son. "Go wait in the hall," he murmured, and Uryuu promptly shot out, glad, in the way of a timid child, to absent himself from any epicenter of tension.
The moment Uryuu was gone from the room, Hansuke shot another glare at his subordinate. "What the hell is this? I didn't even know you were married, let alone that you had a kid."
Ryuuken drew his tongue across dry lips and ran a hand through graying hair, then proceeded to lay out his story. "My father wasn't at home this morning; I had nowhere else to bring him."
"So you brought him here?" Hansuke's voice dripped scorn. "Your decision is lacking logic in the extreme, Ishida. What about the boy's mother? Couldn't she have looked after him?"
A spasm ran across his face and was systematically suppressed. "My wife's been dead for years."
The look on Hansuke's face made Ryuuken think that he was sorry he had asked; he took that to his advantage. "Please let me keep him here, sir."
Hansuke frowned, eyes narrowing. "How old is your son?"
"Five."
His supervisor nodded. "Too young to be by himself," Hansuke muttered. He shook his head in frustration. "Why didn't you say anything about having a family?" The question was plainly rhetorical and was meant only to show his annoyance that he knew so little about one of his higher-ranking subordinates.
Finally, Hansuke came to a decision. "Alright. The kid can stay. Find a place for him where he'll be out of the way from the patients."
Ryuuken let out a highly pressurized breath of air. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me. If your son causes any trouble, any at all, your skin is mine."
.
Uryuu sat in the chair beside Kuri, trying to be inconspicuous. His father had left him behind the help desk on the second floor, told him that he would be down the hall and made him promise to behave and be as quiet as possible.
Kuri was a tall young woman, probably no older than twenty-two, with a round, friendly face and black hair, who had accepted Uryuu's presence in the empty chair to her right without complaint.
Content to flip through the several pamphlets he had found in one of the drawers and silently mouth out the words he didn't understand, cataloguing them away for future reference in the dictionary at home, Uryuu didn't so much as raise his head as Kuri instructed confused visitors on where to go in the hospital.
Abruptly, he looked up.
That sensation was back again. He was being watched.
Uryuu scanned the hall with eyes that barely reached over the surface of the desk, pulse starting to race as it had that day outside of his grandfather's house.
He looked, but he could see no one making eye contact with him when his eyes sought out every nook and cranny of the hall. Whoever it was, they were gone.
Kuri noticed the change in the child beside him. Smiling, she put a hand on his shoulder and asked, "Are you hungry, sweetie? We can go down to the cafeteria."
Uryuu shook his head vigorously. "No, ma'am."
He went back to the pamphlets, but couldn't focus on the words anymore.
.
Crash!
The high sound of crashing glass against linoleum was what woke Uryuu out of sleep, as he jerked awake and sat up in bed. Jail stripes were across his bed again, milky and pale. Uryuu stared at the door, eyes wide and round as coins as he listened for telltale noises in the darkness.
If Uryuu heard sounds at night, he expected them to come from outside. Namely, from the porch. But now… This had come from inside.
Come on… Get up… Shaking, feet and hands strangely clumsy, Uryuu pushed back his bed sheets and got out of bed. It seemed an eternity before he reached the door, but finally, his suddenly maladroit hands were pulling at the knob and pressing the door open.
The sound of breaking glass, it seemed, had drawn Ryuuken out of bed too. He was standing half into the hall, and his eyes were sharp and edgy as he whipped his head back and looked at Uryuu.
"Go back to your room!" he hissed, in a tone that brooked no opposition. Or, at least, would have brooked no opposition under normal circumstances.
Ryuuken didn't bother to look back to see if his son was obeying his sharp command. Instead, he crept towards the kitchen and, after a moment of indecision, Uryuu followed him at a distance and prayed Ryuuken wouldn't notice.
The light to the kitchen flipped on, and Uryuu could hear his father's ragged, labored breathing even from several feet away. Ryuuken scanned the kitchen wildly before realizing that there were eyes on his back.
He whirled around, and his expression, Uryuu realized with dread (no child ever liked to see their parents lose composure) was of anger mingled with fear. "Go back to your room!" Ryuuken's voice rose almost to a shout.
But he could not prevent Uryuu from seeing what he himself had seen.
An empty glass had hit the floor.
The back door was open.
And there was no one there.
.
Uryuu felt his throat squeeze, tight and hard, as he looked at his grandfather's house. It was still intact, still whole, but in the overcast morning, the light strangely gray, it seemed like a burnt-out shell, a vortex of emptiness.
And it was empty.
Ryuuken's hand on his shoulder was strangely gentle as he came to stand behind him.
Forcing himself to speak, Uryuu was appalled at the thickness of his own voice. "Grandfather's not coming back, is he?" Out of habit, he fought back tears whenever they came to his eyes, but he couldn't keep them from pricking at his eyes now.
Looking up at his father's face, Uryuu watched, breathless, as Ryuuken shook his head, strangely reluctant. Maybe the idea of his father being gone didn't appeal to him as much as Uryuu had thought it would. "No." Ryuuken was very quiet. "I don't think he is."
.
If he were to deny that he felt safer at the hospital than at home, Uryuu would be lying. The place was buzzing with life, never silent, and Uryuu found that a mercy, because if any aberrant sounds came, he wouldn't be able to distinguish them from those that were commonplace in a busy hospital.
But he felt eyes on him in those halls.
He felt eyes on him everywhere now.
.
For the fourth time, Uryuu was woken up from sleep by a noise coming from outside his room. It was not soft like whispering, nor thumping like footsteps, nor high-pitched like breaking glass. Instead, it was heavy, and numerous. Like furniture was being moved.
This time, Uryuu didn't hesitate to go seek his father out.
The hall was dark, but Uryuu practically ran to the door a few feet down from his. He pressed it open.
"Father?" Uryuu's voice was barely audible as his hands clung to the door. His eyes met pitch black darkness, and heard no sound from inside.
Uryuu slipped inside Ryuuken's bedroom, and when he clambered up on the bed, there was no one there.
Another heavy, scratching sound came from outside elsewhere in the house. From the living room, Uryuu realized. His eyes, wide open and terrified now, stared at the door.
Curiosity, both fascinated and petrified, compelled Uryuu to enter into the hall. With unbearable slowness, he started to creep down the hall, towards the living room.
The shadows obscured everything. But Uryuu could still see.
There were three heavy shadows, the outlines of men, rooting around the living room. One took the time to overturn the coffee table, which fell on its side in a great crash. They seemed to be looking for something.
And standing between Uryuu and the three men was, in the threshold of the hall, a tall, slender woman. Her clothes were dark, her long legs moon-white in the darkness. She had her back turned to Uryuu, watching the men at their work.
Then, flat, even eyes turned on Uryuu, and his breath caught in his throat, feeling like a small animal caught between gnashing hounds and certain death in a deep abyss of a lake.
She made no attempt to move forward or alert her comrades. She did not so much as move. Instead, her eyes met Uryuu's gaze steadily, and she whispered one word, so soft that the three with her couldn't hear.
"Hide."
Uryuu was all too happy to take her advice.
He retreated into his bedroom closet, and listened, horrified, to the sounds of crashing and conversation outside.
"He must have taken the child with him when he went to the hospital." A man's rough voice, thwarted and frustrated, voice rang hard on Uryuu's bones, making his heart jolt.
Then followed an almighty crash, of something large and heavy hitting the floor. Uryuu would realize later that he was hearing his bed being overturned by one of the men.
"Perhaps." The flat, soft voice belonged to the woman who had told him to hide. "We will return another night, and take the boy then. For now, we should leave, before his father returns."
After a few moments, there was silence. Silence that Uryuu had never found so merciful in his life.
But he did not really breathe again until, after an eternity, he heard the sound of the door slamming, and his father pulled the sliding closet door open.
Ryuuken dropped to his knees immediately, breathing hoarse and ragged as though he had been running a great distance. He put one hand under his son's chin and turned his head back and forth, checking, Uryuu realized, for injuries.
There was only one thing Ryuuken had to say to him. "Are you hurt?"
Uryuu shook his head, but Ryuuken didn't seem at all reassured by this.
Leaning forward, Ryuuken picked his son up in his arms and began to walk away.
.
It was a call from the hospital that had drawn Ryuuken out of the house in the late hours of the night. He had received a call that was telling him that the shift was short and that they needed him there, if only for a few hours.
Ryuuken didn't bother to wake Uryuu up; he figured he could be there, do what needed to be done, and get back home before his son woke up.
It didn't once occur to him, Ryuuken cursed mentally, that he was being tricked.
For weeks, wherever he went, he had felt as though he was being watched. And somehow, in light of what had been happening for the past two weeks, Ryuuken didn't take any precautions at all.
It was only, however, when he came to the hospital and discovered that no one had called him, that Ryuuken realized exactly what was happening.
His car stopped working halfway back to home. There was no reason, no warning; the engine just cut off, and didn't start up again.
And when he finally got back to home, he found his son hiding in a closet, and his home in shambles. Nothing had been taken, nothing had been stolen, but the house had been ransacked, every piece of large furniture overthrown, Ryuuken realized with a pang, as those who had broken in looked for his son.
He had prayed this day would never come.
Ryuuken was now walking along a sidewalk on a deserted road, street lamps set at intervals casting pools of white light onto the streets. There were no house in side, merely a scattering of trees on one side and undeveloped land on the other. His son was asleep in his arms; though Uryuu was getting a bit heavy to be carried, Ryuuken wasn't going to object in these circumstances. He himself was exhausted, his step beginning to falter.
The street lamp overhead flickered. He looked down at his son, and Ryuuken's eyes clouded. Uryuu, in sleep, was oblivious. He didn't know that his life as he knew it was over.
His father had wanted peace. But in so doing, he had put them all at risk.
Soken's life had not been snatched away from him by a Hollow.
Ryuuken supposed he could have stayed behind and tried to fight. But he only would have been delaying the inevitable. He wasn't stupid enough to think that he could have won, and he wasn't about to risk his life or the life of his son on account of his pride.
He had prayed against this day, but his prayers were never heeded, and the day had now arrived. The Quincy, what was left of them, were once again a hunted race.
And there was no way to fight. Nothing to do but run and try to find a place where they wouldn't be found.
Ryuuken stared down the sidewalk into the darkness beyond.
The road stretched on forever, it seemed.
But he could not turn to sleep.