The year was 1992.
Ishida Uryu had just finished a dreadfully dull discussion with his father, preceded only by a dreadfully dull day at college and oh - a dull test that he'd only naturally topped the class on.
It was almost as if Ryuken Ishida could sense his dissatisfaction - and revelled in it.
A career in architecture had never been at the forefront of Uryu's mind. Medicine was the honored profession in his lineage, passed over from generation to generation like a carefully preserved artefact. A legacy that kept the Ishida line revered and pristine. This legacy was what won his father accolades, promoted him to Director General at Tokyo's most distinguished hospital, and kept him in the good books of nameless aunts and uncles that drew ire at the slightest soil to the family name.
Uryu hated his family name. It had gone down, in his eyes, with the death of his dearest grandfather - redeemed not in the slightest by his father. And if anything, Uryu hated his father.
So, architecture. It had not the prestige or passion a career in medicine held for him, but it bore barebone resemblance. There was something frighteningly similar, the way you could put together and pull apart a structure - observe with clinical precision - the way you could a body.
And perhaps Uryu just wanted to piss off his father.
He ducked around a corridor, lifting his phone to his ear. "Status?" he whispered.
"The first batch of ocipro just went up," his informant said, in an excited hush. "Your money is crazy, man! The site is like, professional-quality. All my years in this business and I've never seen the market run crispy clean like this. Never seen such a demand for lung cancer medication either."
Uryu smirked. His father's money was efficient, yes, but there was hardly anything clean about it. The current administration had all but reversed the last's policy on pharmaceutical price-cuts; the cost of generally affordable medication that the good people of his country were entitled to, was now sky-rocketing. He was just doing his national duty - right out of the pocket of his unsuspecting father.
"Put up the second batch as well," he ordered. "Show the people where their good faith is going."
There was a pause on the other end. "Eh, Ishida, I dunno man," his informant said hesitantly. "I say we lay low for a while, stay out of the authorities' eyes until news of the first batch blows over."
Uryu rolled his eyes. "Put up the second batch. The day the 'authorities' gain an edge over my enterprise is the day I'll sign my karmic debt in full."
There was a resounding crash somewhere north of the hospital wing.
"Inoue," he heard his father barking. "I did not take you under my wing so you could plod and meander around expensive machinery meant for the patients! Either develop a spring in your step or find your replacement by the end of the day."
"Yes, sir, , sir!" the poor, young intern wailed, and then there were frantic footsteps following the deliberate ones of his father.
"I have to go," Uryu spoke into his phone. "Call me when we're live."
He hung up and rounded the corner, exiting the hospital without sparing them a second glance.
x.x
"All you have to do is drive, Sado," Keigo was saying, trying to keep up with Chad's long stride. "Pop in there, wait for my guy to make the drop-off, then drive back. In-and-out, easy does it. You'll be back home in time for Carnivore Kingdom!"
Chad huffed, with a small frown. "I don't know, Keigo." He didn't particularly like making a habit out of running jobs for Keigo and Mizuro but money was tight and Abuelo…
As if reading Chad's mind, Keigo's eyes softened. "He's getting worse, isn't he?" he said, showing a rare moment of maturity and insight. "How's the treatment going?"
"Not good," Chad admitted with a reluctant sigh. He turned to Keigo grimly. "How much are these guys paying?"
Keigo brightened. "It's a sweet deal, Sado! They're naming 1,000 yen for the drop-off but my guy said they might be willing to negotiate if the job goes smoothly. Whadya say?"
Chad didn't say anything, just stared at his hands. Keigo waited.
"This is the last time," he warned, finally.
"Last time, yes!" Keigo whooped, putting one hand up victoriously in the air. "I'm telling Mizuro you're in! He'll send you a text with the drop-off deets," he rambled, already fishing for his phone. "You're gonna be so thankful when this thing pulls through, Sado. It's a lucrative deal, you know, this business…"
Chad tuned him out, feeling a pang of guilt in his heart.
He only hoped his efforts would go towards taking care of Abuelo's treatment.
x.x
The year was 1992.
Kurosaki Ichigo was on the phone, booking a return train ticket from Tokyo. His mother was coming down for the weekend.
x.x
Four years later, in cell #42, three boys stared at each other.
"We're breaking out," Ishida confessed. "Me, you, and Sado-kun."
"Yeah, no shit, Ishida," Ichigo scoffed. "I didn't think you were plumbing a stairway to heaven down there."
"Ichigo," Chad interrupted, looking the grimmest Ichigo had ever seen him. On closer inspection, Ichigo saw bags under his eyes. He didn't know how he hadn't noticed it before, but he did now and it concerned him. "Abuelo's test results came back. They've given him two months."
Ichigo suddenly paled, his throat going very dry. "Chad - what?" he asked, looking back and forth between Ishida and Chad. "I thought he was in remission."
"His cancer's progressed while Sado-kun's been gone," Uryu explained, crossing his arms. "I used the last of my pull to get him to Tokyo General, but -"
"- he's dying, Ichigo," Chad finished, eyes turned to his feet in sorrow. "There's nothing they can do."
Ichigo felt himself sink down onto the bed. The last of any feeling in his legs evaporated at Chad's confession.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked weakly, feeling both parts hurt for Chad and betrayed that his best friend didn't trust him with something like this.
"You had been attacked," Chad answered, setting one palm on Ichigo's shoulder. "We...didn't want to worry you more." He paused in contemplation, then added softly, "You thought you deserved to be here."
"We didn't think you would be...agreeable," Ishida added, with a frown. "Besides, er, Sado-kun?" He pinked suddenly, turning away from both boys in embarrassment. Ichigo raised his eyebrows.
"Abuelo's last wish is to see me get married, Ichigo," Chad spelled out, crossing his arms. "I...can't deny him. I want us to be with him in his last moments."
Ichigo closed his eyes, rested his forehead on his locked hands. No one said anything, but Ishida and Chad watched him carefully.
"The rumors of an 'Urahara's Cross' existing within these four walls are true," Ishida began, when a long silence had passed without anyone saying anything. "Grimmjow and his men seem to think it's below B-Wing, where the largest water pipe in the penitentiary connects to the prison's sewer system. That's why he was desperate enough to offer you a P.I job in exchange for your silence. The only way for him to avoid his death sentence is riding on this rumored pass. He's unwilling to let B-Wing go because he seems to think that's where the Cross is."
"But let me guess," Ichigo said dryly. "You know where it really is."
"I do," Ishida said simply. "It's a path leading out of the doctor's office."
Ichigo blinked. Then, he slowly connected the dots. "That's why you -"
"-encouraged you to pick clinic hours for P.I, yes," Ishida said, slowly edging behind Chad as Ichigo's eyebrows began to draw together. "I needed you there as a placeholder until the time came, so that none of the other inmates would gain access."
"So," Ichigo took a deep breath. The look on his face was near livid. "If this thing pulls through, and Orihime gets questioned, there's a chance she could lose her job." He looked to Ishida, eyebrows narrowed.
Chad closed his eyes, pained. Ichigo felt torn between appeasing him and living with the guilt in his heart if she lost everything because of him. After she'd given him everything and then some.
Ishida frowned lightly. "Not...necessarily. The farther you keep her from our plans, the safer she should be. But obviously lying to her is going to be a bone of contention in your relationship - if we can call it that," he mused, then seeing Ichigo's disdain, he grimaced. "None of us anticipated that you would fall in love with her, this is not something I have a contingency for -"
Chad coughed, jerking his head to show Ishida how Ichigo's shoulders had begun hunching together rapidly at his words.
"Right," Ishida carried on quickly. "But no harm, no foul. I highly doubt the doctor herself is aware of the goldmine she sits on, so there's no fear of her getting in trouble. Besides, she is young and gifted. I am almost certain that if she loses her job - which she most likely will not - she will find another, well-paying one." He stared at Ichigo, a little displeased. "I'm not an animal, Kurosaki."
"Could've fooled me," Ichigo muttered, turning away from both of them so he could rest his arms on the top bunk. Then, he straightened. "This Cross, they say no one's been able to find it for years. But somehow, among the 150 inmates here, you lucked out?"
Ishida made a face. He didn't like attributing skill or deduction to luck, but a certain amount of that had come in handy, much to his chagrin. "I didn't 'luck out'," he said, nonetheless. "The night Abuelo's test results returned, I couldn't sleep. So I listened. I listened until I could hear the waters."
"You could hear the waters," Ichigo repeated skeptically, glancing at Chad with a raised eyebrow.
"Yes, Kurosaki, I could hear the waters," Ishida snapped impatiently. "Have you ever thought about how the doctor's office is the one place in this entire penitentiary that smells like an ocean? The brine is spread so thick there, I was surprised no one had come to this conclusion prior to myself."
"Wasn't really focused on the brine when I was in there," Ichigo muttered. Chad grinned knowingly, patting him on his shoulder.
Ishida ignored them. "I listened for the sounds and determined that sometimes, in the night, we can hear the ocean from our cell. That was odd, considering the thickness of these walls don't really allow us to usually hear it that well, even in the courtyard," he explained. "Which had to mean there was a hollow, carved out connection between the ocean and the cells that allowed sound to travel through."
He made a tunnel motion with his hands, looking slightly like a madman. Ichigo wondered if he had slept at all since last night. If this was why he was condemning Ichigo to sleeplessness as well.
"I had Sado-kun make Keigo fetch the penitentiary's blueprints for me during visitation," he continued. "What I saw there didn't make sense. Logically, where there was supposed to be a pipe or even a tunnel of sorts, there was a dead end. A mighty wall of concrete."
"Right," Ichigo replied, cradling his head in his hands and feeling faint with the lack of sleep. He motioned for Ishida to hurry up.
"So, I borrowed Urahara-san's autobiography from the library," he said, pacing around the room in frantic motions. "Figured if there was anything hinting at what I had discovered, it had to be in there. Architects love hallowing their own creations. I suppose that feeling must have increased tenfold if you were a fairly underground genius who had been hired for his first big project - the groundwork for a penitentiary."
"Chad, make him stop," Ichigo pleaded, from where his head was buried. Words were starting to sound very much like not-words now, and he was too in shock to process anything.
"Listen to him, Ichigo," Chad said, leaning against the bed.
"To my disappointment, there was nothing overtly incriminating in there at first," Ishida explained, pushing his glasses back up his nose. "Then, I read an excerpt - a tiny paragraph hidden in pages and pages worth of drab history, really, that said some of the tunnels and pipes behind these walls were initially made of lead. When the Prison Sanitation Bureau deemed the lead to be injurious to inmates' health, however, they replaced it with plastic and covered up the old tunnel entrances with concrete."
"So the tunnel I slipped into last night," Ichigo said slowly, examining the scratches and bruises on his hands with disgust. "That was an old one?"
"Hmm," Chad replied, feeling proud of Ichigo for cottoning on quickly, even in his state.
"It's prison protocol to keep a record of all blueprints so guards and plumbing staff could keep track of changes done to the place." Ishida knocked his fist against the wall. "But Urahara-san must have liked to trifle with people because every time a new blueprint was drafted, he destroyed the previous one. It became impossible to keep a comprehensive record of the exact structure of the penitentiary - and rumors of the Urahara's Cross were born."
"That's great, Ishida," Ichigo drawled. "Fucking fantastic, really. But I've been in the doctor's office and there isn't any path in there except for the vent I took to get there."
"That's because," Ishida gave a dramatic pause. "The path is the water."
Ichigo blinked, looking to Chad for confirmation. The latter, too, however, seemed equally confused.
Ishida decided to spell it out for them.
"To escape the penitentiary, we have to get to the doctor's office through the vents, yes. But that's only the checkpoint," he explained, smirking slightly at his friends' confused expressions. He turned over his heel. "If we want to break out for good, we have to swim the rest of the way. The path that waltzes a strait of water is assumed to be a bridge - that's incorrect. The water is the path, the Cross is the crossroads where Dr. Inoue's office sits. We want to escape, we break the pipe and swim east."
"Oh fuck this," Ichigo muttered, slumping backwards on the bed heavily. He craned his head to look at them. "What were you going to do? Drag me by the collar the night of your grand escape? Throw me in the water and say 'Swim for your life, Ichigo, we're breaking out'?"
"If you refused," Chad replied blankly. Ichigo couldn't tell if he was serious or not.
"I was considering leaving you behind to wallow, Kurosaki," Ishida stated grandly, nose upturned in the air. "But I came to the conclusion that our rivalry has yet to reach a stalemate and perhaps Sado-kun would be miserable in your absence, so consider this a gift."
Ichigo read the underlying message beneath his words and gave them each a dry, half-smile.
"You don't deserve any of this," he heard Orihime's voice insist in his head. At the thought of her, his smile fell into a frown. What would she think of this? If they went through with it, could he say goodbye? He obviously couldn't tell her he was breaking out, not without putting her at a metaphorical crossroads, as Ishida said.
He suddenly felt anxious. He didn't want to say goodbye, not after they'd just gotten together, but the reasons pushing him to go - Abuelo's health, his own innocence, the possibility of freedom - they were too pertinent to ignore. He felt a headache begin to throb at his skull.
"So?" Ishida demanded, crossing his arms.
Ichigo stood up with a sigh. For a long time, he simply stared out of the cell, eyebrows creased. He'd allowed himself to wallow, these last few years. Brick himself in and grieve at his own failure to keep his promises. And Chad and Ishida had been nothing but patient with him, allowing him to be just the way he was with only minor complaining. But the clock was ticking now, the time to wallow rapidly running out.
"I'm in on one condition," he said finally, with a sigh.
"What?" Chad asked.
"We leave Orihime out of this," Ichigo said firmly, daring either of his friends to challenge him. "Minimum casualties. No casualties if it involves her."
If they could somehow pull this off without her getting into trouble, there could be a glimmering chance that they could see each other - properly - outside these walls someday. When it all blew over. Ichigo didn't allow the hope to float very high, but he didn't actively try to squash it either. It was a dangerous thought, a selfish one - but his luck hadn't run out so far and he was wondering if it really would be a bad idea to push it.
Ishida frowned. "I cannot make promises, but we will try," he emphasized quickly, at Ichigo's deepening scowl. "We will try, Kurosaki."
Ichigo shook his head, then threw himself back into bed.
x.x
Some time in the middle of the night, he gingerly woke up. The familiar sounds of the prison - Chad's deep snores, the click of the night guard's boots, the murmurs of other inmates - all drowned into a drowsy chatter. If he strained his ears, he could faintly hear the ocean, like Ishida had said. It was soft, so distant that Ichigo wondered how sleepless - or how desperate - Ishida must have been that night to hear it.
Speaking of, Ishida's bed was empty.
When Ichigo blinked blearily around the darkness of his cell, he saw Ishida standing at the cell door, hands in his pockets as he stared outside the cell unseeingly.
Ichigo sighed, groggily standing up. Above his own bunk, Chad was still deeply asleep.
He came up and stood beside Ishida. For a moment, neither of them spoke, eyes following the night guard making his rounds. Ichigo observed Ishida's pale face, the bags under his eyes with a frown. "You know," he started, "if we get caught, that's a dime on each of our sentences."
Ishida didn't react, but the downturn of his mouth let Ichigo know he was listening. "If we don't make a move, it's still a decade Abuelo doesn't have," he replied coolly. He narrowed his eyes at Ichigo. "I was surprised you agreed to this easily. The last we talked about it, it seemed like your intentions were to finish your sentence."
Ishida had called him an idiot for that, back then. It was a time when they still didn't understand each other well, hating each other's guts, taking out their own anxieties and insecurities on each other. Though they still stubbornly clung to those old habits, the heat of it had sizzled out with their time in prison. And now with their eventual escape...
Ichigo looked away, shoving his hands in his own pockets. "Maybe I changed my mind," he muttered.
Ishida crossed his arms. "If this has something to do with the doctor," he said hesitantly. "I'd ask you to do away with fantasies of reuniting with her once we're outside these walls. Any such behavior would only put both of you at risk - especially her." Ishida regarded him out of the corner of his eyes, his glasses glinting in the low light. "If you do tell her, it'll incriminate her as an accomplice in the fallout of our escape."
Ichigo clenched his jaw. "Focus on getting us out of here," he said quietly, ignoring Ishida's other words. "I'll handle my business on my own."
He stormed away, leaving Ishida to continue mulling over his thoughts by himself.