…And now a message from seldelaterre:
I like Gin and Izuru. Because...they remind me of the comedy and tragedy masks people use to symbolize the theatre. Both of their faces are frozen in expressions they can't help but hide behind. It's unsettling.
Please read and review.
Disclaimer:
1) I don't own Bleach. If I did, Orihime would crawl in a hole and stay there.
2) Rated M for Language and Suggestion. Very mild graphic ishe. If you're looking for lemon, go buy some Lysol.
"If you are the cloud, then I am the snow
If you are the rain, then I will not grow
All of the asperity you have sewn"
"Everything Starts Where It Ends" – Lovedrug
Everything Starts Where It Ends
Chapter One- "The Voice of Izuru"
A silver haired Shinigami paced fitfully; he traced furrows in the cold stone flooring with the constancy of his tramping feet. Ichimaru Gin walked heavily for one so agile and superiorly surreptitious, but that was a fault that only surfaced in times of extreme agitation. He'd been waiting patiently for the return of his envoy but there was no news. His patience waned.
The chamber was lit with a single lamp that hung from an iron rung bolted near his desk but Gin would have functioned with or without its harsh white light. He didn't need to see anything tonight, he only wanted to hear.
Izuru was dead. That was all he knew so far. His loyal soul had been rent apart by someone- one of Aizen's abominations- and reborn again in the human world, never to exist as Izuru Kira again. Dead. Vanished. Bled white. Murdered.
But not gone.
After what seemed like hours had passed, a knock at the door shook the ex-taicho from his inconsistent reveries. Gin sprinted across the room to wrench to heavy stone portal open and snarl at whomever had disturbed him, but he didn't have a chance to say anything before being shoved back through the open doorway.
"Gomen-nasai, Ichimaru-san, but your instructions were to minimize the time we were seen together."
A pair of perpetually weeping green eyes was lowered in deference as Gin's intruder bent at the waist in an obsequious bow. Annoyed by the Fourth Espada's overblown humility, the captain grabbed a tine at the top of Ulquiorra's mask and violently yanked him back into a standing position.
"Damn it, we don' have tha time for that! Did ya get them? Jus tha ones I asked ya for, mind ya."
"Hai, Ichimaru-dono." The espada solemnly pressed a thick square package into Gin's expectant hands. "I experienced no confrontation and was seen by no one."
Gin turned the heavy package over in his hands- the shape was right, but were there really that many of them?
"No confrontations and no sightings! Ya want a cookie?"
It was painfully clear that Gin wanted Ulquiorra gone. The green-eyed Espada excused himself.
As soon as the sound of Ulquiorra's steps faded down the corridor, Gin slammed the door shut and bolted it to further safeguard himself from the possibility of intrusion. He blew the lantern out and opened his watery blue eyes to allow his sight to adjust to the swimming blackness they were met with. The layout of his chamber was simple, almost Spartan in its sparseness, so Gin didn't have a problem with groping his way to the futon in the corner. Once seated, Gin scratched at the thin rice paper that wrapped the package Ulquiorra had secured for him from Izuru's abandoned quarters.
The instructions had been to sneak into Soul Society, locate Izuru's rooms, find this package, and to burn everything else to the ground. No witnesses, no screwups- kill anyone who might have seen you. If Ulquiorra was telling the truth, then the only thing the third division would have to report in the morning was that the late vice-captain's quarters had been set aflame. There would be no property to inventory and nobody would know what had gone missing the night of the fire.
Gin's cracked, yellowing fingernails caught themselves on a piece of adhesive that held the flimsy wrapping together. The paper fell apart in his hands and revealed the content of the highly valued package to Gin's blindly fumbling fingertips.
His fingers traveled smoothly in a circle, sensing deliberate grooves in the surface of what felt like a wide disk. A vinyl record, no- a stack of vinyl records! At least twenty five of them! There was a lot to listen to.
The first vinyl began with a crackle of static and a voice that sounded disingenuously familiar.
"Are you comfortable, Kira-san?"
"Quite. Thank you. May we begin?"
Gin's breath hitched in his chest. Right there! Like a fossil trapped in amber for millennia at a time, Izuru's voice would forever be preserved in these vinyls. Dead, but not gone.
"Whenever you're ready."
December 13, 18:36. Session One.
My parents used to make a joke out of it, but looking back I think they were laughing out of worry. I mean, I was healthy and everything but I was, I don't know how to put it. They had a name for it; they said I had a- an 'anxious soul.' That was a cute way of saying that I was scared of my own shadow. I couldn't sleep because I'd always think I heard these creatures outside my window. Something would- used to scratch at the glass and tap on it. I'd- I used to hold a lamp out to scare them away but they were only trees.
I think my parents were going to do something about it but they procrastinated, and then they died. The nightmares stopped a few months after they died. Ironic, I know. I've always taken that as evidence that I was a little bit, um. Sick.
There was another voice on the recording, but the speaker's voice was muffled. Muffled, but disturbingly familiar.
Izuru's Voice broke out in a burst of short-lived laughter. The Voice on the recording couldn't give Izuru's laugh justice. His feathery, rapidfire giggling had attracted Gin to the blond shinigami immensely. Not because the laugh was particularly appealing or sexy, but because Gin had immediately attributed it to somebody who was quite potentially a nutcase. Metaphorical birds of a feather do, after all, flock together.
Yeah, I guess you could call it that too. Either way I thought that was twisted. Um, I was already in the Academy by then, I always had people around me. I was never alone, so I was happy. I had Renji and Momo and all of the other trainees right there with me, watching me and caring for me. That's the last time I can remember feeling that complete.
It's weird because I've been told over and over that I'm an introverted person, and introverted people are supposed to need time alone to restore themselves. But I feel like I can't live without the other people in my life. I count on them, I need them to feel whole.
The muffled voice sounded again on the recording, but this time Gin could make out what the other speaker was saying.
These people who complete you, or make you "whole," what do you think would happen if one of them were to leave you?
There was silence for a moment and Gin found himself grinding his admirable teeth in anticipation. He wasn't sure what he wanted Izuru to say, but he wanted him to say it- now.
I would lose a part of myself. I'd be an amputee.
Shortly after those words, the recording slowed to a halt.
End of Session One.
Gin reached over and turned off the antique phonograph he'd jacked from the human world. It was definitely Izuru. The run-on sentences, the snide remarks (a habit Gin liked to think Izuru picked up from him), the pointed accuracy…it was the Izuru that Gin had known (biblically) and abandoned (mercilessly).
Izuru's voice brought back a wave of memories for Gin. Some of them were benevolent, most of them were dreadful, but all of them were hilarious in retrospective to the tasteless taicho. There had been an inordinate amount of social backlash after Ichimaru Taicho selected Izuru Kira to become his immediate subordinate. His fellow captains initially disregarded his decision on the grounds that Izuru wasn't as fit a choice as some of the other members of his division; some lesser officers accused him of abject favoritism and of harboring a hidden agenda. They were all idiots, and they were all wrong.
Why Izuru then?
Easy. He was damaged goods. Gin didn't need to open his eyes to detect how deliciously and deleteriously fucked up Izuru Kira was. The pretty blond boy was a strong and able fighter- he was capable of performing at a vice captain level, but so were several other officer's in the third division. Gin chose Izuru because he was interesting; he had the darkest outlook, the deepest secrets and the sharpest life. That spark of mystery behind Kira's cerulean eyes intrigued Gin to no end- he wanted to tear him apart and discover all there was to know about this fallen noble orphan. Izuru started out as an experiment, a dissection of sorts. If, after the dissection was through, Gin's charming subject was mutilated and left for dead in the tray- what did he care?
So his reasoning had been. So his reasoning had held up……for the first month or two.
Gin hadn't meant to fuck him. Honest. It just happened. It just happened when Izuru fell asleep at his desk and woke up with Gin's skeletal fingers working their way up his hakama. It just happened and within minutes the little blond slut was on his back, begging Gin not to hurt him. Pleading for him to let him go, don't touch me like that, please Taicho you're hurting me. God. No. Stop. Please. Don't. No. Stop. Please. Stop. Don't.
Don't stop.
The whole of Soul Society thought that Gin abused his vice-captain. The bruising was too violent and difficult to conceal. No living soul could possibly be so clumsy as to garner such an impressive array of black-and-purple markings. It became "common knowledge" that Ichimaru Gin beat Izuru Kira, but nobody dared to intervene. Izuru would never allow them.
Izuru liked it too much.
Of course nobody would believe him if he tried to out himself and his masochistic affair with his Taicho, so Izuru kept his mouth shut. Gin lived on in infamy as the fox-faced lunatic who beat his subordinates for pleasure or otherwise.
Until now. Gin reached out with a lazy finger and traced the stack of records next to his futon. He knew that Kira-kun wouldn't die without finding some way to tell his story. Izuru was a crack that needed to be filled and Gin had willingly obliged. Kira's very soul was hot-wired to require abuse.
Or so Gin had deduced. These records, the Voice of Izuru would confirm every notion Gin had ever made about Izuru Kira. His experiment would be complete.
Izuru was a masochist. Izuru had a dependent personality. Izuru needed Gin. Izuru was a crack that needed to be filled. Izuru was fucked up. Izuru was damaged goods.
Gin's crescent-moon smile widened and froze as the ex-Taicho fell victim to the stony sleep that comes to the enlightened few who are convinced that they deserve the relief of such perfect rest. On the turntable, not an arm's length away from where Gin slept, the record reset itself and began to play into the unfeeling darkness of Gin's room.
"Are you comfortable, Kira-san?"
"Quite. Thank you. May we begin?"
"If you are the voice inside of my head
That's fine with me
I'll turn down the bed
You cannot control me from the other side
No, you will not control me from the other side"