Uryuu claws his way to consciousness, body exhausted and brain numb and eyes aching in an uncomfortably familiar way. He forces his eyes open and stares blearily at the ceiling overhead — unfamiliar, oddly old-fashioned — trying to figure out what the hell happened. And where he is now.

He remembers… accepting Yhwach’s power. Remembers the way it crawled through his body. Remembers how disgusting, how invasive it felt. Remembers how he wanted it gone. And then… and then…

He thinks… he thinks Yhwach died.

(Did he kill Yhwach somehow?)

And… voices. He remembers voices. Possibly an argument? And something bright. Fire? Something about fire…

Uryuu gives that train of thought up as not worth the effort and takes a careful breath, then a deeper one. Flexes his fingers and toes. Moves his legs. Arms. Checking-checking-checking…

(He’s exhausted and drained and numb but not like he suffered as a child.)

(He can move, he can breathe, he can think.)

(He’ll be fine.)

(He has to be…)

Another breath and he forces himself upright and squints at the room around him — unfamiliar, bare, also old-fashioned barring the western style bed he’s on — then slumps back against the wall next to him and scrubs at his dry, aching eyes in an effort to gain some relief. Wherever he is, he’s never been here before, which is… not promising at all. On the other hand, there isn’t a hint of white anywhere to be seen, which is promising because he hasn’t seen more than the occasional splash of color anywhere in Yhwach’s white fortress. So he’s probably not there anymore.

Which, unfortunately, leaves… a lot of room for where he currently is.

Uryuu grimaces and stares down at his hands, flexing his fingers absently as he tries to think…

Only to pause and narrow his eyes as he notices that there’s a white coat draped across him, wrinkled from being gripped and bunched up as if it was spread over him almost like a blanket and… it’s not his. He knows it’s not his, because he’s still wearing his. So who the hell tossed their coat over him? And why?

(Which member of the Wandenreich would even bother?)

(He’s… no one to them, not really.)

(So… why…?)

The door clicks open and Uryuu drags his gaze up, away from his hands and the mysterious coat and towards—

“Huh, didn’t expect you to be awake already,” the man in the doorway says as he tilts his head, his brilliant magenta hair catching Uryuu’s attention. The sight is familiar, niggling at Uryuu’s mind as he tries to place the other, but… nothing immediately comes to mind.

He doesn’t know this man. He doesn’t know this man, and yet the man feels familiar, feels safe, in a bone-deep way that Uryuu’s never felt before. It’s disorienting and concerning and troubling because why?! Why does he think the man is safe?

“Woah, hey, calm down before you pass out again, kid,” the man grumbles as he leans against the doorway and crosses his arms over his chest. “You’ve been out of it for most of a day already, time to stay awake awhile.”

Uryuu huffs and scrubs at his eyes again, then sweeps his gaze over the area near him, looking for—

“I put your glasses on the side table next to you,” the man says before Uryuu can spend much time looking. “Figured that was best.”

“Thanks,” Uryuu forces out, wincing at how rough his voice is, and snatches his glasses up and slips them on before he can waste any more time. A glance around confirms his previous thoughts: he has absolutely no idea where he is or who the man in the doorway is, beyond being a Quincy with… interesting taste in hairstyles.

“Don’t fucking mention it. I’m serious,” the man says as he sweeps his gaze over Uryuu, his brows furrowing at whatever he sees. “Well, I guess you look slightly less like shit now. Think you can stand up?”

Uryuu frowns and considers the question, then shrugs, shoves the coat aside, and swings his legs over the edge of the bed to test it. A couple careful tests prove that his legs aren’t about to give out under him, and he slowly rises to his feet, a bit unsteady but otherwise fine.

“Good enough, come on,” the man says after watching him with considering eyes. Without waiting for Uryuu to say anything, he pushes away from the door frame and turns, leaving Uryuu behind as he walks out.

Uryuu swallows a frustrated noise and steps away from the bed, wishing that the man had waited, wishing that he wasn’t at the mercy of some unknown…

But his legs continue to steady as he moves, and by the time he reaches the door he feels almost like himself again. He pauses in the doorway and looks out, taking in the hallway — uncluttered but undeniably warmer than the halls in Yhwach’s fortress — before glancing down each direction in an effort to find the man.

“‘Come on’ he says,” Uryuu mocks softly as he scowls at the empty hall. “Well I would, if you didn’t just disappear the moment you leave the room.”

He hesitates a moment longer, glancing left and right as he debates which direction to take—

(Debates if the man will take offense at Uryuu getting lost.)

—before something tugs him to the right. It’s faint, barely a whisper, but it feels like the best option, feels like the correct option, and Uryuu… doesn’t really have anything to disprove the feeling, so with a shrug he turns to follow it. The tug leads him down the hallway and past several doors, then to the left and into a room with large shoji doors open to reveal a simple yard with a forest beyond.

Uryuu stares at the forest, stomach sinking like a rock at the proof that he’s nowhere familiar anymore, before tearing his gaze away from the open doors and to the room itself. There’s a low table set up in the middle, a coat rack and shoe stand by the door outside, and very little else of note: there’s no pictures on the walls, no side tables with things on them, absolutely nothing to indicate that this place is lived in.

(Even Ryuuken’s manor has more personality than this place, and Ryuuken hardly spends any time there!)

“Right, sit down and get some food in you,” the man announces as he steps through the door opposite Uryuu, a bowl in each hand. He bends down to set both bowls on the side of the table closest to Uryuu, drops a pair of disposable chopsticks beside one of the bowls, then straightens back up and arches an eyebrow at Uryuu.

“Why,” Uryuu bites out, not even bothering to look at what the man had brought out.

“Be more specific, kid, there’s a hell of a lot of ‘whys’ you could be asking about,” the man says with amusement, his arms crossing over his chest as he takes a step back from the table and fixes Uryuu with a look.

Uryuu makes a frustrated noise and sweeps a hand out as if to encompass everything around him. “You. This. Why am I here? Why are you being…” he hesitates over his phrasing, because the man isn’t exactly being nice, but it’s also about the only thing that Uryuu can think of to describe it.

Before he can figure out what to say, the man laughs, sharp and tired and pointed in a way that makes Uryuu wince. “Look kid—”

“My name’s Ishida Uryuu!”

“Look, kid,” the man repeats with another short bark of tired laughter. “You did what I couldn’t. Yhwach’s dead and it couldn’t’ve happened to a more deserving bastard. But most of the Wandenreich? They liked him, and you’re just the little kid he hauled in at the last minute and made his successor. What do you think was about to happen before I pulled you out of there?”

“That’s it? I somehow killed someone you couldn’t and you just… decided to kidnap me?” Uryuu asks incredulously, even as he tries to remember more of what happened; surely he should be able to, surely something as important as killing the man who killed his mother should have left an impression, but… he still can’t. It’s still just flashes, impressions of things that he can’t quite parse, and he wants… he wants…

“Sit your ass down before you fall down,” the man snaps suddenly from beside him, one hand gripping Uryuu’s upper arm in support. “Fuck,” he mutters, so softly that Uryuu can barely hear, before tugging on Uryuu’s arm and pulling him over to the table. “Sit. Eat. I have no idea when you last ate, but it’s been at least a day and that’s going to fuck you up even worse.”

Uryuu snorts but lets himself be tugged around without a fight; there’s something… now that the man is touching him, he can feel a connection between them just on the edge of his awareness, and what he can feel is… interesting. The man’s a twisted mess of anger-spite-disbelief but none of it beyond the disbelief seems to be aimed at Uryuu. And underneath that is… concern?

(No, he’s probably imagining it, or the focus of the concern.)

(The man has no reason to be concerned about him.)

“Hey,” the man snaps again, jabbing Uryuu in the side of the head with a finger as he does. “Stop zoning out, kid.”

“Would you stop?” Uryuu snaps back at him, swatting at the man’s hand in the process. “You’re so shit at this, old man,” he can’t resist adding, despite knowing how terrible of an idea sassing an unknown like this is.

Except all the man does is toss his head back and laugh, actual amusement in the sound for the first time Uryuu’s heard it, and it’s… it’s weird. No one should be so amused at being back-talked like that, especially by someone they barely know, especially at… however old the man actually is.

(His sensei was amused by it all those years ago, but no one else.)

(Adults don’t like it when kids talk back.)

“Yeah, I am, aren’t I?” the man says as his laughter finally dies back down, flashing Uryuu a sharp grin in the process. “Ain’t had a need to babysit since… well. Since I was about your age, like a thousand years ago. And I definitely sucked at it back then, too, little Quincy King.”

Uryuu flinches before he can catch himself, and bites out, “Don’t call me that,” before he can think better of it. Again.

The man stares at him, eyes narrow and cold and thoughtful, then says, “Yeah, alright. Won’t change what you are, but I’ll drop that one, kid.”

“Thanks,” Uryuu mumbles as he tugs his arm away from the man’s hold and sinks down to sit in front of the low table, gaze on the bowls — plain rice and some sort of broth — instead of on the man now towering above him. It feels more like defeat than he’d like, but… what else is he to do?

(He’s Yhwach’s successor.)

(He’s Yhwach’s successor and Yhwach is dead.)

(What does that even mean, though?)

The man makes a noise of acknowledgment and steps away, stalking around to the other side of the table and settling into place with a tired sigh. He props his chin on one hand and sweeps his gaze over Uryuu again. “So, that answer your questions, kid?”

“Not in the slightest,” Uryuu says in exasperation, even as he carefully picks up the bowl of broth in both hands and gives it a sniff; whatever it is, it doesn’t smell terrible, so he tips it up slightly to take a careful sip. And then takes another because it actually tastes fine, being some sort of mild chicken broth, and the taste of it is starting to make him hungry.

The man snorts at him and says, “Yeah, I guess that’s fair. What else do you want to know?”

“Do you actually have a name, or should I just call you old man all the time?” Uryuu asks without looking away from the bowl of broth, not wanting to see how the man reacts to his question.

“I am not nearly the oldest of the Wandenreich, brat,” the man says with amusement, before adding, “Call me Bazz, that’s all you need to know.”

Uryuu casts a thoughtful glance at Bazz, then gives the man a shallow nod and takes another sip of the broth. He rolls a few questions through his mind as he drinks, wondering which he dares to ask, wondering how personal he can get before Bazz starts lying to him, before giving it up as a worthless line of thought; he doesn’t know Bazz well enough to judge anything, so it’s probably best to stick to general questions. “Do you know what’s happened since you kidnapped me?”

Bazz blinks at him, surprise flickering across his expression before smoothing back out. “Nah,” he says with a shrug. “Don’t know, don’t care. Quincy, Shinigami, they can all kill each other for all I give a shit about their grand little enmity.”

“You… don’t hate Shinigami?” Uryuu blurts out.

“Eh, more accurate to say that I hated Yhwach more, and now that he’s dead I just… don’t care that much,” Bazz explains, then clicks his tongue when Uryuu sends him a puzzled look and adds, “Look kid, I have no idea why you hated Yhwach so much that you killed him the second you had the opportunity, but you weren’t the only one with a grudge against the man. Or the only one to try to kill him. You just succeeded when everyone else failed.”

“Oh.” Uryuu stares at Bazz for a moment, trying to figure out what sort of vendetta he could have had, before dropping his gaze back to his food and setting the now-empty bowl of broth aside in favor of the chopsticks and the bowl of rice. “So, how in danger am I?”

“No idea, kid, sorry,” Bazz says with a small grimace. “Now that you’re not in the fortress anymore, the bastards have probably split into like a dozen different factions and started going at it. Best case, they’ll all kill each other off before they find us. Worst case, Jugram manages to grab enough control that he can point most of them in the same direction for at least a few days.”

Uryuu swallows as he snaps the chopsticks apart and quickly makes sure there’s no splinters on the ends; he… possibly hadn’t given a single thought to what came after he tried to kill Yhwach off—

(Honestly, part of him hadn’t even believed it possible.)

(He’d just needed to try, needed to do something, especially after… after Kurosaki simply left him behind…!)

—but now he’s faced with a reality in which he somehow won, somehow killed Yhwach without losing his own life in the process. He can’t even really remember how it happened, and that makes something cold crawl along his spine and curdle in his stomach.

(What if he’s a danger to everyone around him?)

(What if all it takes is a moment of inattention, a moment of fury, and he kills someone else?)

(…maybe it is for the best that he doesn’t know where he’s been taken, doesn’t know how to get back, doesn’t know why Bazz even cares—!)

Fingers snap right in front of his face, startling Uryuu out of his thoughts and forcing him to focus on Bazz once again.

“Save the zoning out for after you put more food in your stomach,” Bazz informs him dryly as he pulls his hand back away from Uryuu’s face and lets it drop back into his lap. “Man, kid, the hell’ve you been through to get battle shock this bad?”

Uryuu frowns at Bazz in confusion. He knows he’s been more out of it than usual, but he’s also got more on his mind than usual, his thoughts swirling back and forth as he tries to reorient to the changed world he woke up not long ago. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he settles on when it becomes clear that Bazz is waiting for an answer.

“Wh— seriously?” Bazz asks incredulously, then runs a hand over his face and heaves a tired sigh. “You were completely checked out for the entire announcement ceremony Yhwach performed, kid, and didn’t even fight when I kidnapped you. Bet you can’t even remember what happened after, can you?”

Uryuu tears his gaze away and scowls down at his half-eaten bowl of rice, stomach starting to churn as Bazz’s words sink in; the man is right, he can’t remember much of the announcement ceremony, and his memory just… stops after a point.

(After the sickening crawl of Yhwach’s power, after the shouting, after power started to rise through his body like a tsunami—)

“Oh for… okay, enough,” Bazz declares before Uryuu can do more than start picking at his memories all over again. “It doesn’t matter, so stop obsessing and finish eating.”

“Then why did you ask?” Uryuu grits out, the chopsticks in his hand creaking with the strength of his grip. “If it supposedly doesn’t matter—”

“Because you were theoretically awake until I brought you here, and I was trying to prove how not okay you really are, kid,” Bazz declares with a dramatic eye roll. “Fuck, it’s like you’ve never had someone ask about it before.”

Uryuu shrugs awkwardly and stuffs another bite of rice into his mouth to delay having to react to that, because what is he supposed to say? That Ryuuken doesn’t so much ask as just give him a disappointed once-over if he’s stupid enough to be caught by the man? That Kurosaki doesn’t ask because before now he’d been there for most of the shit they’ve been caught up in? That Inoue asks but he can’t bear to answer with anything that would disappoint or frighten her? That no one else, even Sado, looks at him with anything more than tolerance?

(And now, even if he goes back… won’t the others do the same?)

(He joined a madman’s cause with intent to get his revenge, to be the hidden knife at Yhwach’s back, but he’s no fool.)

(No one likes traitors.)

Bazz heaves a sigh and tips his head back to stare at the ceiling for a long, silent moment, then finally says, “I’m almost afraid to ask, but you got anyone I should be returning you to, kid? Or are you like damn near every other Quincy that Yhwach folded into his service over the centuries?”

“What does that mean?” Uryuu asks suspiciously, not bothering to answer Bazz’s first question because… because, well, what can he say? Even if he never had to show his face to any of his (former?) friends while part of Yhwach’s forces, why would they want him after everything that’s happened? The Quincy still invaded, still killed people, and he’s been suspiciously absent during the entire affair.

There’s only one conclusion they can reach, and it’s the correct one: he betrayed them.

“Alone. Hurting. Angry,” Bazz bites out, eyes sharp and brows furrowed. “He liked to make promises, you know, liked to offer people a place if they could prove their worth… and he liked to make sure that those he had an eye on needed a place.”

Uryuu freezes at Bazz’s words and then slowly, carefully, sets his mostly eaten bowl of rice down, trying to keep his hands steady despite the way ice is settling in his gut and freezing his limbs.

(Yhwach liked to make sure those he was interested in needed a place…)

(Then… did he…?)

(But no, he’d seemed entirely astonished that Uryuu had survived Auswählen.)

(…but he’d certainly wasted no time in bringing Uryuu into the fold, had he?)

“Yeah, thought as much,” Bazz says with a quiet snort, before leaning forward and swiping Uryuu’s bowls and rising to his feet again. “This place is safe, just don’t go beyond the wards. Go like… get some sun or something. Or go back to bed, fuck if I know, I’m not your damn parent.”

Uryuu stares up at the man, then turns his head to stare at the open doors thoughtfully. “What happens if I go beyond the wards?” he asks before Bazz can take more than a few steps away from the table.

“Eh, best case you just get lost and can’t get back in,” Bazz answers him with a shrug. “Worst case, some faction of the Wandenreich finds you. If you’re lucky, it’ll be a faction that wants you alive.”

Uryuu grimaces and rubs at his face; that’s about what he expected, but to hear it said so plainly…

“I ain’t gonna save you if you walk past those wards and get in trouble,” Bazz states firmly. “Nearest town’s to the west if you want to make a break for it by yourself, kid. Your choice.”

And with that, before Uryuu can ask another question, Bazz stalks out of the room, leaving him alone once more.

Uryuu sighs and lets his hands drop back into his lap, debating what he should do; he doesn’t quite feel like going back to sleep already, no matter how much the idea appeals to a corner of his brain, but his other options aren’t exactly appealing either. He probably should get up and start wandering the house, try to figure out where he is and what’s all here, but he’s not sure whether that will annoy Bazz or not.

(He… he doesn’t feel like fighting anymore, doesn’t feel like expending that much effort when there’s barely any reason…!)

He glances out the open doors again, staring at the bright sunlight and the rocky garden and the forest just beyond it. It will take a bit to orient himself, and probably longer than he’d like to find whatever town was apparently ‘to the west’, but does he really want to? Does he even have a reason to?

(He doesn’t.)

(He doesn’t, and he needs to accept that.)

(No one will come looking for him except to bring an end to him, especially if they know he’s inherited Yhwach’s position.)

(No, there’s no reason to flee.)

(Not right now.)

Mind made up, Uryuu pushes himself to his feet and slips out the open doors, pausing on the porch steps to stare up at the blue, blue sky dotted with little white clouds and bounded by mountains on three sides. There are birds singing in the trees just beyond the little rocky garden and a gentle breeze rustling the leaves and, distantly, he can hear the gentle sound of moving water. It’s both peaceful and incredibly isolated, lacking any hint of other humans beyond the two of them, and right now he can’t even hear Bazz.

It feels like he’s caught somewhere surreal, trapped in some sort of hidden realm like in a children’s story, even if the rational part of his knows that he’s just… a long, long way away from the more built up regions.

It’s strange to realize that Soul Society is probably mired neck deep in chaos at this very moment from both the Quincy invasion and Yhwach’s abrupt death. That right now people — Quincy, Shinigami, and Living — are probably fighting for their lives in Seireitei. That the only reason he isn’t out there fighting for his life — or already dead, given what little he remembers of the meeting — is because of the unexpected mercy of a single Quincy.

(He… doesn’t know how to feel about that, or about Bazz, either.)

(Who does something like that, anyway?)

Uryuu sighs. Steps down onto the path. Turn back to the house and jumps, reinforcing his motion with a touch of hirenkyaku in other to land lightly atop the tiled roof. Takes a moment to take the view in, marveling at the sweeping forest and looming mountains and the ripple of birds, and then carefully takes a seat and leans back, arms behind his head.

The sun is warm and the breeze is cool and the sky feels like it goes on forever and…

He breathes out. Closes his eyes.

Lets himself rest.