Title: Truth Is What You Make It
Author: Yami no Kaiba
Fandom: Bleach
Rating: PG
Character(s): Ishida Uryuu

Summary: Uryuu thinks over his father’s words, and finds that sometimes, they ring with the truth.
Disclaimers: I do not own the characters. Kubo Tite owns the characters and all of Bleach.
Note: Set sometime during the father/son training.

*---*---*---*---*

The most galling part, the most absolutely despicable, vile thought, was simple truth:

"You're weak, Uryuu. A pathetic amateur."

And he hated those words, not because they were true, but because it was his father who said them.

He'd known he was an amateur for a long time, even before his grandfather had died. He was, simply, only scratching the surfaces of his abilities. The fight with that monster of a being, that twelfth division captain in Soul Society, had been more than ample proof to collaborate with his father's announcement.

For one, brief moment in time, he'd been able to do *anything* his mind could think of. Create an arrow to match and surpass his enemy's bankai? Simplicity. He could have created hundreds of thousands of such arrows, what with the sheer amount of power he'd had at his fingertips, and all *he* had to do was collect it and convert it with but a thought...

And still, he'd felt that there was *more*. That there was something he was overlooking, something he could do, something that he could manipulate if only he'd had the right training or knowledge...

He knew, instinctively, that even in that 'final form' as his father had called it, he'd been fighting at not even a quarter of his potential abilities.

Which, of course, was the pinnacle of pathetic. A fighter that doesn't know his own abilities, and insists on fighting anyway in a harmful manner simply because he couldn't wait to properly train himself is a fool twice over.

Was he pathetic? Yes. An amateur? Most definitely.

But weak...?

He was never weak. He may be pathetic, he may be an amateur, but as long as his resolve never wavered, he was never weak.

Uryuu was strong, whether his father believed him to be or not. And it was that strength that would keep him alive, no matter how many times his father kept predicting he'd die from his 'lack of talent'.

Where a Shinigami's resolve to protect might waver, where an Arrancar's strength might fail, Uryuu would still stand.

Because he was a Quincy, and he had resolved to prove it to the world.

--Fin.