A Prose to You
Disclaimer: Yeah. Bleach isn't mine and I bet it isn't yours too.
Summary: No holds barred and fighting the convention: ByakuyaXAizen. He wondered what he ever meant to this traitor. One shot.
Note: Plot is virtually unknown to me as a writer, which makes it a good thing that the idea of this story is not originally mine. Credits to Pollux Unbound, in that case. I'm not sure how many people favor this pairing (my guess is they're pretty few) but I do think each is hot enough for the other. There is no humor to this either, unlike PU's works, so do bear with angst. It's also painstakingly long. At any rate, enjoy.
He remembers him as a child almost just yesterday. In his recollection, Sosuke Aizen was just a boy too, not more than ten years older, close to lanky, optimistic, always smiling, reserved intellectual, probably brimming with mischief just up his sleeves and always, always clever. He pictures himself along with this older model figure, sometimes feeling small, challenged, possibly insecure as a consequence of that genocide that rendered him an orphan at the tender age of ten: as he does so there's the familiar stab of pain that writhes inside him, ripping him apart like the murdering cheater cancer is. On one of his first days at the training camp came the first words that Aizen told him, though they were not the first words he heard him say.
"You have a nice swing with your sword. I wonder if some technique could be named after you, well, one of these days, that is." Aizen beamed. In Byakuya's memories, Aizen perpetually beams.
"Thank you." He would timidly return in gratitude and stalk off. He remembers, too, the absorbing air that used to surround Aizen, particularly how uncomfortable it always made him. If it escaped detection from the other trainees, they certainly did not bring it up. As far as Byakuya knew, he was the only one unfortunate enough to feel that way about Aizen.
In those days Byakuya's genius would gradually receive recognition from the academy. The Kuchiki heritage would shine through his noble existence, the long line of family tradition reassured of its continuity. A true cause for celebration for someone who escaped death by just a hairsbreadth. At two months shy of seventeen he was slated for captainship: he became known for his offensive tactics and efficient leadership, but for the better part maintained a guarded aloofness from his squad members. For all this, he found a rare confidant in Aizen, his sempai, who would sit with him once in a while and alternately fulfill the role of a friend and adviser. Aizen, in parallel fashion, had by this time gathered a reputation for himself. While not exactly a prodigy, his maturity in combat and strategy gained wide distinction. It would be superfluous to say that their friendship enjoyed a sort of mutual power relations: Byakuya would never look at Aizen without a hint of inferiority, nor address him without the usual formalities of reverence. Neither did their friendship enjoy regular acquaintance: both were always too occupied with their mission assignments to ever allow time for themselves. In consequence, their paths converged only accidentally, in short periods when both happened to be free or else waiting for another mission to be announced.
"Cut the 'sempai' crap, Kuchiki." Aizen snapped at him at one of their infrequent meetings. "By now you should've learned how to eliminate self-debasing terms."
"To be sure. But you are my senior and as a rule, I should communicate respect, however you might want to interpret it."
"Look, it's not like I taught you anything. It's fine if you call Commander sensei and your older teammates sempai; but me, the only advantage I have over you is age: in every other respect, we're pretty much equal. Come on, Kuchiki." Aizen's face broke into an affectionate smile. The tips of his bangs touch his eyebrows, possibly combed down to conceal the forehead that promised early hair-fall.
Byakuya found nothing to say. No matter how many times Aizen insisted, the die had been cast; there was no way things between them would shift, overturn, or disappear. He looked at Aizen's young face and saw in his smile a brewing, profound thought that had no link whatsoever with the present.
"I've been promoted to vice-captainship, Byakuya." Aizen muttered at length. "Starting tomorrow I'll be sent to better missions, instead of the usual child's play I'm forced in. It's supposed to be the real deal. I think it's only a matter of time before they proclaim you as one. Great things lay ahead, Byakuya."
"I suppose so." Byakuya replied quietly, brooding in the next moment. He thought of Aizen, his new post, and the effect this occasion would have on them and on their friendship and knew all at once, over and above everything, that it couldn't be good.
True to Aizen's predictions, Byakuya was at once swept by his rapidly growing status. In time, he achieved the summit of his career and got instated to captainship. Aizen, for his part, led the fifth division to numerous success missions amidst critical acclaim. They met a few times but not more than their schedules allowed, which was dramatically few. At times, Byakuya had a lot to say to Aizen on his experience out in the field, his feelings about the soul society, his prospects; else, he was content to share these short and rare moments with his sempai in silence. In all of these instances, his admiration for Aizen never waned.
Once on a gray musical night he found Aizen peering through his window. Aizen was perched on the tree that stood just a few feet away from Byakuya's window, his arm propped up on his knee. The moon hung low above and would've easily invited a sea of amazed faces if they weren't exactly asleep. Byakuya stretched himself up from the bed, traipsed cautiously across the room and pried the frames open. He surveyed Aizen curiously, not permitting himself to be shocked.
"Sempai. Good evening." He said.
"Sorry to disturb you, Kuchiki."
"You can come in if you want." Byakuya offered as he felt the coldness ripping the wind.
Aizen shook his head. "I got a good spot here, don't sweat it." his eyes glimmered with the stars. "How are you, Kuchiki? It's been a while since we talked."
"So it's been." Byakuya sighed. He knew he had been longing for a time alone with Aizen, but missions had lately been by turns long and deadly that it was difficult to find time and effort for anything else. He knew, too, that Aizen's case was one and the same. "I can barely cope with the demands and the paper works get in the way. My members are able and my sub is potentially extraordinary, though he gives me right to be cross with him at times. Otherwise, I let him handle the rest. Yours?"
"Going through rocky patches as well, I guess. Situations are harder to remedy when you're captain, I should say." Aizen chuckled then. "Do you know, I almost snuffed it yesterday. It's funny but lately I can't seem to force concentration into my head. Things don't change during battles either. I actually got a mouthful from my sub-captain, nagging me to be more careful and such. She cares about me, you know."
"As all members should be. It can't be helped, sempai. You should learn to watch it next time." Byakuya responded with a frown. He knew how well this man in front of him attracted danger and how he always emerged unscathed. If he ran out of luck, how did he think Byakuya would feel? Byakuya thought furiously.
"Uh-huh." Far from bothered, Aizen only smiled at Byakuya. Underneath the gentle shafts of moonlight, his features seemed to stand out beautifully. "Not to take all the credits but I was right, wasn't I?"
"What about?"
"I told you you were in for great things: I firmly believed in it. And now you're donning the habit. I would've added that you didn't have the right amount of self-esteem but I was afraid it would make you cry. I guess I'm just proud of you."
"They couldn't be had for nothing. I worked hard for this and you… you were there to see it."
Aizen laughed. "I can't overlook the fact of your hard work but shoot me if I was there. Hell, I can't even remember the last time we had a talk like this. When was that anyway?"
"Three weeks ago." Byakuya muttered. Time, its absence, had always been their obstacle. He exhaled, his breath seeming to come from the depths: he meant to let Aizen know that he was too largely responsible for Byakuya's success, whether or not he had always been there. He wanted to set the record straight, tell him all he needed to know, tell him that these feelings were not without precedent, that he had felt this way since they were young. Byakuya knew all of this without knowing how to articulate it: right now, alone with Aizen in the solitude of night, he had no thoughts for anything else.
"Three weeks is a long time." Aizen said. The cold hemmed in, dropping several degrees lower to fuse with the very earth. The wind strengthened and the darkness deepened into something close to infinity, which lent the night the frightening power it yearned for. "I wonder how big that space is."
"Which one?"
"There, up." Aizen pointed to the sky where he suddenly directed his attention to. "That expanse called universe. I suspect it's pretty empty. But you know, if I desire it, I can blow it all up. All of these up." Aizen declared with a passion that wasn't subdued enough. Something in his eyes turned criminally red, rousing the deadened environment into an unseen yet forceful flame.
Byakuya gaped at him, an expression he rarely took on, and let out a short laugh. Knowing nothing else in the way of a reaction, he answered, "Must be pretty ambitious."
"Come away with me, Byakuya; let's take the highroad and we'll put an end to all this bullshit." Aizen said and smiled as if attempting to soften the younger man's resistance. Byakuya remained dismantled, subsequently conjuring a loud, maddened cackle from Aizen. "Don't think it over too long, Kuchiki: It was a joke."
"Oh, okay." Byakuya said but no sigh of relief escaped him. If Aizen tried to fool him, it definitely looked the other way around. In the next minutes he became pensive with thoughts. "I hope you'd take me seriously, sempai."
"Whoa. Cool down. If I'm not taking you seriously, I wouldn't watch you sleep night after—er. I mean, I wouldn't be talking, theorizing, arguing, doing whatever with you. Would I?"
"To be sure, yes. But you're always—"
"Just go to sleep, Kuchiki. You look awfully spent. And besides, you and I have a lot to fix come tomorrow, I bet."
Aizen left Byakuya to his musings in the maturing night, neither soothed nor sufficed. Byakuya lay in his bed with a mind that couldn't resign itself to peace, as the world outside drowsed and collapsed. He recounted Aizen's words and knew he meant that bit about blowing up the universe, because he could. Simply because he could. While Aizen maintained a veil of simplicity and slight incapability, Byakuya, perhaps alone of everyone else in the soul society, had the grasp of the true nature of Aizen's suppressed strength. He knew all along, in fact, and knew this was his rationale for treating Aizen as his constant superior, titles and all. But he denied himself access to the truth: where Aizen was concerned, truth evidently no longer applied. There were times when he would feel strongly the contradiction within him, between his heart and mind, his emotions and logic. In the long run, it was his trust in Aizen—the beautiful image of Aizen he so well preserved in his mind--that prevailed. Guilt, if at all felt, found no room in Byakuya's heart.
At length, they stopped seeing each other. Around this time a mortal boy calling himself Ichigo took the spiritual world by storm. It was only a matter of time then when rumors of Aizen's betrayal came to light and when Aizen refused to come clean, the speculations were confirmed. Byakuya was in his office when the news reached him, whereas outside it crept into the world like wildfire. His heart thumped, broken for sure, his mind running against a desperately raging whiteout. He paced up and down the room as his steps echoed both the loneliness and anger vying for space inside him. He collapsed at his desk, as afflicted as he'd never been.
By some quirk of fate and failed scheme of assault, he caught himself trapped in Aizen's Espada-ridden castle along with a number of soul society members. His views as to this action were unclear, notably less so than his reluctance, although he might not have voiced any initial objection to the plan. As things stood, there was no going backward or forward: he had nowhere to go, no choice to take but stagnate in this imprisonment.
"I hope you know how I feel about detaining you here." Aizen told him then. Without his specs and with his hair pulled back, nothing human seemed to remain in him. The smile that Byakuya came to take warmth in, beyond everything, would never grace that face again.
"If you have any sense of duty to humanity, you'd begin feeling shame." Byakuya spat at him, undeterred.
"If." Aizen replied. "You did realize I meant what I said that night, Kuchiki, and I wouldn't be horsing around long with the society either way. I meant to take you with me and not to bid you farewell for good, but I learned you didn't have my urges: we've always belonged to different worlds."
"I'm glad to know that."
"Well, it was an unhappy choice for both of us; you are such a commodity. You would've made a great captain for my army."
"You disgust me."
Aizen sighed and held Byakuya in his gaze. Without his glasses, Aizen's eyes seemed to strike Byakuya with a more naked force. Byakuya withdrew from them, nearly recoiling. "You seem to forget that your life is in my hands, Kuchiki. But for whatever it's worth, my feelings for you were sincere. I guess they still are and will continue to be. I don't expect pardon, or you'd be fast on your tracks scouring for ways to redeem me. I'm just glad we became friends, Kuchiki…"
Something in Byakuya's heart contracted. Inside the compressed space of Aizen's castle, the air stiffened and howled its sad song. Byakuya kept still, aware of the memories that had woven their fabric in his being, memories he would keep between him and Aizen forevermore, memories he would never quite learn to outgrow.
"You could've at least said goodbye. I would've believed you had faith in our friendship…" Byakuya's words trailed. His mind reeled, the confines of his feelings melting, giving way to that old affection that most probably was just sleeping all along.
Aizen felt this and breathed what little oxygen was left in the air. His Adam's apple coursed up and down his throat, like swallowing gave him a hard time. His eyes flashed with less intensity, smoothening, becoming tender, retaining their unquestioned honesty. Byakuya had seen that look before, in the faces of victimized mortals, his dying enemies, but most of all in the mirror that reflected a morbidly spiritually broken man: a look of conflicted sadness. Aizen gave it a start as though he was giving all the energy he had to speech.
"When I left, I had only once chance to have a word with one person: I asked him to lure you into this place. I can't have you exploding along with the universe, Kuchiki, I won't…" Aizen's voice faded into a croak. He turned around then as if the burden of reality he was faced with became altogether too much to take. As he marched away, the melancholy overtones of silence lingered almost obstinately. Abandoned by Aizen, perhaps for good, Byakuya was as alone as he ever was. As abandoned as the child that missed death when the entire Kuchiki clan was wiped out from the surface of the world.
"It's all gone under the water now." He told himself quietly. He stood there relishing the darkness that had begun to embrace him, his thoughts wandering to the first words he heard from Aizen, "I'm going to lead the most powerful army the society has ever seen." A young and slightly built Aizen bragged in front of a band of wistful academy trainees. His eyes were focused on his little henchmen, overflowing with conviction, passion, and naïveté that never again would sweep across his face. Byakuya, a novice student, stood apart from the group, shrinking his aura as much as he could; if Aizen could've only caught a glimpse of Byakuya's childish face then, he would've discovered the one genuine look of undying admiration. But Aizen was too engrossed in his oration and seemed content with the adoring, awe-stricken looks he was extracting from his generous audience.
More than anything, Aizen's smile would conquer Byakuya and would go on to win him over, whatever the circumstances. In his incarceration, Byakuya imagines Aizen beaming, perpetually, just the way he did when they were young and unfettered and free from the glorious responsibilities of captainship. This picture is the one thing that would keep him sane all throughout this ordeal. He knows this much is true.
END
A/N: yeah, that's it. It's basically okay to let me know what your opinions are, like if it's atrcious or needs a sequel or some sort of wrap-up. You know, I have a fine habit of leaving things hanging all around. I'm a modernist, which is probably why I'm not into happy endings.