No matter how one might see it, I couldn't look at him in the eyes-not that it was so hard to do when his lids were getting in the way most of the time. He was half-dozing, apparently, the other half of his consciousness scowling the morning away quite without his knowledge. Beside him was Tia Halibel, Tercera Espada, who seemed to be in pretty good humor so early in the morning, for reasons more or less obvious. But surely, this was different from harboring suspicions too vaguely founded. She kept glancing at her side, as if Stark was a magnet to her eyes.
"Shut up. I'm trying to sleep." I heard the pale, irritable, and therefore very short of sleep Primera Espada say from across the table.
Of course, this was something that regularly came out of his mouth when the Espada were finding it hard to keep their hands from strangling each other. To start with, Nnoitora was conducting his usual provocative comments to the constant receiver of his trash-talk, Halibel, who would merely stare regretfully in return, to which Quinto would flare up. At the other end of the table, Cuatro, though subdued, was giving himself self-satisfaction as Sexta blared at him with all sorts of murderous threats flying out his mouth. Last night probably hadn't gone well for them. Hence if no one was to beg for silence, the meeting might as well take place in hell.
In the midst of the verbal onslaught and before I could stop myself, I watched him.
Stark was staring at me.
I shrugged at him and mouthed, without resorting to actual sounds, what came naturally to mind,
Are you okay?
I didn't know what I was doing, but I was doing what was needed. He was at the last strip of tolerance, and a minute more of this sort of noise would get things out of hand. Stark's wrath was something I didn't wish to witness. But, setting aside necessities, it was unbecoming of me to demonstrate genuine concern. Thus I could only try to look away. And then he did the last thing I expected him to do; he replied in the same fashion,
I'm getting out of here. You?
This must have been what was known as confidential intimacy. I felt somewhat privileged for having received a response, and maybe embarrassed too, for managing the guts to initiate something so out of place. In any case, I declined,
I'll stay. Aizen-sama shall arrive soon.
He shrugged, closed his eyes, and tried to enjoy his slack while he still could. In the next second, I found myself trying to distinguish if he felt disappointed, and later on realized my imagination had gone overboard. I hardly had the time to reproach myself because not a moment later Aizen-sama emerged from the door to stage once again another useless act of civility; the daily meeting commenced.
I never got the clear sense of the point of all this, if there was indeed one. So here I was again, treading my way downstairs to eventually reach the end of my hallway journey to my room, after a long discussion over things I simply failed to remember. What I had in mind exactly went along the lines of 'Aizen-sama should really stop wasting our time'.
I dredged on the deserted hallways, whose only source of light was the paleness the walls were kind enough to diffuse. Upon reaching the flight of stairs, I soon began feeling obliged to conjure a Cero but thought better of it. After all, darkness was my arena. Unfortunately, the thought lost its credibility when I bumped into someone and knocked both of us out of balance, to take with me the lucky person I ran headlong to, and together we tumbled over what seemed like a million treads of stairs, with our limbs clutching to one another for support as a brutal array of groans assaulted the formerly grim corridor.
"Damn." a voice said upon recovery. Helplessly, I tried to straighten up but deduced that further rash movements, or any movement at all, would put me in greater debt to the person I dragged into this accident.
The owner of the voice was Stark, as luck would have it.
He conjured a tiny Cero to reveal how bad we looked. We were at the foot of the landing, with me on top of him, both my knees and palms planted on the ground so that he was right beneath me in between my legs. The odd thing was, he was still clinging to me, his palm on my waist. On top of that, our faces were only three inches apart and not more than that. I heaved myself up, feeling impelled to kneel down once more for an entirely different purpose; a nice shot at apology. But, of course, I wouldn't do that.
I shouldn't dwell on it, but he kept his hand fastened on me until I got both my feet set right.
"I'm sorry, Stark. I couldn't see well in this darkness and I didn't sense you at all."
He scratched his hair without even bothering to pull himself up. For my part, I vaguely wished he required assistance for that, in which case I should perhaps hold out my hand…I must be out of my mind.
"Never mind. Thanks for waking me up."
"You were sleeping-while standing?"
"Sort of."
There were many things so arresting about this dude, and not less was the fact that he could sleep anyway he liked… which reminded me of something. It was only a week ago when he had spoken my name in his sleep, rousing up this curiosity in me about what he had been dreaming about. But madly interested as I was, it was a wholly different matter to ask him something that personal.
"Well, I'd like to think you sleepwalked the wrong way; your room is two floors below."
Finally he stood up, to tower over me, further enhancing the shadows that surrounded us.
"No. Actually, I was waiting for you."
As an immediate consequence, my embarrassment was replaced by fear, not for something he might do to me but for what I was tempted to say next. For reasons I couldn't explain, my heart started to hammer away against my ribcage.
"F-for me?"
"Yeah. We have an appointment, don't we, regarding my duality?"
I must say, I should lay off caffeine if I intended to live long enough to see the end of this experiment. I couldn't exactly tell if it was relief or disappointment that silenced the activities of my heart but, whatever it was, I wasn't better without it. Apart from it all, I never thought diligence could be expected from him…
"Come along, then."
The more time I spent with him, alone, the harder it seemed to reconcile myself with the thought that he'd be gone after what he was set out to do here, when there no longer was a reason to stay. I busied myself with my task, occasionally throwing furtive glances at his direction, only learning I ought to cut it with the staring because the last thing I had on my profession list was a master gaper.
"There's something I'd like to ask you." He started.
"Fire away."
"Aizen-sama had something in mind. Well, what are the modes of reproduction in the case of Arrancars, besides the Hogyokou and cloning, of course?"
It wasn't a question I expected, considering how much it hinted on education, in which he had shown the least of interests.
"I have never heard of sexual intercourse between our kind- except for Jaggerjack and Ulquiorra but that's a different story-since we live in a place where there's never a lack of deadly enmity, even between individuals of opposite sexes. But reproduction is universal and, where fertility is present the natural, most common process of reproduction would be sex."
Unless I was hallucinating, he was crestfallen.
"Any alternatives?"
"Test-tube fertilization, which still remains only theoretically possible because I haven't tried it before, owing to everyone's refusal to donate sperm and eggs. Is there a problem?"
"Aizen is pretty serious about adding another member of the family who'd more or less possess strength equal to mine. He insists that producing an individual with such qualities is beyond the powers of the Hogyokou. He suggests I should have a child with a female Arrancar, Halibel preferably, so that in no way shall the 'finished product' be inferior to either of us parents."
That veritably stunned me. Slowly, I realized with piercing clarity, and quite too late at that, that anger was coursing through me. If he had shown the slightest of disagreement against Aizen-sama's plans, I wouldn't have to choke back the lump that had built up my throat, nor would I have known I was capable of fury of this level…
"Good luck, then." I managed to mutter and, although I tried to help it, I was completely aware that my tone contradicted the words it served.
I was ready to bet I'd lash out on him and be a complete retard when he answered,
"Why doesn't he just fuck her himself if he wanted a goddamn strong spawn so much? He'd make a good father… maybe not."
I came to my senses, reluctantly.
"Halibel's a fine woman, Stark; you might regret turning her down afterwards." I heard myself say.
His eyes narrowed, and subsequently it struck me that I was alone with the strongest warrior among the Espada.
"Regret? Why would I?"
He stood up and walked over me