Characters: Urahara, Ururu
Summary: He isn't sure when he started loving her.
Pairings: Urahara x Ururu father-daughter relationship; no romance
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for the Arrancar arc
Timeline: While Tessai is healing Ururu
Author's Note: Obviously, this houses huge speculation on Jinta and Ururu's true nature. Also, I was interested in the parallel between Urahara and Mayuri, and I can't help but think that, what truly makes Urahara a halfway decent man is how he treats Jinta and Ururu, Ururu especially, as opposed to how Mayuri treats Nemu.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
"Kisuke-san…" She's holding out her small, burnt hand, voice bereft and faint. Tessai continues his frantic work with the healing kido, too engrossed to tell her to lie still. "Kisuke-san…"
Urahara gently grasps the much smaller hand in his own. From the next room, Jinta's tense frustration rolls off of the walls in waves. "It's alright now, Ururu," he whispers, gently rubbing the charred skin. It will be alright, if he has anything to say about it.
He made her first, three years before Jinta. Jinta was the secondary model, modified and improved upon—at least improved upon in theory; to Urahara, both serve a unique purpose and fulfill it well, and they are not interchangeable in his eyes—but Ururu was the original, the first time Urahara proved that he could give a gigai a life of its own, with a multi-faceted personality and a voice that was all her own and a face that was not dependent on the form of another.
It's dangerous to care for something so fragile, something that dangles so precariously between the balance of life and death. But in Ururu's eyes, there is a humanity that cries out, desperate to be heard, and Urahara heeds that plaintive cry and smiles softly down at her.
Urahara created Ururu to be a weapon; due to her nature, she can never awaken a zanpakuto (and Urahara almost smiles when he thinks about the screams of rage Mayuri must be indulging in, when he discovers that Nemu can not wield the Shinigami's signature weapon) nor perform kido. But though she may be a weapon, her purpose, much like Jinta's, has become very different over the years, and Urahara does not look at them and see expendable tools anymore.
Ururu is not a weapon anymore, though, as Urahara has discovered this night, not all instincts programmed in can be wiped out by decades of kindness and peace.
Urahara smiles ruefully. If they, Jinta and Ururu, are his children, than he is a terrible father, to so blatantly favor one of his children over another.
But he can't help it.
Jinta is self-sufficient, and will always walk his own path.
And Ururu is the child who clings to him and wants to know that she has done well.