Author: icefalcon
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Bleach
Pairings: Slight Isshin/Masaki implied.
Warnings: Spoilers for Isshin's backstory.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
For Erin - I hope this intrudes into your thesis. XD
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1.
Shiba Isshin had always intended to join the fourth division, and he'd beat up anyone who said different.
He wanted to heal, dammit, no matter what muscle brained morons thought of the Fourth division. Anyway, he was THE Shiba Isshin! He'd shape up the pansy assed weaklings, and he'd be the best healer and the best fighter the Gotei-13 had ever seen!
Yes, Shiba Isshin had always intended to join the fourth division - until the moment his zanpakuto imperiously woke.
He'd known the right words to wake it, of course. Isshin always had. They'd never worked, but he could feel the distinctly unimpressed arrogance sitting at the back of his head, refusing to obey.
He'd sat there for hours at the Academy, shouting them over and over, getting more and more frustrated at both the lack of response, and the growing heavy amusement inside him.
And then one day, it worked.
He'd snuck out to spend the day nosing through the Fourth division headquarters. Unohana-taichou had even smiled at him, which was good, because it meant she liked him and that was important because he'd be vice captain soon.
Isshin had been stomping back to the Academy, howling out the release command of his shikai (he'd made a little song), thinking about how he'd kick Akane-fukutaichou's ass and other important things.
"REEEEEEJOICCCE IN THEEEEEE -"
No.
'Horizon, A - huh?'
We will NOT answer your call while you direct yourself so.
Isshin groaned, overwhelmed by the force of the presence manifesting itself in his head.
Heal? his zanpakuto said, increasing in power.
Isshin fell to the ground.
Serve? his zanpakuto hissed, burning, burning brightly.
He struggled to breath through the shining blaze around him.
We will not serve, his zanpakuto said.
In. Out.
The light was unbearable.
We have a different path to walk, his zanpakuto said.
And the radiance of his zanpakuto's sun tore through the misty clouds of his planned future.
2.
An old name, they said, patching up his burns.
An old power, they said, while informing him that his blindness would subside in a month.
They did not say, this one is too strong for you to master, but Isshin heard it anyway.
3.
There were several theories behind why zanpakuto were as they were. Where they shaped by the soul that wielded them? Did they exist separately, choosing to serve where and when they wished? Why did a zanpakuto take a particular form?
At first, Isshin thought that his zanpakuto was a separate entity, which had obviously chosen him because of his brilliance as a shinigami.
Slowly, as he gained more control, he assumed his growing mastery and abilities were because they were learning to get along.
The sniping comments injected into his mind at any random point of the day grew to be more amusing, and less of a burden, and the brilliant heaviness that lurked within him began to feel more natural, his stubbornness leashing it down under his rule.
Despite the burns, the near constant blindness, the time that he spent in the Fourth Division (most likely more than he would have if he'd actually ended up in the Division), a fierce burning pride was glowing.
He was getting stronger.
Isshin did not stop to think that he too, was changing.
4.
The day Isshin tied on the insignia of a Vice Captain was the day he began to question whether or not his zanpakuto was an entity coming to a compromise with his genius.
His control was so much stronger, so much firmer, than his zanpakuto had occasionally begun to defer (or at least not argue, which was really the same) to him.
Surely, Isshin rationalised, the zanpakuto was a tool shaped by its master - which meant that he wasn't testing himself against a sword, he was shaping his power, right?
The form of his zanpakuto was only his (naturally) immense power taking form. Then, mastering his zanpakuto was merely the process of learning how to discipline his power! And he was Shiba Isshin - no challenge would ever be too great.
He would decide the path to walk from here on, not some stupid-assed piece of steel!
This thought, more than anything, drove him to his first attempt at Bankai.
The thought did him little good.
His zanpakuto contemptuously shattered him - a Vice Captain! - hammering him down to his knees, just like on the first occasion.
What path are we walking, Shiba Isshin? Not this one.
Bright, bright burning.
5.
It was sixty years before Isshin tried for Bankai again.
By that time, they fought so seamlessly that Isshin had given up philosophical questions of what a zanpakuto was. It worked, that was what mattered.
Isshin never told Urahara that he'd technically achieved Bankai a whole lot faster that the stupid new Twelfth Division captain had. Firstly, because Urahara would have brought up the first attempt and laughed at him a lot, and secondly because it was so easy it was dumb.
Isshin had simply ordered him. Commanded that they both grow stronger, and that he would tell Isshin what his bankai was, or Isshin would know why.
His zanpakuto laughed, and laughed again, tauntingly unfurled words of fire in his mind, a whiplash of power matched this time with a surge of Isshin's own reiatsu.
It was only as Isshin shrugged on his captain's robe, to the sound of golden chimes of triumph curling through his head, that he recognised his zanpakuto for what it was √ neither tool nor being, merely a perfect reflection of himself.
Larger than life, shining like the sun.
6.
A reflection, however, does not pick and choose which aspects to mirror, and when the order to exterminate the Quincy tribe came, they both reluctantly obeyed, aware of the danger the Quincy methods of Hollow eradication posed to their worlds.
'Bankai: Final Form.'
Isshin withdrew into the embrace of his zanpakuto.
'Royal Judgment of Benu!'
And nothing happened.
The final form of his Bankai was judgment in its purest form, shearing soul from body, sending Hollows and those tainted by the darkness into the next life, to be purified and cleansed.
If it failed, then the target was found innocent by whatever higher powers Isshin and his zanpakuto drew upon.
Nothing happened.
At least, nothing happened that bloody night that Isshin and his other half caused.
They burned brightly, but this kind of slaughter this was as foreign to his zanpakuto was it was to him. They ruled, they commanded, they blazed.
What path are we walking?
The kind of petty organization that ordered its captains out, tight faced with disgust at the task they were given, unhappily wading through the blood of innocent, innocent, people was not where he belonged.
None of the captains deserved this: Yama-ji with his stoniest face on, doing his duty to Soul Society, Kyouraku, alone for once, with a disconcerting lack of expression at Yama-ji's side (Ukitake had flatly excused himself on the grounds of ill-health), Aizen fastidiously moving as fast as possible, granting the mercy of a quick death where he could √ no one deserved this.
None of the Quincy deserved this.
This was not his path.
He had to put down his zanpakuto, for both their sakes.
Isshin closed his eyes, squared his shoulders, and set his feet on a different one, one that brought him the door of an old friend.
'Urahara.'
Urahara with his Crimson Princess, equally as stuck up as Isshin's own zanpakuto (Isshin and Urahara had speculated several times while drunk that they gossiped secretly about their plebian wielders) understood the places that they were both driven, and the places that they could not go.
'Help us disappear.'
7.
The droning of the first year med lecturer and the scrape of chalk against blackboard was still unique enough to hold Shiba Isshin's attention.
Or would have been, if not for the presence of a Hollow outside the building.
Isshin returned his gaze to the front of the lecture hall.
The Eighth Division patrolled this part of Tokyo. It was not his concern.
The growl at the back of his head said it was.
Wake me.
'No.'
Wake me! He commanded.
The moment of stillness before Isshin's reply seemed infinite.
'No. I won't do it again.'
'I'm sorry, what did you say?' The pretty girl seated next to him snuck a swift glance at him underneath her bangs.
'Ah, nothing!'
'Are you sure? You looked very grim there for a moment! I was almost scared! Although, you know, you look kind of cool like that, I bet if you had a cigarette you'd look like a regular yakuza! I'm Kurosaki Masaki! What's your name?'
8.
Twenty years later, Kurosaki Isshin ate all his fine promises of withdrawal, of turning his back on shinigami and Soul Society alike, the isolation and anonymity that he had maintained despite the cost.
Grandfisher.
He had been too weak to save the Quincy.
He had been too late to save Masaki.
Grandfisher.
He had been too slow to prevent Ichigo from being drawn into the world he'd turned his back on.
Too lost to remember what path he should be walking.
Grandfisher.
He could feel the reiatsu pressing down.
'Rejoice -' Isshin faltered.
He would not be too weak, too late, too slow. Yet -
A weighty stirring in the back of the head, indolent incandescence uncoiling with increasing rapidity.
We walk our path.
Isshin breathed out, smiled. Bared his teeth in a grin like the howl of a winter wolf, one that would savage anyone who dared stand against them, and murmured -
'Quiet, asshole. Breaking my concentration.'
Idiot.
'Rejoice in the horizon -'
The manifesting power coiling through him, rising in blinding brightness, carried the same deadly radiance as it had from the very, very first.
'... Akhenaten!'
And Kurosaki Isshin shone again.
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