Hmm, it looks like my bite-sized chapters are now blowing up into full blown cookies...

Chapter 4: The Things You Give Up

A couple of months earlier...

Urahara was lying sprawled like a crooked letter X across a tatami mat before the shop's long windows, his hat covering his face. The late afternoon sun was shining like molten gold through the glass, kissing his limbs with a pleasurable warmth, and he found himself dozing off and on. Every now and then he would be jolted awake by a violent thunk! or crash! issuing from the floor below. Earlier, he had sent Jinta and Ururu below to move some boxes, and their efforts made it sound like a herd of Menos Grande was careening through his basement. Noisy kids, he thought idly. He flexed his fingers lazily; Benihime was tucked safely away in his cane, which sat on the floor just a hand's span from his grasp. In safety, he allowed his thoughts to wander; however, he didn't think about hollow detectors or Mobius strips or any of the like. No, he found himself thinking about how one would go about restoring a Quincy who had been stripped of his spirit energy to his former power...

His mind came up blank.

There was the barest rush of cold air, and Urahara's skin prickled at the loss of warmth. Something's blocking the sun. His fingers crept incrementally toward his cane before his hat was rudely pulled from his face. The sudden brightness hurt his eyes, and he squinted blindly as a flat, familiar voice above him said: "You really are a lazy creature."

Uryuu Ishida again.

Urahara didn't bother getting up. Instead, he regarded the boy from his supine position on the floor. He was still in his school uniform, and there was the beginning of a smile pulling at the left corner of his lips. It would be better if those lips were smiling. But the smile didn't have a chance to materialize before his eyes suddenly narrowed and his mouth went back to its usual down-turned position. Still holding Urahara's hat, the boy sat down on the mat next to him, his long ivory fingers absently caressing the candy-like stripes. A serious air emanated from his lean archer's frame.

"Can I...can I ask you something?"

Despite the flatness of his tone, Urahara didn't miss the subtle note of despair coloring the boy's words. Urahara sat up, giving the Quincy his full attention. "Of course. You can ask me anything..."

"...but I can't promise that I'll give you a straight answer," seemed to be the unspoken subtext. With him, it was always the unspoken subtext. Reality, to Urahara, was a fluid concept. And at his best, it was even one he was able to bend to his whims.

Uryuu's head was lowered, his eyes trained on the floor. Even with a sense of despair bowing his back, there was a hint of stubborn determination. Moments passed. Urahara waited silently for him to speak.

"My father..." Urahara tried not to visibly start at the mention of Ryuken. "Well, my father...you see...he came to me and he said...he said that he knew a way to make my...Quincy powers return, but..." The boy stopped speaking. Urahara narrowed his eyes; he didn't trust Ryuken. "But what?" Urahara finally prompted. He watched the boy's fingers as they twisted his striped hat in an unconscious gesture. After a moment he reached over and plucked it from Uryuu's grasp, plopping it back down on his head.

"He said that if he did this, then I had to promise. I had to make a vow-"

"-yes?"

"To never associate with any Shinigami, ever again," Uryuu finished morosely. The Quincy turned to stare directly at Urahara. "I think...well, I'm almost positive that he knows about Ichigo and me. And that he wants to break us up." Uryuu continued staring with a stony expression. Urahara reached for his fan, snapping it open and fluttering it in consternation.

"Why would he do that?" Urahara asked flatly. Even though he knew the answer already.

"Because he's a fucking asshole and he hates me! He always has and he always will! Because he's a callous, cold-hearted bastard, that's why!" Urahara leaned away, hiding behind his fan. The sheer amount of rage coming through those words was mind-boggling. Especially from someone who was usually so self-contained, so unemotional. Urahara watched the porcelain skin of the boy's neck turn red, watched the glint of hate invade his eyes. Like father, like son. Urahara peered at him cautiously over the top of his fan.

"But I won't give him up. Not Ichigo. I won't. I can't. But..." In the absence of the hat, the boy had started ringing his hands together; he seemed unaware of the gesture. The feeling of despair was wafting off of him like a noxious stench, relentlessly intense. "But I can't stand being like this! All helpless, with no power. I'm even less useful than Kon now; it's revolting. I can't stand it-"

The fan lowered. "Ishida that's not true," Urahara said quietly. "I meant what I said after that last training exercise; you did better than anyone. With only your mind. You're smart-"

"It doesn't matter; I'm a liability." Bitter poison coursed through words already dripping with despair. "And you know what else?"

"What?"

"I hate it every time Ichigo leaves to go fight hollows. I hate it. Because it reminds me of what I cannot do. Of what I no longer am. And I'm jealous of him, Urahara. I'm jealous of his ability to still fight. We both went into the Seireitei, and I came out with nothing, while he came back even more powerful." The boy paused, and cobalt eyes flashed toward Urahara, blue colored with shades of guilt. "It's terrible. I shouldn't feel this way towards him. But I do. And then I think, if only I could be like I was..."

"But that would mean-"

"Bowing to my father's wishes? Giving Ichigo up? Yes." Uryuu stopped speaking, and both he and Urahara stared down at the floor in silence.

Then: "I don't know what to do." Urahara watched the boy's marble-like profile: lit by the late afternoon sun, it made a beautiful picture of defeat.

"Tell me what to do," the boy whispered.

Urahara was startled by those words. "What?"

"You're a smart man. The smartest of us all. You tell me what I should do."

The fan took up its defensive position in front of Urahara's face again. "Ishida, I can't answer that. No one can answer that. Only you can decide-" Urahara's speech was cut off by a loud rapping on the window glass. Both Uryuu and Urahara turned to see Ichigo standing on the other side, a triumphant grin on his face as he waved Zangetsu at them in greeting. Urahara waved back and picked up his cane. Under his breath he said to Ishida, "I suppose you haven't told Kurosaki any of this?"

A low answer: "No."

"As I expected." Urahara angled the tip of his cane at the window and used it to pop open the clasp holding it closed. He poked the glass once and it titled outward, allowing Ichigo entrance inside. In his Shinigami form, he hopped through the window. "Good evening, sensei," he said to Urahara in cheerful greeting. He sheathed his zanpakuto and turned to Uryuu. "Sorry to keep you waiting. But duty calls, you know." He held out his hand, and the Quincy took it, allowing the other boy to pull him to his feet. "So, what have the two of you been talking about?" Ichigo asked idly.

"Nothing important," Uryuu said. Urahara watched Ichigo as he affectionately threw his arm around the dark-haired boy. Urahara could see the Quincy was making an effort to compose his glum expression. Ichigo bent to whisper something low in the other boy's ear, and then the orange-haired Shinigami looked up and said, "We'll see you later this evening for tea, sensei. Yes?"

"Of course. I'm but a lazy shopkeeper with nothing much to do," Urahara answered with his usual mischievous grin. He watched the two boys as they went down the hallway together; Ichigo was leaning into Uryuu, nuzzling his neck the entire way. Besotted, just like Isshin was. Urahara turned and pulled the window shut. He stared in uneasy silence at the swiftly sinking sun. Ichigo's casual display of affection had only served to bring Urahara's own loneliness into even sharper focus. It's so lonely here, in the place of my exile. He found himself vaguely wondering where Yourichi was. She was always out roaming the world, as free and independent as a cat. She was fickle like a cat, too. Always coming and going as she pleased, sometimes disappearing for weeks on end. It had been a long time since she had visited him. He suddenly found himself longing for her company-for her sympathetic ear that always seemed to understand what was going on in that strange mind of his, even when no one else did. She was probably his only true friend.

He wished she would come back.

Several years earlier...

"I've decided to give it up."

Urahara, Ryuken, and Isshin are all sitting together at the tiny table in Urahara's kitchen, drinking sake. Startled, Urahara lowers his glass and says, "Ryuken, what are you talking about?"

"I no longer wish to be a Quincy."

"So? What? You're going to stop being one, just like that?"

"Yes, I am. Just like that." Flinty, slate-gray eyes stare at him over the rim of a sake glass. His voice is like ice; his face is all distant and pale and beautiful, like the moon. "It's distasteful, being bound by an outdated mandate that decrees I should spend all my days hunting for hollows. Isn't that what you wretched Shinigami are for, anyway?"

"Now, Ryuken. Enough of that," Isshin says good-naturedly. How he stands Ryuken's constant railings against Shinigami, Urahara doesn't know. But the sake is working to loosen all of their tongues, and Ryuken is spouting more bile than usual.

"I'm not going to do it. I mean it. I don't care what my father says. It's ridiculous. I've made up my mind. I'm going to university. I'm going into business. I'm going to be a rich man and not some wretched sod who spends all his days hanging out in the forest with a bow and arrow." Ryuken takes a long draught; his sake glass clanks loudly on the table's wooden surface as he slams it down. Then he says, with finality:

"I'm going to be the end of the Quincy line."

End Chapter 4.

Next update: the middle of next week.