Characters: Ryuuken, Soken, Uryuu
Summary: Doomed to see other faces in his son, the illusion starts to deconstruct in earnest.
Pairings: None
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Timeline: None needed
Author's Note: Twisted. Family. Dynamic. Say it with me, people. You can not deny it, no matter what you think otherwise.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
Why must the old dogma haunt him after the last master of it has been dead for so many years?
Because he has left a young pupil behind, one whom he didn't live long enough to teach the whole lesson to, but knows enough of the song to sing it with a voice that is slightly reedy and uncertain but still strong enough that it can't be blocked out.
Ryuuken sighs wearily and wishes he couldn't see ghostly after-images of memory swimming in the sea of Uryuu's eyes. First it was Sayuri, and he can still see her there, unmistakable, but now there's Soken too, to the point that Ryuuken almost expects to see brown eyes instead of blue.
But Soken was never this angry. In reality, Soken, who learned—Ryuuken has no idea how—how to simply take everything in stride, rarely showed anything resembling anger at all—if he was, he hid it well behind an unendingly (and as a child Ryuuken always found this supremely annoying) patient demeanor.
Why couldn't he just leave well enough alone? Why did he have to drag Uryuu into this too?
Common sense tells Ryuuken that to an extent it's his own fault, that if he had ever put his foot down his father would have respected his wishes and that he never did make his own wishes clear, so Soken was left to come to his own conclusions and do what he thought was best (And this is the one thing Ryuuken knows is indisputably true—that he and his father both had Uryuu's best interests at heart but differed in their opinions of what "best interests" were).
Ryuuken finds it supremely ironic that it's far more difficult to ignore his father now that he's dead, the crux of the issue being that while Soken is dead he's all too alive in the minds of his son and grandson, that he won't lay down and die.
The seed planted corrodes at them both, laying down cracks that widen to fissures—this isn't what the old man wanted but it's what he'll get anyway. The very idea is monstrous.
Ryuuken can almost believe it's Soken he's having these arguments with and not Uryuu, until he hears that voice that's lighter and reedier than Soken's, but the irritation is still there and he snaps and snarls the way he used to with his father, but going to draw blood far more quickly and deeply than he ever did with the old man. He's learning for the first time what it tastes like to be cruel and it occurs to him that something's wrong here—angry at his father and taking it out on his son since Soken's not here anymore—, but he can't tell what and can't regret any of it enough to stop.
For a moment, the pain on his son's face is vivid and brought forth in clarity, and Ryuuken can see the echo of his father's pain, knowing what it is to be rejected so utterly by someone they love, before it is hidden—never seen in any light of day—by the resentment Ryuuken knows belongs to Uryuu alone and the anger that never surfaced on Soken's face.
Ryuuken's anger, he realizes. Father and son have always been angry about something, but never can tell what for the morass their relationship (if it can even be called that anymore) and their lives have become.
Soken knew how to let go. Ryuuken and Uryuu never learned that lesson, in any sense of the word.
Maybe… Maybe the old man was smarter than either of them.