A piece written for Ishida Uryuu's 16th birthday, on November six. Slightly creepy meditation on what it is that makes a birthday special, with rampant character speculation. Some spoilers for Ishida family history, but nothing recent. Bleach is not my koi pond, and I make no claims on it. Live long and prosper, Quincy Archer!

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Ishida Uryuu is 16, but he has never had a birthday party.

This is not to say that he was never born, for he most certainly was, nor that he does not know what day he was born on, for he knows all too well.

He was born November 6th 1989. The same day his mother died.

And so Uryuu's birthday has never been a day for celebration and looking to the future. As far back as he can remember, his birthday was the day every year when his father left for work before the sun rose and didn't come home till it rose again. The day every year when Sensei took him to the shrine to pray…and he would swear he saw his father out among the tombstones, kneeling before one like a statue. But that couldn't be because Father was at work.

This is not to say that Uryuu's growth was never celebrated, merely that it was not carried out in the normal fashion. Instead of birthdays, he had half-birthdays, and every May 6th was a special occasion, a day for going to the zoo, for presents of embroidery floss and white clothing. It was a day for his father to put on a small, rare smile and say his son was getting old so very quickly, perhaps one day Uryuu would catch up to him, or even catch up to Sensei.

Sensei died May 6th 1998. The Hollow attack had interrupted their special fishing trip.

Uryuu has not had a half-birthday party since he was 8.5 years old. At the time, he thought that since there was nothing left to celebrate, and no one left to celebrate with, and so there was no point in even trying to find another day to mark.

This is not to say that others did not take a different view of the situation. Neither for the first nor for the last time, his father surprised him—by leaving an illustrated copy of Alice in Wonderland on his bed the morning of January 23rd 1999, with a ribbon marking the chapter about the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the Dormouse…and the un-birthday party.

And ever since then, any celebration the two of them could muster (and sometimes that wasn't much more than a candle in a bran muffin, but they still made some sort of effort every year) was an un-birthday, a date chosen at random, a day with no meaning but what was given it.

Uryuu rarely even thinks about his real birthday anymore, except when he's filling out forms for school. He has had 9 half-birthdays, and 6 un-birthdays, and still no day belongs to him. November 6th is for his mother, just as May 6th is for Sensei. He owns only his free-floating unbirthday.

That is to say, he owns no day until November 6th 2005, when Kurosaki Ichigo walks up behind his desk, smacks the back of his head, and says, "Congratulations on being a year older, dickweed." When Sado Yasutora actually brushes his bangs away long enough to make eye contact and murmur, "Many happy returns." When Inoue Orihime presents him with a cake that he would never dare to eat without an EMT team standing by.

16 years, and exactly one birthday party.