Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach, or any of the characters used in this fic. They all belong to Tite Kubo. I only own any of my original characters that I choose to include, as well as any of my own original plot ideas.

Twice As Empty

A/N: For an LJ fic contest, bleachfic.

He would speak those words, ones that they had longed to hear, quietly. He didn't want either of them to catch his whisperings on the wind, let alone to feel the venom with which his tongue was laced. They didn't need to know how he felt about them. They didn't deserve it. That's why he kept them in the dark like that; kept them guessing.

"Little tyrant," he caught her saying once as she locked him away. "He doesn't give a damn about us. About how we love him, how we treat and feed him."

Yukio knew that that was all a lie. They didn't love him, but the status he had brought to their lives. People would praise them for having such a beautiful little boy. They'd tell him that he was lucky, having such good and charming parents to raise him into his father's business. A legacy, they'd called it. And, of course, his parents had beamed at every syllable, looking down on him with feigned content. But he'd seen into their eyes.

They hated him. All because he didn't call their names.

In preparation for those parties, the ones that he hated to attend, his mother would call for the month's newest maid to dress him as she watched. He hated the way she looked at him, such pride and disdain in her eyes. She always looked forward to the donations that would go to the company, or perhaps the compliments that people would put in a box with a little red bow. They were all the same, those so-called friends of his parents.

They all looked down on him. To them, he had been nothing but a well-dressed puppet.

Yukio never knew what was worse, being bound to his mother or his father. They never allowed him to go anywhere on his own, always towing him around like a toy poodle in some wild celebrity's glittering handbag. It wasn't visible, the collar and leash, but he could feel it restricting him. Somehow, they'd wormed themselves into his head, insisting that he remain with one of them throughout the remainder of the stuffy event. Not once had he been allowed to interact with children his own age.

When he reached twelve, they broke him.

"You're an ingrate, Yukio," his father said. "We do everything for you, and there's nothing on your end. No gratitude, no performance, no pride in your history. You don't even speak to us as people."

He looked down at the shoes that sat quietly on the floor. Likely imported, planned by some haughty fashion designer, and made in some factory on the edge of the planet. Those shoes had come off the floor, one in each hand, only to be thrown through his window.

He'd been walloped for that display of emotion.

It had been what they wanted, yes? For him to show them something? To prove that he wasn't just a drone?

That's why he'd gone away, never speaking their names. On the evening that he'd stepped into the street, he'd decided that they weren't of any use to him. They were barely people. They certainly didn't deserve to be given names.

"Mother" and "Father" were just words, two that meant nothing to him. And yet, as he whispered them beneath the sputtering streetlights, he felt twice as empty as he had before.