Road to Redemption

Chapter 25: Goodbye Rainy Days

A/N: Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay, I'm currently sick with the flu and moving feels like a chore. Like seriously my voice is now deeper than Aizen's Japanese dub. This chapter also contains major spoilers for Road to Ruin so if you haven't read that and don't want to be spoiled then I suggest you turn back.  Anyway, I hope you're enjoying the story so far. Thanks for reading!🤗😋

© Bleach and its characters don't belong to me they belong to Tite Kubo and Shounen Jump. Only Anna, Jeanne, and the Fujiwara family belong to me.

Chapter 25: Goodbye Rainy Days

Ichigo instinctively looked at the silly poster his father liked so much. Masaki's big smile was the sole reason the kids didn't take it down years ago.

"I have been waiting for a while to hear you say that."

"I'm sorry. Perhaps if I told you sooner, things would've been different."

Ichigo shook his head. "No. I didn't want to force it out of you. I'd be satisfied with just knowing a little more."

"Well then, ask away. What do you really want to hear?"

Ichigo thought for a moment. There was plenty to ask, but he finally settled on something simple.

"How did you two meet?"

Isshin chuckled. "It's pretty cliché, but I wouldn't change a thing. You know Aizen was messing around before you were even born, right?" Ichigo nodded, waiting for Isshin to continue. "Well, one of his experimental hollows killed a few shinigami here in Karakura. I was the Captain of the 10th squad back then, and I was sent to investigate. It was raining hard that night, and I had difficulty fighting.

That thing got the best of me, it was pitch black and tall, his powers were immense! I got beaten pretty bad. But then your mom appeared. That high school girl with a Quincy bow saved my sorry butt from getting killed, and she healed me.

You got your helpful attitude from her."

Ichigo smiled. "Don't sell yourself short pop, you're pretty protective too. "

"Thanks, kiddo."

"So that was it? You got together after that?"

"No, far from it. We went out separate ways for a while. Then I saw her again, she was on the verge of death. Ishida's father was the one trying to help her, saying that it was my fault she got that way, that the hollow had infected her.

Urahara popped in to confirm it. Shinigamis infected by hollowfication can become vizards, but your mother was a Quincy, a living human, that process wouldn't save her, it would kill her. The only way to save her was for me to use my powers to seal the hollowfication. She would live but we would both be left powerless."

"Essentially normal humans..."

"Yes. I agreed to it. We didn't know each other but I would not let her die. After that the Quincy didn't want her, despite the Kurosaki name being one of pure Quincy blood, so she left the Ishida house and broke off her engagement to Ryuuken Ishida.

We both agreed to live a normal human life, and thus we never spoke of shinigami or Quincy matters with you or the twins."

So that was why their families knew each other so well, why they never knew of their shinigami or Quincy heritage, and why his mother couldn't repel the hollow that fateful day. 'Neither of them could stop it.'

"How was it like? Your new life, I mean."

"Surreal. At first, I missed my division, my family, my friends, all of it. Yet as time passed and I fell more in love with your mother, she became the sun in my system, the center of my universe. There's no other woman who could take her place."