Isshin stared down at the fruits that were centered right on the table. It wasn't the first time that Masaki had brought them back from the grocery store. Tonight they seemed to taunt him from the bowl; the red skins appeared bruised and battered, and the black seeds glosses over in tears. He blinked several times before he could make out the actual vibrancy of the fleshy strawberries that were waiting to be eaten. Slowly his eyes trailed up as he saw one lifting, and watched as Masaki bite down into it.

She chewed pensively, bringing a small finger to her lip, and then swallowed. "I thought they might have been bad since you weren't eating them, but they taste fine."

"Yeah."

The two had already been together for more than four years. Masaki had long graduated from high school and was well into her third year at university. When she wanted time off the campus she always made sure to spend the most of it with Isshin, which had developed out of the romance the two found themselves in. With Masaki being confident and Isshin being hard-headed the two got into several more fights but they were still learning how to communicate more effectively, and that was a learning curve they were both spending time with.

While Masaki had gotten a small confession from the man about what had actually happened during the first weeks of their meeting and the hollow, Isshin was consistently silent about everything else that had to do with his time in the Soul Society. It wasn't that Masaki wasn't curious. She had peppered him about it before, but his face turned in revulsion and Masaki just barely managed to not get kicked out of the new clinic that was building up.

After a final ditch attempt to get the man to open up about it, Masaki gave it up. It had caused a rather large fight and they didn't see each other for a month and a half before she wandered back over. Isshin had forgiven her by that point and had acted like the fight hadn't even occurred. Yet, Masaki knew that the man was still constantly in touch with the strange sandal-hat guy from years ago. She knew that Isshin would go to his place and wouldn't come for hours. It was just starting to taper off with him not having gone over in nearly two months. She couldn't put down the visits to Isshin still trying to integrate, or trying to manage the new busy. Masaki was one hundred percent certain that whatever the weird man had at his shoten was something that Isshin was keeping locked up in his head.

The woman crossed her arms definitely and huffed. "Are you going to tell me why you have that stupid look on your face?"

While Masaki had wandered with her thoughts, Isshin's face had morphed into his atypical serious face. There was a watered down pierce, like a shallow cut, along his eyes, where normally they keenly took everything in. His skin seemed to be flushed out and his mouth was actually turning down, with his lips puckering in some sort of deflated sneer.

He lifted his eyes from the strawberries again and sighed. Tugging a hand through his hair, he beckoned the girl over so that he could place her on his lap. Once settled he dragged the bowl over, and took up a strawberry between his two fingers and twisted it so that he could make out as much of the circumference as possible. Masaki's fingers took up a slow run over his scalp, as his hand drifted down to her hip. Like his fingers into the flesh of Masaki's skin, he dug around for a few words but none seemed to want to leave him.

"Is this about soul society?"

The man's heart dried out and the sudden rush of blood, as his heart gave out a strong last pump, was all that Isshin could hear. Isshin dropped his hand back onto the table, strawberry still within his fingers. Feeling weightless his head began to move up and then down, until Masaki took it into her grip and stuffed it somewhere at the crook of her neck

"Did you hear some news?"

The sailor's knot around his voice chords unraveled slightly as the scent from his girlfriend helped tug it free. "Not exactly."

"Oh." Masaki dropped her cheek and nestled it more into Isshin's hair. Her two arms came to wrap around him best they could in the position. "Want to talk about it?"

It might have been a hope whispered out in vain, but Masaki almost felt like she was dangling at the end of a string. Since Isshin would also get like this, yet never tell her the specifics, there was very little that she felt she could do for a man that had already lived at least thrice her twenty-one years. Teaching an old dog new tricks was tough, particularly when they were as hard-headed as her boyfriend. Even when she knew it bothered him, he never seemed to let her shoulder anything; trying to protect her even from the darkness that seemed to come from himself. Yet, Masaki knew that it just wasn't how a healthy relationship worked at all, and she was eventually going to make herself bald with the tugging at her hair trying to figure out how to get him to talk.

"Strawberries are the hardest fruit to cultivate in Soul Society." Masaki shut her thoughts and her mouth only admitting a small hum to pass through. "Something about the weather or whatever - Even though they were hard to find, somehow she'd always get them and share them with me."

A woman? Masaki thought briefly as her eyes trailed over to the bowl of strawberries. Of course she shouldn't have been surprised that Isshin had a lover that he had left behind when he had abdicated to the human world. They never brought up the specifics about his sudden departure, though they both knew that the other knew the truth.

Her arms tightened and then she slowly brought a hand up to caress at the man's half hidden head. Knowing intellectually was always different than feeling and the tightening cord around her heart was proof enough that Masaki hated the idea of Isshin with another woman. She didn't really want to know about his former lover and it was kind of sickening that he was still so upset about this. Perhaps, Masaki should take the relationship slower since the man clearly had unresolved feelings towards someone else.

"My sensei-"

"Sensei?" Masaki sprung back from his grip, and landed on her wobbly feet. She took in the stunned wide eyes of her boyfriend and felt a horrible blush coming up along her face.

Isshin eyed the accusatory finger that was being thrust in his face and the next moment. Not moments before he was being cuddled and now he was being thrust right into the face of a scorned woman. His eyes lingered on the crude limb before trailing back up to see the features on the face of the woman; wide eyes, bright red blush, and a hanging bottom jaw. Added to the fact that she was breathing hard from her accusation, Isshin could make out the well-known mix of shock and embarrassment on her face.

"What did you think I was going to say?"

"Something about a lover!"

"Did you think I would be with you if I had a lover?"

The two were huffing and puffing as they glared at each other. Isshin had unconsciously set off Masaki, who then set off Isshin, who then set off Masaki again, until it rebounded back to the man. With another pass of the ball, now Masaki had the ball in her hands to do what she wanted with it. She decided to let it fall and thus the argument slipped away into flustered apologies, scuffing toes, and raking hands through hair.

Isshin let out an aggravated grown as he slumped into the chair again, and then slipped a hand over his features to help position them into something more collected. He knew that he was kind of at fault with how he had gone about phrasing it, but Masaki had jumped to a conclusion too quickly for him to keep up with. He latched onto her wrist and tugged her back so that they could get back to cuddling and patch up the spat.

Once they were situated, Isshin went into a long story about how he had met the woman he gifted the name "sensei" to. It had started when he had been caught off guard during patrol with his first captain and a great number of hollows had come through a rip between Hueco Mundo and the Soul Society. His patrol group had been doing alright until a Gillian had come through and their captain had to deviate to take care of the mess. It left them exposed and more open for attacks, and Isshin had gotten wounded.

He remembered coming to his senses to find a stout woman making her way over towards him. Through the pain he made some stupid comment about her beauty and severely regretted it when he found out that she was fuke-taicho. If he had been up to his normal senses he probably would have been able to tell from just one look, but delirious from his first major battle and the pain of the wound everything was a bit blurry at the time.

Isshin, however, did remember very clearly the arch in her shoulders and the bestowal of her calm tone and smile at his behavior. He had watched her walk away and those dying flames in his chest come bursting to life, and he wanted to get out of the sick bed as quickly as possible. He wanted to walk like she did. He wanted to be able to soothe over a situation and talk to someone like she did, with that ever present patience around her.

Then, lady luck seemed to grant him his wish, because only a few days later he was walking side by side with her. Ayake Ichiyuko was everything the rumors held her up to be. He had heard them as they scurried past every division, but he paid little mind to them. Isshin wasn't sexist, he thought; he was fine with women being in strong positions whether that's as seated member of even at the very top. He just didn't really care for people spreading rumors. Nice or not, Isshin only wanted to make up his own mind about the person without having to deal with everyone else's strangling thoughts.

There were rumors that said she was kind, that said she was strong, that said she was an image, that said she was a goal for all, that said she was the next major captain, that said she was smart. Isshin could go on and on over the positives of them; the inherent idealism that they placed on the woman he had never met. Yet, as he walked with her and spoke with her, he could find little fault in the rumors at all. It grinded into him even more how he wanted to be like her; breath just a little bit of her air.

As much as he didn't want to be her student, Isshin had had more than a few laughs at the idea, it was one of the greatest decisions he had made in his life. For someone who had been goalless and in the shadow of a genius nephew, her imposition to be anything less than stellar fed him. She made training programs interesting for his quickly waning attention; something teachers at the academy had failed to do. She worked him to the bone both mentally and physically. Somewhere along the way her fighting philosophy became his, and her dream became his as well. He couldn't think of anyone better to serve under until he made captaincy.

For just one second he did think himself in love with her. It was at the very beginning when they were still getting to know one another. All the rumors seemed to conglomerate and fuse into the person that he wanted to make her out to be and not the one that she actually was. Engetsu was the one that started knick-picking at her demeanor and soon after that Isshin, too, was able to see.

Her greatest faults were her pride and her controlling behavior. She did her best to keep them reigned in, but there was moments when she really struggled with them. Her pride came out in the militancy she gave her training, claiming that she would accept no less than perfection from herself and therefore from the people around her.

Her controlling habits came out in her weird dream of wanting freedom. Isshin put it down to her wanting captaincy simply because her pride wouldn't let her be anything else. Pride feeding her ambition, which made her want immaculate amounts of control over everything.

What was her savoir was the fact that her philosophy didn't allow her to imbue any of that on other people. She kept herself lashed and restrained as much as possible when people came to her from different walks of life and different ways about doing things. There was noticeable grit, Isshin saw, when people out rightly disagreed with her. Yet, she kept her wits, and carried out the conversation as much as she could with her ears half-clogged.

In the later years of Isshin's service to her, as her fourth seat, he noted that she had mellowed quite a bit. She was better at being open, and she taught herself the art of listening. She seemed to be trumping over her own weaknesses, or just getting better at keeping herself in line. By that time, Isshin's infatuation was long over, and he was very happy since his sensei was on a different plain than he was. Their lives intersected not for a romance, but for inspiration.

Isshin came to the conclusion that even if they had fallen in love with one another, it would have been quickly dissolved. They wouldn't have been able to make each other happy. She needed someone that was as complicated as she pretended she wasn't. Someone that could keep up with all of her thoughts as they ran through like a freight train on steroids. That was simply not what Isshin could do with his own worsening leniency and lazy behavior.

"So what happened?" Masaki whispered out.

She had felt terribly lonely as she watched her boyfriend talk about another woman. She knew that he wasn't in love with her. He had proclaimed it himself. Yet, she felt some sort of wall being built up between the Isshin that had been close to this mentor, and the Isshin that she cradled in her arms again. Masaki would never be able to get the two different sides, and she briefly wondered if she ever wanted Isshin to actually see her like that; as some beautifully, morbid protagonist.

"Hm~" Isshin scratched at his cheek and chewed into a bit of the strawberries that they had been picking at all night. "Well, the details are a bit fuzzy but… She got caught up in something bad. They attempted to strip her powers but when they couldn't they sentenced her to life in prison."

"What happened?" The words slipped before Masaki could ever stop them, but she regretted them when she saw the shadow that crossed over his face. "You do—"

"You remember Urahara Kisuke?"

Masaki took in some breath trying to breath past the heavy atmosphere. "Yeah… The weird sandal-hat guy."

"About eighty years ago that guy was exiled from the soul society for experimenting on Shinigami and trying to give them hollow powers…. It was big news and everyone was talking about it for weeks."

"A- And we trusted someone like him?"

Isshin couldn't help but give a little smile and then jostle the girl in his lap. "That was my reaction when I first met him, but I remembered something my sensei told me about him. – They were long-time friends."

"What'd she say?"

"That there was a few she trusted in the heat of battle, and that he was one of them."

For the first time that evening silence settled over them, like a long lost friend coming in for a hug. The evening had started with idle chatter about their weeks, and then had turned taunt with the alms giving to an imprisoned sensei. They moved off in a daze, washing what was left of the dishes and putting what they could in the fridge for left-overs another night in the week. Two entities caught in a small dance around the kitchen, never touching, and only connected by the words that still swirled around.

It was only when they had settled onto the sofa that Masaki turned back to her boyfriend. "What did that guy have to do with your sensei?"

"Oh." Isshin tipped his head over to look at her and looped their fingers together. He stared for a minute that the interwoven hands before turning back over towards her eager face. "The incident eighty years ago was what she was arrested for."

"So you mean that sh—"

"It's rather a long story…. She, Urahara Kisuke, and bunch of others were all placed under arrest, some condemned to death, for whatever happened that night."

The morning after all the sentences were passed, and the divisions were informed by either captains or fuke-taichos, Isshin had stayed rooted to his position. There was an outrage in his brain, rattling at the cages of his mouth to say something in protest. No way would his sensei do something like that. Yet, it was easy to let doubt sweep in just as much. She disappeared at times. She didn't talk to everyone in the squad. She was good at diverting information. She was friends with a mad scientist like Urahara Kisuke. Ayake Ichiyuko was an incomplete picture even to someone that had spent the better part of twenty years with her.

His feet had taken him to the captain's room where he had left her the night previously. The desk was still organized to her perfection, and the pen was lightly placed down on a few sheets to keep them from flying away in her absence. Isshin found his eyes wandering over the sheet as if the official documents would give him some concept of what she had been thinking, but it was nothing more than accounting bills.

Isshin's eyes had jumped up when he saw that his fuke-taicho had opened up the door and Kyoraku-taicho was walking through the door. The two shared a strange look which had Isshin's blood coming to a standstill and a ringing coming to his ears. The room seemed to twist and turn about, and yet Kyoraku-taicho stayed absolutely still. Of all the times they had ever run into each other in this very room, it was all the confirmation that the Shiba clansman needed to have. Those deep sunken pits of the captain's eyes which had closed over into a blackness, and Isshin knew that he was reflecting the same thing back to the older man.

They didn't say a word to each other and Isshin walked out of the room and let his feet drag him into the clearing that he and she had used to train. His heart stopped beating for three days, and he stayed out there whenever he could. Time seemed to float around him as he moved very little from the spot. Then, one day, he left the spot and never returned there again.

"Wait, Isshin are you serious right now?"

"What do you mean?"

"You just said that Kisuke guy and your sensei are connected. Why would you trust him after what he was exiled for?"

Isshin let his head fall back, and he let out a sigh that felt like it had been building for years. "I'm not sure why I trusted him… He just seemed like he knew what he was doing."

"Liar." Masaki smacked his forehead and that got the man sitting up straight again. They tussled for a small moment, until Masaki's strength gave out and Isshin dragged her over to him by the wrists.

"Not a lie. - Well… Maybe part of me wanted to see why sensei trusted him in the first place."

"That's an awful way to find out."

"It worked out." Isshin shrugged and wrapped the girl tighter to him.

Even Isshin couldn't pinpoint what he had felt when he first heard Urahara Kisuke introducing himself. The part of him that was still intimately tied to the image of his sensei wanted to seek retribution for the man that led her down the wrong path. He couldn't comprehend how this man had gotten exiled and yet she was being punished much harsher, by being put in jail with jailers inflicting whatever sort of punishment on her for the actual crimes someone else had committed.

Another side of him saw Urahara Kisuke as the accomplice that he was actually made out to be in the case. Not the one that swayed his sensei, but the one that worked alongside her. Together they built up the entire operation and their geniuses fed one another so that they could carry it out. That thought fed his righteous captain anger, whilst the other fed his personal affront anger.

The other part was the sad, bitter sweetness of recognizing the man that he knew his captain would have died for. Isshin had always found it odd that she had a closer relationship with this man than someone like former captain Hirako Shinji. Isshin and the fifth-division captain had also met a numerous amount of times when they were both using Ayake as an excuse to get out of work. Yet, his sensei always claimed the man with a lab as a hermitage as a type of soul mate. Since Isshin had never actually gotten to meet the man, although he had seen him a fair few times, he couldn't understand what they really had in common with one another.

When Isshin came to agree with Urahara's plan as if it was nothing, with them looking as if he hadn't given it any thought, it wasn't really that. From the moment Isshin had recognized Urahara Kisuke, he had come to the conclusion that a dying girl was far more important than his own feelings on the matter. He thought that his sensei might actually have been proud of his decision to work with a man he labeled as evil. She might have been proud to know that he chose to honor protection like she had taught.

The two men were waiting in the shop hearing the second hand tick by them, with the quincy-boy Ryuuken gone now. The girl, Masaki, would splutter out a few words every now and again but she dozed quietly for the most part. Isshin's sensing abilities were already extremely diminished and he could barely make out anything that was beyond the wall of the shop. He was sat staring at his hands, furling and unfurling them to test the connectivity. Adding to that, he felt very heavy, like he was moving with a second skin over his own body.

"The sensations should wear off… Before you know it you'll have forgotten the feeling."

Isshin looked up at the man. Urahara Kisuke was not what he supposed he would be. There was some sort of sympathetic soberness, even with the joyous expressions he had seen. He looked rough and half unkempt; what with scruff around his face, and dark rims under his eyes. Isshin could even see the wariness in the way the man walked; having been replaced from its former urgency to some sort of slow crawl around the shop.

"How did you know my name?" Isshin asked, as the man was pouring out tea for the two of them.

A thin, yet soft, smile came upon his face and he shifted the hat from his head for the first time that evening. "Yuko-chan took a lot of pride in showing off about you."

"She," Isshin's words fell back into the cradle of his throat and he had to grunt a few times to get them to move. He had carried the weight of her name in his heart for so long he had almost forgotten what it was actually like to sound out her name. "She mentioned me?"

"Of course." There was a light drawl as Kisuke turned to him and handed over the cup. Isshin grabbed it with one of his own but refused to remove his eyes from the amused wave that came over his neighbor. "She didn't mention how young you were, though."

"Oh… Yeah. I've always looked a bit older, I guess."

"Or how reckless."

Isshin spluttered over his tea, but it was small enough to not make a mess. A silence fell over the two again; this time with a slight bit of warmth to them as they took in each other's moment of vulnerability. Masaki thumped around in back of him for a moment and then the steadiness returned. With Kisuke's hat off, Isshin could make out the remorse that painted over his eyes as he swirled the liquid around his cup. Even through the jokes there was a certain loneliness to the man, which was made even more apparent when Isshin noticed that there was actually no one else in the shop.

"Urahara Kisuke."

The blonde moved to stare at him, keeping that straight line across his face. Isshin could finally see it there, and it made his shoulders sink until he was fully pressing back on the deck. It wasn't like Isshin was in a better position than the blonde anyway having just given up his right to call himself anything of a captain; let alone a Shinigami. Isshin opened his mouth several more time to figure out what else he wanted to say but then he just left it closed.

Kisuke turned back to his tea with another swivel and then gave out a small chuckle. "Would you believe me if I told you?"

"Told me what?"

"Yuko-chan was the first successful hollowfication I ever encountered."

"What?" It was the sort of sharp whisper that broke through the air because of its rupture but not because of its volume. "What does that mean?"

Kisuke turned in on him and shackled him down with nothing more than his eyes. "Will you listen?"

The two men faced off for a moment; Kisuke with his hard look, and Isshin with his nervously searching gaze. With the tension fizzled out, Isshin nodded and swirled the words of the truth events eighty years ago into real-time. Dancing before his gaze was nothing more the movements of an image; his sensei going through and living with hollowfication alone, her momentary distance and then her sudden resurgence, and then finally her disappearance that was in concordance with the exile of her friends and the defiling of the others.

Isshin started down at his two clenching fists which he belatedly noticed were quivering with his lost strength. He shut his eyes tight and brought forth the final visage of his captain, which was actually the first-time he had ever seen her. Her head tossed prideful and high, and her back taunt with belying strength, and her shoulders arch perfectly straight as she graced across the grassy fields. His paradox of a sensei that could rip through enemies and then mourn them at the same time, and could toss out strength and appear lady-like in the same instance.

Isshin clamped a hand over his eyes and let out a full body shudder. He had followed that image for years through her last years as fuke-taicho into her wonderful captaincy. That same image that added only a sleeveless captain's haori. The very same one that he adopted and, without realizing, had never changed. He had carried that image of her in his back pocket for decades knowing that even with her incarceration, it was still her that gifted him with everything. As his hand slide down his face and cupped around his chin, his eyes slowly adjusted back to the dim lighting of the Urahara Shoten. Somehow he had still refused to give her up, but now that image of her was returned to perfection.

"It…. It sounds a lot like her."

"Hm." Kisuke whispered out. Though his eyes were still down at his tea, he could feel the concrete energy his friend's student was hanging out to dry. His gray eyes closed over for a moment, hearing that swell of pride at the boy's last intonation.

Isshin made out the trace of mourning and he slammed his hand down onto the man's desk. When he got a shocked huff he proclaimed, "don't look so depressed….. Sensei would have smacked you for that."

Yuko-chan has raised a good one, Kisuke eyed the boy that was glaring at him now. Long gone was the withdrawn look. Instead it was the pride that he had found many times in his old friend which burned those not prepared. Mixed with something of hard worked through determination that never wavered.

"Your right…. Though I'm pretty sure she'd also be upset with you for spilling your tea."

Isshin looked down at where the man was pointing and so that growing dark mark on his new shirt. "Argh! She'd kill me for this." Picking at the fabric with his free hand, he stared down at it mournfully, before picking his head back up at the chuckling blonde who was stain free. "Don't look so pleased with yourself."

"Now, now." Kisuke waved his hands and adjusted his hat back onto his head. "There's no need to get so testy."

The two men went off a bicker with the teapot situated between them, and the cups half-way full. The two could leave the situation as settled. Isshin forgiving and Kisuke feeling forgiven. Their odd connection, which should have been formulated in Seiretei, finally coming full circle. Both realized that it was still completed by Yuko, either way.

Isshin was rather happy with the results, even if he had ditched the joint goal that his sensei had gifted to him. Dropping the title of captain that he had striven forwards to get, to gain a lovely woman and the actual truth about his sensei was worth the sacrifice. The ease on his consciousness knowing that he had, indeed, followed the strongest woman he had even known was worth far more than a damn chair which he had grudgingly accepted. Perhaps, his sensei would have even liked Masaki.

In an alternate universe where she had stayed and Aizen didn't exist, would he have given it knowing he could have what he did with Masaki was another question. Isshin refused to dwell on that type of dream, because that's just not what reality had given him. Dreaming about things he couldn't protect anymore was wasteful, and he had something in his arms to take better care of. He had learned a tough lesson of giving up someone, though those were only to rumors. He wouldn't subject himself to it again.

"What did you say her name was?"

"I didn't." Isshin squeezed the woman in his arms. "Ayake Ichiyuko."

"And what was the thing about strawberries again?"

Isshin rolled his eyes and flicked the girl on her nose. "She'd bring them over and we'd eat them after training…. They were her favorite fruit, I think."

Masaki pushed up and leaned onto his chest. "Let's call our son Ichigo then."

"S- Son?" Isshin barked out as he grappled onto the woman, before shifting his eyes just a bit lower to her stomach.

Her face remained an innocent blinking mask as she eyed the man before she burst out laughing. "I'm not pregnant you idiot."

"Then why are you talking about children?" Isshin let out a whine as Masaki hit him over the head and clutched onto the spot.

"I'm just saying as a… What do they call it? Memory to her…"

Isshin blinked at his studious wife who was trying to get the right term but broke out into a large grin. "She'd like that."

"And our son would be so adorable with the name strawberry."

"No."

"What?"

Masaki took in her boyfriend's dead glare and the huff that was expanding his chest. He crossed his arms firmly and then leaned towards the girl, so that she was forced to back up just slightly. "I'm not naming my son after a fruit… He won't be a floozy."

"But—"

"We'll name him 'number one protector'… That's the type of namesake he should be."

Masaki sighed slightly and then thought back on the woman that had been described. Certainly her fruit of choice might have been strawberries, but she was nothing like one. Ayake Ichiyuko from how her boyfriend had described her seemed like the type of woman that would much rather die on the battle field than of old age. Not the type that would easily let bruises squish her to death. She was a type of true warrior captain that tried to pass along all that to her subordinates, which from Isshin's set jaw seemed to have been not only a large task but also a one well accomplished.

Masaki smiled, not bothering to tell her boyfriend that his sensei was still living through him. Or that he didn't need to be so defiant about the naming. His eyes were glazing over in that look from earlier in their long conversation, and Masaki was once again reminded of how much this sensei must have meant to the man sat beside her. Her face softened and she leaned up against him again.

Yeah. Strawberry wouldn't be very fitting. Masaki just didn't have to tell Isshin that she already agreed with his decision. He could fight for that one just a bit more.