Strength

Ichigo Kurosaki had last been to the sea over a year ago, when he enjoyed the last few lazy days of summer before colleges and vocations scattered the delinquents and oddballs to the four winds. Ishida was going into medical school, just like his pseudo-rival. That had ruffled his feathers more than he would care to admit. Keigo and Mizuiro were rooming together in some college up north. Tatsuki was putting school on hold for a year to focus on her burgeoning martial arts career; she was aiming for the Olympics. Orihime and Chad had just sort of wandered off somewhere, lost in the shuffle, falling through the cracks, kicked to the curb.

He couldn't think of any more ways to say the ties that bind really didn't bind so well these days.

The thought struck him with more guilt than he would have anticipated. They were friends in the truest sense of the word and they slipped through his fingers, more memory than flesh. He supposed the unassuming man with the mug had something to do with that.

They had all faced terrible things at one point or another, but those two had taken it harder than the others. Not everyone was a monster in man's clothing. No one else could claim the divine as their own, not even the manipulator who sat before him, his smile all wrapped up in licorice and butterscotch.

How that must have burned him. There he was, King Snake. And there she had been, little Miss Princess. He had scraped and clawed and surged while she laughed and chatted and lounged. He saw an empty throne and resolved to claim it. She looked around and saw beautiful things worth wasting a little time on.

And at the end of the day, he was all the weaker for it. A pillar of Soul Society some years ago and the overlord of Las Noches even more recently, but a fleeting crescendo on the global frequency.

Still he smiled his warm smile, a smile that said he would love you forever with upturned lips even as his fingers crossed and he resolved to exterminate everything that restricted him from becoming the Master of All Things.

"I said 'how are your friends,' Ichigo."

The young man blinked at his own name. So that was how he had gotten off on his tangent. The fearangershock had assailed Ichigo Kurosaki in waves when he set eyes on the far-from-dead man, buffeting his body in stinging currents that reminded him of the ocean. The ocean was a million miles away. Beyond.

Sosuke Aizen was very close at hand.

Ichigo could spit on him if he wanted to. That was starting to sound like a pretty good idea.

The Hollow inside crooned at him in its scratchy-soft purr-roar. Even Zangetsu, or what was left of him, seemed to shiver in anticipation across his back. Every fiber of his being told him to fall on that man with righteous fury.

"Have a seat, won't you?" The fallen Captain gestured to the chair across from him, taking another sip of his coffee.

Ichigo took a seat.

This is insane. It was the most sensible thing he could have done, given the circumstances.

Controlled and modulated though it was, Aizen's spiritual pressure rolled off him in such a thick, stifling miasma that Ichigo resisted the urge to gag. He had missed it from across the room, only spotting the madman by sight, but sitting so close made it impossible to miss. For all of his trials and tribulations, whether it was scraping up from newly minted spiritual warrior to Captain-class combatant in a matter of months or prying a mask from his inner Hollow's cold, cruel hands, Ichigo couldn't hold a candle to Aizen. More like a cheap disposable lighter next to an inferno, but Ichigo was feeling a little poetic.

Maybe it was being faced with the possibility of a swift, painful death that did that.

"It's going to be quite difficult to have a conversation if you refuse to speak." His companion pointed out gently, arching an eyebrow at his scowl. "You'll give yourself a cramp if you keep that up."

Ichigo let his face unwind, if only slightly.

"Go to Hell."

What was this? Why the hell was Aizen pulling his buddy-buddy routine again? He'd even gone so far as to let his hair fall-where-it-may again. Maybe he had kept all his hair gel in Hueco Mundo. Yeah, that had to be it. Now that it was a smoking crater in a godforsaken desert, he had to rock the yuppie look again.

"I would if I could," Aizen shocked him out of his mental meandering. "But Hell has little interest in me, and I it. I've found the Soul Reapers and their associates to be far more intriguing."

Ichigo found it impossible to let go of Aizen's retro-makeover for some inexplicable reason. "What happened to the glasses?"

"I don't have any use for them anymore." The answer was so light and breezy. He could have been talking about his pet cat.

He thought to seize on that for a moment with a scathing witticism about how he just loved discarding things they had outlived their usefulness—fashion, societies, people. But that would assume a certain amount of consideration on his part and Ichigo really couldn't bring himself to give a damn. Aizen's fickle tastes amounted to verbal scrap metal.

So he ditched the subtle and went for broke. It had always worked before.

"What are you up to?"

Aizen's eyes gleamed out at him from behind his shaggy bangs for several, appraising seconds. Karin had gotten to the age where she had started complaining about boys undressing her with their eyes. Ichigo felt like Aizen was flaying him with the world's sunniest expression. Just when he started to squirm, the other man bothered to answer the question.

"I have a few productions in the works." He put his coffee aside for the first time since he had been found out. "Nothing major, not yet—and even then, I can't exactly tell you. It would ruin the surprise."

Ichigo felt something in his face go hot and tight. A tension wire of…well, tension stretched taut across his forehead, cutting off the circulation to his brain. He felt feverish and light-headed all at once.

"Cut the bullshit." He usually wasn't one to swear, not with the way his father had raised him to mind his mouth around his 'baby sisters' (Karin had groused about that non-stop once she hit fifteen), but this was a special occasion. He wasn't going to let Aizen play footsy with him.

Soul Reapers were missing. The Thirteen Squads were up in arms and Soul Society was on high alert. He wouldn't have been called in—him, a tenuous ally at best—if it hadn't been serious. (He wouldn't have answered the call if Renji Abarai and Rukia Kukichi didn't number among the missing.) Aizen turning up in some sleepy little corner of the Rukongai could only be a coincidence if the world was coming to an end.

Then again, with all that had been going on lately, that might not have been so far-fetched.

And this man had to had to had to be at the center of it all. Tousen and his gaggle of half-assed rebels couldn't have pulled it off if everyone in Soul Society were hogtied and blindfolded. (Then again, given Tousen's condition, the blindfolding wouldn't have done much more than even the playing field.)

An electricity thrummed through the air briefly before the grotesque bulk of Aizen's spiritual pressure drowned it. The current rebounded and shot through Ichigo's spine until it skittered down his arm and forced his fist to rise and fall. The table rumbled slightly.

He had meant to say something to go along with this bold move, but the ocean of Aizen's spirit left him feeling parched.

Aizen looked faintly amused. "I'm sure the proprietors of this fine establishment would like it if you didn't demolish the furnishings."

"Eat me."

Aizen stifled a faux-embarrassed laugh, asking a passing waitress to forgive his 'crass friend' and placing an order for another cup. The hot, tight band around Ichigo's brain threatened to snap and explode. At once. The few other people inhabiting the little restaurant saw the woman scurry off, leaving the rough young man to chat with the mild-mannered gentleman.

"No, Ichigo," Aizen steeped his fingers to cup his chin. "I have much bigger things on my plate than you, but when is that not the case, hm?"

The seconds ticked away into infinite.

"It's really too bad, Ichigo," Aizen leaned back into his chair, abandoning the finger steeple so he could lay them out on the table before him. Nothing up my sleeve, they seemed to say. "I think, under different circumstances, we could have been friends."

"What are you smoking?"

Sosuke Aizen was a lot of things. Manipulative, devious, dead inside, soulless, evil incarnate. Anyone who had met him would feel compelled to use those words. Ichigo decided that 'higher than a God damn kite' was another little phrase you could tack onto his resume.

"Nothing at all," Aizen laughed resonantly as if to demonstrate how pink and strong his lungs were, only to move into something resembling hurt. "I don't see why you would discard the notion as out-of-hand. It runs in the family, you know." He paused and then, just because he felt like it, "I tried to recruit your father once."

Ichigo felt molten something seeping into his skull. The band had broken. But Aizen had made eye contact at long last, which amplified the effects of his torrential outpouring of spirit energy many times over. The band had broken and nothing was happening.

"I assume he's told you. Your expression hasn't changed all that much," he said it like something worth mourning. "But I saw a great deal of the same potential in both father and son."

"What did you see?" Keep him talking. Keep him here. Keep him still. The others know where you are. The cavalry is bound to be coming. Can't breathe.

"Potential, the kind you wouldn't believe. Only you would, seeing as how you are yourself." The mastermind smiled in a way that made Ichigo realize this was the first time he wasn't manufacturing the motion. "But, in truth, I saw a vanity. I saw myself in the two of you."

Ichigo bit his tongue.

"I saw two people born with everything and poised to lose it all." He paused, blinking something away that Ichigo could only begin to guess at. It was a clearing away of old cobwebs over rustic, rusted memories. "You know, this is going to sound horribly passé, but the truth of the matter is, you and I have a great deal in common, Ichigo Kurosaki."

"Oh, yeah?" But it came out sounding more like 'un ah?' It was hard to talk when you were biting yourself so hard you could feel the slick, thick mess of blood seeping out of the wound. He wanted nothing more than to spring on the man like a jackal, but bitter experience had taught him better.

Aizen didn't answer right away and he was grateful for it. He could only tolerate his brand of bullshit for so long before something gave. His killer instinct had faltered enough times that Ichigo was starting to think the only alternative lay in falling on his own sword. Aizen, for his part, leaned forward again and clasped his hands to keep himself from gesticulating. He had a flair for the theatric but he wanted himself composed and focused for this.

"It's only after we've lost everything that we are free to do anything."

"You stole from some American movie." This was simple. This was good. Talking smack wasn't talking about all the awful things—the part where he killed him, where he had nearly killed Rukia, the part where he got away clean, the time he almost had his father by the soul.

"It is!" Aizen beamed, the nice man again. "I was trying so hard to think of a way I could relate the idea to you. It's not easy, speaking from one generation to another, so I had to put it in words that you would understand, even identify with."

The waitress came, left. Aizen had a new cup just waiting to grace his lips. Ichigo exhaled. The tide had gone out with the woman's arrival. He didn't know when he would be able to get his head above water when she left again.

Aizen cocked his head to one side, an artist preparing a display. "It's true, you know, every word of it."

"Sounds like some self-help garbage to me." When are they getting here?

"Maybe you're right," Aizen faked a laugh for him, although the smile still seemed a little real. "But that doesn't dilute the message. Sometimes, conventional wisdom is the best kind."

They lapsed into another silence then with Aizen reclining a bit, hands resting over a raised knee. The position struck him as the kind of thing he would see Keigo doing as he lounged around. It looked horribly out-of-place on Sosuke Aizen, but so did lollipop smiles and gumdrop eyes.

"What's the difference between us, Ichigo?"

The question him like a truck. "What?" Hadn't be just been blathering about how they were so very alike?

"Our power, our standing, things like that," Aizen elaborated. Ichigo was five years old again and his mother was coaching him on how to introduce himself. He balked at the association of the two figures. He needed a shower. He needed a shrink. He needed a rescue party ASAP.

"I was never a Captain, if that's what you're getting at."

"Yes, you would be horrible for that position. Flash steps and releases came easily enough. I'll give you that, but you know nothing at all in the way of kido and you have only the barest instruction in proper swordsmanship. You're more a brawler with a sword than a swordsman. Urahara and Shihouin taught you a great deal but they didn't each you everything."

"Thanks for that, Captain Obvious," Ichigo spat the words like they were made of gristle. His breath didn't come so shortly anymore. Aizen had apparently decided to reel it in a bit after the waitress' interruption. "Or should that be Ex-Captain Obvious?"

"Whichever you prefer, so long as we stay on point."

"What is the point? I guess that's another thing they didn't teach me, whatever spell it is that lets me read your mind."

"You're the easily distracted type."

"Like hell I am. I worked myself to the bone for those slave drivers."

"But for how long?" Aizen's smile was starting to appear more sincere than ever. Ichigo found it more than a little unnerving. Why was he so happy? "Hours? Days? Weeks or even months at the very most?" The questions hung heavy in the audient air. "Try doing it for years, decades, over a century. Try maintaining that pace and that drive for a dozen of your lifetimes."

Ichigo stared like a fish on a hook. It wasn't too far from the truth.

"You can't, can you?" Aizen was at once disappointed and triumphant. "That is what sets us apart. You have too many distractions in life, too many things to satisfy you in the here and now so that you put up your sword and robes instead of weaving them into your flesh. You only take up your responsibilities as a Substitute Soul Reaper when there's a fight at hand, don't you? But what about the fight next year or the year after that? You've never been the type to think ahead because you're too concerned with the present."

"Well, yeah," he fumbled for something to say in response to that. He couldn't understand why Aizen was so excited about this, what he expected him to say to any of it. This was an Aizen he had never seen before and in a man like that, it was a terrible thing. "Am I supposed to go around thinking about how I'll conquer the world all the time like you?"

"Not at all," Aizen returned the mug to its proper place in his hand. "Mine is not a road easily walked, nor would I urge others to walk it. After all, in order to make that journey, you must first lose everything."

"Is this the part where you tell me your Dad didn't hug you enough as a child?" Thin ice, to be sure, but Ichigo wasn't the type to skate around the rough patches.

Aizen did a terrible thing, then.

He laughed. It started deep in his gut and exploded out of his body. Food poisoning would have earned the same reaction, but with something wet to go with the noise. That might have actually been better. At least he could piss and curse and moan about it. All he could do with a laugh was listen and hope it ended soon.

It did, after a time. Aizen wiped a stray tear on his unassuming sleeve. Long gone were the Captain's robes and overlord's ensemble. He dressed simply and laughed like anyone else. Ichigo found that thought deeply disturbing. It meant there might be something of normalcy in Sosuke Aizen.

"I have to thank you for that. It's been so long since I've laughed like that. Why, I can't even remember the last time." He washed the last bits of laughter down his throat with a gulp. "No, no, it wasn't anything like that. It wasn't my father. It was my Rukia."

God damn it. He thought he had jumped the hurdle when he got the freak off of his father. This was going to be worse. Somehow.

"She was the one who changed my world."

Ichigo wished Aizen would keel over from a heart attack, a stroke, poison in his mug, a tumor he never knew about—anything to keep this conversation from happening.

"I won't bore you with the details, but I will say this: Like you, I was blind but then I could see. And I had one person to thank for it. Oh, I trailed after her at first, stepping on shoes and pulling on pigtails. She hung the moon in my sky but every moon sets. There comes a time when a boy must become a man. I put away my childish things, her among them."

"What's that supposed to mean?" All too easily could he see Aizen steering the conversation into something obscene—something like 'you should have left her to die.'

"I outgrew all the others, the way you never did." There was that disappointment again. "You're young, so it's to be expected, but I would like to think you'll understand some day. There are so few who do."

Urahara hadn't understood, no matter how much he wished they could have traded ideas. Hirako refused to understand, even though he had been offered a great opportunity as one the blessed few to experience that change. Momo simply could not understand him. Even little Gin only faked it, bowing out of their pact when it was no longer amusing or convenient. He had expected as much, but every mind that turned away from him in its perceived reality hurt him in a way he could scarcely describe.

A sigh rattled him.

"I had dreamed you would be one of them, but I never really pinned any hopes on that. You have too much tying you to your mediocrity. You have school and summer and your fleeting friendships."

Chad and Orhime flashed through his mind, each a lightning bolt that struck him in the deepest part of his soul. Even the Hollow shrieked.

"Maybe, one day, you'll see how pointless it all is and I will be able to sit and talk with you again—not as a tutor, but as an equal. Yes, I think I would like that." He drained his cup.

"What do you want me to understand?"

It was something said in desperation and self-loathing and a million other things. He wanted to keep Aizen here just long enough to be outnumbered. He wanted to hear what it was that Aizen hoped to see in him some day so he cut that part out of himself. He had to hear it.

It gave the former Captain genuine pause. He hadn't expected that and he hadn't yet found a way to relate it to someone who wasn't ready to see it—not yet, at least. But he could try. It would be nice to say something, if only to give himself the practice. When next they met, he could have a more polished argument.

He chose his words carefully.

"I don't have things like your school or summer or fleeting friendships. I don't need them." No artifice or flair, just a simple truth. "The solitude of my reality is all I will ever need. I look at all the things I don't have and the rest comes naturally. There's nothing to waste my time or my thoughts while I build myself up, brick by brick, moment by moment."

Broad shoulders.

"But you? You blind yourself with the mundane intoxicate yourself with the inane. Your friends will only be your friends for so long. You will lose each and every one of them to apathy or death or even the simple passage of time. I pursue excellence while you spend away your time in adequacy."

Eyes smoldering.

"Perhaps, if you can find the courage (or resolve, isn't that what Urahara would say?) to destroy the life you knew so that you can start anew, you will be my equal. If there ever comes a day when you fight for your own sake and not someone else's—whether it's their life, their laws, their justice…"

A sonorous voice.

"Well, if by any chance that day comes, it will be a wonderful day indeed. I would expect Hell to be a bit chilly that time of year, but stranger things have happened. Still, it would be nice if I could teach just one other man to be his own man."

Looking at Sosuke Aizen was like staring into the sun.

And then he was gone from Ichigo's life, not by flash step or illusion or an elaborate scheme to pass himself off as dead for the purpose of rising to a dizzying height so high up that it made his former station a mockery. He walked in through the front door and that was how he left, leaving a generous tip for the industrious young lady who had seen to him.

He would probably kill her with some decision or another as he ushered in his brave, new world but he didn't have to be spiteful about it in the meantime.

Ichigo was still there two and a half minutes later, when four rather tactless soldiers from the Second Division put their mission statement to shame with the way they came clamoring through the door. He didn't pay them any mind.

What could he possibly do? There was no way his power could match Aizen's. His dogged savior complex had come up short against a selfish misanthrope.

Ichigo thought of Sosuke and Chad and Orihime and the monster inside. More importantly, he thought of the monster he could one day become. Throw everything away for a glamorous new life of dreams come true? It was a very human impulse and it meant (or at least implied) that Sosuke Aizen was a very human man.

He didn't know how to feel about that.