Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
The night was unseasonably warm for late summer, muggy and damp but not humid. A swirl of pale blue smoke circled in the air as it was blown away from the cigarette.
Isshin found his old friend leaning against the wall of his house, smoking a cigarette and clearly unconcerned that his son hadn't come home yet, ostensibly uncaring of where he was or if he was in any sort of trouble. Typical behavior for Ishida Ryuuken these days.
"Yo," Isshin announced himself, getting Ryuuken's attention. His brown eyes narrowed slightly in the light cast by the street lamp, but he made no protest to Isshin coming up and standing beside him.
"It's been a while," Isshin commented, staring up at the crescent moon half-obscured by clouds, tree branches and smog. If there was one thing he had never liked about Karakura Town, it was the level of air pollution; being a suburb of Tokyo, though, it was pretty much unavoidable. That didn't mean Isshin liked it.
Ryuuken gave no reply, staring out at the street in such a way that was obviously meant to ignore Isshin's existence, colder than any verbal rebuff. Isshin had become all too familiar with that cold shoulder, though it had never done much to deter him.
The crickets chirped softly in the swaying grass; the fresh scent of rain clung in moisture to the trees.
"You know," Isshin remarked slowly, keeping his voice low—there was no need to shout yet, "I saw your son recently."
Ryuuken stiffened, but other than that refused to elicit a reaction.
"I think the last time I saw Uryuu must have been, I don't know, when he was three years old, or younger." Isshin smiled a mask of a smile. "Still looks just like his mother."
A tense pause came from beside him. "Yes." The single word was slightly raw, as were any words Ryuuken spat out even remotely associated with the topic of his wife. Isshin genuinely regretted it, but he knew he had to say it.
"Does he act like her too?"
The next, terse word was even more painfully dredged up than the last. "Somewhat."
Isshin frowned. That voice…That voice had become decidedly unfamiliar. "You two…don't get along, do you?"
No answer came, and Isshin took that as an affirmation of what he had guessed. Isshin didn't know much, but he could guess that Ryuuken's definition of "not getting along" added up to something a bit more severe than Isshin and Ichigo's normal routine of kicking each other nearly hard enough to put the other in the hospital. Delightful.
Now came the difficult question. The frown became slightly disapproving. "Do you even know where he is?" Isshin knew he didn't have much of an excuse for keeping such a long leash on Ichigo to the extent that that "leash" was practically non-existent, but he had the girls to look after as well. Ryuuken didn't have that excuse.
The reply Ryuuken gave was the last thing Isshin had expected. "Uryuu doesn't live here anymore, Isshin."
Guess the wages of a freelance tailor are better than I thought, Isshin mused. I didn't think it was enough for a sixteen-year-old to be able to support himself, though. He decided not to ask if Ryuuken knew where he lived; he probably did, but wouldn't tell Isshin.
"Have you noticed he's lost his Quincy powers?" Isshin had noticed how low the boy's reiatsu was when he'd seen him, and he had gotten an explanation for that from Urahara who had gotten it from Ichigo, who had, after strenuous effort, managed to painstakingly drag the full story out of Uryuu. All Isshin could say was that he felt sorry for the kid, and couldn't blame him for behaving as he had. Isshin remembered Kurotsuchi Mayuri from his days in the Gotei Thirteen, and in all honesty, probably Unohana had been the only captain who hadn't wanted to eviscerate him at some point.
Another plume of pale blue-gray smoke unfurled and flew away. "I'm not blind, Isshin. It would be hard not to notice."
"Do you know how?"
"I don't think that really matters."
Isshin sighed softly enough that the slim, ascetic-looking man beside him wouldn't notice. The soft damp of the late evening suddenly felt overly humid. "And this doesn't bother you at all?" he asked skeptically.
Isshin had known Ryuuken for a very long time, since he was not very much older than their sons were now. There were several things that bothered Ryuuken. Untidy housekeeping in the hospital bothered him (Karakura hospital was, as a result, possibly the tidiest and most efficiently running hospital in Tokyo). Food undercooked irritated him because of the hazard it posed to one's health (Which would probably explain why he had done all the cooking for as long as his wife was alive; her mother had been a good cook who hadn't allowed any of her children in the kitchen because she didn't want them in her way). Hypochondriacs infuriated him.
But there was one thing above all that that Isshin knew Ryuuken couldn't stand, and that was a fool.
"He made his own choices." Ryuuken never missed a beat; the words were hollow as though he had been telling himself that ever since he had noticed that his son was missing a piece of himself. "Now he has to live with them."
People who knew him had always said Ishida Ryuuken had ice water running in his veins instead of blood. For the first time, Isshin could believe it. "Man, you are stone-cold."
That, for the first time that night, got a reaction out of Ryuuken further than an apathetic response or an uncaring non-response. "Is there a reason you're here, Isshin?" His voice was tight in the way that screamed "I don't want to talk about it". Well, too bad.
"Yeah, there is." Ever since Sayuri had died, Isshin had doubted Ryuuken's ability to take care of a child on his own. Ryuuken had thus far given Isshin no reason to feel that he was wrong in his doubt.
"Things are heating up, Ryuuken. I know you can tell. Hueco Mundo's nearly ready to make its move, and it's going to be pretty damn ugly when they do.
"Your son will involve himself in this, whether you like it or not—"
"If he does," Ryuuken murmured, "then that is his own issue. Uryuu is capable of looking after himself."
"—whether he has his Quincy powers or not." Isshin's expression darkened. "And you know as well as I do, Ryuuken, that if your kid goes into this without his Quincy powers, he will die."
Even Ryuuken couldn't find a cold, hardhearted answer for this. His face was as tightly drawn as guitar strings, eyes hard and glinting with a repressed anger.
There was a sad gleam on Isshin's face; knowing his friend was still human, he knew that there was no way that Ryuuken was as detached as he claimed to be, knew this hurt him much more than he let on. "Speaking as one father of a teenage son to another, if you don't do something now, as much as you claim not to care, you will regret it for the rest of your life."
"Anything else?" Isshin could practically hear Ryuuken's teeth grinding against each other, the anger of a man who didn't want to be told what he already knew.
Isshin cracked a sardonic grin. "Yeah, actually. You're never quite as much in control as you think you are, Ryuuken."
"And why would you say that?" Ryuuken inquired frigidly.
"Because right now, your son is being attacked by two Hollows."
For a moment, Ryuuken looked at him blankly, as though he hadn't heard him correctly. Then comprehension dawned.
"Damn it!" Ryuuken tore back into the house, cigarette falling to the ground; Isshin quickly slammed his foot down on the smoking cylinder. A second later, Ryuuken emerged from the house, pulling on his coat as he came down the porch steps.
Ryuuken glared furiously at Isshin as he skipped the steps on the porch. "Why didn't you tell me this sooner?"
"Because I needed to make sure whether you even gave a damn or if I was going to have to go out there and settle things myself!" Isshin called after him as the younger of the two men started at a fast pace down the sidewalk, clearly trying to pick out any sign of his son's dangerously depleted reiatsu amongst the tangled mass that was the spiritual presence of Karakura Town.
"Go to hell, Kurosaki."
Isshin rolled his eyes and cupped his mouth with his hands. "One day I'm going to remind you of this conversation!"
Ryuuken didn't answer.
Isshin sighed, and started walking in the direction of the dense reiatsu that surely belonged to another Hollow, shifting into Shinigami form as he did.
There were some things that no father, no matter how much they claimed not to care, would allow to happen to their child.