He never really cared, actually. It didn't matter to him. Here, there, freedom, all these were but fallacies, lies, all these things they would spout at him, smirk in his face, gain some form of pleasure from it. And he did not see why. What would inspire such pleasure from others, and especially since he did not react to whatever it was that they were gloating about? He did not understand.
It seemed to them that it must be a pitiful existence, to have made it through the Academy, only to enter the Gotei Thirteen and be withdrawn within a year or two. It seemed to them that he had to be bitter, he had to be disgusted, he had to hate the world. And he did not comprehend it. These emotions and queer thought processes were beyond his understanding. He did not need to understand them, he did not want to understand them, he did not understand them.
Yes, he knew that he was naught but a prisoner, doomed to a lifetime of ideals and the absolute lack of any way with which to fulfill them. But it did not matter to him. There was no point in arguing, in fighting the system. He was fine with it. He knew that his presence, his objectivity, his detachedness, all these freaked others out. They did not understand how it was that he could be like that.
To them, yes. They would be caged birds, they would have seen the sky, would have tasted the fresh air, and they would miss it. They would yearn for what they could not have, and they would do that until they died from that obsession, from the abject sadness, from the sheer torture of eternity.
But him? He would not. He was no bird. He had never seen, never truly seen the outside. Yes, he had come from Rukongai, he had been out there once. But it had not appealed to him. He had not liked it, he had not found joy in anything but his mind. And so, there was nothing to yearn for, nothing that if he were freed from the place he would be able to have that he did not already have.
He had his ideals, and he knew that they would never come to fruition. He knew that, and that was it. It did not matter whether he wanted it or not. He had long since accepted the fact that what one wanted was not necessarily what one got. And he was used to not getting his way. He had never gotten his way anyway.
He had never fit in, had never been understood, had never, ever been like them. He was different, and he knew it. He understood the value of being unique the most. He knew that systems were cruel, that people fell through the gaps as regularly as clouds blew across the sky. And of course he would know, for he was one of those people.
Through the gap he had fallen, all the way down. But it had not mattered to him. He had had no purpose, nothing had mattered to him, he had lived for the sheer amusement of seeing others wonder what to do with him. He could not live with the others, they would pick on him, and when he fought back, there would be nothing left of them.
And so they locked him up. Fine by him. It did not matter. He was perfectly fine by himself. He did not need exercise, did not like it, the only exercise he had actually done was mental. He thought. And he did have all the time in the world, so he postulated, he hypothesized, and he thought everything through. The human brain was powerful. It was the most powerful tool that anyone could have, and he was surprised that most of the others would rather laze their days away than even use their brains. And the guards were even better.
Stupid and lazy, he wondered what on earth it was that they had that he did not have that allowed them to be out there, while he was in here. He wondered purely out of curiosity. He was curious. And he had waited, he had known that one day, somewhere out there, there would be someone, someone he could talk to, someone who would understand him.
That day had come. That person had arrived in the form of a grinning scruffy-haired third seat. His flippant attitude, his very manner suggested that he was equally, if not even more intellectually disabled than the rest of the guards. To most, that was. For him, when he looked at the person, he saw straight through it. He had been watching people for a long time. A very long time, and he knew when masks were masks.
He also knew an intellectual equal, if not superior when he saw one.
Their first conversation had been completely casual. He had refused to give his name, and he had refused to respond. Completely casual, except that the tension could be cut with a knife. Both knew what the other was thinking, what the other was plotting, and both were dropping bait, hints, waiting for the other to rise, to slip, to fall.
It did not happen. They had skirted around the issue, so they did not speak of themselves ever again. They changed topics, switched to intellectual debates, not of morality or philosophy, but of cold hard science. It made sense to the both of them, and they knew the possibilities. Both knew the possibilities, but only one knew the limits. The limits simply did not exist to the other.
He had never seen them, had never come into contact with them, and they did not matter to him. Just because some other could not do something did not mean it could not be done. Perhaps not replicated, but that there might be a different way with which to approach things? A different angle? A different point of view?
He offered his point of view. He was completely different. It was radical, it was borderline illogical, it seemed completely insane. But they were genii. They were both genii, and they knew it. Logical and illogical morphed, mixed, twisted into one coagulated form. Inseparable, they realized that what made sense only made sense because something else did not.
And then they questioned that. They questioned everything, from thought processes to the barest of sensations. Everything revolved around morality, they realized. And morality was the sensitive ground on which the hob-nailed boots of science stomped mercilessly upon. It was the same thing that neither truly understood, and both saw the complete lack of point in.
Morality was a man-made definition. It did not exist when there were boundaries to push, when there were innovations to be tested, when there were creations to be made. For the greater good was a catchphrase that was a mere excuse. But excuses were based on morality, and as far as they were concerned, as far as they had debated, had thought about and had figured, morality was crap.
It was crap. It was crap when the institution supposedly upholding morality doomed its people. It was crap when everyone said it, but no one did it. And since no one was doing it, and that majority was always, always right in the end, then morality was crap. As simple as that. There were half a million flaws in that argument, but they believed it. The hell with the logical fallacies. They were science people.
He had changed. His view of the world had been modified. Theories had been inserted, a completely new point of view had been shared, and he knew it.
But in the end, when it all crashed down upon his head, when everything he had stood for was now viewed as flawed, as immoral, as evil, he had looked on stoically as his mentor had been forced away. He had turned around, and gone back to where he had come from, his lab.
And he had stayed there, working, thinking, wondering exactly why it was that morality seemed to mean so much, why everyone saw the world differently and why it did not make logical sense.
And then he realised it. He saw why.
They saw him as a caged bird.
He saw himself as a blind one.