Dislcaimer: I don't own, but ideas are mine.

Author's Note: Dedicated to my Kisuke, Ewic. Good luck on midterms! (I stayed up till past 3 typing this for you)

Please read and review everyone! Thank you!

Crimson Petals

Kisuke spat out a mouthful of blood. Crimson flecks stayed on his lips and chin as he starred out towards a fading door he could never again cross again, a gateway to a home he could never return to. A home he had forced himself to leave behind for its own good.

"Come on". She grabbed at him, helping him up and throwing his shoulder over hers. He grunted softly as she forced him to his unsteady feet, Benihime held like a walking cane to keep himself upright and not have her hold all his weight.

They moved forward, too quickly for the wounded man to move comfortably, but still too slowly for the dark haired woman to be satisfied and she pushed them forward. If

Yama-ji wasn't going to push the issue, he would leave the former 13th team taichou with merely the casting of a banishment jutsu, his soul forever sealed from entering the Soul Society again. If not, they would have the other teams on their tails, however reluctant some of them were, and more blood than already had flowed would stain the streets of the human realm. Yoruichi promised that much. She would never go down without a fight.

Finally, they came to a small building, tottering on the edge of pathetic from its outside appearance, but humbly clean inside and had been suitable for their basic needs to have a place to stay on occasion when the two of them had been in the human realm. Although it was rare for them to be assigned to the human realm, Yoruichi occupied with the training of the Secret Corps, Urahara with the running of his team and his innumerable designs and research experiments. But somewhere, sometime in between all that, Urahara had found the little building in the outskirts of a middle-class neighborhood and arranged for it to be available for them. No words were exchanged between them, but both stopped there whenever they needed some time to collect their thoughts. Sometimes, little trinkets marked who had been there last, a running joke between the two of them.

Yoruichi had never thought they might ever have to use it as a hideaway from their own people though. It was a cruel black irony to two of the most powerful shinigami in Soul Society. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

It wasn't until she helped the taller man down inside the sparse inner room and turned back from shutting the doors that she finally noticed the splattering of blood on him.

Blood, like a bright crimson dye, had spread slowly across the dirt streaked white Captain's haori, spots resting here and there likeadelicate designs, crimson petalson a silk kimono Yoruichi would probablyhave been wearing if she'd been home. Instead of wishing for the comforts of a noble house she would not allow herself to return to, her eyes widened and she reached for his top, which was dark enough to not reveal that he was still bleeding. He was breathing hard, a soft rasp in the back of his throat as sweat shined on his forehead, plastering pale blonde strands to his face, but his hand still reached out to grab at her wrist as she reached for his top.

Yoruichi gave a feral snarl at his defense and shook her arm from his grasp before peeling the kimono away from his skin. A bloody gash, half burned broke a jagged line from across his abdomen to his lower back, smeared brown where the blood had started to cake dry and a deep black-red where it still gleamed sticky on his pale skin. He didn't meet her eyes but a sad ghostly smile played on the edges of his lips.

"I knew you'd be angry."

She scratched at him, a half pawing slap of her hand. The impact of the blow left a light tinge on his cheek. He said nothing, having known something like this would probably happen. He could foresee through induction and mental calculations what the future might hold, but that didn't mean he could escape them.

"If I hadn't come, you would have just let them taken you down. You would have been killed. Killed! Do you not understand that, you damn fool of a man!" Yoruichi's eyes were bitter and accusatory. How dare he give up, even if it was for others? There was always another way out.

"I—" Kisuke coughed, tasting the nasty mixture of coppery blood and spittle in his mouth. His lip burned where it'd split sometime in the fight.

"I didn't want to have to hurt them. They shouldn't have to be killed by their own taichou. It's not right. At least not for a reason that they will never be allowed to know." The blonde ex-captain and researcher rested on his chest briefly.

"And maybe if they'd killed me then—"

"They would have died. Your reitsu itself would have rebounded the blow enough to split them in half. None of the others, not even the captains could have taken you on, especially with that thing in you. You were acting like a fool Kisuke, something not like you. What if just your body had been destroyed and that thing left behind? Then what? You'd need more than just the power of a shinigami to destroy that. You know. You tried." Kisuke sighed as he leaned back his head to rest against the wall of the building.

Yoruichi unwound her scarf from her neck, a symbol of class and her noble rank. It was the closest they had to something clean right now and her nobility meant nothing at all where they were now. She pressed it to the gash, trying to wipe at the dark blood and stop further bleeding. Even shinigami can die.

"This was Yama-jii wasn't it?" Her voice asked quietly. The man gave a trademark quirky smile.

"My crimson princess was quite upset at the separation as well, but even I was caught off-guard by the ambush. I didn't have Benihime with me and it wasn't until I'd escaped to my office that I was able to use her. The old man didn't even give me time to respond after Aizen screamed his line, just blew me off my feet." He laughed at himself and the unexpected reluctance to fight other shinigami that had surprised even himself.

"Sad isn't it? Some fluffy-haired genius that makes me," he laughingly mocked his own moniker around the Gotei 13.

Yoruichi said nothing as she wiped at the wound, not paying attention to his own lightly tossed around lies for her. She knew him and if old Yama-jii had allowed Aizen and whoever the hell else had been there to ambush him, the wounds had not come from his own foolhardiness. She gave her thanks to the spirits that Ukitake had managed to find her out on a mission and given her the warning necessary to rush back in time. If the white haired captain hadn't slipped her his suspicions regarding a secret investigation of his old friend, the eccentric scientist captain of Soul Society, she might have come home to a funeral instead of a rescue mission.

"There's so much blood." She whispered as she tried to wipe at the blood on his side, but it just seemed to get everywhere. The once-pure clothe now was soaked in the man's blood, red on red on red. The crimson seemed to be dyeing everything red as she struggled to keep the sticky blood from flowing out of him. Her hands were covered in crimson, dark thick red that smeared both their faces and clothes. He could feel her helplessness, as she couldn't understand why the wound would not clot, why he was dying before her eyes and there was nothing that she could do. She gave a sound of frustration and self-directed anger.

Kisuke was drifting away. There was a clawing on his insides, a burning pressure on his side and back one that threatened to have him cry out, as the pain seemed to fade in and out sporadically. He reached out with his right hand and brought Benihime to him, the sword dull in the absence of its master's usually powerful presence.

"Sing for me, my crimson princess." He whispered to it as he pressed his two hands and the sword flat on top of Yoruichi's hands. The red of the blood smeared onto the blade, giving it a beautiful bright lucid sheen.

Yoruichi thought she could feel two little hands pressing down on top of hers, on top of the weak push of Urahara, two hands that emitted a warming heat. The blood flow seemed to slow as the heat continued and she looked up, with a calculated challenging look to the man she considered her closest companion in life, the man she'd thrown away everything she had for to save.

But that last bit of energy and reitsu needed to summon Benihime from her sword sleep was too exhausting for Urahara Kisuke and he had closed his eyes, his body desperately crying out for healing. Even in sleep his left hand curled around a terrible treasure hidden in the folds of his kimono.

Yoruichi gave a soft defeated chuckle. Even geniuses had to rest sometime.

Brushing the tousled bangs of his face to the side so it wouldn't get in his eyes, she sat back against the wall of the dark, lightless building, leaning against his shoulder.

She had given up everything she had, her leadership of the Shihouin house, her commandership, abandoned herlife for the sake of friendship. But, she wondered bitterly if the world that had exiled him would ever realize how much Kisuke had given up to keep them safe from themselves.