From Loss

by ShadowThorne

Isshin suffers horrible loss and, years later, after a tragic accident threatens to take away the last thing that holds him together, he searches for a way to save his only child. Driven by a father's need, he finds himself going to great and desperate lengths in his efforts. A donor is created, but even an artificial life is hard to end when it becomes self-aware. Warnings within.

1. Chapter 1

I should probably tell you guys that this isn't a valentine's story, the date is merely coincidence... It's actually been really long in the making. If you follow my tumblr, you may have seen teasers of the beginning quite some time ago.

But anyway, onto more important things!
Before you begin, the warnings: This will not be a happy story. It will get better towards the end, but it will be a rough ride along the way. There is character death, the story is labeled as a tragedy for good reason. There is also plenty of sensitive material. That being said, there will be a second part to this and most of the really awful stuff is in the first, so it cheers up as it goes.

If you're still willing to give the story a chance, I hope you can enjoy!

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He stared in shock and horror, dark eyes wide and disbelieving. It had to be a lie, a horrible, cruel joke. He preyed that he would wake up any minute, that he would realize this had all been a nightmare, conjured from the darkest pits of his mind.

But nobody was laughing and he was very awake.

The doctor, still in sterile, white lab coat and pale, greenish-blue scrubs, looked back at him with dampened remorse as he delivered the grim news in a gentle monotone. Complications, he explained, too much bleeding. She'd been weak, sickly before she'd been put on bed rest. She'd been in pain when she'd been rushed to the hospital. Her condition had spread and they hadn't been able to prevent it. The doctor and nurses had done everything they could, but it just wasn't meant to be...

Isshin stood in the hallway for a long long time, silent, motionless. He barely even breathed. There was a hole in his chest, and someone had poured hot led deep within him. It was cold and hard and solid and it sat in the pit of his stomach. All around him was quiet, even as hospital staff walked passed. Even as the doctor apologized and took his leave. All was silent.

Dead.

He only stirred when a small hand crept into his own, and a little voice spoke from his side.

"Daddy?" His boy, his only child, his beautiful son, asked in a somewhat eager tone. Isshin looked down at him with furrowed brows and a tight jaw. Wide, excited and wonder-filled brown eyes looked back up at him, "Can we go see mommy and my new baby sisters now?"

Isshin's shock finally broke. He crumpled to his knees in the middle of the hallway as all the sound rushed back in like a tidal wave. Pulling his son against his chest, sobs wracked his sturdy form. Hot tears wetted bright orange hair as little arms returned the embrace, a timid confusion in the boy's actions. He cried as he held his only child. His only family. His twin daughters would forever be unborn, and his beautiful wife would never return home.

After a few hours, Isshin collected himself enough to enter the delivery room, where his wife laid upon a hospital bed, covered by a thin, white blanket that had been pulled up to cover all but her face. The air smelled like antiseptic and a cold, underlying stress. The hospital staff had done well at cleaning it up, but Isshin could still see the evidence of the bleeding the doctor had mentioned. It wasn't like they always said; she didn't look peaceful. She looked pale, drawn. Her features were pinched, pulled with the strain and pain of contractions that served no purpose, of her body trying to push out two little girls that were already dead. She had died in pain, gasping and gritting her teeth until she'd grown too weak for even that.

Isshin bowed his head and hunched his shoulders, rested his forehead against hers, and cried. He'd left Ichigo out in the hall, with a nurse. He didn't now how to explain this to his five year old son. He didn't now how to tell the boy that his mother wouldn't be coming home with them, that he would never get to meet his sisters. He'd been so excited to see them, to help take care of them...

Three weeks prior, when Masaki had first been put on bed rest, Isshin and Masaki had laughed and looked at their wonderful little boy with pride in their eyes. They'd told him that it was a big brother's job to protect the little ones that came after him. Ichigo had been so proud and determined as he announced that he would be the best big brother he could be.

But he would never get the chance. Isshin and his son left the hospital, and returned to an empty, broken home.

The funeral was a few days later.

Dressed in black, Isshin's features were blank, devoid, as he watched the coffin being lowered into the ground. Never again would he see his beautiful wife; the love of his life. At his side, Ichigo held his hand tightly, his youth-rounded features pulled into a sad scowl, his orange brows furrowed. His bottom lip quivered ever so slightly, and quiet tears streaked his cheeks.

He'd been confused that night, when they'd finally left the hospital alone. He was a smart child though, he figured it out.

"Mommy and my sissies aren't coming home, are they?"

"No, son...no they're not..."

Isshin released the little fingers squeezed in his own and bent to pick his boy up, holding him in a tight embrace as he straightened, his dark eyes never leaving the coffin. Ichigo buried his face against the black suit jacket his daddy wore. He cried silent tears all through the ceremony. By the time Isshin was finally ready to leave the cemetery, Ichigo had worn himself out and cried himself to sleep in his father's arms.

Suddenly, Isshin was a single father and an only parent, with a five year old son to raise alone.

It wasn't an easy thing, but taking care of his son gave him purpose, gave him drive. He would take care of their beloved son, he would make sure his wife could concentrate on taking care of their infant daughters, rather than looking down and worrying about him and their still living child.

He concentrated on his work, and devoted himself to his child.

Years passed. Using his work as an outlet, Isshin's drive and efforts in the scientific community did not go unnoticed. By the time his son reached high school, he'd been promoted to chief researcher in the genetics laboratory he worked in. He worked directly below the most renowned and well known scientist in the country. His research was published in scientific journals around the world.

Ichigo grew into a handsome and intelligent young man. He attended the most advanced high school in the area and showed interests in perhaps following in his father's footsteps one day. He wasn't a perfect student, and he had a tendency to act rashly in certain situations, but he ranked high in his classes and seemed to have a bright future ahead of him.

It seemed that Isshin and his son had overcome the immense hardship of their loss; an only father that had struggled through and seemingly won out against crippling heartache and a teenage son that was well on his way to earning a happy and fulfilling life. Things weren't perfect, life wasn't easy, but overall, they prevailed. They learned to move on, to live and even find some semblance of their happiness back.

Each evening, after Ichigo had retreated to his room for the night so that he could get up early for school in the morning, Isshin took out his favorite portrait of his late wife. He'd twist the plain, gold band that never left his finger as he spoke to her in low tones. He told her about their day, told her about Ichigo's schooling and how he was growing up. He told her about his work and his research, about the weather, about his fears and worries, about anything and everything that came to mind. He took comfort in knowing that, if it were possible, Masaki smiled down on them, two little girls crowding around her legs as they looked over the rest of their family. He liked to imagine his daughters were as beautiful as their mother, like angels.

Every year, Ichigo and his father visited his mother's and sisters' grave together, where they laid out flowers for Masaki and wished the unborn twins a happy birthday, even if they didn't technically have one. During Ichigo's senior year, as the girls would have turned 12, the two made a little cake and blew out candles for them. Almost teenagers, Isshin had mused. There was a small, goofy smile on his scruffy features, but heartache in his voice, like their big brother. On their way home from the cemetery, they left the small cake to a stray dog on the streets, untouched.

One day, everything would come crashing down again, and the heart and mind can only take so much torment.

•••••••

The sun was warm overhead and a fresh breeze whispered through the town's edge where the small group walked. The air smelled of coming fall, of cooler weather on the horizon and fresh water from the river, whose side the street followed. Birds sang overhead, some taking to the sky in great flocks to begin their winter migration.

It was a normal day, like any other. Ichigo pushed a small smile across his handsome features as he walked at his friends' side. Like most teens, they goofed around and picked at one another the way friends usually do. The bag slung over one of his shoulders was weighed down my textbooks, but it was a work load he knew he'd only finish half of. Most of it would be left for the next morning, before his classes began. Sometimes his father got on his case about it, but he kept his grades up so his old man didn't lay it on him too harshly.

"Ichigo, I heard you earned the highest grade on our science exam," One of his friends mentioned, pushing wireframe glasses back up his straight nose. There was a sly little smirk on his lips though, "next to my score, of course."

Ichigo laughed, slinging his arm around the other boy's shoulders in a friendly way. The boy's girlfriend smiled and watched the two interact. "Sorry to drop you down a notch," Ichigo teased, "but I threw the two questions I missed on purpose."

The cocky expression on Ishida's features melted away as he glared at the orange haired boy. "Why would you do that? Are you trying to ruin your scholarship chances?"

It never occurred to any of them that what Ichigo said might not be true: they knew their friend had an almost absurd desire to stay out of the light. It was the only thing that kept him from being at the very top of the class. That, and his lack of attention to his homework. The teachers knew he didn't put much effort into school, and had quit trying to make him before he'd even reached high school.

Ichigo snorted a sound, pulling is arm away to let Ishida steal his girlfriend back. "I know we don't look all that much alike, but you do remember who my dad is, right?" He changed his voice to something haughty and joking as he continued, "Dr. Isshin Kurosaki, renowned geneticist, wrote the leading theory on cloning and creating artificial life." He laughed it off, dropping the cocky act to return to his normal, easy going demeanor. "I'll get into whatever college I want, if I decide to go."

"Prick." Ishida scoffed, though he meant it with the most love possible.

"Successful, well-known, handsome, rich prick." Ichigo amended. The friends around him laughed.

As they walked, talking amongst themselves, they passed by a small cemetery and Ichigo went quiet. Everyone knew why, and said nothing about it as brown eyes coasted over the elegant, iron gate, before dropping downward to watch the ground as they walked.

A small yelp from the other side of the street, near the bank of the river the street followed, pierced the air with a sharp ring. Ichigo's head whipped around to find the distressed animal. Brown eyes landed on a stray dog as it tried to limp away from a few young boys. Recognition lit behind his eyes as he realized it was the same stray that always seemed to be roaming around the cemetery his mother and sisters were buried in, the very same dog he and his father had fed Karin and Yuzu's cake to all those months ago.

"Hey!" Anger deepened his voice as he veered away from his friends and started to cross the street. "Leave the dog alo-"

There was a split second where brown eyes went impossibly wide, where everyone held their breaths as the screech of tires drown out Ichigo's reprimand. Then a sickening crunch and Ichigo was laying in the middle of the street, his textbooks scattered across the blacktop. Black skid marks smelled of burned rubber and everything was eerily still as his friends gasped in shock and stared. The stunned horror was broken when one of them screamed.

The driver of the car flung the door wide, climbed out and ran to the teenage boy's side. Everyone rushed into the middle of the road, screaming their friend's name. Ishida was the only one to stay collected enough to pull his cellphone from his pocket and dial for an ambulance.

Ichigo didn't move.

Isshin received a phone call that evening that nearly killed him.

He flew from the building his office was located in so quickly that he forgot to grab his jacket and the papers he'd been working on. He left his lab equipment running, his computer on and running through test scenarios that he would have normally locked down and kept under secure supervision. His boss shouted after him, confused and angry. Isshin didn't hear him.

His hands shook, trembled violently, as he tried to stick his car key into the ignition. Tires squealed as he peeled from the parking lot. Half way to the hospital, flashing lights and sirens warned him that he was going far above the speed limit. Breathing in panicked, jerky breaths, Isshin glanced at his rearview mirror, then flipped his four-way marker lights on to let the cop know he'd seen him, and kept going. He couldn't stop. His son...his only child... The cop could arrest him when they made it to the ER.

When he pulled to a rough, hurried stop in front of the ER entrance, threw the car in park and yanked the keys from the ignition, he climbed from the driver's seat with his hands raised in a surrendering way. The cop screeched to a halt right behind him, climbing from his car with his hand on his gun.

"I'm sorry...I'm sorry..." Isshin chanted over and over, "My son...he's...I'm sorry..." he backed away, toward the hospital doors, before he turned, rounded the front of his car, and sprinted to the building. The cop of course followed after him, but the gun wasn't drawn and handcuffs stayed secured to his belt.

Isshin hurried to the front desk, gave his name and waited impatiently as the woman behind the counter looked up the room number he was looking for. One of Ichigo's friends ran up to him, grabbed the sleeve of his lab coat and looked up at him with wide, violet eyes. The evidence of tears streaked her pretty features and her dark hair was mussed from a rough past hour.

Isshin stared down at her in horror, frozen and unable to move. She shook her head slightly, and her voice trembled as she pushed out hoarse, whispering words, "Th-they don't know... H-he might not..."

"Oh no...oh god..." Isshin trembled as the young lady turned, still holding his sleeve, and began leading him down the hall. His steps were uneven, strengthless as he trailed behind her and toward the room his son occupied, "Not my boy too..."

Ichigo's friends filed from the room as Isshin entered. They watched through a small window as their friend's father spoke briefly with the doctor, before moving to his son's bedside. He bent over his son's prone form, listened to the force air hissing from the machines nearby, to the frail beep of the EKG monitor that showed his child's heart was still beating painfully. He brushed riotous, orange bangs from the young man's face and looked at the black and blues of deep bruising that marred usually tan, healthy skin.

A thin tube had been fed through Ichigo's nose and down his airway, and the doctor explained that he'd quit breathing in the ambulance on the way to the ER. Now, his chest only rose and fell because the machine beside his bed mechanically filled his lungs with oxygen. His heart was still beating on its own, for now, but the prognosis was shaky at best. The odds were against Ichigo, and Isshin listened in a lifeless way as the doctor apologized and told him that it was unlikely his only child would ever wake up.

Eventually, he dropped bonelessly into a chair that he'd pulled closer to the bed, and stared unblinkingly, unseeingly at his comatose son. Ichigo's friends came in, said a few things, gave their condolences, and cried. They told him what happened, they told him they should have been paying more attention. They apologized over and over. Eventually, they took their leave and left a lonely old man to grieve over his dying son.

A week came and went. Doctor after doctor was consulted. Isshin called every professional he knew. He spoke with every medically brilliant mind he'd met in his line of work. Specialists came to run tests and talk about possible options and treatments. None of it was very promising.

One night, after leaving the hospital, Isshin drove down the river road that passed by the cemetery his wife and daughters rested in. On a whim, unable to face his empty house for another night, he pulled the car over on the side of the road, and sat for nearly an hour. Broken down and worn out, he didn't enter the cemetery. He couldn't face his late wife, he couldn't tell her what had happened, what he'd allowed to happen. So he sat there, alone, too emotionally and psychologically drained to even conjure up the energy needed for tears.

His scruffy features were drawn and tired, haggard. His dark eyes were red rimmed and sunken. The stubble on his jaw, greying with the stress of raising a child on his own, was thicker and more obvious than normal. He simply sat in his car and stared out the windshield, until a low whimper caught his attention.

Slowly, tiredly turning to look out the driver side window, he watched as a mangy, skinny stray dog limped toward his car, keeping one leg lifted and its meager weight off a week old broken limb. He recognized the pitiful looking mutt. And he knew it was the one Ichigo's friends had been talking about. His son had nearly died for this dog. His son was still fighting for his life, because he'd wanted to help this dog.

Climbing from the car, Isshin knelt on the sidewalk, hand held out, and the dog limped up to him, cautious with its tail tucked and its head down. He didn't have any food to give the poor thing, but he had a warm car, and a warm, empty house.

The poor thing looked terrified the whole of the car ride, but it laid across the backseat quietly, trembling slightly. Its nose twitched and wiggled the way only dog noses do as it sniffed what sat before it. By the time Isshin had made it to his house, the dog had laid its head on crossed paws and had been lolled into a light slumber.

Isshin smiled a frail expression at it, climbing from the car to open the backdoor. He didn't let the dog jump from the car, but rather picked the mutt up and carried it inside. He called a vet, set up an appointment to have the injured stray looked at, and fed the poor thing something more wholesome than cake this time.

After having the dog for a few days, Isshin decided on his next trip to the hospital, he would bring it along. He rolled the driver's side window down as he parked outside the hospital entrance. The dog sat quietly in the driver's seat, one leg wrapped in a sturdy cast, and waited patiently as its new owner disappeared from sight.

Everyday for weeks, Isshin visited his son in the hospital. The hospital staff began to recognize him. Ichigo's friends, when they happened to be visiting at the same time, began to notice that he didn't always have a fresh change of clothes on. The usual button up shirts he wore under his lab coat while at work were always wrinkled and stiff. His tie was always loose, like it hadn't been untied in weeks. He hardly ate, hardly took care of himself. He looked old and tired.

No one knew it, but he quit preying to his wife.

Eventually, he was expected to come back to work. He didn't. He lost his job. His son's condition never changed, not for the worst, but certainly not for the better either. When he would finally drag himself from Ichigo's side, the dog would still be sitting in the car, despite that it could have left at any time. He would drive to his house, a building he no longer saw as his home, where he would spend another silent, lonely night in worry and a sleep that didn't bring peace. In the morning, he would get up, feed the stray, and start all over again.

A month went by. In that time, Dr. Isshin Kurosaki had hardly said a word to anyone. He did nothing but visit his son in the hospital. His research on genetics and human biology was left uncompleted and inconclusive, most of which had been left in his lab at institute he had worked in. But he couldn't care less. Everything he'd lived for, his reason for continuing, had been taken from him.

The doctors began discussing other options with him. Ichigo's time was running out, they said, his chances of ever awakening and recovering were lowering with each passing week.

It was killing him to sit back and watch his son deteriorate in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines to keep him alive. As he sat in that room, staring at his only child for hours at a time, something hard began to knot in his stomach. It was cold and fierce and unyielding.

Twisting the plain gold band he still and always would wear around his finger, Isshin knew he couldn't let his son die. He'd been helpless when his wife and daughters had been taken from him. He couldn't let that happen to his boy as well.

Nearly four months after a freak accident had essentially taken Isshin's only surviving family from him, he strode into the hospital, looking haggard and worn, but more awake than he had in recent weeks. After speaking with Ichigo's doctors, and learning that his chances for ever waking up were nearing the 15% line -chances for a real recovery even lower- Isshin made a decision. His son would be coming home with him.

Arrangements were made, and Ichigo was carefully loaded into the back of an ambulance, strapped to the bed he would never leave and still hooked up to the machines that helped him breath and fed his body nutrients, and driven to Isshin's house, the home Ichigo had grown up at. The young man's bedroom was converted into an in home hospital room. At first, Isshin had protested, not wanting some stranger in his house, but after some discussing and some convincing, he agreed to have a nurse visit everyday. The woman would come in, bathe his son, check on the equipment supporting him, change his bedding and IV feeds when necessary.

Four months after Ichigo's accident, he finally went home. His friends showed up at the house the very next day, and Isshin welcomed them with a quiet greeting in a rough voice. They played with the dog he'd taken in, and went up to their friend's room to visit with Ichigo. But Ichigo wasn't awake to see any of it. He would never wake up.

Less than a week after having his son brought back home, Isshin showed up at his place of employment for the first time since the accident. Thinking he was finally trying to get ahold of his life again, his boss offered to give him his job back. Isshin turned him down, marched passed him to where his office had been. He swiped his keycard, mildly surprised the code still worked, and pulled the hard drive from his computer.

He pulled all his secure files from the safe he kept under his desk, carefully putting the folders in his shoulder bag along with the hard drives. After collecting all the research and notes he'd left behind, everything he might have use for, he left without a word.

His coworkers and colleagues would never see him again. He would eventually disappear from the scientific community altogether.

Upon returning home, Isshin sent the nurse away, leaving him alone with his comatose child. He set about converting the master bedroom he'd once shared with his wife into a small office where he could continue working on his theories and research, if not actual experiments and tests. He installed a lock on the door, so that it could all be kept private, even when he wasn't home to watch the nurse.

As the agreement with the hospital had stipulated, Isshin had given her a key to his house, so that she could let herself in to keep up with the care of his son. Isshin wasn't particularly happy about it, but he tolerated it so that he could keep Ichigo at home with him. He wasn't outright rude or mean to the woman, but he didn't go out of his way to be overly friendly either. Tired and worn down, he didn't care enough to pretend.

He took to sleeping on the couch in the sitting room, and the stray dog would curl up on his feet every night. The nurse, nearly a month into her new job of making daily house calls, noted how even though Dr. Kurosaki still looked rough and depressed, there was a spark of new life in his dark eyes. Being a medical professional, she took notice of his health during her visits. He'd been eating more again, and sleeping better, even if it was on the couch. At first, she chocked it up to the comfort of having his sick, injured child at home with him, after having raised the child alone for so long.

In private, Isshin continued his work. At first, he merely picked up where he left off; redeveloping his theories on genes and synthesizing artificial DNA. He worked himself into exhaustion most days, living on coffee and microwaveable meals. When he wasn't in his bedroom-turned-lab, he was sitting at his son's side.

Modern medicine hadn't advanced enough to save his child, but desperation was often the catalyst needed to spur amazing developments. Or terrible ones.

Some nights, when he couldn't sleep, Isshin would pull his theories from his new office and sit at Ichigo's side, reading the papers aloud as a way to both keep Ichigo company and preoccupy his restless mind. He would sit on the side of Ichigo's bed, careful of where the cords and tubes laid across the mattress, and brush slowly growing, dry orange hair from his boy's features as he read. The mutt he'd taken in, still nameless, would lay in the hallway beside the door, like it knew better than to disturb the grieving, desperate man.

One day, late into the morning and nearing mid-day, Isshin was in his makeshift lab when the nurse arrived. She pulled her key from her pocket, and was surprised when it didn't work. She frowned, realizing the lock had been changed. Confused, she knocked on the door. Waiting a few moments without an answer, she knocked again, louder this time. A few minutes later, the door was unlocked but not pulled open for her.

She pushed it open in time to see Isshin turning back toward the hall again, muttering various equations to himself as he thought aloud. She frowned harder, a bit of worry creasing her brow, but headed toward Dr. Kurosaki's son's room.

After completing her daily routine, she peeked from the silent room and down the hall. The door the elder Kurosaki had disappeared through was closed. Crossing the hall and to the door, she knocked quietly.

"Dr. Kurosaki?" A grumbled, deep voice was her answer, before Isshin called out an inquiry. "I've finished for the day..."

The door was pulled open, a bit quickly, and Isshin stepped through the doorway, shutting the portal behind himself as he went. "Excellent. Thank you." He dismissed, heading toward his boy's room again.

"M-may I ask what you've been up to, Doctor?" The nurse asked. Seeing as no one ever saw much of Isshin, it had inadvertently become her job to not only watch over Ichigo, but keep an eye on his father as well. She was assigned with keeping watch for anything that could endanger the comatose patient, and that included the mental health of his parent. They'd seen crazy things happen before...

"Working." Isshin answered, turning into his boy's room. The stray dog trailed behind him, and the nurse noted that the cast had been removed and the dog's previously broken leg had been re-shaved. She assumed Isshin had made a return trip to the vet's at some point while she'd been away. He wasn't exactly supposed to leave Ichigo home alone, but it wasn't as if the boy would be going anywhere.

When the nurse remained quiet, Isshin turned to look over his shoulder at her, fondly threading his fingers through orange, freshly washed hair. His features softened a bit. "It keeps my mind busy and gives me something to focus on," He explained in a rough voice. She didn't need to know what he was working on, that he was looking into ways to save his only child. Even if she asked, and he decided to answer truthfully, it was likely she wouldn't understand most of what his scientific jargon was about anyway.

Not long later, the nurse left and Isshin was once more left alone with his child and the mutt he'd adopted, alone in a house that felt far more empty than it should have. Locked away in his home, Isshin lived off his savings -a rather vast account, considering how well off he'd been from his work in the scientific community. He only left when an empty fridge and cupboards demanded it.

Hidden away in his makeshift workspace, he worked. Soon enough, papers and notebooks were stacked on all the flat surfaces of what had once been the bedroom he'd shared with his wife. The walls, once a soft color, were marked up and scribbled on like chalkboards that couldn't be cleaned. Needing more light, he'd pulled the shades off the lamps and left the bulbs bare. It cast harsh shadows around the room while he bustled about, checking and rechecking numbers and calculations, redrawing graphs, scribbling out theories and starting anew.

Eventually, he ran out of room and his work began to spill over into other rooms of the house. He'd be sitting at the kitchen table when a thought flittered through his mind, and use a knife to scratch it into the wooden surface. The mirror and tile in the bathroom had soap drawings and scribbles all over them, from where his mind would be busy at work while he was in there.

Then one day, he called his nurse and asked her to pick up a news paper for him on her way. Taken off guard by the request, especially considering he'd never called her before, she did as asked. After handing it to him, she went about her duties, then left like usual. But how could she miss the evidence of his work all over the house? She'd thought, like he'd told her, that it was just a way to keep himself focused and busy. He was well known, she knew what he did for a living. Perhaps he'd taken to working from home, and still had papers and theories that needed completed. But that afternoon, after she left Isshin's house, she reported back into the hospital.

She told her superiors that Isshin Kurosaki was beginning to show somewhat alarming signs. After describing his behaviors, they told her to simply keep an eye on him, and that if he became more erratic, to call them or the police immediately.

And so things continued. Months passed by. Isshin marked them on a calendar he kept pinned up on one of the walls in his bedroom. The longer things went on, the more the situation continued to weigh on him. Time was passing, and the chances of his son's survival were slimming. Ichigo's recovery was slipping through his fingers and his dead wife would never forgive him for letting their only surviving child to die before his time. Ichigo was still young, he had had such a bright future...

Then came the tests. The computer he'd brought with him from his place of employment, a laptop that he could take back and forth, wasn't large enough to run the kind of virtual experiments he really wished he could run, but it was a start. It would run numbers for him, and calculate answers.

While letting the program run, he'd grab the newspapers he'd bought or had brought to him. He threw out the majority of the paper, the adds and articles, and kept only home, office and location listings. He crossed off location after location. He needed someplace bigger, someplace he could further his work, and, if it ever progressed far enough, he would need a place secluded and private enough to conduct his experiments. He would need someplace that he and his son and his equipment would be safe and unbothered at.

Running his hand through his greying hair, Isshin chewed his lip as he plugged numbers into his laptop. He'd begun running test scenarios, though nothing major, and the results were far from what he was hoping for.

"Mr. Kurosaki..?"

Isshin jerked in surprise, looking up from where he'd been seated on the edge of a couch cushion. The screen of his laptop lit up his scruffy features, making them look all the more drawn and tired. His eyes looked glassy and red rimmed and loose sheets of paper were scattered around the coffee table and the across the couch beside him.

The nurse stepped through the open doorway, worry on her features. "Your door was open..." She paused, frowned, "Have you been up all night?"

Isshin typed a few more keys on his computer, than started to stand. Blinking harshly, he scrubbed a hand across his bristled chin and kind of looked around for a moment. His dark eyes followed the movement of his dog as the animal quietly padded in through the open doorway behind the nurse. "I guess I have."

"Are you alright, Isshin?" She asked quietly, really beginning to doubt the poor man's stability.

"Yeah, yeah...fine." Isshin assured, crossing the space and into the kitchen where he started a fresh pot of coffee. "Just busy. I'm so close... we're almost there...almost..." He said, and it sounded like he spoke more to himself than the nurse slowly closing his front door.

A few minutes later, his computer chimed an alert that signaled that program had run its course and the numbers were ready to read. Isshin dropped what he was doing, leaving the coffee pot sitting on the counter while the machine started brewing, nothing under it to catch steaming, hot liquid.

The nurse half panicked and raced across the kitchen to put the glass pot under the spout, keeping the mess to a minimum. Looking back to the sitting room, she watched the older Kurosaki bend to stare at his laptop. His eyes raced from side to side, reading faster than she thought seemed right, but he was so used to seeing this set of numbers, he knew exactly what he was looking for by then.

To his surprise, for the first time, he found it.

Straightening in a quick jerk of surprised motion, he raised his hands, dragged them down his features. One settled over his mouth as he shook his head slightly and paced a short circle around the coffee table. Then he raced back to the computer, muttering things the nurse really didn't know about with words she'd never even heard before. It all sounded like it had something to do with his research though, so she dismissed it and wandered down the hall to check on her patient.

After entering a few keys, Isshin set the program to run the exact same test with the exact same data again. He stood, took a deep breath, and went back to the kitchen for that coffee he had been making. He hardly even noticed the puddle of dark liquid cooling on his counter, from where he'd forgotten to put the pot in place to collect the fresh coffee.

Nearly a half hour later, as he stared into space and sipped at now cold coffee, the computer chimed again and Isshin dropped his mug in the sink as he pushed away from the counter. He rounded the low table and again began reading the results of his tests. Another positive.

Tears welled in Isshin's dark eyes for the first time in months, but rather than pain and loathing and sorrow, they were happy and disbelieving. He collapsed to his couch, legs wobbling and unable to support him, and hung his head as he cried. Finally, there was hope for his son.

The nurse found him passed out on the couch, the deep set scowl that normally adorned his tired features lightened a touch. She pulled a blanket over him and glanced at the laptop. She found very little she could recognize, and shrugged it off. Job done, she took her leave and pulled the door closed behind her.

Reporting into the hospital and the doctor that kept track of young Ichigo's records, she notified nothing new; no changes in the patient and no continuation of the father's erratic behavior.

The next day when she made her rounds, she arrived only to find the door again locked. Knocking earned her nothing. After standing outside for a few minutes, she pulled her phone out and began dialing the number Isshin had listed as his emergency contact on Ichigo's file, only to freeze as black smoke and the smell of burning drifted through the air from somewhere near the back of the house.

Gasping, she called the police instead.

After breaking the door down, the fire department found the master bedroom and everything that had been inside destroyed. Half the ceiling had collapsed by the time they arrived. The kitchen and coffee tables had been dragged in there as well, feeding the fire that had been set. Scouring the house, they found no sign of Isshin and Ichigo's bed lay empty, all the equipment he'd been hooked up to gone as well.

A manhunt began for the missing scientist and his comatose son. The house was investigated and photographed, evidence collected. After consulting a specialist, the few things Isshin hadn't burned with the rest of the research he'd left behind seemed to point toward interests in furthering the work he'd previously been known for; human genetics and synthesizing living tissue. It took a while for anyone to piece it together.

Dr. Isshin Kurosaki was attempting to recreate the vital organs that had been damaged in Ichigo's accident; a desperate father trying to save his dying son.

After days of driving, stopping only to refuel his vehicle and get just enough sleep so that he wouldn't fall asleep at the wheel, Isshin arrived at his new house. It was bought up front, in cash; a run down little cabin an hour from the nearest village, four and half from the nearest major city. Surrounded by wooded land and accessible only via a dirt road, it was far removed and the exact opposite of the house he'd owned while he'd been raising his child.

The inside, much like the outside, was worn and had seen better days, but it had a full basement and that was the only part Isshin really cared about. The seclusion was perfect, and the basement could be converted into his new lab, giving him far more space than he'd had before. The rest of the house only had to keep him sheltered and store his food.

Opening up the back door to his car, he let the dog out, before ever so gently pulling his motionless, dying teenage son from the backseat. With care that showed how deeply he loved his boy, Isshin carried Ichigo through the door of their new home and carefully navigated the stairs, down into the basement. He'd already dragged a gurney into the main room of the underground level, and that's where he gently set his boy down at, careful and precise with how he set the machinery up around him. The gurney, more of a metal table on wheels with a thin cushion made of blankets, was only temporary while Isshin acquired the rest of what he'd need.

In the coming days, Isshin made frequent trips from his new house. He pulled strings, used fake names and IDs, and of course his vast bank account to acquire the things he needed as he set up his lab. Machinery, beakers, lab equipment, specimen jars, tools, a centrifuge and more quickly began accumulating upon the sterile, metal tables Isshin pushed along the sides of the vast space. In a smaller room of the basement, what had once been a fairly large cellar and pantry, Isshin pushed the table his child laid upon. This room, he set up more like a living space. Shelves that had once held canned and dried foods were filled with books, magazines, and files from his research. He also set out all the photos of his late wife and Ichigo, even the ultrasounds images of his unborn, twin daughters.

For the first time in months, for the first time since Ichigo had been hit by a car on the way home from school, Isshin dared to prey to his wife. It was a deep, profound apology and a short, simple promise. He spent the night after finally acquiring the last of what he would need sitting at his boy's side, holding his child's hand and lovingly stroking bright orange hair.

Desperation and heartache drove him. The need to save his only family, the only thing he truly cared for, to right a horrible, horrible wrong pushed him to dire, unthinkable lengths. In all his well-meant intentions, Isshin was left blinded to a simple and brutal truth; machines and medical technology kept the body alive, but Ichigo was already dead.

Isshin started with the dog. Too trusting, the way man's best friend often was, the stray the scientist had taken in held still and cooperated as Isshin re-shaved its leg again and pushed the needle of a syringe under its smooth flesh. Drawing blood, Isshin went about his work.

He put the extracted blood into vials, set them in the centrifuge and left them to spin, separated all the various components that made up the liquid of life. After hours of allowing the blood to separate from plasma, Isshin put a sample on a slide and studied it under a microscope. He extracted the DNA, spent days manipulating it, weeks.

He spent every waking moment working on creating and growing new tissues; muscle, ligament, organ. He recorded his results, put the samples in a clear-front refrigerator that he'd modified to serve his purposes. When he ran out of clean, healthy samples, he re-shaved the dog's leg and drew more blood. Eventually, he found he needed other samples; tissue samples, muscle, bone, and he mixed a homemade sedative for his unfortunate friend.

Trusting of the human that had taken it in, the dog easily enough ate the tainted food given it. Isshin didn't have the medical background required for things like surgery, but he was intelligent, and his scientific mind already knew the basics of such procedures.

When the dog awakened, its previously broken leg was missing from the elbow down. It whimpered as it stumbled, still drowsy from the drugs and off balance now too. Isshin picked it up, careful not to jostle the bandaged stump of what was left of its limb, and moved it over to a cushy pile of towels and blankets where it could comfortably lay down in the corner of his lab. The dog's leg, what was left of it as Isshin took what he needed, was kept wrapped up in the freezer.

Over the coming months, the poor animal lost far more than its leg. Its tail was the next to go, but still it followed Isshin around his new house and the basement after relearning to walk with only three legs. It lost weight, grew sickly as its master continued to use the animal in his experiments.

After months of hard work and determination, backed by a career's worth in years of experience, Isshin managed the impossible. Nearly a year after his boy had been struck by a car and fallen into a coma, months after he'd kidnapped his own child and ran away with him, in a clear, cylindrical tank filled with nutrient-rich, sterile fluid, he grew his stray friend a new leg. The limb was under developed and hairless, the veins and blood vessels close to the thin skin, but it was a recognizable limb, a dog's leg.

Isshin shook with his excitement. He'd done what no one had been able to do before, in a basement with stolen and modified equipment no less. Scientific breakthrough aside, the development renewed his hope, his vigor. After pulling the artificially grown limb from its protective, growth tank, he tested the mobility of the joints, the workings of the ligaments. He drew blood samples and inspected them under a microscope. He took skin scrapings and tissue cultures and everything he gathered from the artificially grown leg pointed towards a normal, functioning unit.

Overjoyed, Isshin turned towards his dog. "Come here, pup." He said in a horse, quiet voice, a smile on his scruffy features and lessening the dark circles under his eyes a bit.

From the corner, where the mound of soft bedding remained for the entirety of Isshin's time at the abandoned old house, the sickly dog struggled to stand under its own power. It had no tail to wag, but what was left of the muscle that normally anchored the tail near the spine wiggled a bit as the animal hung its head and hobbled across the lab. Scars marked its body, where Isshin had cut it open and took from it other samples; a kidney, a few ribs, part of one lung, a strip of muscle from near the spine. Torn ears hung limp, drool dripping from cut up, scarred features, but still the dog listened to its master.

"Ready for a new leg, finally?" Isshin asked as he settled his hand on the dog's head. There was nothing cruel in his touch, despite the tattered state he'd slowly worked the dog into. The animal was panting in wet breaths just from crossing the room, but it hardly flinched as a long needle was pushed under its mostly numb flesh. Within minutes, it was out cold, laying on its side upon a metal lab table.

Isshin donned rubber gloves and a medical mask. He sanitized all his tools and equipment, and began surgery. After hours of surgical grafting, of fusing old muscle and ligament with new and fitting the joint of the new leg into the old socket, and careful sewing, Isshin stepped back and his dog had a new leg. A line of ragged but clean stitching marked where the old body ended and the new limb began. It was off colored, a little thinner than the dog's other, natural legs from being under used and so less muscled, but by everything Isshin could see, it was a functioning replacement and a step towards his ultimate goal.

A leg wasn't nearly as complicated as the things he would need to create for his son, but it was a start.

So much went wrong. Despite having made the hour drive to the nearest small town for all the over the counter antibiotics he could buy and creating some of his own, the dog's body began rejecting the new limb. Infection set in, putrefying the skin on the surface and eating it away from the inside. The leg started to wither and rot before the dog could even bear weight with it.

Angry and distraught, stressed out and not in his right mindset, Isshin recorded the happenings, photographed the incision and the infection, and once more knocked his dog out upon a cold metal table. He amputated the dying limb, setting it aside for further study, and re-sutured the dog, three-legged again. He carried the weak animal back to the corner and once more laid the stray out upon the thick bundle of blankets and towels, before returning to the artificially grown, dead leg.

Muttering to himself, he shook his head as he tore the leg apart with surgical precision and scientific coldness. He flayed the thin, almost translucent skin away, pinned ligaments and tendons back as he cut away sickly muscle. Upon dissecting the leg, he found evidence of new, fresh growth among the rotted, dying old, which meant the dog's body had actually been beginning to accept the limb. But that left Isshin to wonder what had gone wrong. Perhaps it had simply been bad luck: infections happened even in hospitals, where professionals were doing this sort of thing.

After cataloguing all the information he could glean from the failed experiment, Isshin dropped the dissected limb in a large specimen jar, filling it with preservative alcohol, and sealed the lid. He labeled the large jar with a number that matched the number on the file filled with the leg's info, then slid the jar into place upon the shelving that lined two walls of his lab, amongst all his other attempts and preserved specimens. He had quite the extensive collection going.

And, at the end of every night - or day, or sometimes after several days, when he couldn't keep going any longer and his body and mind demanded he put his work on pause - Isshin would lock down whatever he'd been doing and unlock the door to what had become his son's room.

Ichigo's bed took up the center of the room, wires and cords and tubes stretching to one wall from the machines the teen was still connected to in order to keep his body alive. An old, military style cot had been dragged into the room and pushed up against one wall. That was were Isshin had taken to sleeping; in the room with his comatose child, where the photos of his wife and a little, orange haired, lively boy looked over him.

"Don't give up on me, Ichigo, my son." Isshin muttered as he sat upon the edge of the boy's bed. He tenderly ran his hand through orange hair, looking down upon what should have been peaceful, sleep-like features. Instead, Ichigo looked pale and sickly, drawn. His skin was dry and sallow and his condition worsened the longer he lay there, lifeless but for the machines that kept him breathing and fed nutrients to his body. "Your old man will figure this out..." And Isshin closed his eyes, pretending like he could see that bright smile again, as tears slid from under his eyelids to streak his grizzled, worn features.

Having no other choice, Isshin started over. He couldn't give up, wouldn't. So he tore down the tank he'd used to grow the leg in, cleaned it, rebuilt it and started anew. In other tanks around the basement turned laboratory, be began work on other experiments.

With a heavy heart, he turned toward himself and his son. He took blood samples from Ichigo and healthier samples from himself, and began human trials.

Notebook after notebook, file cabinets full, were filled with barely legible, hand written notes and theories and diagrams. Like with all experimental research, there were many failures. Quickly added to his macabre collection, deformed, dysfunctional organs floated in sealed jars. Dead tissue samples pressed and scraped to slides were labeled and filed away.

Isshin worked day and night. He eventually began the process of reattaching another new leg to his dog. Before preforming the surgery, he once more inspected the limb. It was again off colored, the skin not quite as tough as the dog's natural flesh, nor as pigmented, but it was still a healthy, functioning, artificially grown limb. He theorized that if this graft took, and lasted longer than the first attempt, the limb would fill out and the skin would toughen with use. He guessed the lack of pigment and durability, as well as the under developed muscle was simply a product of the environment in which it had been grown.

When it came time to make another attempt at returning the dog's missing leg, Isshin administered the drugs he'd made to knock the animal out and began cutting the creature open. He attached the new leg, lined up the joints, fused new muscle with old, attached nerve endings and sinew and re-closed the wound.

A few hours later, after being carried to its bed in the corner, the dog reawakened. It refused to put weight on the new limb, but it had been an extensive surgery and was no doubt sore. The sensitivity should have begun to wane with time.

No such thing happened, however. It was created from the dog's very own DNA, synthesized from the dog's own flesh and blood, but like before, the limb began to reject.

Baffled, Isshin turned back to his theories and his other research. There had to have been something he was missing. Studying some of the other, still growing specimens in their tanks, floating in sterile, nutrient rich fluids, he began to wonder if the failures had something to do with the environment they were created in. Or perhaps the process?

His brilliant mind scrambled for possible explanations and solutions. The things he was creating were alive and stable, healthy until attached. They were essentially already complete, and therefore didn't need a host body, only the conditions they'd been created in. Maybe he was thinking on a scale too small, too narrowly. Maybe he needed to widen his vision.

He decided to go about his goal with a different approach. Once more using samples of the dog's DNA, he began attempting to grow a full, living, breathing animal, a completely separate dog. Cloning was nothing new in the scientific community. He'd been doing research and writing papers on various cloning techniques for years. But attempting something to that scale in a basement, a homemade laboratory, was a stretch. But then, so had creating new organs and limbs, yet he'd accomplished that. For his son, he'd do anything.

Using the same techniques he'd used while growing the leg and other various organs, he began attempting to grow an actual puppy, something with the dog's same genes. If he could grow a host, perhaps he could then harvest the limb from his creation.

His first several attempts were complete, horrifying failures. The things he grew in his lab were not dogs, but monstrosities. Most couldn't even claim life, and the few that had, had died almost immediately after being severed from their artificial umbilical cords and brought from their grow-tanks.

But most of his work was trial and error. Unlike science in the usual sense, when it was open to the criticism and spectators, he didn't have a set of moral obligations he had to follow. There was no questioning whether he should do something. His child depended upon this, upon his success. So Isshin would do it, no matter the cost.

The more he worked, the more clones he produced, the closer he came to bringing a second dog to life. His creations were more and more like the first. They began living longer, even outside their specialized tanks. Some even made it so far as developing sight, hearing, the ability to differentiate between stimuli.

And then he produced one hairless, colorless little pup. It looked more like a naked rat than a puppy, but when he set it upon the sterile lab table, he could feel body heat through his rubber gloves. He could feel its pulse under his fingertips. Like a newborn creature, its eyes were still closed and after a few minutes of trying to figure out what was what, it began to cry as it took its first breath of real air.

Isshin's face lit in a wide, overjoyed smile.

He had managed to clone his dog, in his basement.

That night, he placed the little puppy with the stray he'd taken in, watching as it nestled among the blankets. The dog seemed a bit curious, but also a bit wary of the new animal, and watched its every move.

Tired and at his limit, both physically and mentally, Isshin retired for the night. In the morning, he awoke to find the puppy not only up and moving on its own, despite a newborn-like state only the night before, but furred and snarling at his dog. Short, colorless hair coated the animal in fuzz. Teeth had grown, its eyes not only opened, but had lost the blueish of newborn and gained a brittle, brownish color. It had developed, grown, aged, overnight.

Isshin was amazed. This seemed to be exactly what he needed. He could perhaps grow a host, something that grew and developed quickly, far quicker than a normal rate, and harvest from it what he needed to save his son. He'd finally found his answer, or so he thought.

Unable to wait, fearful of how much time had already passed, he began human attempts as the puppy explored its older clone. As he worked, a few snarling yips and growls marked as the two animals got to know each other. Despite being a copy of the older mutt, the clone seemed more aggressive, more confident and also more out going. It stumbled around the lab, sniffing and exploring and letting out little growls at anything that moved or surprised it.

All the while, Isshin half worked as he watched it explore. Eventually, he succeeded in growing a human fetus. The tank acting as an artificial womb, he monitored the fetus's development closely. If the growing human clone was anything like the dog, it would develop at a swift pace and seeing how there was no natural labour and birthing process, when the baby was ready, Isshin would have to be there to pull it from the tank and cut the umbilical cord.

In the meantime, while the baby was growing, he focused on the puppy. Dogs had a shorter lifespan than humans and so growth rate already accelerated, the clone quickly grew into adulthood. Only a couple months after its artificial birth, the pup reached maturity.

Knowing he was about to attempt harvesting the pup's leg for his real dog, he began growing a second clone in a tank nearby the human fetus's. When the day came that Isshin determined the puppy was ready and physically old enough, Isshin killed it himself and cut its leg from its body. There was no remorse in his actions, only a need driven sense of duty.

He once again attached a new leg to the dog he'd been preforming his experiments on. A week went by and the second dog clone was ready. He pulled it from the tank as it squirmed in his hands. The new leg, still pale and a little on the thin side, with fur that was nearly white while the dog's natural fur was much darker, was still healthy and attached. The dog had yet to begin putting weight on its new limb, but the surgical transplant hadn't been rejected this time, not yet at least, and the dog seemed to be in an acceptable condition.

Later that night, after he'd called it quits for the evening and retired to be with his sick child, Isshin was jerked from his sleep by the sharp sound of barking. Pulling himself from his cot and nearly overturning it in his startlement, he hurried from the back room of his lab and entered the main area of the basement. He found his stray backed into a corner, barking at the smaller clone of itself. The puppy, despite its swift growth, was still less than half the dog's size, but it faced its older clone with bared teeth, raised hackles and hunched shoulders.

Frowning, he strode up to the aggressive little pup and picked the thing up. It squirmed in his hold, growling at him as it struggled to turn and face him. Isshin shook his head and tapped its nose, issuing a firm, "No." as he walked away.

The stray relaxed as its clone was pulled away, and returned to its bed of folded blankets and towels. Isshin brought the colorless pup into the back room with him and laid back down on his cot with it. It seemed happy enough to curl at his side and he frowned all the harder, wondering what had angered the little thing so.

Only a few days later, the event Isshin had been patiently waiting for finally occurred. Breaking the sterile, airtight seal on his tank, he broke the womb-like conditions within and pulled forth a small, albino baby, a clone of his beloved son. A smile tried to break the darkness of his features as he held the baby and tiny but fitful and unhappy cries broke the silence of his lab.

Drawn by its cries, the stray dog sat at Isshin's side, looking up at the baby on the table, while the smaller clone sat at the scientist's other side, ears pinned back but not growling its aggression this time. After a moment of marveling at the baby, of reveling in holding a child again, Isshin oh so carefully laid it upon a cloth swaddled lab table and began a physical check. Throughout the whole of the exam, the baby cried and fussed in its tiny, brittle voice.

Like the clones of the dog, the baby was sallow and pale, its skin an ashen white. What little hair it had at birth was also white, fine and silken. Isshin frowned slightly as he noted that the baby's nails were dark, like little bruises on pale fingers. But its lungs were clearly functioning well and its temperature seemed normal. Aside from its odd coloring, most likely an error in the genetics Isshin had tampered with, it seemed like a normal, healthy baby boy.

Isshin was weighing the baby, recording all the data he collected on the clone when the little one pried hazy eyes open to look up at the scientist. Its crying pausing, it stared up at Isshin with the oddest eyes Isshin had ever seen in his long career and life. Unlike the rest of the baby's small form, there was no white to his eyes. The irises might have been similar in color to that of his real son's, but surrounded in a sclera of black, the brown they should have been looked more golden; brittle and bright and cold.

Tears and helpless little cries finally quieted as Isshin stared down at the little baby. Its eyes weren't really focused on him, but they were aimed in his direction, like the way a natural born baby will try to focus on a parent rather than a stranger.

Isshin finally smiled, a small, frail expression, and set aside his work. He swaddled the naked baby in a clean, warm towel and held it against him carefully but confidently, remembering what it was like to hold his own baby boy for the first time. Rocking it in a gentle motion, careful to support the clone's head and neck, he watched as those strange eyes seemed to grow heavy. The baby gurgled a few little sounds before falling still and silent again, fast asleep. Still holding it carefully in one strong arm, Isshin reached up to wipe the traces of stray tears away from his scruffy features as he watched the baby sleep.

Isshin was incredibly careful with the baby's growth and development. He did everything in his power to keep it healthy and strong. He took to calling the little one Shiro, because of the baby's distinguishable lack of coloring.

Back in Isshin's hometown, the case had all but come to a standstill. Both Mr. Kurosaki and his son were still on the missing persons database, but the police had mostly stopped searching for them. It was presumed to be a murder suicide. In the quiet of private homes and off record meetings, everyone agreed; the scientist had finally lost it. Who could blame him? After facing such a tragedy, anyone would have crumbled. So most everyone agreed; Isshin had most likely kidnapped his son and ended their suffering in private somewhere, somewhere where he could hold his boy while he did it, somewhere where he could finally find peace and the two of them could join Isshin's wife and daughters, Ichigo's mother and unborn sisters.

Of course, this wasn't really the case. Isshin had indeed snapped and was still crumbling, his sanity a fragile thing whether he realized it or not, but killing his beloved son was out of the question.

He would save Ichigo.

So he continued his work, his comatose son driving his every action. Like the dogs Isshin had cloned and grown, little Shiro grew faster than was normal. By the turn of the year, the little boy appeared closer to toddler age than infancy and was already beginning to learn words.

"Papapapapa." He gurgled quietly as he sat upon the lab table and played with the stethoscope hanging around Isshin's neck.

Isshin smiled, repeating in a slow voice as he tried to teach the young child real words, "Pa pa," He said, drawing out the sounds carefully, "Just twice, Shiro, pa...pa."

"Papa." The baby mimicked and when Isshin's smile grew, so did Shiro's. "Papapapa!"

The scientist chuckled an amused sound, shaking his head slightly as he gently pulled the stethoscope from little hands. "Maybe we should try daddy instead," He mused, lifting the child from the table, "Can you say daddy?"

"Da...dadada." The young clone got stuck on the repeating sound again, an almost confused expression settling over ghostly features.

Isshin chuckled again, "Well that's ok, we'll figure it out, wont we?" He asked as he set the boy down on the floor, making sure he was steady on his feet before letting go.

Little Shiro ignored him and began unsteadily making his way toward the corner of the lab while his creator watched over him. He inevitably found the old stray's bed and toppled forward as he tripped over the blankets. His landing was soft enough though, and he cooed happily as he crawled across the bedding to find the dog.

Isshin went back to his research, knowing the stray would tolerate all the boy's antics as little Shiro pulled on its ears and tail and pet it with less than deft hands. The boy always seemed so fond of the dog, but not the other clone running around. Shiro and the clone of the puppy didn't get along well, though Isshin had yet to figure out why. In fact, like it was with its older, naturally born counterpart, the cloned pup was outright frightening around the baby. Isshin feared he'd have to get rid of it to keep it from hurting the boy while he grew and developed. Luckily, little Shiro seemed just as happy to avoid the unnatural clone and stick with pestering the adult dog.

He wondered if eventually he would see the same aggression in Shiro, but the child had been cloned from his son and Ichigo was tolerant and kind, far from outright aggressive. Then again, the same could be said of the stray, who's genetics the cloned pup had come from. The poor old thing let Isshin pick it up and lay it on the table every few days. It let Isshin conduct his studies and experiments and held still and silent even when needles were pushed under its skin. And it was the same way with Shiro. The dog was patient and even careful with the toddler, letting little Shiro crawl over it and tug on its discolored, borrowed limb.

Soon enough, Isshin was relieved from the need to worry about getting rid of the aggressive puppy. A few weeks later, he was deep in thought and theories when he was startled from his work by a scared and pained wail and a sharp yelp. When young Shiro's cries shattered the silence of his lab, he threw himself away from his table and scrambled around the corner to find the boy smeared in blood with tears streaming down his pale features. He held one arm out in a telling and awkward way as he cried and sniffled and Isshin could see the obvious marks of a bite already beginning to bruise along colorless skin.

He rushed to the boy, scooping him from the ground to further inspect the wound, only to pause and gasp a surprised sound when he finally spotted the cloned pup twitching in a growing pool of its own blood. It breathed in pitiful, wet gasps but still it bared its teeth and tried to growl.

Little Shiro took one look at it and started crying all over again, leaning forward to hide his face against the collar of Isshin's lab coat. "Papapapa-" He hiccuped pitifully through his cries.

Isshin cradled him close, soothing him as he carried him to a table where he could get a better look at the bite. Sharp teeth had broken the skin enough to draw blood and nearly need stitches. He cleaned the wound and bandaged little Shiro up as he pondered over what could have happened. Obviously the clone had bitten the child, but that left him wondering how the clone had ended up choking on its own blood afterward. There was only one conclusion that made sense; little Shiro was beginning to show aggression as well.

After insuring the child would be alright, Isshin decided that it might have been an isolated incident. The cloned dog had attacked, it was entirely possible that the child only became aggressive because of his obvious fear and pain, though a child shouldn't have been able to kill a dog...never mind so destructively and violently.

Even still, Isshin realized that he needed to start distancing himself from getting attached to the child. Shiro had been grown with a very specific purpose in mind, after all. That should have been a hard thing to do though, when the artificially born creation was so young and dependent upon Isshin. But Isshin wasn't the same person he'd always been. Once he had been a kind man and a loving father, but the falling apart of his world had changed that. He grew more withdrawn and bitter by the day.

After his days at work, Isshin retreated to his real son's side. Ichigo was not doing well. Even with the aid of machines, his breathing was beginning to sound wet and shallow, leading Isshin to conclude that his body was beginning to deteriorate at a faster pace. Time was running out and the clone of his son wasn't yet ready to be cut open so that the organs Ichigo needed could be harvested.

Distraught, Isshin began plans for how he could prolong the inevitable. He would need to either speed up Shiro's growth, or slow down Ichigo's deterioration, the dying of his body. After weeks of working on theories and designs, after months of scrapping ideas and going back to the drawing board, Isshin stood staring absently at the colorless copy of his son when he realized what he would have to do to save Ichigo, to keep his boy alive.

It was obvious, really. He set to work building a new growth tank, creating a nutrient rich, stable environment that he would be able to manipulate and alter as the need arose. He built one that would be large enough to fit a full grown man in.

As he worked on it, Shiro became his little helper. The boy was growing out of the toddler stage by the time Isshin's designs were complete. By the time Isshin procured the many materials he would need and construction began, months had passed, nearly another year, and Shiro held the appearance of a nine or ten year old. He eagerly ran back and forth to grab the tools his papa needed as Isshin worked himself into exhaustion on the new, much more complicated and larger tank.

At night, when he finally called it a day, he would retreat to the smaller back room of his lab. He would lock the door behind him and crawl onto his cot to fall asleep at his son's side. He mostly left Shiro to his own devises during the nights, but the front entrance and all the windows of the main house above were securely locked and the artificially cloned boy had nowhere to go.

Sometimes Shiro would venture up the stairs to leave the basement and explore the rest of the house, sometimes he'd stay downstairs where he was more familiar with. In the mornings, Isshin usually found him curled up and sound asleep with the stray, nestled among the blankets and towels that made up the dog's bed and cuddling the poor thing. The dog never seemed to mind his affections. Other times the scientist would find him passed out on a couch or the floor upstairs.

It wanted to pull at his heartstrings that he was letting an innocent little boy live like this, but he refused to let it get to him. Shiro had been created with a specific purpose in mind and like the other cloned creatures, Isshin couldn't get attached to his work. And that's all Shiro was; a scientific creation, grown in a jar so that he could later be killed and used to save another.

It took months for the tank to be fully constructed and in working condition. Young Shiro, despite having the appearance of a boy nearing his early teens, still happily did Isshin's bidding with childish fervor, always happy to help out his papa. In his self-imposed exile and the work he buried himself in, Isshin changed overtime. Even when the scientist purposefully ignored the colorless boy, even began showing neglect and anger towards the pale creation, Shiro didn't seem to notice or mind. He may not have looked it, but he still acted and thought like a child.

When the tank was finally completed, Isshin instructed Shiro on how to help him load it onto a push-dolly. The massive tank was heavy and solid, as its intended use dictated it be. He wheeled the cart containing the tank over to the ever locked back door, and disappeared within, once again leaving Shiro to his own devices.

The clone listened as things were moved around, some sliding across the floor, some crashing to the ground. Inside what had become his son's bedroom, Isshin rearranged to make room for the tank. He pushed shelving aside and wheeled Ichigo's bed out of the way, careful with the cords and wires and tubes that kept his boy living and breathing. When he'd arranged the tank exactly where he wanted it, he carefully pulled the wheeled cart from under it and began filling it with a mixture similar to what he'd grown Shiro and his canine clones in.

In the past, he would have prayed that he'd been accurate in his calculations and theories and that everything would go well. But now, there was none of that. He trusted in his science alone and he knew he was right. He had to be. If he wasn't, his son was going to die and that couldn't happen. He wouldn't let it.

With much careful maneuvering and careful but hard work, Isshin lifted his son from the bed he couldn't leave. Precise in what he was doing, he immersed Ichigo in the tank, still hooked up to the machines that kept him breathing, kept his body functioning and monitored his heart-rate and brainwaves. Orange hair, grown long in his years of stillness, fanned out in the water around his features, nearly glowing in the light of the tank's lid. All the wires connected to Ichigo rose upward and were fed through a small opening in the lid, so that the machines they connected to could be kept free of the liquid within. Ichigo was left suspended in the tank, breathing through a tube, eyes closed and skin pale.

Isshin stared at his son for hours and wept at what had become of his only child. Later that day, he reminded himself that this was only temporary, that Ichigo would not remain this way forever, and dragged himself from the back room of his lab. He went back to doing what he did best, to what kept him sane. Isshin locked the door to his son's room and went back to work.

Shiro was happy to see him and grinned as he jumped up from where he'd been sitting at the stray's side to prance over to his creator. Isshin didn't smile back at him and after a few minutes of trying to get the elder's attention, Shiro's happy expression melted away and he went back to pestering the dog.

From then on, they mostly only interacted when Isshin asked Shiro to help him with something, or when it was time to eat. Once a week, Isshin would call the boy over for testing and blood work. Since Shiro was getting too big to pick up, he'd have the child hop up onto his metal lab table and Shiro would automatically hold out his arm, palm up. So used to the procedure, having gone through it weekly since he'd been 'born', Shiro didn't even squirm as a sanitized needle was pushed under his pale skin and blood was drawn.

He watched with something like fascination as Isshin drew his blood, injected it into a sterilized test tube, and set it in the centrifuge. Then he'd wait patiently for his father figure to tell him he'd done well, preen under the tiny bit of praise, and hop down from the table to continue playing with the dog.

Though he remained mostly quiet and left the scientist alone like Isshin told him to, Shiro was still more observant that Isshin realized. Perhaps his curiosity came from Isshin. After all, Ichigo was of Isshin's blood and Shiro was of Ichigo's very DNA, but whatever it was, he watched his father and creator for most of the day, observed the things Isshin did, all his little habits, all his mannerisms as he worked. He had no contact with other people or with the outside world, only his creator, but it was enough to teach him basic human behavior and he eventually began imitating Isshin's writings.

He'd sneak scraps of paper and a pencil and Isshin would pretend like he didn't notice as Shiro would go sit in a corner and scribble over the paper. He didn't write real letters or words, merely little squiggly lines and imitations, but it was an interesting thing that the scientist in Isshin couldn't help but make note of.

Somewhere along the line, the messy lines became drawings of the things around him and Shiro would sit for hours, copying beakers and lab equipment and even the dog down onto paper. On one of Isshin's necessary trips to the small town, he picked up a sketchbook and some colored pencils with his groceries and needed items. Shiro lit up when he was given his new gift and instantly went about adding color to his drawings as he worked on filling the blank pages.

One day, nearing what should have been Shiro's fourth birthday, he started to draw something from memory rather than what he saw around him. It wasn't perfect and most of the details were a little off, but he drew a picture of the large tank he'd helped Isshin build nearly a year ago now. Proud of himself, and maybe a little confused on what it was that he'd drawn, Shiro climbed to his feet, sketchbook and pencil in hand, and walked over to his father.

Like always, Isshin was hard at work and deep in thought. The boy, much larger than his age would suggest, stood by quietly and watched while he waited for Isshin to address him. After several minutes, notebook held close to his chest, Shiro frowned.

Isshin sat with his head bowed, eyes scanning line after line of numbers and letters and things that Shiro had no idea about. He knew it was papa's work though. Growing frustrated and tired, Isshin sighed and grumbled something to himself, hands wringing upon the edge of the table turned desk.

"Papapa..pa.." The child finally spoke up. A slight frown marred pale features, brows furrowing as Shiro repeated the sound a few too many times and recognized that it sounded odd. "pa..."

"Shiro-!" Isshin started to snap, cutting the repeated word off as he looked over at the boy. He held up two fingers and gave the pallid clone a telling look, jaw tight.

A sheepish, almost guilty expression crossed his features as odd, golden eyes panned downward for a moment. "Pa-" Shiro held up one finger, like Isshin, then a second. "-pa..."

Isshin nodded slightly, a bit of a torn look on his scruffy face as he finally stepped away from his work. He put his pen down, scratched at the week old stubble that lined his jaw, and gave his creation his rare attention. "What is it, Shiro?"

The odd creature crossed his hands in front of himself, the fingers of his right pulling at one finger of his left. He looked up at Isshin with wide, curiosity filled eyes. "What's this, papa?"

The scientist frowned again, watching the child he'd grown. He was growing far more swiftly than a normal person, at least at the moment, but it seemed there were still bugs with his genetics. He had trouble with certain things, especially anything that repeated. Sounds were especially hard for him, Isshin wondered if it was somehow connected to his odd, watery voice, and he'd draw the same thing over and over before moving to something new. And even though his outward age was nearing early teens, his mind still worked much like a child's. Granted, Shiro was barely over a few years old in reality, so even though his developing mind seemed behind his physical years, he was still far ahead of other children his true age.

"Shiro..." He drawled, giving the boy a critical look. "You know what fingers are..."

Pale features twisted into a pout, "No..." He twisted his thumb and pointer finger around the base of one of his fingers on his other hand as he stared at Isshin. "This." He demonstrated, "You do this a lot... Why?"

Frown deepening, Isshin mimicked the child's motions, twisting his fingers around the base of his ring finger as he tried to figure out what the clone meant. His fingertips brushed cool, smooth metal and he looked down. His dark brows furrowed in an almost sad, helpless way as he twisted the ring he never removed, and recognized what motions the creation was trying to copy. He closed his eyes for a moment, before looking back up at the pallid creature.

Sometimes he forgot how observant the boy was, but Shiro had obviously picked up on his habit of fidgeting with the ring while in deep thought.

"It's a ring, Shiro." He said lowly, but not harshly.

"A ring..." Shiro mused, brows arched, eyes directed at the object he'd been talking about as he continued to copy over and over again the motions that he so often witnessed from his creator; the twisting of the man's ring. He crept a small step closer to get a better look. "What for?"

"People have lots of reasons to wear rings," A very small smile twitched onto Isshin's features. He stepped around his lab table, closer to the clone he usually tried to distance himself from, physically and otherwise. He looked down at his ring, still twisting it. "but this one is very important. It was a symbol of the bond I had with my wife."

"Papa was married?" The lad's lilting voice was filled with wonder, "I have a mamama..ma?"

Isshin looked up, arched a brow slightly and held up two fingers. Shiro mimicked him, first holding up one finger, "Ma-" then a second, "-ma."

Isshin nodded his approval, and continued. "I was married...years ago..." He paused, glanced back down at his wedding ring; a simple, golden band. "She wasn't your mother...you don't have a mother...but..." As he thought about it, finally reflected upon something other than his goal, on something other than what consumed his very life, Isshin realized something. "I think, if she were still alive, she would have loved you like her own."

Masaki would have never allowed him to do this. If Masaki were alive, and Ichigo had still been in the accident anyway. If she had been around to see all that Isshin had done, all that he'd been working so hard to do. If she had been alive to see the creature, the clone, the life, he'd created in his desperation, she would have never allowed him to follow through with his plans. Even if it was to save their son, Masaki would have taken Shiro in as her own, as a real child. She wouldn't have let him kill the boy.

Part of that hurt Isshin, knowing that he was going against what his beautiful, beloved wife would have wanted...but he had to save Ichigo. He had to save his son, his real child. Ichigo was his only child, the only family he had. Ichigo was all Isshin had left.

He looked up again, glanced at the clone, "She would have been happy to have you call her mama."

A small, happy little smile rested on colorless lips. Shiro looked pleased with the new information and with what his father and creator said. A few seconds later he went back to pestering the dog, petting and doting on the scarred up, tired old animal.

Isshin went back to work, like he always did.

He wasn't granted much peace though, when Shiro remembered the reason he'd originally been bothering his papa. Jumping up and grabbing his notebook, he scurried back over to the lab table and proudly flipped to the drawing, holding it out to show Isshin, "Look, papapa!"

Isshin sighed at the extra syllable, but looked up again. He started to force a smile to indulge the child, when he realized what Shiro was showing him. The door that tank sat behind was always locked, and Shiro was never allowed within. Amazed about the implications of what Shiro had drawn, Isshin took the book being shown to him and further studied the drawing.

"This is very good, Shiro," He praised, much to the clone's pleasure. "Where did you see this?"

The boy frowned a bit and shrugged, "Dunno. I just drew it. D'ya like it? You can have it if ya do, papa."

Shiro had only ever drawn things he'd seen around him, never things from his past. In fact, he'd never really even showed signs of having any real form of long term memory. To the scientist, this was an amazing new development in a life-form he'd created. "I do, thank you, Shiro."

"You can keep it then." Shiro repeated with a smirk.

Isshin couldn't help the small smile that tugged at his scruffy, worn features. With a small sigh, he gave in and nodded, but turned the drawing back to the clone, "You have to sign it then. You can't give people your art if you don't sign it."

"Oh!" Shiro eagerly took the drawing pad back, but paused as he looked at the picture, pencil in hand. The eagerness drained from his features and he looked back up at Isshin, quietly whispering, "How do I do that..?"

"You write your name in the corner," Isshin told him, grabbing the pencil. He knew Shiro didn't know how to read and write, since Isshin had never taught him, so he wrote the letters very lightly in the corner and handed the pencil back, "Like that, trace over top of the letters."

"Ok!" Eager again, Shiro very carefully followed the light lines his father had made for him, "This is my name?"

"Mhmm." Isshin nodded and pointed out the few letters, telling the boy what each one was called and what sound of his name it made. Shiro eagerly drank in the new information, repeating each sound while he traced the letter with his pencil. After he'd figured it out and memorized it, he excitedly scurried away and began signing his name to all his other drawings.

Isshin let his smile slip away and watched for a few minutes, absentmindedly twisting his wedding band, before he again turned back to his work.

In the coming days, the scientist began paying a bit more attention to his young charge. He took note of how curious about everything Shiro was. He took note of how the boy seemed to watch everything; the dog, the computer that ran Isshin's programs and experiment probabilities, the centrifuge when it was on. As those days ticked by into weeks, then into months, he also began to realize that something was off about the boy.

Shiro normally grew so fast that in the past, sometimes only a couple of weeks would mark an obvious change in his height and weight. And his hair grew equally fast, so Isshin had to cut it every few weeks to keep it from growing long and out of control. But as more time passed, Isshin realized that he wasn't seeing much change in the boy anymore. He hadn't cut Shiro's hair in months, yet it wasn't even touching his shoulders yet, and he still only looked to be in his early teens, when he should have been nearing mid-teens by all of Isshin's calculations.

All the while, his curiosity grew. He began learning things easier, speaking easier. He started conversations more and on more than a few occasions, Isshin would catch him talking to the dog when Isshin himself was busy. His drawings became more elaborate, more detailed and he started drawing things aside from what he was surrounded with. He started drawing things he shouldn't have had much knowledge of at all, things he'd seen through the windows of the house he was locked in, things he'd seen when he was only very small still. He even drew the cloned pup he'd killed as a baby.

It was like something in the child was trying to play catch up. Shiro's physical growth had begun to slow down and level off to something more normal, while his mental development had seemed to speed up. It was an anomaly Isshin could have never predicted. The other two dogs he'd cloned had both been killed off before they'd reached this stage, and his work was unprecedented, leaving Isshin with no former examples to base his theories and research upon. At first, it was exciting. It was amazing and new and incredible.

But only at first.

It quickly wore off as Isshin realized what would come of the new development. If Shiro's growth was slowing down, he'd never catch up to Ichigo in age... The older man had been waiting so that the clone could develop into a full adult, so that his body would be as close to Ichigo's as was possible before he preformed the necessary procedures. Granted, Isshin knew enough about the medical field to know that donors were rarely the same age as the recipients. In fact, race, gender or age actually had very little to do with it. More important was blood type and Shiro's blood type was an exact match to Ichigo's. In fact, his blood was Ichigo's. But Isshin had been airing on the side of caution, insuring the clone's body, organs included, were fully developed and functioning before giving them to his son.

Now that Shiro had stopped physically growing so quickly, there was no longer any need to wait. Though the tank and the conditions within had surely prolonged his life, Isshin's son was still running out of time. In the back of his mind, the scientist knew that even should this work, even should Ichigo wake up from his coma after he was given new, functioning organs and blood and everything else that needed replaced by now, the chances of Ichigo ever being Ichigo again were very slim. Brain damage alone all but insured Ichigo would never have a quality life again, never get into college, never finish his senior year in high school, never be well enough to be out of Isshin's care and on his own, but Isshin couldn't accept that. He was a father. Ichigo was his son, his child. He had to try.

It took him days to mentally sort through what he'd have to do. He had to put Shiro under. He had enough sedative that he'd be able to essentially kill the boy. Shiro's heart would stop while he slept, brain activity would follow shortly after, and Isshin would only need to keep his basic bodily functions active long enough to complete the transplants. The clone wouldn't feel a thing.

So, on the day Isshin normally would have drawn blood for more testing, the man forced his voice to stay even and level, and called the boy he'd created over. After years of watching over Shiro, of creating him and raising him and watching him develop and learn, Isshin was going to kill him.

Like he did every week, Shiro stopped drawing and smiled as he hurried over to his father's side. He hopped up onto the metal lab table and held out his arm, palm up. Isshin turned a weak smile on him and grabbed the syringe. As he watched, a small frown creased Shiro's ashen brows, golden eyes settling on the needle.

"Papapapa...why 's there already somefin' in it?" He asked, picking up on the oddity of the situation. He'd gone through this routine enough to know that the syringe was usually empty until his father filled it with his blood. "There wont be 'ny room in it for the blood..."

"It's ok, Shiro." Isshin practically whispered, pushing the plunger to the syringe a bit, until a tiny drop of the sedative beaded at the tip. "It wont hurt..." When he was sure it was in working order and there wouldn't be a problem, he gently took the boy's arm, pressing his thumb just below the crook of Shiro's elbow where a prominent, blue vain stood out against pale skin.

Confused, knowing something wasn't right, Shiro whimpered a small, frightened sound as the sharp needle was pushed through his skin. He furrowed his brows, the bridge of his nose crinkling as he watched. "I don't wanna..." He protested quietly, but as Isshin started to push on the plunger again and the slight burn of the foreign liquid entered his veins, he gasped a sharp sound, eyes going wide. "Papa! Nooo..."

He jerked his arm away, not liking the odd feeling. Isshin cringed, refused to look the boy in the eye, and held his arm. "It's alright, Shiro... It'll be over soon..." Isshin soothed quietly.

Tears started to form in the corners of inverted eyes as Shiro's bottom lip trembled. He struggled against the older man, becoming more fervent and insistent as his fear grew. Almost half the dose had been injected when he finally started really crying. Tears streaked his features and he shook his head, terrified and confused.

"Papapapa-" He chanted over and over again, shaking as the room seemed to blur and swim before his eyes. As the sedative began taking effect, and Shiro began to slump forward, leaning his weight against his father, something snapped. It was just like with the pup, and as he sobbed terrified tears against his creator, he bared his teeth and started pushing Isshin away again.

"No, Shiro, n-no..." Isshin tried to sooth as the boy continued to struggle. He'd very nearly injected the full dose but he wanted to be sure it worked, so he continued to fight with the child. "Shhhh...it's alright, Shiro, you're being such a good boy..." He praised, knowing how much the clone usually enjoyed it.

That wasn't the case this time, as Shiro's cries grew louder, until he was nearly screaming, tears streaking pale features to drip from his chin. Though he still thought and mostly acted like a child, he had the size of a teenage boy. He wasn't small and fragile, not like he'd been against the puppy.

Isshin grunted under the force of the boy's next shove. He looked up just in time to see terror stricken features twist with an instinctive sort of aggression. Like the cloned puppy had against the stray, Shiro turned on his creator. It was basic instinct, self preservation. Shiro knew something wasn't right, he knew his papa was not protecting him, and he fought back.

He all but threw his father away from himself, overturning the table he'd been sitting on in the process. The metal table hit the ground with a deafening clang, bouncing before sliding to a halt. Everything that had been sitting across it, the tools Isshin had gotten out in preparation for what he'd need to do after sedating his creation, scattered across the ground, some shattering.

Frightened beyond words, Shiro ripped the needle from his arm and flung it across the room. It shattered when it hit the wall near where the stray dog cowered in a corner. The pale clone bared teeth down at his father as Isshin groaned, reaching up to press the heel of his hand against his throbbing head, and started to rise.

His steps wavering under the drugs, Shiro advanced on the man trying to hurt him, eyes wide and teeth bared in a horrid mix of confusion, fear, pain and aggression. Tears streaked his features as his name fell from his father's lips. He cried out to his papa as Isshin screamed.

By the time Isshin fell still, Shiro was covered in blood, slipping in slick, warm puddles as he struggled through numbing sedatives. He couldn't understand what had happened, what he'd done, and he finally gave up, falling to his butt and calling out for his papa as his hands fisted in Isshin's lab coat. A few moments later, he fell still, breathing in pitifully weak little gasps as adrenaline wore off and his system was flooded with too much sedative. Gold on black eyes rolled back as Shiro collapsed.

He laid there, in a puddle of his dead father's blood, for hours. When he finally started to come to again, his body forcefully rejected the substances it had been fed, and he added everything he'd eaten in the past day to the floor until he passed out again.

It was nearly two days before he actually regained full consciousness and when he did, Shiro whimpered at the pounding in his head, the pain in his everything, and the nauseating smell around him. Disoriented, the boy clutched at his aching stomach with one hand as he pushed himself into a sitting position with the other. He looked around, confused and still groggy, mind sluggish, but when he spotted Isshin's body sitting hardly a foot away, his eyes went wide and he crawled the short distance.

"Pa...papapa..." He trembled as he tugged at Isshin's lab coat with red stained hands, "No, papa...I'm sorry..."

Of course, he got no response. The stray dog painfully climbed from its bed in the corner and slinked its way over to Shiro, cowering as low to the ground as it could get as it walked, tail tucked between its legs.

When it nosed at Shiro's arm, the boy turned toward it with tears in his eyes and pulled the dog close. He buried his face in its mangy fur, sniffling as he sat on the floor and trembled. It took him a few hours, but eventually the boy weakly pulled himself to his feet. He stumbled over to the nearest wall of the lab, where he paused to lean his weight. After two days of laying on a cold, concrete floor, nearly overdosing and without food or water, the movement made him dizzy and stole what was left of his strength. The dog loyally trailed at his side, a limp in its steps as it used its foreign leg and what was left of its tail tried to waggle.

After a few moments, the clone pushed on. He grabbed his notebook and pencils on his way by, and made his way to the staircase that led up into the rest of the house. The first thing he did was begin digging through cupboards for something to fill his belly with. After eating until his stomach quit protesting, he fell asleep on the couch, fingers tangled in what was left of the dog's scruffy fur.

Days came and went. Shiro mostly paced up and down the stairs, constantly trying to wake his father up each time he entered the basement. The dried blood on his pale skin itched and after scratching until he bled, he finally figured out how to work the shower upstairs and bathed himself, without help from his creator, for the first time. The water ran nearly black, thick with dried fluids and grime, as it swirled down the drain.

When he'd dried off, he went back down to the lab and dug around for some of his clothing. He dressed himself and sat down on the opposite side of the large space from Isshin's body, and began to draw. And draw. And draw.

He drew whatever came to mind, which was mostly his papa. He drew Isshin at work in his lab. He drew Isshin drawing blood from him, drew him scribbling in his notebooks and staring at his computer and twist-twisting his ring. Then he drew Isshin laying on the ground and he used his red colored pencil for that one.

When he was done with each drawing, he carefully signed his name in the corner before flipping to the next page. Eventually, he grew hungry again, so he closed his notebook and climbed back up the stairs to find more food. The stray dog whined a small sound and stared up at him as he nibbled and he looked down at the animal, before tearing the piece of bread in half and handing over part of it. The hungry animal scarfed it down and Shiro smiled, giving it the rest of his half.

A week went by. He ran out of things he could eat. The body in the basement had long since begun to smell and it was becoming unbearable, even upstairs. Still, it took Shiro a few days of going hungry before he grew desperate enough to try to find a way out of the house.

He'd never left before, never ventured beyond the small house. Because of Shiro's appearance and obvious oddities, as well as the nature of his creation and what he'd been intended for, Isshin had never dared bring him on any of the rare trips he'd made to the small town nearly an hour's drive away. He always locked the pale boy in, made sure Shiro was securely hidden away. Shiro only ever saw the outside world through the windows and in a few of the various books Isshin had laying around.

But desperation and instinct were powerful things, as was the drive for survival. He tired the door at least a half dozen times before finally giving in and realizing he wasn't going to be able to get through whatever lock Isshin had put on it. It needed a key even from the inside.

So Shiro turned to one of the windows. Afraid he'd get in trouble, he hesitated to break it, but eventually worked up the courage to find something heavy down in papa's lab. He threw a heavy, metal tray through the glass, ducking as it shattered. The sound scared the dog and the stray yelped a dry sound and cowered.

Shiro looked over at it, then back to the window. After a moment of debate, he dragged the couch over to sit under the broken window and climbed onto the cushions, then onto the window's sill. It wasn't a far drop to the ground, only a few feet, but when he landed, broken glass crunched under foot and he grit his teeth, features twisting.

But he still had to get his dog through, so he turned back to the gaping window and stuck his arms back through, "C'mon, pupuppy..." He called, watching as the stray's ears perked at his voice. "C'mere...aren't ya hungry too? We can go find somethin' ta eat..."

It was more his voice then his words that brought the dog over to the couch, but Shiro decided the animal must have been as hungry as him. He patted the back of the couch through the window and the mutt tentatively climbed up onto the couch as he bid.

"Good doggy." Shiro praised quietly as he reached through and wrapped his arms around the scared up, skinny thing. He grunted as he lifted it and pulled it through the gaping window, bottom lip trembling as he shifted on the broken glass below his feet. But he refused to set the dog down on it too, so he walked a few feet through damp grass, until he was clear of the jagged shards, before he set the animal down and dropped to the ground himself.

The dog let out a low whine as it laid down beside him in the grass and Shiro patted it before pulling one of his feet toward him. He chewed his bottom lip as he pulled the broken glass free, pained tears trying to blur his vision.

When he'd removed the glass from the bottoms of his feet, he finally sighed and looked around himself. He'd seen most of this from inside, through the windows, but it was still new, still foreign. He knew no fear, however, only wonder and curiosity, and he pulled himself to his feet with a bit of effort.

As he started walking, choosing a random direction, the dog groaned a tired, worn out sound and struggled to its feet again. It loyally limped along behind him for hours, head hanging low and panting as the sun rose above the canopy of trees the woods created.

Sketchpad in hand and followed by the only real friend he'd had in his short life, Shiro padded through what he'd only ever been allowed to look at before. He forgot about being hungry, tired. He forgot about his dead father and the lab he'd left behind. He touched and inspected and smelled everything around him; the patchy grass below foot, the bark of the tree trunks around him, leaves and flowers and even the half chewed, dead squirrel he came across.

Trailing behind him, the dog seemed less impressed. It's steps were tired and short, dragging. It's scared up features were slack and it's brown eyes were dull from years of misguided abuse. It did manage to peel its lips back and bare teeth as they trudged past what Shiro hadn't recognized as something else's meal, but that was the extent of the stray's energy.

After wandering in a meandering trail for the majority of the day, Shiro's fatigue eventually caught up to him. With a sigh and a small frown, he sat down against the base of a tree and looked around. Completely lost, it didn't even occur to him to go back to the house he'd been created in now that it was getting dark. He'd left it behind for a reason, after all.

It took the dog a few minutes to catch up to him, and when it did, the stray lowered itself to the ground at the boy's side with a weak grunt. It stretched out, flattened on its side, and settled its head in Shiro's lap. The two fell asleep as the colorless clone ran long fingers over coarse fur.

In the morning, Shiro yawned as he awakened, his stomach making a painful, unhappy sound that reminded him he hadn't eaten in days. The dog's head was still in his lap, below his hands and a small smile twitched to life on pale lips. "C'mon pupu..." He skewed up his features and very carefully enunciated the word, "puppy... Let's find somethin' ta eat."

But the dog didn't respond to his voice like it usually did. No tired stretching as it stood, no happy little grumble as he petted it. Not even a worn out, annoyed huff of hot breath against his hand.

Shiro frowned, swallowed hard, and ran his hands through course, dry fur. He shook the animal a bit as he looked down at the heavy head in his lap. His only friend, the only consistent playmate he had, lay dead against him.

He frowned all the harder, pressed the heel of one hand against his eye as he settled the dead dog's head down across the animal's paws and pulled himself to his feet. Shiro left the stray where it had died and with a final pet and a small, sad little sniff, continued on his aimless journey. He wandered, barefooted and lost, through the woods for nearly the rest of that day too, before he finally came to something that wasn't the same as everything else around him.

At first, a little delirious and on the verge of collapse, he thought maybe he'd somehow ended up back at the little house he'd been grown in, but he quickly realized the wooden boards ran the wrong way, up and down instead of horizontally like siding. Through his worn haze, a spark of curiosity made Shiro wander up to the structure. He ran his hand over the smooth, treated wood. It still had a little bit of a chemical smell to it from the lacquer, like it was fresh. But that wasn't quite what registered to Shiro. What he picked up from the foreign smell was that it was more familiar to him from his time locked away in a scientist's lab than was the earthy, natural smells he'd been surrounded by for days now.

As it turned out, the boy was pretty good at climbing, even if it was an eight foot tall privacy fence meant specifically to keep people out. He jumped up, hands catching the top edge, and hoisted himself over with a grunt. His landing was a little less than graceful, but considering the poor state he was in from wandering round through the woods for days -even longer still since he'd last eaten or truly rested- that he stayed upright at all was a small feat.

Something not far off growled an odd sound, before it hissed and scurried away.

Shiro half jolted at the unexpected sound, before straightening and trying to follow the little animal. It disappeared in a thick patch of greens and reds and yellows and the clone realized he couldn't follow it through, too big to climb between the plants and the posts they grew along.

Attention sufficiently directed at the new plants instead of the small animal, he curiously inspected them, before finding a bright red, round something growing close by. When he reached out to feel the smooth, almost waxy looking texture, the vegetable pulled free and fell to the dirt with a dull thump.

Brows arching a bit, Shiro stooped in a crouch to settle on his haunches, before reaching out and picking the tomato up. As odd as it may have seemed, having only been alive for a handful of years and hidden away for all of them, he'd never actually seen a whole tomato before. But as the pressing issue that was his very unhappy belly persisted, it didn't take him long to realize it was a vegetable and therefore edible.

Biting into it, he was too busy focusing on how very hungry he was to realize the juice from the tomato dripped down his chin. It took him hardly a few seconds to consume the vegetable, and he quickly started to check the others. The first had fallen off with his touch, so he merely poked at a few, before another bright red one fell free under his touch.

Crouched down and so hidden from sight, he missed as the cat he'd been originally following hopped up onto the back porch of the small home that the yard enclosed and rubbed against a sliding glass door. Behind the glass, the owner of the house and property deep in the woods frowned slightly as bright blue eyes panned over his backyard, before dropping to glance at the upset feline.

It was probably just a raccoon or opossum upsetting the barn cat. Thinking nothing of it, the man grunted a small sound and, after finding nothing of interest, turned back to the interior of his home to continue his morning routine.

Later that afternoon, hours later after the incident, the man wandered outside. As an afterthought, he decided to take a peek around his garden, hoping the pests didn't do any real damage.

They rarely did though, not since putting up the fence and getting a cat. His little feline hunter took care of mice and birds and the smaller annoyances that could wreak havoc on his plants, and since putting up the fence, the deer had quit depleting his crop.

It was quite the shock when he wandered through his rather large garden, passed the peppers and cucumbers and squash, towards the back, and found that not only were most of the tomatoes that had been just about ripe yesterday gone, but that what was left of them lay scattered in a messy pile at the base of one of his plants.

After months of constant issues, he'd finally given in and put a privacy fence around his private property, in the middle of the woods where he had no neighbors and privacy wasn't a thing he needed to concern himself with, and now he was having issues again. It was like nature and all her creatures had decided to play some horrible game with him this year.

"You've got to be shitting me." The big man grumbled lowly.

Not far off, the big orange barn cat disappeared between two rows of vegetables as it stalked for prey. The man snorted. Next time the little hunter came running to the backdoor, he'd be more concerned. For now, he was left the task of trying to figure out how to save his season's worth of fresh produce.

But how did someone challenge nature at her own game?

"Barbwire..."

An hour and half later, Grimmjow and a store clerk had donned thick, leather work gloves and were busy loading rolls of barbwire into the back of an old, black pickup truck. The inside of the bed was scratched and gouged and mud splattered its sides and grill, making obvious its duty as a work truck. After another half hour of drive time back to his home in the middle of nowhere, Grimmjow wasted little time in getting to work. Mounting the fixtures that would hold the barbed wiring along the top of the fence took him most of the day.

After hours of hard work in hot, midsummer weather, he called it a day and decided he'd finish the wiring part later, the next day perhaps. Wiping sweat from his brow with the back of one tanned hand, he dropped his tools to on a sturdy, wooden patio table that sat out back behind his house, kicked off his work boots, and retired inside for a cool shower and something to eat as the sun started to set.

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Expect the second and final part soon, it's already written and merely needs edited. (which will hopefully be done better than this chapter was... OTL) Anyway, I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on the story thus far!
Thank you for giving it a chance~