epiphany

by eudaim0nia

At world's end, God and Shinigami seek meaning in the shattered existence that remains. And each other.

8. VII

A/N: Please note the rating change to M going forward.

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Rukia didn't want to believe it.

She refused to believe it!

It was inconceivable. Incredulous. Impossible.

It was… painfully, unmistakably… true.

A rush of heat came over her. She felt it in her veins, in her cheeks; a scarlet testimony. There would be no escape, no fanciful dereliction or reprieve. Her traitorous heart thumped and her mind raced, convulsing with terrible ragged-torn convolutions.

The truth stung her all mottled and aching inside.

Fingers dug into her skull, pulled at her hair. She wanted to scream. She wanted to destroy something! To make known and physical the catastrophe and whirlwind of panic tormenting her; to liberate herself in a chaotic shower of sulphur and reprisal and forsaken heartaches.

Why?

Why?!

She gazed up at the grey heavens, desolation and torment etched absolute on her face. Wordlessly, she beseeched them.

Why him?!

Of all the souls she'd ever known and encountered, why did it have to be Aizen-damn-it-all-to-bloody-hell-Sōsuke?!

It was another tragedy in the long line of cruel, cosmic jests. Forever and again Rukia wished for an end to this curse, to an eternity that decayed in reverse and left her forever bound and never too long apart from him. It shouldn't matter that he was the only one left. It shouldn't!

He was awful.

Kind.

He was horrible.

Compassionate.

He was domineering.

Thoughtful.

He was cruel.

Merciful.

He was a traitor.

A liberator.

He was a fiend, a villain, a once-but-never-forgotten enemy!

Fighting for something greater than even he.

His offenses were innumerable.

Insoluble.

He was a madman.

A genius.

Heartless—sympathetic—and obstinate in the pursuit of evil—good. Of destruction—reformation—of….

The fires in her veins strangled all ire and thoughts. All save one, birthed entirely from the ashes of a deadly, frantic grasp at confirmation. Validation.

What were his crimes?

What… had he actually done?

Rukia stilled. Mind slowly rebooting, reconsidering and reassessing in a growing frenzy. Desperately, she called forth a barrage of ancient chronicles; rifling through them, tracing over them. She had succumbed to the bitter-sweet sting of remembrance countless times past when thinking of the dead. Each memory and every accompanying face was unique in its ability to break her heart even as it cleansed her soul anew. Recollecting his face now, across a span of morbid time and a cold river of old fears and wounds, she felt an entirely different ache. A burgeoning onset of tears.

Rukia exhaled a breathy, derisive laugh and wondered: why was he the only one for whom she cried?

Wiping furiously at her eyes, she recalled the past with a growing distress that mirrored the flourishes of sweeps of swipes of razing, frenzied fire coming down.

First, his betrayal of the Soul Society.

"…Perhaps the coldest of all cold monsters. It even lied coldly, and this lie crawled unabashedly out of its mouth: I, the Soul Society, am the only blessed afterlife. Pure falsehood, one amongst many. Life beyond death was never meant to affirm eternal torment for the many and myths of peace for the few great of heart. A true afterlife, endowed by a perfect Creator, would serve as testament to a love for all souls, and thereby would serve life itself."

"The Gotei Thirteen and Great Noble Houses never thought to consider this. Never wavered in their blind obedience. Never questioned their purpose or role in protecting such a monstrosity, accepting that this, simply, was: how the world is. They grew weary in battle and still their weariness was called upon to serve, time and time again. Their sacrifices grew and yet the monster was never appeased. Even heroes and honourable men served as mere embellishment, their shining virtue and the resolve in their proud eyes put on display only to inflame and inspire hearts."

"The Soul Society was little more than a den filled with drinkers of poison, a place where all souls would venture into and lose themselves. A place where the slow suicide of everyone was audaciously called 'life'."

Her breaths trembled, caused lungs to rattle sorely against ribs as she recalled his words. Another soliloquy in a long list of torturous insights that had filled the deathly void as they ventured forth forever and ever into nowhere.

Thinking back on it she couldn't say he was entirely wrong, and she shuddered to think what atrocities he had unravelled to warrant such a grim portrayal. What skeletons he had unearthed, veiled up and hidden from view, tucked away in diseased and murky shadows. She imagined horrors far worse than anything she had witnessed in Inuzuri, or the injustice she had come to know—and mindlessly accept—in the Seireitei. Those old terrors and cruelties still smarted in their senseless actuality even a millennium after the world's death, cold and rotten in the grave.

Perhaps treachery in such circumstances was not the most egregious of sins.

Then, what of all the people he had killed?!

Who had he actually killed?

Rukia raked her mind. She tried to recount names, recite numbers. The forgotten and unknown. And could only recall, with absolute certainty, his slaughter of the Central Forty-Six.

"A man who professes to be wise only confesses his foolishness. And none were more foolish than the Chūō Shijūroku. Comprised of forty wise men, so called, and six judges, they stood as the supreme judicial and legislative authority within the Soul Society. In actuality, they were little more than peddlers of their own inept morality. Preachers of delusions, turned convenient facts, and masquerading as truth. They knew not of mercy, nothing of pity. Their decrees were dogmatic, static, loathe to evolve. Audaciously proclaimed right and absolute, and so could never be reversed. Their rulings petty, their judgements a revenge against any who would dare challenge their vision of how the world should be. Why? Because, they were the wisest of the wise. Because, they simply, knew best."

"But mortal wisdom is of little or no value. It is fallible, Kuchiki-san. It is erroneous. The truly wise man knows this. He knows that he actually knows nothing at all. Would those oh so wise and virtuous men ever have admitted such ignorance? Would they have dared adopt any such humility? Perish the thought. Not when they were chosen to rule by mandate of the Soul King himself. After all, the self-proclaimed perfect deity who could do no wrong could only elect the wisest and most judicious, and so arrogance begot arrogance. That thing's will thus became their will, and the world they would preserve would be none other than the world as the Soul King saw it. They were hostile to life, hostile to truth. They were nothing more than a barren death-horse clattering in the regalia of pseudo-divine honours."

True. Many of the failings and shortcomings of the Soul Society could be traced back to them, and from there, she supposed, the Soul King himself. No one had batted an eyelid at her death sentence for granting her powers to a human and delaying her return; such a judgement, even if wholly fabricated by him, was to be expected. Par for the course. The Central Forty-Six readily sent souls to their death with little care or remorse. Inhaled the putrid air of apathy and malady, and played God with people's lives in his stead.

If anything, Aizen had besmirched his sword with their blood.

She saw the streaks and splatters in her mind's eye; blacker than red, a coagulating glutinous gunk. A stream of irony—justice—dripping and slinking across the slimy, slick-lined walls of their once proud and hallowed sanctum.

Rukia could not find the will, or reason, to condemn him his purposeful massacre.

Even as no other name came to her she was certain there were countless others unknown to her. She could not, however, envision a motive either senseless or mindlessly cruel. For someone who claimed to value life, she suspected every death carried some meaning behind it, some substantive higher purpose.

Aizen was not someone who killed indiscriminately, she slowly realised. Scarcely. If ever.

That she was trying so hard—fists clenched tight and white like bleached-over ice—to yield an incriminating list only to come away largely empty was a testament to that.

A pause in her thoughts. Inhale then exhale—not the other way around—and she conceded he may not be the heartless killer she once thought him to be.

But! He had still done wrong and hurt far too many—her dear nakama—time and time again!

…Right?

"Adversity, is duly owed to those called friends and a gift, a fondness even, to those known as enemies. Indeed, to hold one as an enemy speaks of true respect that does not dare to ask for friendship. Your greatest affection for them is found in the harshness of your blade. Be merciless as you test them, challenge them. When you fight them endeavour to destroy them. Lead them onto death and from there bring them into life. Burn them in the flames of your compassion so that they may shine brighter, re-forged and made anew from the ashes of their ancient corpses. Wage war against them even as you rebuild and venerate them, and there may just come a day when they finally thank you for it."

Rukia froze. Gaped in astonished incomprehension—for a hundredth time, or was it the thousandth… no the ten-thousandth… she lost count—as another stream of words played over and over in her mind; a conflagration loathe to become an ashen memory.

Just thinking about it made her head hurt.

She couldn't make sense of his insane logic on this, the odd and twisted beliefs. Her hands itched, longed to tear out her hair. And so she contemplated ceding there and then; forsaking the desire to understand him completely along with the need to decipher all his haunted mysteries for the sake of her sanity.

Her traitorous heart went dead at the thought. Stopped, just like that. A tacit rebuke, and she would not know peace. She would know no escape.

Not for the first time she didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Kuchiki!" his voice snapped all of a sudden, out of nowhere, pulling her away from harrowing, frustrating thoughts with a thundering shock. She imagined the same strict tone echoing across a large hall at the Shin'ō Academy. No doubt another lecture was forthcoming.

She cursed him in her mind. Couldn't he see she was in the middle of an existential crisis?!

"Are you paying attention?"

"Y-yes."

Where had he even come from? How long had he been there? What was he even talking about?!

"… Understand then that not everything can be loved, but only what is good. What is evil neither can nor should be loved; for it is not one's duty to be a lover of evil, nor, for that matter, to become like that most vile and base…."

What—?!

L-LOVE?!

"NO!"

Her rejection rang loudly into the air as horror and distress gripped at her. The notion smarted like a vicious slap. Left her violently blushing and in patent agony.

Frantic, she resorted to praying: God, have mercy on me a sinner! Your unworthy servant beseeches you. Please, rid me of this affliction!

And was granted: nothing.

To her great dismay, there was no response. No blessed reprieve.

God was dead.

Her heart throbbed at the thought more and more, a perpetual ache. In the growing, deadened silence her skin burned hotter, still itched. In her periphery she saw Aizen regard her with an annoyed arch of his brow and a baffled frown.

"Do elaborate, Kuchiki-san. Clearly you have more to say given such an impassioned outburst."

He needed to stop. He needed to stop talking! She wanted to scream at him to just stop!

"I don't," she meekly mumbled instead after a lengthy moment, suddenly feeling all too worn out; a-coming down from her all too mad and crazed ascent. "Sorry."

He levelled a pointed stare her way, no doubt wondering what had come over her—what was wrong with her—before continuing. Rukia dully listened with half an ear, frozen stiff and still as he gorged her on, all too fittingly and fatefully, grand philosophies of Right and Wrong.

"No one willingly chooses to do wrong; the rightness and wrongness of one's action is purely proportion to his understanding. Evil, wickedness, licentiousness, injustice; such ills are wanted by no one. To those who choose it, evil seems to be a good. But ignorance permeates the soul and leaves it prone to errors. For although it has by nature a keen love for the good, it is often unable to see where the good lies. Indeed, no man who is not an utter fool or coward fears his end, but he is afraid of having wronged. For to go beyond death having one's soul full of injustice is surely the last and worst of all evils."

Of Virtue and Vice.

"For existence is good to the virtuous man, and each man wishes himself what is good. And so we ought to act in accordance with what we presume to be the will of Heaven, insofar as we can judge it. This alone is the highest virtue: trying with all our might to contribute to the general good and especially to the embellishment and perfection of that which affects us. Of that which is near us. Of that which is, so to speak, in our grasp. The greatest vice, thus, is the knowing rejection of such a calling."

And, with brazen daring, even an elucidation of Good and Evil.

"Truthfully, evil in and of itself has no substantive existence. What we deem evil is simply an absence of perfection or good. Immorality, misery, death… they are mere shadows, voids. Zeroes. They are negations of real things, but not real things themselves. Immorality is the absence of right morals, misery the absence of happiness. Life is pure existence; death is only a ceasing. Thus, life is a magnitude, but death is a naught."

"Beyond evil, the principle of negation extends to all being. There is light, but there is no darkness; darkness is only the non-existence of light. It has no degree, while light has. So too for something and nothing. Nothing is without arms, nothing as an independent idea is an absurdity. A contradiction. To speak of nothing can only ever be relative and with regards to something. The idea of existence then, owing to it a positive reality, is supremely good, and the degrees of evil within it are mere abysses. They cannot take away from its overall beauty but complement it, like the darkest shades of a painting, and only ever as the partial view of a harmonious whole."

His philosophical orations echoed like religious sermons. Were simple truths that had likely been uttered by others lifetimes past and yet took on an entirely different meaning when parting his lips. They delved deep into her mind with zealous fervour even as they left her all the more exhumed, spirit drained and muddled. They whispered promises of answers, understanding, even salvation and pacification. An absolution from clouded worries and harrowing discomforts. All they offered was lost on her. She simply couldn't understand—him—couldn't truly grasp the message he was trying to instil in her.

Aizen eyed her expectantly, awaiting a response. Rukia kept her gaze on the white horizon in the distance, stubbornly ignoring him and everything he represented and all he had awakened within her. The growing silence demanded her acknowledgement. She remained quiet.

She was adamant in her rejection, in her lament. Spiteful against his unspoken entreaties and charities.

His irritated sigh echoed all around her.

Exhausted by flames, left eviscerated and hollow, she couldn't bring herself to care.

Overgrown bangs covered her eyes like a curtain, black and light and feathery, hiding her face. They distorted the world as she longed to forget what had come to pass, revelations and all.

To reject what had yet to come.

Rukia closed her eyes, knew all too well it was a fanciful, impossible dream.

. . .

Compelled, perhaps, to pull her from her desolate inertia—to impel a reaction—he proceeded to teach her another Kidō.

Rukia numbly listened and regurgitated incantations on automatic rewind, all the while keeping her distance. But rather than an assured and eager recitation, the words came out insecure and jolted and hurting. Awash of her subconscious; the mental driftwoods of distress, rivulets of self-reproach and valleys of tortured dreams. Ten pink streaks of violent energy vibrated unsteadily around her, a fluctuating hazard mirroring her tumultuous heart.

"Focus," Aizen intoned, his heat suddenly close and right against her back.

It did not have the intended effect. The easy calm he usually heralded was nowhere to be found as he ignited her nerves and submerged her in a pool of liquid flames. It was as if she'd been hurled over an edge, was drowning in the most errant of fires. The flames danced across her skin, swam down, ghosting her neck and spine, her breasts, before pooling hot and heavy in the deepest pit of her stomach.

A weighty exhale rattled her ribs and she was suddenly at war with herself, a tug-and-tear-and-pull as a part of her longed to sink back further into that inviting heat. To give in to all it sinfully promised. Another part of her, all too frantic and anxious, demanded she dash away, far and clear, springing fast and furious over clouds and ghostly stars.

She was slowly losing it. The many energy streaks trembled erratically, a cautionary resonance.

"Focus!"

His hand came down on her shoulder and broke the dam completely.

Pink Kidō streaks instantly dissipated as she tore away from his hold with a violent jolt. It felt like she was being burned and undone anew by bruising electric currents.

"Don't!" she cried out, a hysterical frazzled mess.

Flash-stepping away, putting some much needed distance between them, she wrapped arms tight around herself in hopes she wouldn't shatter and disperse like dust to ashes, ashes to dust.

"Don't touch me," she breathed out shakily and with more venom than she intended.

Aizen blinked at her, expression stunned and frozen blank. Confusion and something else wavered in his dark eyes, calling forth images in her mind of a kicked puppy. It was such a ridiculous comparison she would have laughed if she weren't all the more horrified by it. Feigning ignorance, shying away and tempering a wave of unexpected guilt—he hadn't actually done anything wrong—she looked around her fretfully, trying to avoid his heavy gaze.

Just as quickly as it had appeared that unnamed emotion vanished, a cold, deadened mask falling into place.

"My apologies," he said simply, impassively, retreating even further away from her.

When he turned to look at her once again with bored, uninterested eyes, hands crossed at his back, she physically winced.

"Continue."

The world reverted back to an abyss, weaved a toxic descant, and left her abandoned in a crevice a million miles from him. It was an agony that cut chasms into the heart and choked her full of regret.

Closing her eyes, Rukia took a moment to calm and centre herself even as the cloud of tension around her turned all too bleak and unbearable. Breathed in, out, and diverted her focus back on the burgeoning Kidō. A whispered chant left her lips, the energy streaks materialising and stretching forth around her once more.

Still her heart cried, her mind wandered.

She couldn't keep going like this. She needed an escape, a way out beyond secret pains and heartfelt struggles. It would not come from mere words; the beautiful soliloquies he weaved on justice and the right. It would not come from trying to vindicate his past actions and sins. It had to cut deeper, rawer; from a gaping wound felt thrice in the soul. Only then could she finally begin to understand.

Lord, if you can hear me, please help me!

The phantom sun flared and quelled and flared again overhead and she felt it; a solar insurrection coming down, engulfing her whole. A memory rose unbidden in her mind. Washed up, ashore. It drowned her lungs as she felt the pains and hurts of remembrance all over again.

"Gin. Kill her."

A blast of hot air flew over her, caused black tresses to fiercely flutter and scatter all around her face as starry violet eyes opened to an unfolding scene. And there she suddenly was; on Sōkyoku Hill once more.

Held aloft, hanging from the edge of a collar. Shinsō streaking fast towards her.

Swept up in Byakuya's hold. Blood splatters on her face. Her screams echoing loudly into the air. Why? Nii-sama? Why did you save me?!

Why? Why?!

Aizen turning to regard them, expression inscrutable and cold. Byakuya collapsing, her arms holding him tight to her breast. White robe stained red with his blood.

Aizen approaching, appraising. A marble smile and veiled secrets drifting across metaphorical graveyards. Dark, emotionless eyes met and held hers.

Seeking, waiting. Expecting.

The screams of ghosts pounding in her skull. The weight of his unholy reiatsu creeping along her limbs, suffocating her in a sea of dread. Her hold on her brother tightening. Heart frantic, beating erratic and painful. Sweat beads trickling down.

Red blurs, red emerging. The world was bathed in red.

Aizen's gaze locked forever and ever on hers. No escape. His hand moving, falling, grip closing around the hilt of his zanpakutō—

Rukia gasped, thrown back into the here and now. The descent crashed and jolted her awake amid a furious, bleeding cacophony of angry pink streaks.

"KUCHIKI!"

Aizen's scream sent another jolt straight through her as the ten energy points of Senju Kōten Taihō glowed forebodingly before simultaneously descending upon her. Rukia could only watch on with paralysing horror as the world was bathed anew in magenta hues and crimson.

Just as quickly she was being swept up in a tight hold. An arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her forward, pressing her up against a hard front. Trembling and shaking uncontrollably, Rukia's gaze trailed over the sea of white and higher still, just in time to see Aizen raise his other arm high into the air.

The vicious streaks of pure pulsing energy descended upon him, as if called upon and pulled directly into the palm of his hand. A blast of scorching air and fiery static submerged them and pelted down upon their frames, a bone-crushing flood of obscure infernos. Rukia screamed into his chest, felt the wisps and licks of noxious flames on her skin. Aizen's only response was a soft grunt, his hold on her tightening as he countered with his reiatsu and absorbed the brunt of the blast. The air was growing hotter, heavier. Glowed all too bright just as an explosion of red rocked and blinded the world.

It was over in a second.

Then all was quiet, all was still. Rukia couldn't be sure how much time passed with her head buried in his chest, breaths heavy, hands gripping onto waves of white silk. It came as a shock when she was finally pushed away. Aizen's hands painfully gripped her upper arms, shaking her with tumultuous rage as he bowed his head, gaze level with hers. The fury pulsing in his dark eyes left her dazed and physically winded. He was angry, all right. So very, very angry.

"You. Senseless. Fool!" he roared, giving her frame another harsh jerk, causing her head to snap back and forth. "Are you purposefully trying to get yourself killed?!"

Another painful shake when she didn't immediately respond, eyes turned glassy and unseeing like a china doll before his furious glare.

"N-no," she whispered softly as the inklings of awareness and sense returned to her, shock steadily subsiding. A tear streamed down her cheek.

"No," she repeated, even more softly, more tears pooling in her violet eyes.

He was a statue, composure stiff and still, as he silently regarded her. She could see the battle taking place within him, the unnamed emotions warring in his dark eyes. There was a tightness to him, a tense vibrating tremor across the line of his arms and shoulders. His breaths were long, sharp, silent bursts as he fought for calm even as he tightened his grip. He was clasping onto her so hard and tight she wouldn't have been surprised if he caused bloody streams to break forth and run free from crystal skin and arteries. Rukia scarcely noticed the pain, all her focus entirely centred on the flitting emotions in those dark pools looking to subsume her soul.

Abruptly his eyes closed—closed himself off. A long exhale came next, an amalgamation of all his sighs and frustrations, and his lids parted open once more. The dark glint of anger was gone.

"Kuchiki," he began, tone deep and low and laborious as his heavy gaze locked with hers. "Care and caution… cannot be overstated when executing the Demon Arts, more so the higher order spells. This is especially true for someone with great spiritual power. Surely you've realised your strength has grown far beyond what it once was. You cannot become complacent or careless! You must always be sober and vigilant in your practice, especially now that your reiryoku is bourgeoning. Is that clear?"

Sheepish, properly chastised, she quietly nodded, looking down and away from his intense stare. His grip on her finally eased, unfurled completely. His temper quelled, the lightning and intoxicated rage no more. And then his hand was moving, brushing through her bangs, the falling curtains framing her pale face, thin and wispy as her breaths. Wordlessly, he offered this one pacification. Once again she both hated and longed for his touch, insides-bolting and fluttering when fingers brushed her cheek. It felt like the world was slipping in and out of view just as a streak of red flashed in her periphery along with his retreating palm.

"Aizen," she gasped in surprise, eyes trailing after it. "Your hand!"

A curious hum as he straightened, turning his hand over to see what had caught her attention. Aizen saw the red welts and bleeding, blistering burns, a moon-rosacea and inferno-haemorrhaging, and froze. Blinked once, then twice in confirmation; a stoic attempt to come to terms with what he was seeing. Wordless surprise still gripped at him. Rukia could scarcely believe it herself.

She had scarred him.

She had made him bleed.

Out of impossible, empty and nil—like her plus him divided by zero—and Rukia slowly realised the shocking and miraculous could happen. Even at world's end in the abyss of aeons gone.

The disbelief wore off and a horrible, encompassing guilt overwhelmed her. There was no joy in her accomplishment, no satisfaction for the physical testament of her long tortured growth. Only ice-cased, caved in, deeply burrowed grief and liquid memory ghosts. Rukia felt her heart splinter in two.

Carefully she reached out for him. Took his hand deferentially between her own and began a healing Kidō. It was a meagre if not heartfelt gesture; Aizen could heal himself far better than she ever could. Still, she took his hand and counted the seconds as pieces of absolution; scattered petals she gathered to her breast and breathed life into before weaving them into a fabric of reconciliation. Aizen said nothing, didn't even move a whisker's breath, allowing her to continue. Relief flooded her. She needed to do this. Needed to make right a wrong that had only occurred because he'd thrown himself into harm's way, yet again, for her sake.

Her heart throbbed painfully.

The memory that had spurred all this plagued her mind once more, a bruising brush across her thoughts.

"Gin. Kill her."

She breathed deep, shoulders slumped and head dipped, bangs covering her face.

The worst of the burns and blisters had vanished, several hazy red scars all that remained in their place. Wordlessly she tore a white strip from her shitagi's sleeve and proceeded to bandage around his palm. Quiet and still, Aizen made no move to stop her. When she was done she maintained a gentle hold, unwilling to release him.

"Aizen," she whispered, tone steadier and far more measured than she felt. Her gaze was still dipped low and downcast, loath to look him in the eye.

"What did you have to gain from having me killed?"

She felt a slight tremor of surprise run across his frame and through his arm. "What?"

"On Sōkyoku Hill. You ordered Ichimaru Gin to kill me. Why?"

A long silence stretched between them. She felt a twitch in the muscles of his palm before he finally spoke.

"You still…," he began, confusion and incredulity tainting words, only for a harsh note of frustration to take over. "Don't tell me this is what's been afflicting you of late?"

Rukia didn't respond. Her hands still gripped at his, head bowed low.

"What foolishness," he proclaimed with disdain.

He made to pull away but her hold on him tightened. There was no real force or strength behind it; she simply wished to show she would not let him disregard her query or walk away from it. Her display of resolve must have struck a chord as he paused, statue-still once more. His hand still encased gently between hers.

"Aizen, please," she implored, firm and steady. "I need to know."

I need to know I can allow myself to feel something for you and not hate myself entirely for it.

Her eyes closed at the thought—the honest admission of all her woes—and another gaping wound unfurled within her. It was a void that ebbed and ate away at her heart and spine. She no longer had the luxury of time and theories and musings.

The muses had long been slaughtered.

She needed an answer. Now.

The silence was deafening. Just when she thought he would never reveal his secrets and intents she heard him sigh, tired and exasperated.

"Nothing. I would have gained nothing from your death. And yet I ordered Gin to kill you. Why?" he levelled the question right back at her. "To what end? For what purpose?"

Rukia bit her lip. Frustrated, she drew blood. If she knew she wouldn't be asking! Her grip unwittingly tightened, nails digging into his skin in admonition and resentment. Silently she demanded his admission.

And finally received it.

"I never did care for that fatalism you exhibited like a badge of honour, Kuchiki-san," he revealed, his words weighted even as they seamlessly left his lips. "Nor, for that matter, that brother of yours."

Her head snapped up at that, finally taking in his expression. He was staring impassively over and beyond her head at the distant skies and horizon.

"Far be it for me to disparage the dead, but Kuchiki Byakuya was the epitome of everything I despised in a man. Self-obsessed and arrogant enough to hold himself above praise and blame, and yet unwilling to defend and ordain the good when challenged by Fate. Seeing him, standing cold and aloof at the First Division's assembly hall as your execution was decreed before all… offended me. It was a sin made all the worse given the internal torment he so painstakingly veiled."

Rukia blinked at the unfolding revelation, heart alert and focused on every single word.

"He would have seen you killed, would have carried out the deed with his own hand if only to confirm his blind obedience to the Soul Society's laws, and he would have gladly hated himself for it. He would have willingly forsaken the highest good for edicts that cared not for faith or mercy, but which hung a sword and bestowed a thousand blows upon every soul they touched. He was a coward, unwilling to rise above the obvious blasphemy against virtue and right. Unwilling to create and give unto himself his own evil and good, and hang it above his head like a commandment. Incapable of being his own judge and the avenger of his own law, choosing instead to sink to his knees before an impotent monstrosity that could only bite all those weaker than it with stolen teeth."

"I wanted to see him stripped of that arrogance. I wanted to see his pride crushed. A wounded vanity is not only the mother of all tragedies, but so too the birth knell of progress. Where pride is wounded, something even better than pride blooms. And you, Kuchiki Rukia, whether he knew it then or not, were his greatest pride."

He met her gaze with a meaningful stare that caused her heart to beat all the more faster and her skin to flush. It felt like the sun scorching her, painting reddish marks all over white.

"I sensed his approach back then. How could I not? Kuchiki Byakuya never cared to reign in his reiatsu. I calculated the moment of his arrival down to the very second. I would not only pull him from his obedient stupor and compel him into action but engrave the moral onto his very bones, for the most compelling of lessons are ultimately those bathed in blood. I would force him to realise his pride's true value and worth by simply taking it from him."

She very nearly jumped out of her skin when his other hand fell over her own with a commanding strength and warmth.

"That being said, your brother was nevertheless a secondary thought. A superfluous consequence of a more pertinent lesson taught. As I said, I never cared for how you resigned yourself to the dictates of Fate. Of how willing you were to embrace your life's end. I wanted to instil some sense into you and force you to appreciate your existence. What better way than the threat of death at the hand of one's most feared enemy?"

Even as she carefully considered what he was saying Rukia could scarcely believe it. It all seemed far too simple. Far too extraordinary. Was a haunting, daunting truth that ached like a battered, exploited, Achilles heel. That she'd even warranted so much selfless attention and scrutiny way back when she was little more than a place—as he himself had called her—for that infernal orb both unnerved and bewildered her. She honestly didn't know what to make of it.

"Your obstinate resistance to life, your furious vow to never yield, even then, genuinely surprised me. It felt like a personal affront. A direct challenge to all I deemed true; something I could appreciate and welcome yet also abhor. Honestly, for non-blood related siblings, you and your brother were far too much alike in that regard. In your unwavering commitment to parochial beliefs."

His face twisted at that, as if he'd suddenly tasted something sour. The comparison had her closing her eyes; a measly attempt to ward off a fresh wave of hurts.

"Only when he collapsed wounded in your arms did I finally see a flicker of perseverance and defiance against my approach. Of course your concern was solely, and predictably, for him. Kuchiki Byakuya may have learnt a pivotal lesson that day, but you, sadly, did not. Even now, I'm not entirely convinced you've learnt to live for yourself and not for the sake of another."

It was uncanny just how well he could read her for in that moment he knew her better than she even knew herself. She had abandoned thoughts of death when burned by the flames of guilt, the burning wisps of her loved ones' memories. She persevered largely for their sake, respectful of their sacrifices. So that someone could hold onto their hearts across the invisible span of bygones and deteriorating time. And more recently, in another large part, for—

Rukia blinked when his sombre face and tragic figure filled her thoughts, like an apparition ordained to beset till the end of the end. Till the world's last breath, forever and ever.

The air around her was suddenly thick and hot and dizzying.

She wanted….

She needed….

And he was speaking once again, pulling her away from calamitous thoughts.

"If you learn anything from me, Kuchiki-san, I should hope it be this," he began, on the cusp of a budding perspicacity hammered in stone. In prophesy. He gave her hand a small, meaningful squeeze that tugged painfully at heartstrings. Her gaze met his and was instantly enslaved.

"May your love for life be love for your highest hope, and may your highest hope be the highest thought of life."

He allowed just enough time for the potency of his words to seep deep before easily releasing her and pulling away. Her hands fell to her sides, weightless, as he turned on his heel and walked forth towards the bright white horizon. A rare visual of his shadow stretched long and thin across the ashen earth burned her sight. It carried with it a lingering note of mercy like a blunted, ink-splattered cuneiform. Rukia could only stare after him, stunned.

She'd received her answer and was left weighing the gravity of it. Despair, agony and sacrilege no longer called to her. Rather a rising need stirred, a longing unrelenting, and she found herself consumed and overwhelmed and prophesying a bitter-sweet not-tragedy.

As she watched him her eyes swam, glimmered bright and flashed like a billion stars. A memory not-a-memory unfurled in her mind's eyes, a time undetermined and a place undefined. And there was Aizen, speaking. His words echoed loudly in her skull.

"I had no intention of deceiving anyone. It's just that none of you could understand… my true self."

She blinked and the vision vanished, eyes dim once more. She didn't move for the longest time, a bewildered cloud hanging over her. And then a glimmer. A streak of light cutting through shadows, a burst of insight, and it all finally made sense to her.

Aizen's silhouette flickered in and out of focus, a shifting iridescent opal in the light. Like him.

All obscure smoke and intangible waters behind many a mirror-layers, indefinite and unknowable.

She exhaled an amazed breath of air even as a tear made its way down her cheek.

"Aizen Sōsuke," she softly whispered into the silent air with an exasperated fondness. "Deep down, you're actually... kind of a good guy."

She wiped her cheek as she followed after him, renewed from eviscerated flames. Unburdened. Content.

Violet clouds skirted delicately over distant peaks. The lush lapses in the hours drifted by like wispy light-flakes as the two of them continued toward the faint horizon line.

Where at last she could taste something close to happiness.

. . .

She's running. She's breathing hard.

From what and why… she knew not.

Kiyone had just been in front of her. A blonde bob and petite bones, only to disappear behind an endless stream of night and shadows. There one second, gone the next.

Or maybe it was she who had disappeared. Small and forgotten, an inconsequential imposter masquerading as nobility playing the role of a Shinigami, on course to become a vanishing act set on loop.

The moonlight shone directly on her face, revealing all her faults and deceits. Rukia shivered, thinking she was being watched. Couldn't shrug the feeling off, quickened her pace. Left foot, right foot. Faster now.

Faster!

There was something heavy in the air, something rapacious and invasive. It called out to her, an echo mirroring her thundering heart. Stealthily it sought her out with a crippling need. Was a parasite, seeking to eat away at organs and gorge on blood till she suddenly dropped, pillaged and ravaged. It sought to consume her very soul.

A foreboding, rattling whisper of air skimmed the back of her neck.

She shrieked, skidded and tripped.

Quick, get up!

And she was running again, helter-skelter and slamming into brick walls and wooden fences. She felt every impact as if she were made solid and not a mere apparition. Battered and frantic, her body ached terribly. The empty roads of the human town stretched forth before her, longer and longer. No end in sight. Rukia risked a glance behind her, thinking it may be a Hollow hot on her tail. A cloud of ink-swathed darkness was all she saw.

The ground shook, her gaze swam in chaotic, turbulent frenzies. The world was spinning. Bracing against a flickering light pole, she tried to breathe past the growing ache of tender ribs. Her eyelids felt heavy, were drooping closed.

"Oh, dear! You don't look so good."

Rukia jumped and turned, poised to thrash out against hallucinations that came creeping out in the dark. Saw a blonde man instead, partially illuminated by streetlights and watching her curiously from beneath a striped bucket hat. A thin visible line revealed probing eyes, a white folding fan covered the rest of his face.

"W-who… are… y-you?!" she wheezed past painful lungfuls of air.

"Who, me?" he asked jovially, eyes twinkling playfully beneath shadows. "Oh, nobody important! Just a humble candy merchant!"

There was something off about him, in the way he was looking at her. Rukia shivered and begged her body to move, her legs to run once more—faster, leap higher and farther—to get away from him no matter what! Only her body was already failing, falling. That oppressive cloud cloaked her shoulders, licked at her spine, traced the shell of her ear as tangible as a ghost's embrace and a nightmarish love affair. Her skin prickled, breaths a haphazard symphony of distressed pants.

The blonde stranger moved straight for her, geta leisurely click-clacking across cold asphalt and cement pavement as she wondered how on earth she hadn't noticed his initial approach.

"S-stay… away… from me!" she gasped in alarm, trying to shift and crawl away.

Her body felt heavy. So very heavy.

Desperate, she summoned a Kidō blast and launched it at him. It was as weak and feeble as she felt. He easily flicked it away with a walking stick and an amused chuckle.

"Now, now, there's no need for any of that. I just want to help you. And free of charge, at that!"

He paused, standing above her. Pale yellow light illuminated his cloaked, shabby figure even as the shadows hanging around him grew thicker, more pronounced. And in his eyes was a streak of something appraising, contemplating. He eyed her as a fiend would a damsel in distress and burned her with an insatiable desire to corrupt.

"Well, that's not entirely true," he chuckled drily. "I do have one small, itty-bitty favour to ask. No such thing as a free lunch, after all."

Ignoring him she continued in her attempts to crawl away. The oppressive hold on her form had yet to abate. Rukia's skin crawled, sweat trickling down her back. He simply stared at her with a mad glint; a deranged eagerness to crack open ribs and read the naked muscle-billboard of her heart. To pierce through her skull in order to grasp some elusive holy grail of esoteric wisdom.

Her heart froze in terror.

Help! her mind screamed even as painful gasps left her lips. Kiyone! Someone, anyone! Please, help me!

Someone please get me away from this madman!

A growing, buzzing electric current joined the cloud of bone-crushing gravity in the air. Stuffy wisps of air thrashed fervently all around them. She turned her gaze just in time to see one of his hands petrify, resembling a morbid beast's claw.

Her gaze widened in horror, watching as he reached for something beneath the fold of the green jinbei he wore. A glittering jewel emerged amidst his fingers, iridescent and pulsing.

The voracious whispers that had trailed after her suddenly turned deafening and drowned her in a suffocating chorus. An incessant flux of deep Gregorian chants on rewind against the backdrop of harsh ancient rain dances. They ingrained themselves into her skin like invisible light-tattoos, a lustful bondage that vowed to never relinquish her soul. Overwhelmed by fear and panic, her gaze darkened.

She could no longer breathe.

"Well, well, well," he drawled in amazement, in untold satisfaction, as the orb began to glow brighter and brighter. Fan and shield relinquished, she noticed how forked his tongue was, papery-thin and crimson in insidious—hideous—delight.

"Looks like you'll prove useful to me after all, Kuchiki Rukia."

With an elated and wide and manic grin, his clawed hand descended upon her as she blacked out entirely.

. . .

When she opened her eyes once again she was standing, all alone, atop rolling mounds of infinite cumulus clouds.

Atop of the world.

They resembled undulating waves adorned by golden light as they rose and fell, drifting forever forward as far as the eye could see and over a dusty sunset vista.

Whispers still traced over her, echoed in her skull. She heard streams of infinite voices, pouring in wails. They spoke of the past and what would come. They muttered predictions and grand overarching theories that immediately vanished like the deceased and long-forgotten dreamers who'd weaved them.

A current of air picked up and breezed past her in reverse, shot through her and reduced her to a mere particle, a drifting aimless wisp on the cusp of disappearing completely amongst the rotating clouds.

Sound vanished, the vocal whispers turned weightless memories carried forth by surreal winds. Scattering across the four corners, all indistinct save one.

"…In a world absent of being, of soul and heart, only that which has neither remains."

In the drifting silence, she saw Aizen's glowing figure appear, staring out at the great magenta, lilac and golden hues of an encroaching eventide. Clouds were reduced to bright light blurs and drifted right past him. And then he was turning, staring right where she would have been with purple eyes and white irises.

God glanced her way and made her real once more. Pulled her back and emancipated her from a physical death. From nothing.

From nothingness emerged the fountain of life.

From the waters of life eternal, something was born.

Rukia stared at him, bewildered and on the cusp of a grand enlightening. The golden light was blinding. Her heart was screaming.

Teach me—

What it all means.

I want to know

Show me how.

Please!

Help me understand!

A lone finger hovered over his lips as they curled, masking secrets and enigmas with a furtive smile, just as the sight of him shattered into a million tiny shards, into light into dust, and truly became—

Nothing.

. . .

"You're distracted."

There was no admonishment in his tone or words, only a simple statement of fact.

His gaze hadn't left the board, didn't need to. Her placement of the stones was erratic and confused and in disarray. They told him all he needed to know with regards to her mental state.

Rukia released a heavy exhale, fighting back a full-body tremor. Her mind was clouded, a mystified haze. Her body an exhausted husk; it felt like she was suddenly carrying the weight of the world across delicate light-wings.

Her dreams had slowly morphed into a revolving carrousel of the strange, macabre and unknown. Carried too and exacted a heavy toll, silently demanding she surrender the last, the tiniest—hanging off, shredded—right down to the most insignificant bits of her that still kept her rooted and whole. Memories forgotten plagued her, moments unknown ravaged her. She could no longer discern truth from fiction, reality from fantasy.

She had finally lost her mind.

It had been days since she last slept; an anxious bid to stave off the budding pall of lunacy. To dispose the surfeit of a millennium's worth of prophetic riddles and confounded terrors. Her eyes were gloomy and dark, sunken. Skin turned taut and pale like old parchment covering the sickly flesh of corpses.

Absolved at night, she was plagued by day.

The visions still came to her, had her perpetually recollecting and obsessing over every shifting, moribund scene. A part of her desperately longed to tell Aizen everything she was seeing, to seek solace that only he could give. Yet she couldn't, not when she knew he was plagued by his own nameless afflictions. The furtive demons and meticulously hushed-up ails that, at times, made him recede further into himself and darkened his eyes as he gazed out past her. Out at nothing and into nowhere.

Still, there were times she imagined divulging everything. Falling into his arms, clinging onto his coat as she dragged him down with her into a deep glass-pool of endless dreams. Where they would disappear amidst a flurry of silver cosmic collisions and flying sparks. Into past and into future. Into somewhere and elsewhere.

Rukia closed her eyes as air swallowed a draft of guilt.

It was a selfish fantasy, but only ever a fantasy. She had already vowed never to exacerbate his burdens.

Picking up a shadowy stone, she placed it with a little more care and thought onto the board.

"Sorry," she whispered, gaze downcast. "I have a lot on my mind."

The silence stretched thick and heavy before his own stone came down with a soft clack.

"Tell me."

It was neither a demand nor an offer, more like a gentle persuasion. It caused her heart to thump tenderly even as she unconsciously worried at her lower lip, absently placing another stone. She was so very tempted to simply give in and divulge everything—

Temptation was a poison most potent, penetrating deep.

She couldn't, even at his insistence. Though….

Perhaps….

"Aizen," she entreated quietly, looking at him all reticent and uneasy through thick lashes, another why on the tip of her tongue.

One that cut deep, that haunted thoughts. It was a pain recurrent that had re-emerged with her recent dreams. From recollected words uttered once upon a time atop a lonely cliff that bruised with renewed strikes. Ominous, unexpected, and left her shuddering for a long-long time, blood left cold.

"Why am I still alive?"

His hand froze over the Go board, white stone suspended amid fingers. Slowly he looked up and saw all her vulnerabilities and fears reflected in violet-burnished, glassy eyes. Something wavered in his own gaze, but it was gone just as quickly as it came. His eyes were on the board once more.

Clack.

"That… is something I too have given considerable thought to. Unfortunately, an answer still eludes me."

The dismay at the lack of insight was fleeting, surprise over his admission overwhelming her instead. Hearing him affirm that she was a recurring constant in his thoughts, that she claimed some small part of him, had her insides fluttering all too sweetly.

"The fault though is entirely mine. Consequence of a grave oversight on my part," he admitted and she was suddenly staring at him with curious eyes.

"When you first became known to me there didn't appear to be anything out of the ordinary about you. Nothing remarkable with which to warrant much attention, your moonlight countenance and Gin's own debauched fascination notwithstanding. And yet, there was a whisper of something," he revealed with a faraway look in his dark eyes.

"Something surreptitious, something obscure. I brushed it aside, thought it a meddlesome distraction. Disregarded it with little care or thought and still it remained, a softly persistent chorus on the periphery of my mind. It became louder and more insistent the moment Urahara Kisuke placed the Hōgyoku inside you. Like a puzzle ripe with promise, begging to be deciphered."

"Why would that matter though?" she asked with a confused frown and a tempered disquiet against what he was steadily implying. "Didn't he just need a place to hide it?"

Her features contorted bitterly as she recalled their first encounter, utterly lost to her and the pages of time if not for a recent miasmic brush of sleep-divination. How that event had disappeared entirely from her mind she'd never know. The image of his thinly-veiled deceits and recondite smile burned her thoughts and amalgamated with the memory of their posthumous not-happenstance.

"Oh, dear! Looks like you're in quite a bit of trouble. Good thing I was in the neighbourhood! I can rent you a gigai, if you'd like? And at the best rate in town, guaranteed!"

He had been smiling then too.

She remembered his silhouette against the dim streetlights; was a shadow, wrapping its cunning mantle around her shoulders. It had beguiled her into amity.

It had murdered slyly.

Her eyes unwittingly narrowed, darkened; saw the event through a new lens that had her casting off a long-worn shroud of pacified obliviousness. The truth in all its bruising totality stared at her with ugly pupils and a menacing, crinkling mouth. A shrill ringing echoed in her ears and smothered all other sound. It took her several long seconds to realise Aizen was in the midst of a reply.

"…Upon further scrutiny various contradictions and inconsistencies arise. Urahara Kisuke was desperate to destroy his creation. There wasn't anything he wouldn't have attempted, no theory he wouldn't have tested, in order to see that outcome realised, post-haste. He'd already possessed the means with which to conceal the Hōgyoku within another's soul by the time he met you. That can only imply prior attempts had already been made. Other Shinigami, humans, Hollows; no imaginable option would have been overlooked."

His gaze met hers, quiet and pensive. "All that experimentation, all those countless souls. And yet, he only found success with you."

Rukia blinked slowly, a muted alarm slowly brewing. "What does that mean?"

"I cannot say. I imagine Urahara merely assumed certain conditions that could not be readily replicated without further analysis applied in your case; the state of your reiryoku, for instance. Or the age and quality of your soul. Any one such factor, any one out of a thousand and more different possibilities unique to you, would have been enough to generate a positive result where none had in the past. Such was a rationale a man like that would have deemed sufficient with little cause for further query."

"But that's not what you think?"

"Indeed. I'm not so short-sighted as to be confined to the limitations of a clinical methodology incapable of seeing beyond itself and bound solely to worldly phenomena. There are more things in Heaven and Earth than what can be seen and reasoned upon. The Hōgyoku finding its way within you wasn't something that could be reduced to mere causality or explained away as a chance event. I know, as I knew then, there was some substantive and purposeful meaning behind it. That it could only ever have been you to carry it. My instincts, that insistent whisper that haunted me, confirmed as much. I didn't have the luxury of time to adequately consider it then. Yet, even with the entirety of eternity ahead of us now, I lament the truth in its totality may still never see the light."

"None of this makes any sense!" she countered with a shuddering breath. There was a tremor in her voice she could not mask as she looked upon him haplessly. "I'm nothing. I'm no one. There's nothing extraordinary about me! I shouldn't matter!"

Her voice echoed in agony and mutilated, thoughtless fears as Rukia saw her life span unremarkably past her, scarring her with a dull edge.

Aizen's features were sympathetic. The tone of his voice placating.

"And yet you do, Kuchiki-san. Whatever you may think, whatever you may feel, you are so much more than nothing. You are, after all, so very much alive."

A harsh, throaty exhale left her lips. None of this was right, none of it was fair. Surely there had been others far worthier—to carry such a burden. And a part of her was sinking, dark currents overflowing, submerging her in ineffable, hurting guilt and dreads. Desperate she fought against them, swam for the surface, tried to breathe underwater, only for the roaring waves to drag her further down.

Futilely, she grasped at something.

"The Hōgyoku," she managed after a long torturous silence. "What role… does it play in all this? Why does so much revolve around it? I remember you saying it only dissolved the barrier between Shinigami and Hollow."

Silently, she hoped for some revelation. For veils to unravel and some sense to emerge.

"That was Urahara Kisuke's desire when creating it. I later came to discover its true power is in fact the ability to manifest the desires of all those near it. Whatever the heart wants and wills, whatever the mind hopes and dreams, the Hōgyoku sees and knows all. It is a guiding force; an aid with which one's deepest desire is materialised, so long as one possesses the requisite strength to see it realised."

Rukia blinked long and slow at that. Something tugged at her consciousness, a nagging elusive recollection shrouded in obscure night. Her mind was a rotating whirl of ghostly familiarity teetering close to déjà vu. Somewhere, sometime, she'd heard something formed of similar words. But like a fleeting waft of lilac-grey smoke, it maddeningly weaved and breezed beyond her grasp.

"Urahara may have lacked vision, may have been incapable of seeing beyond such simplistic notions as Shinigami and Hollow, but he was still instinctively drawn to the whispered parables of the highest of highs. Of the will to surpass mortal limits, to go above and beyond, to elevate oneself from worldly impurities to a state of blessed perfection. The Hōgyoku is a bridge upon such a path. It unburdens the soul, allows it to overcome and makes it whole, like a rope of deliverance over an abyss. It is the Magnum Opus, aiding in the creation of man by and of himself, the entire conquest of his faculties and his future… the perfect emancipation of his will."

Suddenly hypnotised, he easily drew her in. Dissuaded from clandestine concerns, she hung on his every word. The droning spectacular philosophies far greater than anything she'd previously known. She wanted them burned into her mind, memorised like endless sutras. She longed to understand them by heart.

"Our goal is transcendent, for we are celestial beings, Kuchiki-san. The better part of us is created as something angelic according to the image of God. Within our soul there is a divine spark that longs to be freed. That seeks escape from this corporeal contagion of shadows and dust."

To emphasise the point he scooped a handful of ash with an outstretched hand, watching it slip through his fingers and carried off by languid winds.

"If man has one destiny, it is to reach greater heights. To go beyond this world. To see the stars and the clouds of Heaven shining beneath his feet. And so too he must be prepared to suffer for it. To move even mountains in his climb upwards. No hardship can be too burdensome, no adversity too perilous. If the universe should prove infinite, he must be prepared to cut it in half with his ascension."

His gaze trailed off, his tone turned all the more reflective. Trapped, engrossed, Rukia stared—blank in her eye—as he redefined the world.

"Indeed, existence is seductive in its suffering… in how it tests us, challenges us. Its afflictions are only temporary evils yet wholly good in effect and, forever and always, short cuts to greater perfection. Only at the end of every trial is our worth made known, our growth and wisdom shined upon, and the virtue of our choices and actions case for our—"

He suddenly stopped. Something reflected in his eyes; a bright grandiose flash, like a clash of thunder ringing deaf, that struck him stunned and still. The Go board vanished amidst the thickening silence.

Pulled from her own enchantment, Rukia blinked away lingering fascinations and escalating confusions on what had overcome him. His name was on the tip of her tongue, a bid to pull him back from floating, poignant thoughts. She watched as his eyes dimmed in quiet reverie aimed at the dimming skies and bright horizon streak. Time halted. Slowly, quietly, he withdrew into himself, deep into a pensive refuge somewhere hidden.

His heart captured, mind thwarted.

The silence demanded no interruption.

Deferent, Rukia stilled her tongue.

. . .

His sword came at her lightning-fast.

It pierced the air and her flesh. Rukia swallowed a cry, refused to allow her body to burn itself up and disperse in smoke. As always there was relief to be found in the familiar currents of pain; a merciful distraction from tenuous thoughts and a reminder of her persevering mortality. So she immersed herself in it, pushed back against him as her veins smouldered and limbs protested, push and strike. For a split-second she was faster, shockingly, retaliating with a wide horizontal swing. It caught his shirt with a clean slice as he made to dodge and jump back.

They stared at each other across the distance, anticipation thick and swords poised to swing at any moment. Aizen broke contact first, eyes flicking down to examine—confirm—the damage. A red cut peeked out beyond the thin tear.

Happiness and excitement bloomed deep within her. She'd finally reached him, even if only with the tips of her fingers.

When he looked up at her once more his lips curled, his eyes burned.

They scalded her with their eagerness, the unfettered satisfaction and something deeper still. A streak of something transient yet painfully familiar; it was something she had caught reflected in her brother's stoic gaze a handful of times.

Pride.

Her breath caught in her throat, her heart thumped with intense staccato beats in response. His gaze ignited something within her and painted her cheeks red.

And then he was moving, quick and all of a sudden, darting straight for her in a burst of brilliantly burnished lilac-gold light. Swords clashed, the air crackled. Rukia matched him blow for furious blow in the span of several bruising seconds before he caught her, had her twirling and falling. Heavy, the ground dragged her down, down on her back amidst the turgid leftover ashes. She felt bruised and broken and all the more alive. Above her, Aizen sheathed his blade. Their lesson concluded.

"That's enough for today."

"No," she breathed out, heart and head pounding, adrenaline coursing her veins. "I can keep going."

There was a fire burning bright inside her that could not be quenched.

"Are you sure?" he asked, tone cautious. Falling to one knee next to her his hand descended. Fingers brushed back fine black hair before his palm pressed delicately against her forehead. It took everything within her not to lean up and into it. "You look feverish."

"I'm sure," she sighed, voice uncharacteristically deep and husky.

He studied her carefully, dubious yet on the cusp of relenting.

"Very well."

Casting a healing Kidō, mending cuts and bruises with the ease of inhaling and exhaling air, he offered his hand. She eagerly took it, allowing him to hoist her up. Readying his sword he indicated for them to begin. Again.

Heady on memory aches and drunk on her prior accomplishment—and something more—she lunged straight at him. Fast and furious and blade screeching. In that moment she had no weaknesses. Aizen easily dodged, parried. Again and again. Deflected every blow she sent his way. Rukia kept up the assault, was relentless.

Was overcome by a sudden spur of nameless madness yet couldn't cease.

The clash of blades set off a pounding in her skull mirroring her frenzied heart. A deep escalating chant. Aizen's sword whistled a whisper's breath over her head as she dodged, narrowly missing her neck. She retaliated with a slash and sword glistening white, sweep and slice, and caught the retreating edge of his coat.

They continued to trade blows and strikes in a blazing, frenzied dance as the world immolated a second time all around her. Fire licked her skin, filled her lungs. In beat, in chaotic grace, she twirled 'round and 'round in time with the tune he intoned. The booming incantation in her very soul. Everything wavered and swam, a bleeding scene, like she was plummeting down precipices fittingly embodying a woman possessed. The feeling would not subside. So much so she thought she might just die—

So came the fall.

Beyond the stuffy cloud that was her mind she felt her body sinking. In a shower of ashes as everything evaporated. Brave and serene, she descended into a lake of fire.

Baptised herself.

And dragged Aizen down with her. Down, down in a heated cadence of a glorious rebirth.

She was on her back, ribs and chest rising and falling in unholy undulating ripples along with her silent pants. Her lungs ached; painful, like their first time drawing in air. Aizen hovered over her, hands propping him up and keeping him from any further descent. Quietly still, he merely stared at her. His eyes shone in enigmatic wonder. Rukia felt something bloom deep within her. Lulling, it encroached, pouring throbbing waves into her heart.

Time stopped.

The chanting ceased.

Like a spell broken and she was suddenly moving, was raising her head and closing the arm's length distance between them.

Softly, her lips met his.

. . .

No thought consumed her mind. No real inclination or intent.

Only a fluttering weightless need carried over by leftover dreams. An intimate knowledge, an intuitive bliss felt only at the most unconscious hour.

It compelled her forward, quick and before her mind could catch up with her. It drove her to kiss him. Daintily, nearly shyly.

Rukia simply placed her lips against his as everything fell into place. It was the culmination of everything she had long denied and wanted, dreaded and hoped for, all rolled into one. She immersed herself in the foreign sensation, in how right it felt. The choice entirely hers, a spite against destiny itself.

The moment spanned long and slow, made all the more tangible with every passing second. At some point she pulled away, lowering her head and gazing bashfully up at him. Aizen merely stared back, eyes wide. His form was frozen stiff and still, heavy with the miasma of shock, of unexpected whims. His mind appeared to be whirling at dizzying speeds, jittery like a trapped butterfly, trying to comprehend what had just occurred.

Rukia inwardly smiled, thrilled at the knowledge she'd incapacitated him so. That she'd found any such chink in his armour when none had existed before.

That she'd made him all the more human.

In that single moment she imagined she could string him by a thread, move him like a marionette. Wound him, destroy him. She could do anything she wanted, and he would look at her with those astonished idol-eyes and a wonder unravelled.

So she kissed him. Again.

She brushed lips against his throat, moved up along the length of his jaw. She felt the muscle there strain and quiver.

One swipe, that's all it took to kill a man.

Found his lips once more, her own moving tentatively, seeking, teetering against them with light ghost strokes. White, soft, and blurred.

It was enough to break him entirely.

And all of a sudden Aizen was kissing her back. It had none of her delicacy or reticence. None of her innocence. Aizen kissed her hot-blooded and full of want, his mouth open against hers, his tongue hot and demanding as he claimed the very breath in her lungs. She gasped into it, overwhelmed. Was intoxicated by the dark taste of him, hot and electric like a cosmic pyre.

It burned her raw and breathless.

Fingers pulled her hair, pulled her head back, fingers gripped and pulled her hips to his. She tugged at his coat, at white layers. Wordlessly she demanded something she couldn't wholly understand.

Astutely, he deciphered her silent pleas.

One of his hands left the lines of her body, fingers tracing the ground beside her. She felt the ground shift, transformed, made all the more soft. She was suddenly sinking in a sea of silk.

Large hands trailed downwards. Untied her obi, unravelled scant fears and hopes on the brink of fulfilment. Slowly he peeled away her shihakushō. Layer by layer, he bared her raw. Relinquishing her lips, he pulled away and looked down at her. His heavy gaze left ghosting burns over her naked figure, over every dip and curve and plane. He painted her scarlet as he kneeled over her, still clad in white.

Rukia matched his gaze without a flinch, eyes half-lidded in their clouded fervour, weighted by an insistent, burning want. In the pools of his dark eyes she saw herself reflected, a brilliant resurrection amidst holy lakes.

Enthralled, his hand descended. Did away with the final layer as he freed her hair from its silky noose with one lone pull. His eyes never left hers.

"Beautiful," he uttered.

The honesty of that one word burned her deeper than anything else.

Moving once more he pressed a hand to the flat of her stomach, felt the way it tremored and rippled beneath his palm with every shuddering breath, eyes watching her carefully. Cataloguing every reaction, studying every expression with silent fascination. A shiver came over her. His intense scrutiny shifted to her body, something reverent in the way his fingers traced the bottom curve of her breast and the taut pink flesh of a nipple.

Slowly he moved his hands, fingers dancing along her ribs, sliding like crimson waters down the curves of her hips, along the slopes of her thighs. Rukia shuddered, felt something coiling, twisting, in her stomach. His reiatsu vibrated against her skin, a delicious thrum that had her swallowing an involuntary moan.

Dipping his head low, he went in for a taste. Kissed her neck, tracing a hot tongue over her pulse. Moved to her breast. Nipped. Had her hissing, a sharp exhale as he teased the bud with tongue and teeth, and drew from her a dragged out—drugged black—whine. Simultaneously one of his hands travelled down, down, down, and right in between her legs. A finger trailed her nether lips and her back was arching in surprise.

He liked the involuntary judder of her hips, the twitch to the muscles of her thighs. She could tell from the way his grip tightened against her, dull fingernails that threatened to break pale skin, the way he pushed her thighs wider to fit closer in between her legs. His mouth and tongue wandered lower, down over her taught stomach, along the jut of her hipbone.

"Aizen," she whispered as he went down.

Everything distorted and curved around them and he was a whiplash of wind finding its way around her. Aizen's mouth found her clit and she felt the world shift from its axis.

"Don't move," he ordered hotly, darkly, as he pinned down her bucking hips.

The coil in her stomach tightened all the more at the tone of his voice.

Exposed before him, longing heated her skin, flushed her face, as his mouth and tongue worked skillfully against her. Her head was rolling, delirious. Slowly he inserted a long finger, like an experienced seeker, and she cried out. Felt the rising moistness against the foreign intrusion. Deeper, in, but still not deep enough. She moaned wantonly and she felt him smile against her. It made her shudder.

Her breaths were short and shallow. Another finger disappeared within her, a dull ache as they slid in and out, smooth and silky before being replaced once more by his tongue. His lips sucked her—teased, tormented—as fingers played with her folds, rubbing at the tight little nub of ecstatic nerve endings.

She sobbed his name as something built within her, the coil tightening. Felt him hum deep in his throat in pleasure and the world was little more than white, hot, and electric stars. A breathless ascent, a dizzying descent. She writhed in his grasp, cried out as he finally sent her over the edge.

Panting hot and heavy, Rukia slowly came down from her high. When she opened her eyes she was greeted by the obscene sight of him licking his fingers clean, heavy gaze locked on hers. The weight of it, the unspoken implications carried by it, pierced her scorching and deep and had her looking away.

"No," Aizen said, her chin in a hand as he manoeuvred her face forward again. "I want your eyes on me. For everything."

Her stomach clenched around his words as they burned her skin redder still.

Compelled, her gaze remained frozen on him as he began to undress, layer after layer. Her mouth was dry and wet, her breaths both stilled and feverish as he slowly revealed himself to her. Her heart was pounding, her stomach fluttering as her eyes trailed down the length of him, the familiar muscled contours. When they finally landed on his large, engorged erection her lips parted on a shaky exhale and all thoughts disintegrated entirely.

Her mind was empty and static and yet she knew all too well what came next: the highest high. So Rukia reached out for it—him.

There was no climb anymore. She had reached an apex.

Aizen took her hand, entwined their fingers and his body was sliding against hers, settling between her thighs, pressing her down into imaginary sheets. She was amazed how perfectly he fit against her despite his much larger frame. So her legs spread, wrapped around him of their own volition, her hips rolling against his in silent invitation. Suppressing a shudder Aizen kissed her, all tongue and teeth and unceasing want. The taste of her melded with the dark taste of him, had her moaning hotly into the chaotic kiss. When they parted his forehead came to a rest against hers, lips skimming, their mouths open and it was more that he was breathing her in than seeking to kiss her again.

"Tell me you want this," he exhaled.

Rukia could only moan his name, his length hot and pulsing against her core, teasing her entrance.

"Tell me," he insisted, voice deep and breathy. His dark eyes latched onto hers, demanded an answer. He wouldn't move, wouldn't cross that barrier until she gave him her assent.

"I want this," she whispered, speaking truth. She would never want this more than in that one single moment.

Moving her lips gently against his, she gave him her complete trust and perfect surrender. "I want you. Take me. I'm yours."

His eyes darkened even more, never left hers as he dragged her hips against him, as he struck a match, inundated with the knowledge he would be her first.

Her last.

Her only.

With one clean, swift motion Aizen thrust completely inside her. Rukia gasped, a strangled scream in her throat. Felt the rage and the salve, the tears and the silk, the boom of the sun and the motion of the planets. The greatest ecstasy, the most exquisite slice of pain.

Aizen sheathed himself inside her and translated the universe.

Everything was still, so still, for the longest moment as they simply gazed at one another. Her breaths were a heavy chorus, his measured and deep as he grasped at control. And then, slowly, he began to move. Lost in the friction, the fullness, Rukia shivered against him, the flare of pain already a dull burn. Head tossed back, long hair pooled out in disarray, she felt her body steadily igniting. Slowly, slowly. It wasn't enough. She needed more, tried to move with him, beseeched him wordlessly with lust-filled eyes and parted lips, a litany of moans and pants.

Watching her closely he picked up speed, elevated the stakes. She recoiled, a wave of bliss spreading from her core all over. Muscles clenching, fist tight as she bit into the ridges of knuckles, her other hand gracing his neck, chest heaving, an explosion in the air. She cried out, her back bowed, shot with intensified pressure.

Bright white, shining like moonlight.

Aizen held her by hip and waist, kept her body arched above the ground as he continued to thrust into her as she rode the tides of her orgasm. Beyond the haze of a white ascent she could feel him, thick and long and deliciously painful inside her, and she cried out with every snap of his hips. The building crescendo, harder and faster and unrelenting.

"Oh… God… Aizen!" she gasped as the pressure began to mount again, tears in her eyes from the escalating intensity of it all. "I… I…!"

"Yes, that's it. Stay with me, now."

His reiatsu traced her figure like a scorching finger. Across her sides, over her breasts, and down, down along her abdomen until it was rubbing harsh circles on her clit. Her cries turned endemic. Her walls were clenching as she writhed under him, her back bowing up even further, her skinny frame one with his as he finally brought down her hips, held her down, wrapping one of her legs about his waist.

"Come with me," he breathed.

Angling his thrusts, increasing his rhythm his hips pushed forward and grazed her at a high. At the most glorious of spots that had her seeing stars. Her fingers dug into his back as she screamed into the side of his neck. He persisted, relentless, as his lips sought hers, kissing her hungrily.

"Now," he whispered against her mouth as he filled her to the brim with a low growl deep in his throat, eyes never leaving hers. Never relinquishing, never forsaking.

Grip tight and bruising on her hips, he filled her with his reiatsu and release. A brilliant burst of liquid fire that scorched her core, inside out. It undid her. The tension snapped, drowning her in waves of unholy light.

With a cry she came with him, head tipped back, throat bared. Tight around him, shuddering.

White. The world was white once more.

Lax and boneless beneath him, Rukia breathed deep, staring up past his shoulder at pale empty skies with glassy eyes as her mind and being descended from dizzying summits. Her body ached in all the right ways, heart a fluttering frenzied mess, even with the lingering battle of two opposing, crushing forces weighing heavily on her subconscious—

right and wrong and want and need

good and evil and life and death

now and never and today and tomorrow

god and human and man and woman and bone and flesh

him and her and her and him—

Aizen's face filled her sight, his frame overwhelming her. He was looking down at her with unmatched wonder once more. Fingers tracing her neck, cupping her cheek. Fixated, she could not look away. His lips met hers once more, moved against them languidly, softly. Sweeter than any kiss prior. Again they stole the breath from her lungs.

He kissed her like a man on the cusp of life and not-life. Of God slipping into a tender realm, a realm of tangible frailty. Of death.

The little death now.

The forever death in the future.

Rukia gently kissed him back through the dimming haze of her climax, the encroaching lull and unavoidable sleep. The midnight prophesy. The world dimmed and her thoughts stilled. He'd taken all the air in her lungs.

Was all the more mortal now.

. . .

She was floating on the edge of dreams and wakefulness.

The world was slipping away until only the vague outline of a softly solid mass remained.

Rukia clung to it, curled into it, breathed it in. Was inundated by the scent of petrichor, the humidity of late summer rains. Of early autumn leaves. It enveloped her in its misty haze and bathed her in gentle sunlight.

She sighed, content. Tightened her hold.

A warm male chuckle echoed in the distance and something brushed against her forehead, soft and ethereal and resembling ghost lips. Soothing in its delicacy as she drifted off into a world of quiet—far too quiet—dreams once more.

When she finally awoke her mind was a listless haze, quiet and slow and lost in infinity.

It was a long time before her thoughts caught up with her senses. Slowly, she took note of the tender ache between her legs. The dull bruises on her hips and thighs. The satisfying feeling of fullness and completion.

The warm mound of skin she was pressed up against.

Like a theatre piece unfolding in slow-motion in her mind, with the sound all distorted and the faces all blurred, Rukia remembered—everything. Felt hands and lips on her neck, breasts and thighs. Against the most intimate part of her. And him, Aizen, above her, inside her. Wholly one with her.

She blushed, couldn't help it, replaying the scene over and over and over again as it became all the more vivid, embedding the sensations and sounds and rushes felt deep in her heart and mind.

Gradually, her thoughts shifted to the present. To the man beside her. He was lying on his back, her arm splayed across the ridges of his abs, leg curled over his pelvis, her head resting comfortably just above his all-too-real heart. She could hear the steady beat of it, the even cadence of his breaths. Could feel the languid rise and fall of his chest. An arm was wrapped around her, held her close, hand possessively gripping her waist even in the black tides of unconsciousness.

This isn't a dream, she told herself as she catalogued every vivid sensation. Was all too real and not at all make-believe, and her heart fluttered happily in confirmation.

She was happy, she steadily realised in mute amazement, recognising the emotion filling her core with buzzing warmth for what it was. For the first time in so long a time, happiness bloomed deep within her; wasn't some impossibly tossed dream over the sky. All because of him. Him, Aizen Sōsuke. Only through him damnation had a cessation, tragedy a suspension, grief an absolution.

Him. There, right beside her. Existing and breathing and really….

She allowed the thought to trail off, looking up at him, patient and curious, and studied his unassuming expression as he slept. He looked peaceful, more peaceful than she'd ever seen him. A thought suddenly struck her: that she was the cause of his current tranquillity. Of a serenity that diminished all severity, the entirety of their austere and hellish and rueful destiny.

She'd eased his sorrows, alleviated his burdens, for a moment in time. Had managed to drag him down into a tangible gratifying ease, just as he had for her.

Rukia felt a spark in her core, thrilled she had finally managed to do something for him. Felt her entire body light up as she sunk deeper into his embrace, eyes still fixated on his face. Out of amazement and curiosity. Seeing Aizen so unguarded was a rarity that transcended all probability, and she wanted to savour the sight—for her alone—for as long as possible.

"It's unbecoming to stare, Kuchiki-san."

She almost jumped at the interrupted reverie, the deep timbre of his voice. His eyes were still closed, features still a picture of unblemished contentment. Despite his words he didn't seem all that bothered by her blatant gaping.

She bit her lower lip, trying to stifle a wide smile. "Sorry."

Only she wasn't, not in the slightest. Despite her efforts a smile bloomed across her face, had all the hallmarks of a coy and perfectly lithe—lethal—coquette. Narrowly opening one eye, Aizen gave her a look as if daring her to be embarrassed. She bit her lip again, this time to ward off a giggle. She didn't miss the way his eyes, both open and heavy-lidded, lingered on her mouth. His grip tightened about her waist and her stomach coiled. In anticipation. In longing and vivid memory.

God… she wanted him. Wanted to feel his lips on hers again.

In the next second he had seamlessly flipped her onto her back. She yelped, almost playful, anticipating his frame to overwhelm her once more. She was surprised to see him settling beside her instead, temple resting on a closed fist as he looked down at her, his other arm splayed over her, hand resting softly against her hip.

"How do you feel?" he asked. The note of caution, the undercurrent of hesitancy, wasn't lost on her. It sobered her completely.

"…Good," she replied after a serious pause, wanting to relay only the absolute truth in the simplest way possible.

He studied her carefully, searched her face, looked deep into her eyes for any tell. For any sign she was being anything but truthful. She held his stare with an honesty bright and resolute shining through.

"Good," he finally exhaled with a small smile, the relief palpable in his voice. In the way his entire being appeared to visibly relax and unwind from invisible constrictions and knotted tensions.

Surprise had come naturally to her, and his seeming concern for someone other than himself would have been cause to set her off course, dizzying and jolting and speechless. Once, long ago. Now he no longer surprised her. She looked forward to his curious shifts like changes in the seasons, cataloguing them carefully.

Slowly, she learned to understand him by heart.

His smile disappeared and he was quietly watching her again. His features were a blank canvas, revealed nothing. She felt slightly restless and fought the growing impulse to squirm beneath a gaze that seemed to utterly expose and scorch her beneath the thinly disguised veil of skin whilst simultaneously reducing her to a non-existent phantom drowning on air. Unwittingly, a chorus of insecurities emerged.

"Do you… regret what happened?" she whispered hesitantly, eyes flicking to and from his face, fearing his reply. If he did…. With a deep inhale she fought the abrupt urge to flee, to fly, to dash off and disappear entirely.

Aizen blinked, was brought back to the now. Beneath the mid-morning light, outlined by a brilliant invisible sun, hair tousled and shot by wind he gave her a long perplexed look. A look that wordlessly relayed: that's my line.

"I've already told you, I'm not the kind of man to be overwhelmed by such a notion. Nothing happened that I didn't want to happen."

She smiled to herself as a flood of relief that she would never readily admit came over her. And yet, he was still looking at her—over and beyond her—in that strange, abstract way. Why?

It was a long time before he spoke again. "Still, I never actually anticipated such an eventuality…."

Her curious gaze found his, saw his eyes darken over in lightning flashes and her insides clenched as if struck. His long fingers grazed her thigh in practiced motions, thumb drawing languid circles over her hipbone. She sighed. Was reduced to an instrument as he worked her with experienced hands.

Fingers brushed against her slick skin, delved deep. She released a moan, long and slow, hips rolling. Wanting more, more. He finally moved over her and she was overwhelmed by the scent of petrichor once more. She inhaled deep, sharply, imagined rain puddles and trickling streams and misty streaks of sunlight and his fingers moving against her, dancing up, beads of water dotting her skin like translucent pearls.

Fingers snaked around her neck with paradoxical intimacy, a brush of green leaves and white flowers. His eyes never left hers. There was no fear to be found within her. No pain as he gave her throat a gentle squeeze. His other hand was already spreading her thighs.

"Surprising me is a rare feat, Kuchiki Rukia. I hope you're prepared to take responsibility for what you've set in motion."

His tone was thick and heavy, as seductive as velvet night. His smirk imperious; caustic and saccharine. Her heart beat like thunder in response, her breaths morphing into faint bursts and quivering exhales. She arched against him, wet and ready and wanting. Finally, he drove deep inside her.

Rukia deliriously cried out. Shrill, she sung him proud.

Aizen moved perfectly within her, remade her anew as she conquered the recondite knowledge of immortals—

as he conquered her, garnering her divine trust, a celestial spine twitching to be snapped.

Bright light burst behind her eyes as he made her heart sing, again and again.

The world was beautiful that day.

---

First time writing smut. Let me know how you like it? I'm more comfortable waxing philosophical so these are entirely uncharted waters lol. I definitely would have preferred something more vague and figurative but as long as all of you, dear readers, enjoyed it then my work here is done.

Thank you as always for the feedback and engagement. I greatly appreciate it all! Sad to say the next chapter won't be out for some time as I have to stop procrastinating uni work. Hopefully the length and content of this one will make up for the forthcoming wait. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and I'll see you all again (hopefully) at some point early Q2 next year!