Characters: Hinamori, Aizen
Summary: The illusion still casts veils over her.
Pairings: onesided HinaAizen
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Soul Society arc
Timeline: post-Soul Society arc, pre-Arrancar arc
Author's Note: I prefer to think of Hinamori as a tragic character. If you don't like that, oh well.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
A mirror shows her everything she needs to see, and yet nothing at all. When Hinamori bend over the pool of glass she sees herself as everyone else sees her—face as pale as wax, eyes open and burning with nonexistent fever, long hair lank and hanging like a curtain at the sides of her face—and can't find herself, her true self, anywhere in the glassy depths. There's a mirror in her hospital room—a room that, technically speaking, is not a prison, but really it is, since no one will let Hinamori out without a Fourth Division medic hot on her heels, watching her every move for some sign of danger—so Hinamori has plenty of opportunity to look her face over, and wonder about everything that's brought her here.
Hinamori often wonders. If she had held up a mirror to Aizen's face, would there have been any reflection? She could have solved so much, so much more quickly, if she had put him in front of glass, and seen that there was nothing there. He was always fleshless. There was nothing real about him. He was never there, and he wouldn't have shown up in an honest mirror.
Nothing real, nothing at all. All illusions, all lies, all falsehoods made for the express purpose of twisting Hinamori around his hand until she would have gladly died for him and nearly did.
And now, Hinamori finds herself in the state of lying listless on the bed, so bogged down with antibiotics and painkillers and sedatives that she can barely move.
Even through that haze, the thick fog that robs her of any use of her legs and makes her arms quiver at even the slightest movement, her mind still works. Her mind is unclouded; it sees things the way it should have seen them before, and the truth is a monstrous thing to her, because now, it's telling Hinamori all the things she doesn't want to hear, making her see things that burn her eyes and leave her heart scorched and desolate.
It was all a lie.
He didn't love her.
He didn't even care for her.
Instead, all she was to Aizen was a tool, a puppet. Another expendable soldier, especially expendable since she would have walked into the fire and walked into Hell for him. He cultivated her devotion, grew it like a delicate plant, fed it the best nutrients and put it in the sunniest spot in the greenhouse, so that it would flourish and bloom. And then, he cut it away with a single sword stroke, because he didn't need it anymore.
Hinamori sees it all now, but the illusion is still casting veils over her. The illusion of love is not a cobweb to be banished with a broom. It is as permanent as the real thing. It's left its stains on her, left its mark. A tattoo upon the most secret places of her soul, the ink of which will never be washed away.
And the wound the illusion of love has left behind will not heal. It will instead fester and make her skin crack and flake. Her body will be nothing but a walking infection, a hollowed-out thing for the maggots to feast on before she's even dead.
Hinamori will never let go of it, since it can't leave her.
This illusion is monstrous. It is poisonous. It is killing her.
But there's more happiness to be found in it than was ever found in the truth.
And Hinamori will cling, until it kills her.