Chapter 10: Out of the Ashes

The inmates are restless.

He is back inside the prison beneath Soul Society, and everywhere, all around him, are the listless, tortured souls of the damned. Damned for saying things against Soul Society. Damned for treasonous acts. Damned merely for having the potential, the inclination to incite rebellion. And he is the warden here, the overseer of this potential band of misfits. It's strange how the leaders of Soul Society have committed such an obvious oversight: that the most dangerous of them all walks among them with the keys, that the one in charge is also the one with the most potential to bring harm. Irony of ironies. The joke is not lost on Urahara as he walks among them, eyes sliding left and right, senses on red alert. There is a strange sort of energy in the air today.

There is a shriek from behind him, and an inmate flings himself at Urahara's back. Urahara side steps the attack, grabbing his wrist and flipping him onto his back. But it is almost as if this is a signal: suddenly, they are coming at him from all sides. It's like an attack from a mob of the living dead. Vacant eyes and torn dirty robes and gray features surround him, pull at him. It's so quick, so sudden. Claw-like hands grab his clothes, his hair, intent on taking him down. Their numbers are staggering. He feels himself falling. He is screaming, fighting, and then his head turns and he is faced with a familiar sight. Orange hair and chocolate brown eyes. Ichigo! His student is grabbing him around the throat, pulling him down. His eyes are a wide, empty void. Ichigo! Ichigo!

ICHIGO!

Urahara awoke with a start, a tightness constricting his throat and his nerves singing out a chorus of pain. White, sunless daylight seeped through a massive picture window, bleaching the colorless walls and floors, turning everything in the room a dull, listless gray. He was in bed, propped up by a mountain of pillows. Reams of bandages covered his arms, turning him into a living mummy. A splint had been secured to his right wrist, the contraption weighing it down. Despite the antiseptic whiteness of the room, his nostrils were still filled with the heavy, smoldering scent of fire and ash.

Fire and ash...

"Ah, he's awake at last..."

There was a chiding tone to that simple sentence that nearly brought tears to Urahara's eyes. He managed to turn his head to see Yourichi sitting nearby on an uncomfortable wooden chair, watching him intently with her great, gold eyes. Then, without further preamble she said:

"For a smart man, you certainly are capable of doing some stupid things."

"I know," Urahara croaked. His throat was a parched wasteland, almost incapable of speech. His eyes took in the the enormous room, and after a moment of useless speculation, he asked, "Where am I?"

"Ryuken's mansion," Yourichi answered flatly, with obvious disapproval in her voice. "It was far too crowded with all of us in Orihime's tiny apartment; the place was overrun with people. There would be no peace for you there to recover. Not with Jinta and Tessai and everyone else packed in, too." Yourichi's brows knitted together delicately. "I must say, I was quite surprised when Ryuken offered us the use of these rooms. But then he mentioned something about being responsible for your shop burning down the first time, which I thought was strange..." Yourichi allowed the sentence to trail off; she looked expectantly at Urahara for further explanation, waiting for him to fill in the blanks.

He remained stubbornly silent.

After a while, he asked the question he inevitably dreaded asking: "How are...how are Ichigo and Ishida?"

Yourichi's eyes betrayed nothing. "They are recovering," she answered quietly. And that was the moment that it happened. When he finally fell completely to pieces. The tense dread that had kept him shackled in chains unraveled, and everything that had been holding him together flew wildly, fantastically apart. Urahara began to sob, silently, his shoulders shaking like a man in the midst of a seizure, and Yourichi's eyes grew wide with unaccustomed fright. "Kisuke?"

"Yourichi...I...I fucked up so badly...again...and I...I almost got those kids killed..."

Suddenly, Yourichi was up at his bedside, glaring at him in anger. "Stop it, Kisuke! Stop it! You don't know what you're saying. Those kids are strong; they were the ones who pulled you out of that fire. You don't know how afraid they were for you. How much it scared them, seeing their sensei almost die like that. I won't sit here and listen to you berate yourself. I won't, so just stop it." Urahara gulped in air, his mind reeling, as random bits and pieces of memory came crashing together like the missing parts of an abstract puzzle: The roof caving in on them...Urahara throwing himself over both Ichigo and Ishida, taking the brunt of the damage...his body catching on fire, causing third-degree burns on his arms and legs...a vague, fuzzy image of both Ishida and Ichigo-his face finally free of the hollow mask-dragging him bodily across the floor, to the trap door leading down to the underground training center...Ishida crying, his voice like a distant echo, saying, "I think he's dead..."

...Dead...

Urahara looked down at his bandaged arms. It seemed unreal to him, how close he had come to dying in that fire. With a disgusted grunt, he began pulling at all the bandages, unwinding them, glaring at the dewy, too-pink skin underneath. It was all fresh and new. Orihime's handiwork. How very fragile this body is, thought Urahara, marveling. I wonder if it is possible to make a flame retardent gigai...He allowed his mind to wander, allowed it to work out the technical difficulties of creating fire-resistant skin. It was far better than contemplating what had actually happened. It was better than contemplating his own mistakes.

But a hesitant knock at the door announced an end to his flight of fancy. The real world, it seemed, was hell bent on destroying his solitude. "Come in," Yourichi called out, answering for him. As the door creaked open, she raised questioning eyebrows at him, her expression berating him for his lack of polite tact. Urahara answered her with a sullen, down-turn mouth. Must I have visitors now? his face seemed to say.

Once he saw who it was, he knew he had no choice.

Ichigo Kurosaki poked a hesitant orange head around the door. The moment his gaze alighted on Urahara and all of his bandages, tears began to sparkle and shine around his dark amber irises, threatening to spill over onto his already reddened cheeks. Urahara's face softened as he remembered Yourichi's words from earlier: You don't know how afraid they were for you. You don't know how it scared them, seeing their sensei almost die like that. In a scratchy but strong voice Urahara said, "Now, now Kurosaki. What's with the face? As you can see, my recovery's coming along just fine."

The teary sheen did not leave the boy's eyes. Seeing this, Yourichi got up and announced, "I'll let you two talk alone." She headed for the door, giving Ichigo's shoulder a reassuring squeeze on her way out. The moment the door was shut, Ichigo threw himself down on his knees by Urahara's bedside, sobbing, the same way Urahara had been sobbing only minutes before. "I'm...I'm sorry, sensei! I'm sorry! I don't know what happened...I don't remember much of anything...but...I'm so sorry!"

Urahara placed a comforting hand on Ichigo's shaking shoulder. "Calm down, Kurosaki." Then: "Just how much do you remember of that night?"

Ichigo's face was all but hidden in the pale gray of the coverlet. "It's a blank. Everything. From the moment I came back to the shop, all the way up until I came to, and that's when everything had caved in and-" Ichigo raised his head and looked at Urahara. "You were on fire." Urahara merely looked at Ichigo, until he began to squirm in discomfort. His eyes slid away, to stare pensively at the blank wall. "But what I remember most, what I remember feeling, when I first came back to your shop was...was...rage. Because I overheard what you and Ishida's dad said on the porch, and I thought..." Ichigo was squirming again, as if it hurt to remember it. His eyes purposefully avoided Urahara's; he continued to stare distantly at the wall. Urahara squeezed his shoulder, a gesture for him to continue. Ichigo's face began to go red and he dropped his face back down into the coverlet. "And then after that, I saw you in that room with your arms around Uryuu and I thought...I mean, I really thought the two of you were...and then...and then I just completely lost it. After that, it's all...blank."

Urahara nodded, staring off into space. He knew that something would eventually have to be done about Ichigo's internal hollow problem. He knew that he needed to call Shinji sooner rather than later. That it could no longer wait. He silently cursed Ryuken and his careless, indiscreet words. But mostly he cursed himself for his own ridiculous part in all of this.

Ichigo's shoulders were shaking again. "I'm sorry, sensei. I was so stupid. I don't know what's wrong with me. But I know it was all my fault. Your store, everything. I know I had to be the cause..." Ichigo lifted his head and looked at Urahara, his eyes begging him for answers. Then Urahara said:

"Ishida...he didn't tell you what actually happened?"

Ichigo's eyes grew dark, dark as top soil, and he pounded the coverlet with his fist. "No! He won't speak of it, sensei! He won't..." And Ichigo swallowed and bowed his head in defeat. "He won't...he won't see me. It's been days, but he won't...he won't talk to me." Despair wafted off Ichigo's frame like the pungent smell of fire and ash. Urahara took his student's shoulders in both hands and gently shook him. He said quietly, but firmly:

"He will forgive you."

Ichigo just shook his head and stared down at the blanket. "No. I saw what he looked like that night. It was...it was terrible. All that blood. Orihime cried when she saw him." The threatening glimmer was back in his eyes as he spoke. "He won't even speak of it; he's so proud. You know that. I can't see that he'll ever forgive me..."

"You're wrong." Because he's not like Ryuken, thought Urahara. He has a heart. He thought again of that terrible night, of Ishida coming back to try to coax Ichigo back to his senses. Ichigo, come back to me... Urahara just shook his head. "Just give him some time, Kurosaki. Wait. You'll see. It will be alright."

Ichigo lifted his head to stare at Urahara through a veil of tears. "Do you really think so?"

"Yes, I really do think so." And Urahara prayed that, for once, he wasn't wrong.

End Chapter 10.

Next update: Most likely this Friday. :)