Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach. Bleach and all its characters are the property of Kubo Tite

I feel a bit guilty writing these when I still have that looong fic I need to finish. However, writing shorter fics do seem to keep me in Bleach mode… or just in plain writing mode.

Still, to think I'd actually start with…

Aizen / Baraggan

(My, is that the sound of any possible readership running away really fast?)

1. Ownership

"What drives you?"

The former king of Hueco Mundo does not react. To address the source of the question, he would have to look up - and that, he does not do.

Aizen Sosuke had never declared himself as the king of Hueco Mundo. He does not need to. Even if he did, it would not be true because he does not consider this as his realm. A mere stepping stone to another world he'll create. After all, isn't that what a god is supposed to do?

Baraggan Luisenbarn replies slowly, without turning his head.

"Boredom, it used to be."

Aizen chuckles as if he truly understands. Perhaps he does. A bored king. A bored god.

Slowly, Aizen steps down. The ends of his robe lightly flap after his footsteps. He approaches the segunda Espada and crouches down near him, almost kneeling as his brown eyes look up at the hollow sockets. A mockery of reverence.

A hand reaches up and traces the jawbone, describing its edges. A nail clicks against the hard surface once. Baraggan does not know whether it is intentional. Does not care. The two are scarcely alone together but when they are, Baraggan is nearly always in his released form. It is preferred upon such events, as rare as they are. It is unclear as to for whom.

Baraggan has no use for such a thing as imagination. It implies dwelling upon something that has not yet happened and may never do. For him, it is always the present. Anything that exists does because he perceives it. Nothing else matters.

Yet now, as the long fingers lightly stroke the fine boundary between his jaw and his teeth, Baraggan imagines flesh falling off from those fingers to reveal their own smooth, white bones. Pictures those bones disintegrating into fine-grained powder, to be blown away and scattered over to bury itself in the vast sands of Hueco Mundo.

Aizen slowly rises, and the fingers follow his movement, sliding up towards the eye socket. One finger slips into the gaping hole, caressing the smooth interior like kisses of greedy worms upon silent corpses.

"And now?"

Now. He can do it now. Let his resurreccion's power wash over his whole being, rendering the prying fingers into nothing.

Baraggan merely answers:

"Vengeance."

"Ah."

Aizen allows a sigh-like, amused acknowledgement.

"And after that?"

It is a ridiculous joke. They both know it as such. Baraggan replies anyway.

"There is no after. Afterwards is nothing, as it always has been. There is only the death that I bestow. And that, also, is nothing."

His power is that of time which rots away life. Strangely, it deprives him of itself. There was never any use for 'time' in his world. There was no 'before' or 'after' - only the ever-stretching 'now'.

That was before this shinigami had stepped into his kingdom.

The shinigami chuckles again before taking his hand away.

"The One Who Bestows Death… I did say that you look just like a shinigami."

Baraggan then slowly faces him, lifting his skull to stare into those glassy brown eyes that reveal less than his own empty sockets.

"Perhaps I will be yours."

Your death-bestower, your shinigami who will see to the rotting of your soul into nothingness.

Aizen smiles, raises his hand again to touch Baraggan's crown, trailing down to rest on the side of his skull. Aizen leans in.

"Ah, but, God-King of Hueco Mundo,"

Warm breath ghosts over the cold bone.

"Aren't you already mine?"

In the honor of Aizen in his pre-pupae... I mean pre-narm days