AN: I warned you that I'm exceedingly slow with updates. Don't worry, though – there's more to this story yet, and the next chapter's about 80% done. I just need to sit down and write the damn thing… Anyway, this is a series of short drabbles and one shots dealing with the past, the present, and the future as contained within All Night's Dreaming.
Ossuary
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Ichigo never dreamt the older man was broken.
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Both Vaizard had dealt with the sudden onslaught of taste and foreign emotion in different ways; while Ichigo had danced on the edge of sanity, Kisuke had simply shut down.
The redhead didn't envy him; he'd lived like that once before, and had no desire to repeat the experience.
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Ichigo had never regarded Soul Society as his home to begin with; the Seiritei had brought Kisuke nothing but pain.
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Urahara felt something click into place at the sight of bone-white sands; when Ichigo returned to his arms, he knew he'd finally come home.
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Hara once commented that if Shiro and Ichigo were truly polar opposites, the hollow should have been female; Shiro's response was exceedingly messy.
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Sometimes, rarely, Shiro would find Hara standing tall with his face upturned towards the sky.
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Hara's loathing for Kurotsuchi disturbed Shiro; when pressed, the older hollow would simply grin bitterly before whispering that one of them had to hate.
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Hara has only ever obeyed one order from Kisuke, during the final battle of the War when Ichigo's bare neck gleamed white beneath Aizen's blade.
Kill them all is not a precise mission statement, but it gets the job done.
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Shiro remembers every single time Hara's features softened with genuine affection; he still pretends he hasn't noticed the other hollow's weakness.
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Hara cast a critical eye over the demolished chessboard. "Perhaps, Shiro-kun, we should try poker instead."
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Shiro's jaw dropped; where the hell had Hara managed to find a kareokee machine?
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On the very rare occasions Hara and Kisuke were in close proximity to each other, they exhibited a broken symmetryit was almost painful for onlookers to behold.
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Kisuke was well aware that he was a composite, rather then a whole; memories of his time as a complete individual were becoming increasingly hard to comprehend.
The process terrified him on a level beyond words.
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Kisuke had been exiled before; this time, he chose to walk away.
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Kisuke dreamed of white sands and black sky; the training room's decor was his sole concession to the images whispering of home.
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Sometimes it's easier to hate Hara whispered, and Kisuke couldn't help but agree.
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It's not affection that links the two hollows, despite outward appearances. There's a tacit agreement between them not to raise the subject. They don't love one another. It's far simpler then that.
They're each other's everything.
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Hara's loathing of the cold is matched only by Shiro's hatred of the rain.
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Ichigo tasted of raspberries, of spice and heat and defiance.
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To the uninformed, Shiro and Hara's sparring appear little more then outright homicide attempts.
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Kisuke asked Hara once why he treated Shiro so roughly. The hollow simply looked at him oddly before replying that he trusted his lover to survive.
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Neither Hara or Shiro thought much about marriage; weddings were a human custom, and they already knew they belonged to each other.
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The proudest moment of Hara's life was when Shiro admitted that he liked belonging to the other.
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There was one aspect of the marriage that Hara appreciated; Harashi Kaisuke was nice, but he much preferred Shiroha Hichigo.
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Urahara's gaze was sympathetic but unyielding. "This is what you are now, Ichigo."
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Ichigo can't help but stare because this was Urahara as he was meant to be, proud and powerful and kind.
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"Touch what is mine and die" Hara snarls, power swirling around him like a storm, and Shiro feels a surge of emotion he has no words for tighten his throat with sudden warmth.
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Hara carries the shadows with him, and Shiro wonders if he dares to ask if it is by choice.
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"Teach me". Ichigo snarled from behind clenched teeth. He swallowed, golden eyes blinking rapidly as he looked at his mate. "I don't ever – I don't want – " His expression firmed. "I will not let that happen again."
Kisuke's answering smile was terrifying to behold.
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Kisuke would have threatened to exorcise Hara if he thought it would do any good.
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"It was the shinigami", Hara purred, "and not the arrancar, who tried to take everything from us."
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Kisuke, funnily enough, is a dog person; he gave a full-body twitch the first time he saw Yoruichi's alternate form. Hara is the one who likes cats.
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Kisuke is terrified of Hara not for what he is or what he promises, but because of what he could become.
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"Help me save him" Hara begs, and their combined power snarls through the air as they dive towards their mate.
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Hara's rage is a hot, ugly core of hate that is a perfect counterpart to Shiro's explosive fury. He simply knows how to mask it.
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Kisuke will do whatever he has to in order to ensure Ichigo's safety. Hara will kill everyone he has to in order to keep Shiro safe.
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Hara rarely shows his face in Kisuke's mirror anymore. He doesn't have to.
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"Never the end." Hara grinned.
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Kisuke knows (though he truly wishes he didn't) that Shiro's a screamer. Hara takes a certain amount of glee in informing him.
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Shiro showed considerable more enthusiasm in learning the waltz after Hara informed him that dancing "was making love to another kind of music."
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Hara's current nickname for Shiro is "my little screamer". Shiro's efforts at disproving the appellation have merely led to its validation.
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Ichigo will never admit it, but he was deeply touched when Kisuke started reciting love poetry to him; his awe faded, however, when Kisuke indulged in 'artistic enhancement'.
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Death's not enough" Hara hissed, eyes bitter. "I want him to suffer."
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"You have so much to learn" Hara chuckled into his lover's lips. He drew back with a smirk, licking his teeth. "And I have so much to teach."
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Hara took Shiro to his own realm once, that tiny, parceled-off portion of Kisuke's soul that he'd claimed as his own.
It had been nothing but shadows; Shiro had stood out like a beacon, his colorless skin and hair standing in stark contrast to the darkness that writhed and churned at his feet.
There had been a vague taste of snow permeating the air, but all else was consumed by the fathomless shadows made up the very fabric of reality.
Hara had blended perfectly into the darkness, an extension of the shadows that wafted through the air; he almost seemed to dissolve into the dusk until all that distinguished him were two brilliant ghostfire eyes staring at Shiro from a pillar of writhing shadow. Hara was his realm, was sea and sky and earth; Shiro was surrounded by his lover, consumed by the shadows that constituted his existence.
And when they fucked, it was as if the night itself were taking him
*
Kisuke stared at his sword, eyes wide.
He'd known there was more to his shikai then the bloodmist and the blazing song that was his to command. But this – this – he had not expected at all. This was power. Old power, cold power, curling beneath his fingers like the heat-death of stars.
What do you wish of me? Benihime purred beneath his fingers, reiatsu chasing the edge of the blade. I will shatter the night sky if you wish me to. I will crush those who oppose you, sing of their demise and scatter the ashes in warning. Only feed me, Kisuke, only bear me at your side, only call my name, and I shall whisper through the dark to scour the shadows clean. Call my name, and I shall come. Bid me sing, and I obey.
A zanpaktou was a reflection of one's soul, one's essential nature manifested on the physical plane. That much was common knowledge.
What did this say about him?
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Kisuke has never mentioned it, but Ichigo knows, to the core of his being, that a hollow lurks in the blonde's soul. It's a vague understanding that lurks on the edges of his awareness; whenever he tries to access the knowledge, the redhead is greeted with a tangled mismash of images. Shadows and light and a smile made all the more terrible for its promise of sheer, unadulterated mayhem – an awe beyond measure, a need that transcends simple desire and skirts the boundaries of addiction.
He knows he knows this only because Shiro does. He'd rather not know how his hollow acquired the knowledge.
*
Urahara derives most of his income from the day-to-day business of his shop; despite his reputation, he doesn't sell much to shinigami. It's not economically plausible – few shinigami even know of the existence of the shop, making his business in black-market spiritual equipment less then profitable.
There is a very good reason that Kisuke stocks up on Soul Society merchandise. Specifically, the artificial souls.
He eats them.
On rare occasions, Kisuke will sit at his dining room table, when the children are asleep and he knows that Tessai is elsewhere. He will, very quietly and calmly, take a single sphere from the box on his plate and chew it into shards before swallowing it down.
Then he'll pause, count silently to ten, and repeat the process, ignoring the flaring need that urges him to cram the spheres down his throat. They're paltry fare, stale and unappetizing, but they're one of the few things that blunt the edge of the hunger.
He needs the ritual, if only to keep himself sane.
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Kisuke once told Ichigo that he'd dealt with become a Vaizard by simply ignoring it.
He lied.
Hara dwelt in the edge of every whispered breath, dancing in the darkness behind his eyelids. Dark hands wound softly around the tendrils of his thoughts, pale ghostfire oddly comforting as it flickered at the edge of his awareness.
The hollow sang to him, sweet songs of death and destruction, the decay of morality and the sky's collapse. Faint tendrils of melody whispered lazily from the depths of his subconscious as the dark-skinned hollow paced the edges of the shopkeeper's awareness, dark fingers tracing the barriers that held him at bay.
Urahara has long since turned ignoring things into an art form.
Funnily enough, the first time Hara was ever really, truly quiet was when Ichigo burst out of the Shattered Shaft, eyes bright with the promise of death and reiatasu lashing with white-tinged shadows.
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Hara, in some respect, embodies the quintessential qualities of a true Vastoe Lorde. He is powerful, ruthless, amoral, and possesses an extremely warped perspective of reality. Fortunately, for Soul Society at least, he also displays a profound indifference to just about everything that doesn't directly affect him.
Shiro's the one exception. Hara will, quite literally, slaughter his way across half of the creation for the smaller hollow.
Shiro will kill the other half.
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Urahara's actually a lot stronger then people realize.
Hara is, perhaps, the only person who comprehends this. Despite the hollow's immense power, it was Kisuke who thrust his sword home the day they fought for dominance. Hara has never forgotten that fight, or the extremely narrow margin by which Urahara secured victory.
The fact of the matter is that Urahara spends approximately fifty to seventy-five percent of his total reiatsu capacity actively suppressing his counterpart. He makes up for this deficiency by being extremely creative in his energy expenditure.
Urahara has spent the last century in a near-constant competition with a hollow – as a result, his power has grown exponentially. He hasn't gone full-out in a fight since he left Soul Society.
He's a little afraid of what might happen if he did.
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