A/N: I am trash. I have no idea what came over me, I just couldn't handle the blatant disregard of Yuzu anymore so this came out. I don't know why I threw in some legal jargon and elaboration for canon. Meh. I feel like I birthed an octopus, it feels so weird. Enjoy! Or don't. I can't really control your opinions. On with the show!
"Ichi-nii?"
Freezing in his tracks, Ichigo plastered on a benevolent smile before turning around and acknowledging his sister.
"Yes, Yuzu?"
Beaming back at him was a happy young girl, with an apron around her torso and strawberries in her hair.
"Where are you going? Dinner's almost done!"
An identical pair of caramel eyes gazed up at him, daring him, threatening him, to see if he would try extinguishing the light blazing in those wide orbs.
"Oh, it's just a ... project I'm working on, with classmates of mine. I won't be long."
Ichigo's eyes cautiously softened, his hand outstretched to ruffle Yuzu's hair. She allowed the affectionate gesture, only closing her eyes and sighing deeply in dejected disappointment when he let his hand fall and turned around, intent on walking out the door.
Tentative, Yuzu glanced up, up, up at her big brother's back, his tense shoulders, stiff posture, long, hurried strides, and suddenly felt slightly nauseous, the heavy ache in her bones weighing her down.
Why did they always lie? It was bad enough that her insomnia prevented her from being fully (alive) awake at any given moment, but the way her family treated her just made her feel hollow. Don't tell Yuzu, don't hear Yuzu, don't see Yuzu (suffering, struggling to breathe against the pressure of a thousand and one demons hammering away at her lungs).
And her twin and father and brother just try not to break her. A fragile little doll, with a painted mouth and crystalline eyes.
Some days, when sleep evaded her by a feather's depth, Yuzu liked to play a dangerous game with a knife clenched tight in her hand and a spastic, bitter smile on her face.
One that would never be shown to anybody else but her reflection and shadow. A game just to see if she really was that porcelain dream, instead of soft flesh and calcium bone. If a knife chipped at her glaze or carved a pretty, pretty red picture on her fingers.
(And she knew what she did wasn't right. Morally, at least. But, when was the last time she cited morals as a good excuse not to do anything?)
•••
"Ichi-nii?"
"Yes, Yuzu?"
"Where are you going? Dinner's almost done!"
"Oh, it's just a ... project I'm working on, with some classmates of mine. I won't be long."
"..."
"...Yuzu?"
(stop lying nii-san quit it with the lies i just want the truth, please just once, one time, let the words stumbling out of your fucking mouth not be a fantasy)
"...Enjoy your project. Ichigo-onii-san."
Freezing in his tracks, Ichigo's plastered benevolent smile fractured, before he turned around and gazed down, down, down at his little sister's small back, her tense shoulders, stiff posture, short, forceful chops and suddenly felt nauseous, a fear unlike any he'd ever known before settling upon his bones and seeping into the cracks and dents, contouring to his soul, bringing along with it a cold so frigid, his heart fought to keep his extremities responsive from the dense agony flooding his blood.
Wha... what? Yuzu, the lifeblood of his family, their home, so bitter and furious and the betrayal, dear Kami, the way it colored her tone cut him and tore at him, more painfully than any of the wounds he'd ever dealt or been dealt.
Pausing in her chopping to spare him a glance over her shoulder, she uttered one word that sent him spiraling.
"Leave."
(you're never around anyway)
"Yuzu..."
(i'm sorry i can't be who you want me to be)
She'd resumed chopping after she spoke, only to stop at one very punctuated stab, tighten her grip on the knife, so furious that the blade rattled, and chucked it at him, flipping and twisting until it found its way into the door directly next to his head.
"Leave." The word writhed its way into his sternum, a throbbing density so condensed that he had no choice, but to do as he was told to relieve the sense of acidity tearing through his skin.
The finality of Yuzu's command rang true, a door gently pulled shut and faint footsteps echoed her own crumbling resolve, as an insistent prickling behind her eyes led her to press the heels of her hands to her face, taking deep, trembling breaths.
Kurosaki Isshin could tell you anything you wanted to know about his eldest, his youngest too. He knew the two of them as if he'd written out their entire lives before hand, and watched them blossom into their characters through the smallest moments that would define their worlds. But they didn't know that.
And at one point, Isshin could have listed in excruciating detail each and every event that made his eldest twin daughter who she was. The way her eyes lit up when her elder brother gave her the faintest smile, her first steps, which she made in a desperate attempt to greet her father when he came home from working in the clinic, and even that one time she crawled into his (cold, empty) bed to comfort him after he had a nightmare about his wife's death and his son's scars.
But this one time, this little itty bitty moment when the Soutaicho of the Gotei 13 asked about his only spiritually insensitive offspring, he balked. Isshin stood there, his muscles suddenly turned to sleet, jaw hanging, posed to answer, when he gained enough awareness to ask himself, did he even know who his daughter was anymore?
Each and every moment from their birth, he could recite forwards, backwards, alphabetically, color coded, concerning his eldest and youngest. The minute his wife died, the second Yuzu took up the mantle of keeping their house a home, catering to anything their hearts could wish for, he lost his bright eyed, carefree baby girl. His attention turned to his son who blamed himself for the death of his mother, and his daughter who locked herself up so tight, the air barely made it past her throat. His life devoted to keeping them tethered, chasing away all the dark thoughts with annoyances and complaints of 'helicopter-dad.' He didn't know what that meant, but it was better than hating themselves of something completely out of their hands.
Yuzu was the strong one. She held down fort while the other wallowed in despair, repressed sobs and shudders from the core of her soul to help them cope with theirs. Taking the role forged by a wife with no other priorities was difficult enough for anyone, scholar or worker. But the added pressure of being a mere five years old and trying to cook for four, clean an entire house, launder all the clothing, take care of the clinic, and be the mother that hers never had the chance to be, it should have taken its toll on a child that young. For a few months or so, he watched her, at a distance, waiting for that amazing little girl to break into shards of mourning, in order to swoop in and have the same father - son/daughter moment he'd had with his other children following tragedy.
But that moment never came. It was always carefully measured doses of empathy and hope, a watchful eye raking in all the microscopic flinches and shivers, and getting rid of every pain - filled memory attached to any given object.
(She still hasn't cried for Misaki)
(She only cried for them, for their pain)
(But they'll never (want to) know that)
As the middle child, it was expected that she would be a pillar for both her brother and sister, knowing exactly what to say and how to say it. She was believed to understand both her siblings , being in the same position relative to each, and Isshin knew this when Yuzu shared Ichigo's stress about the multitudes of spirits coming to him, and was reminded of her devotion every time she caught a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, reacting immediately by doing some move to defend Karin. Less noticeable now, though, more subtle and instinctive.
(she's learned to hide herself well)
Amoung a dragon, a jester, and an executioner, she made her place as queen, and the earth quaked beneath her bare feet.
With a trembling breath, he realized, has he ever really known his daughter?
•••
As Isshin attempted to muster up an answer, the doors were thrown open behind him. He turned, startled to see the very subject of their conversation being taken into the meeting room. A deft hand grabbed a hold of him before he could charge to his daughter's side.
Hitsugaya stared back at Isshin with a tired look in his eye, shaking his head. Isshin calmed a bit when he saw Karin follow the Shinigami carrying Yuzu, such an intense look of hatred marring her features, directed the poor, terrified man. The Shinigami quickly bowed, placing Yuzu in a chair in the centre of the room, before sprinting out, leaving Karin to hold her sister upright.
Ichigo was held back by the mere fact that he could not move from his position. He'd worn himself out so thoroughly that it was exhausting just keeping his eyes open, even while being continuously healed by Orihime for the greater part of the immediate aftermath.
"As the proper precautions must be made, Kurosaki-san, you understand that this is just a formality, yes?" Kyouraku-soutaicho smiled benevolently, before his fukutaicho, Ise Nanao, set up a kido barrier restricting anyone who was not a taicho or fukutaicho to be in near proximity or even seen by Yuzu.
Where am I? Was the first thing that popped into Yuzu's mind as she began to wake up. This place, it didn't feel right to her. Something was just so... wrong, it physically hurt her to be there.
Taking a moment to feel her surroundings out by extending her awareness a bit, thin, wispy tendrils slithering about to search for danger, Yuzu focused solely on breathing until she determined there was nothing to fear. But being afraid was worlds away from being uneasy.
Yuzu felt something positively disgusting raking over her, and without a second thought, yanked a pair of needles from her sleeve and launched it at the source of her discomfort, an oddly grinning man who was wearing a peculiar headdress, whose eyes gobbled every inch of her greedily. The smile seemed to broaden as the needles planted themselves into the area his eyes used to occupy, his head now at an awkward tilt.
"Hello, dear," a voice intoned from the head of the room, supposedly the man with the languid smile and pink kimono draped over his shoulders. "We'd like to ask you a few questions, if that's all right with you."
She narrowed her eyes, sizing the man up, along with every other occupant in the (what she assumed to be) war room. There was a variety that showed up, that's for certain, she joked silently to herself. A bulky man with bells in his hair, one with white hair, a bit too sickly looking for comfort, one with a scarf and a set of barrettes, one with a fox head, (definitely not in Kansas anymore), one with white hair who looked decidedly too young for it, one with a cravat and vest that did not match his traditional garb, one with silver hair, a woman with a braid beneath her chin, and one with two down her back, an obvious age gap between them, if her aura reading was up to par. And that was only the ones wearing white haori.
(It was beyond anything her mentors had ever seen)
(The only problem was she hadn't even met them yet)
Sensing something amiss, Yuzu responded as if she had played this game her entire life.
(She has)
"It is not." Her answer seemed to shock them a bit, if the spike outside of her peripheral line of vision is any indication. She continued, "You cannot detain me, as a minor, without the knowledge and presence of a parent, or, legal guardian. I refuse to answer any questions pertaining to anything whatsoever sans the counsel of my father or godfather."
Yuzu cocked her head after she finished speaking, daring the man with the pink kimono to refute any bit of what she was saying. Doing so would be inherently illegal, if memory served her right, and any attempt to coerce her into speaking would put them in jeopardy, due to her stance as a minor.
Still very much in tune with her surroundings, when a white clothed one's aura attempted to overpower hers, appearing behind and grabbing at her in the same instant, she felt his intent before he even thought of it.
Yuzu stiffened, a chill settling over her as she took in deep breaths like each one was a war in and of itself. No. No. Not now. She could not afford to have a meltdown in a room full of faces she's never met.
Her eyes darted around the room, quickly becoming more and more panicked with each glance. She knew what this was. She could recognize an anxiety attack even when it happened to her; she'd treated enough of them anyway. With her vision tunneling and her demeanor beginning to mimic a caged animal, she did the one thing she could think of with her mind in such a frenzied state.
Her aura manipulation was superb, the one aspect of herself she enjoyed almost as much as she hated her resemblance to her mother.
So, she condensed the portion of her reiatsu she kept around her at all times into physical strength, and saved herself, fleeing to wherever was safe for the time being.
Karin should not have been so shocked. After all, their sister was their father's daughter. It would be natural that she inherited traits from him. And how else would Yuzu have been able to do all the housework all these years? A five year old would never have the endurance, strength, nor speed to keep up with such a rambunctious household of two males, one of them fully grown, and another female her own age. Especially considering the fact that it was a full time job for an adult, how could a toddler fill those shoes and walk for eight years in them, gradually making them her own?
The answer should have been obvious; not just to Karin, but to their entire family. Yuzu had been changing her reiatsu into strength and speed every day for the past eight years. That was why Yuzu never saw spirits properly, her reiatsu wasn't there to make them clear to her, the thin film she kept around her only allowed her to see blurs and outlines.