unmasked
i.
Goodness, Urahara realized, was something best left to those more capable of such traits. It was a revelation he’d had younger than most would suspect. Before his days as a jailer, as an assassin, or as a deeply flawed man.
In his youth Urahara had seen the way his own heart was shaped. How he guarded what was his with any means available to him. That he was all too susceptible to the taint of envy, how it bleed into his bones. That he could smile easiest when he felt no joy.
To be fair he hardly had any appropriate role models. Soul Society was filed with heroic figures, powerful beings, and methods to achieving what seemed impossible. But there were very few truly good people.
But Kisuke did try to avoid lying to himself. He was no good and that was just a fact.
ii.
Benihime’s song was filled with bloodlust from the first instant he could hear her. A shrill sound that made Urahara shudder and his hair stand on end in wariness.
Yet, rather than to be terrified to pull away he’d followed the sound to the source buried deep within himself. His instincts demanded no less of him.
Stranger yet as he drifted down into the darkness, beyond the carefully constructed walls that kept Urahara at bay from the world was a comforting presence. No less intimidating but oddly soothing.
From the first hesitant touch Kisuke found he understood why something that should repulse him only drew him in.
Benihime knew each dark secret, every crack in his defenses - but she turned away from nothing. He couldn’t conceal himself from her. No fool’s smile would lead her astray; no deflection would distract her.
Stripped bare of his defenses Kisuke found himself understanding what it meant to be accepted just as he was.
They were a matched set.
iii.
Power seduced and knowledge made fools of men.
Urahara had overestimated himself and let himself be consumed. Or perhaps he had only embraced himself to his flaws.
Either way the hogyoku became itself. And only after this did Urahara see the error of his ways, saw the dangers he had unleashed. Meddling in places he had no business.
Much like his slipping through the curtain that hid the Soul King.
The hogyoku inspired much the same feeling their King had. His heart raced and a cold sweat beaded over his clammy skin as fear snaked through his being. Horror made his stomach roll and turn, as his eyes had seen something that should not be, being.
Perhaps fear was to blame for his brush with madness that made him create a tool to make mere men into something more than they were meant to be. The hogyoku was brilliant but in the most terrible sense. Urahara knew this because he wanted to destroy it, bury it and never look upon it again.
Urahara had wanted to reject the reality of the King.
Wanted to reject the very limitations that made him powerless to accept.
But reality would not permit his ignorance in the face of fact.
Just as he could do nothing to destroy the hogyoku, Kisuke also could do nothing about the Soul King. Both held something very precious together.
A lynchpin.
iv.
Isolation was natural of those who were intelligent. Urahara was no stranger to the way the world seemed to be so far removed from himself. Even those that shone the brightest - like Yoruichi.
They all failed to see the gap between his smile and he words. Missed the precise distance he held himself at. Took no notice of the hollowness of his emotions. Smiling for the sake of smiling, laughing for the sake of laughing - more routine than anything else. The output of the calculations of social equations.
When he was alone Kisuke indulged in allowing himself to be pensive. On some occasions even bitter.
Because he had yet to meet someone how had ever truly seen him.
Yoruichi had been the closest but even she missed the way he hated her in brief moments. How his disappointment made him hardened against her in ways he had not always been.
But he asked too much of anyone to accept him as he was. Right?
v.
Some nights sleep never came. Mind too heavy with what he had done so Kisuke laid in the dark and dwelt on his choices.
Those nights were long and filled with shadows. Shadows they always seemed to shift whenever he looked away. Cast over his head to stay and leave him in darkness that did not always lift with the morning sun.
At first those nights had meet with fear, revulsion, and desire. But with time weariness was all that they roused in him.
The blood on his hands would not vanish or thin because he repented. He’d committed his acts already. Nothing could undo them. Dwelling on what might have been would do nothing but offer him solace where he deserved none.
So Urahara did what he could to still his mind to stillness. Letting the memories run their course. Not trying to comfort himself, reassure or reaffirm.
Men made their own demons with their own two hands. The more talented a man was with his hands the greater his demons must likewise be.
All he could do was stare them back in the face and try not to flinch back.