Right now, Aizen sits with Keigo Asano, and they stare one another down.
"So," Aizen begins from his throne, as Keigo stands among the bodies of slain Arrancar guards, zanpakutou in hand, "Have you come to quell the rebellion early?"
"No," Keigo states, and there isn't a trace of the goofiness Ichigo or any of his friends have seen so far. "No, Aizen. I've come to talk. Fighting would be useless for how evenly matched we are."
The Lord of Las Noches smirks slightly, and stands from his stolen throne, walking towards the much younger-appearing man. "A prime time to visit, King of Soul Society. It's been difficult to track you down, but then again, I was expecting such. But hiding in the human world? It must have been mind numbing, no?" He breezes past Keigo without concern, and Asano sheathes his zanpakutou with a humph and follows at Aizen's back.
"Slightly. Humans are a shameful, disgusting lot. I hear you've been trying to kill me?" He quirks a brow, and Aizen smirks still.
"Your throne has been empty for far too long. Why do you not return to it and rule, as you should?"
"Because of a tip that I would be assassinated in due time," Keigo states, in monotone. "The Zeroth Division's Captain and Lieutenant Captain came with me to settle in this new identity." Aizen chuckles slightly here, glancing back now and again.
"The Captain? Isshin Kurosaki, you meant? And the Lieutenant was Kisuke Urahara, correct?" He queries, lightly, and Keigo sighs under his breath.
"How did you find that information out?" He asks Aizen, as they pass through a blank white hallway and into Aizen's private chambers. Regal. Gaudy. Aizen sits down and has a servant Arrancar pour them tea.
"It did take me a few centuries to surmise that you were even gone from the throne, much less the presence of your Zeroth guards," Aizen speaks from behind the lip of his cup, a serene expression on his face. "But after I did, then it was no small wonder who they were. An elaborate plan to save the King's life, centuries, almost millennia in the making. Amazing planning." After another sip, and then one very brief one, Aizen glances back to Keigo and speaks again. "Now, what did you stroll into enemy territory to discuss with me, Asano?"
Keigo sets down his teacup after a very, very brief sip, and looks into Aizen's eyes. "I'm here to negotiate a truce."
"A truce?" His counterpart queries, raising a brow as if wondering about Keigo's honesty. "And why would we do that? What do you offer that would be worth ending the war and relinquishing the chance at winning your throne?"
After a moment, Keigo looks out the window, and then back to Aizen. "It's safe to say that you'll never just give up on attaining my throne. I offer something different. A temporary armistice until we agree to resume the war, when our troops are bolstered again. I am very aware of how Kurosaki Ichigo is tearing through your ranks, but the shinigami's numbers are dwindling as well. A span of a millennium, in which we may train our new soldiers, and then finish the war then. My offer to seal this deal of ours?" He pauses, almost as if he doesn't want to say the next line, and then says with a breathy sigh, "The souls of the shinigami and Quincy that I accompanied. Take them, do with them what you like, make them into soldiers to destroy us with later on; do as you please." He looks back up to Aizen, and asks, "Is that acceptable?"
After a moment, Aizen smiles in a devious way at Keigo. "You sacrifice the allies you know well? That is very cold, King."
Keigo's hand tightens into a fist, before relaxing. "I do what I must to protect the Soul Society, even if it comes at a personal sacrifice. Their sacrifices will not be in vain."
After a moment, Aizen steeples his fingers under his chin, closing his eyes. He then opens them again,smiling at Asano. "Very well then; the terms of this armistice sound acceptable. I will have a Gargantua opened to return you back to the Living World, and from there, you may inform Isshin Kurosaki of how you sacrificed his son to me. Will you enjoy telling his sisters that you gave his life to me to save yourself?" He goads, but Keigo closes his eyes and stands from the table, walking past Aizen and to the window to watch, a silent guardian.
"Isshin Kurosaki and I...have already...discussed the events. It pains him greatly, but I know where his loyalties lie, and so does he. Ichigo Kurosaki is a martyr in the fullest definition of the word." He responds, solemnly, as Aizen chuckles in his throat.
"Martyr? No; a sacrificial lamb. Why do you think I left the shinigami ranks? You're all too jingoistic for your own good. Sacrificing your own so easily, for nothing but the cause."
Keigo does not answer.
Hichigo turns a corner in Las Noches' white expanse, sand in his hair and blood on his clothes. That's fine though; he knew he was going to get bloody, one way or another. And so when he drips blood with every step, it's no problem because the blood isn't his. He'll have Orihime soon, he's sure of it, and once he does, he'll leave this piece of shit dimension and spirit her away to the human world again. He'll disappear from Seireitei's focus, drop this whole hollow hunting aspect of his life, and enjoy the rest of his life. Even if Orihime grows a spine and leaves him, which won't be for a good long while if Ichigo's memory serves correctly, then she can fucking rot in a ditch for all he cares; there are prettier women, better girls, easier sluts out there that'd be more than happy to cater to his whims.
When he stops at the foot of a long staircase, preparing to head up onto a higher level and hunt Inoue's reiatsu down, he stares, blankly, at the figure standing in the doorway at the top. Vivid green eyes, a godawful, emotionless stare; it's that prick Ulquiorra, one hell of a bastard that Hichigo has a score to settle with.
"Ulquiorra!" He points Zangetsu at the Arrancar, aping Ichigo's every natural reaction, tone of voice, everything. Ulquiorra...doesn't react. After a moment, he stares longer and waits for Hichigo to do something, waits for an inclination to attack.
"You are not Ichigo Kurosaki." He drawls in his natural monotone, and Hichigo raises his eyebrows. How could Ulquibitch tell? Probably some hollow shit, he decides. And so Hichigo, seeing that it is just the two of them, smirks viciously.
"No shit, Sherlock. Ichigo's toppled off his throne and broke his crown; King's down for the count, and it's the steed's time to play. But man," He laughs, derisively, "You're the first one to actually fucking get it! Grimmjow, that dumb shit, didn't realize 'til the moment he fucking died that it wasn't Kurosaki he was fighting. That creepy spoon fucker didn't get it either, and neither did that little brat that turned into a full-sized bitch. Eh," He shrugs, keeping his now golden-black eyes on Ulquiorra, who seems detached, unaffected, almost bored, "Doesn't matter. They're all dead anyway."
Ulquiorra stares a moment longer, before speaking in his naturally laconic manner. "And why did you come?"
Shirosaki quirks a brow, again, and spits, "Because I'm gonna fuck Inoue, why the hell else? Well, I did want to off Kuchiki and Abarai and that fucking Quincy, so there was more than one reason why I came, but mainly, to fuck Inoue." His snide expression drops, his voice becomes Ichigo's again; booming and heroic and full of all the self-confidence that a human WMD can have. "I'm going to rescue her, like I should have five years ago." The real Ichigo seems to retract with guilt, pain; Hichigo smirks inwardly, but keeps his expression determined. It's now that he really gets a good look at Ulquiorra, and realizes just how...elegant the Espada looks. Long pianist's fingers, eyes such a bright, lurid shade of green as to be striking, almost painful to even look at, and the stiff, robotic and generally lifeless air about him doesn't diminish the almost lachrymal charm he has wrapped around him like a stifling blanket.
'Ichigo, stop checking out Cifer,' Hichigo snaps, inwardly, and Ichigo doesn't have the energy to argue over who exactly is the one making them look at Ulquiorra so closely right now. Something broils in his heart that almost tastes like jealousy, and Hichigo wonders why. He shoves the idea away when Ulquiorra draws his zanpakutou, and takes a step forward. He disappears after that, and Hichigo instinctively blocks a sword heading for the back of his neck, as the battle begins.
The Hueco Mundo moon hangs heavy and backwards over their heads, as the masked Hichigo clashes with Ulquiorra, now in his Murcielago form. Who's winning? Hichigo is. He's too strong for even Ulquiorra; now in complete control of Ichigo, and not even bothering to keep the nice guy charade up, he's a killing machine, howling with laughter as he slashes at the Cuarta. Their battle is only describable with the word 'titanic'.
Ulquiorra, as Tensa Zangetsu slashes a moderate gouge in his shoulder a half second before he can slip out of range, remains stoic. Does he now know what love is, like all the dime romance novels extol of the hero, facing grinning death, would experience epiphenomena? Does he now fear to lose the woman that had been left on the floors below them, as he and a demon fight on Las Noches' roof? Does he fear at all?
No.
This is not a romance novel; his life is not piteous enough for reality to accommodate him in that. He is still stoic, unmovable emotionally; the idea of there ever being a time when he can lay in bed with Orihime and stroke her waist, and admonish, "Darling, darling I want you," and she sigh "Yes, yes my love," such silly notions are never going to happen. He will do his duties until the day he is cut down, and he will not tell her that he loves her because he does not. There is something akin to possessiveness, a hollow urge to dominate and own her completely, but there is no love, not even now when he faces murder at the hands of a devil hiding in a former flame's skin, a monster that wishes to abuse Orihime in ways Ulquiorra could name with a cool efficiency.
There is no lament over this, though. Because, despite Hichigo's abrasive nature being completely polar opposite to his own mechanical efficiency, they're really no different from one another.
A blade whistles through the air, and black blood, of an acidic nature, lands on their clothes and begins to sizzle quietly. Ulquiorra knows when he's lost, and this moment is when the blade of Zangetsu carves him from shoulder to hip. Not enough to separate the two halves of his body, but enough to render him unable to continue the battle. They've been fighting for hours, it feels like, or maybe just a few minutes. Ulquiorra has lost, and he doesn't regret because he is unable to.
Hichigo stands before him, smirking so wide that it's almost a grotesque snarl in the low moonlight, and when he slashes Ulquiorra the hollow's black blood splatters across his front and onto his face. It burns his skin, slightly, and he grimaces and wipes it off with his sleeve, before watching the Cuarta drop to his knees. Hichigo Shirosaki, as he's named himself, is unstoppable in every sense of the word. Sure, he's now toting injuries of his own, including a few sword slashes about a hair's width away from striking vitals and killing him, but he'll live, and Ulquiorra will not. That's all that's important.
"How's it feel, Ulquiorra?" He cocks his head, slightly, and sneers the question out. Ulquiorra's green and yellow-tone eyes match his black and gold pair, and the lack of an expression on the hollow's face or, indeed, any reaction at all just stirs his sadistic nature that begs him to torture the hollow to death instead of a quick, painless blow. He's arguing with himself (and ignoring Ichigo, who is arguing hopelessly for them to just leave) whether he has the time to actually torture Cifer as much as he'd really like to. Hichigo knows that he is irredeemable, that he's a monster through and through; his voice is like the shrill screams of Penderecki's chorus, his eyes are black and the edges of a chasm teeming with unnameable horrors that can only be the product of a sick and insane mind, his touch is pure icy death to anything he so decides. He has no soul and he doesn't want one. The closest thing he has to a conscience is Ichigo's shrill voice that begs for mercy, and he ignores that more than he would his conscience, if he had one at all. Hell, he does shit just to torment Ichigo...just because he can. He wants to see Orihime Inoue cry at his feet, he wants to break her spirit thoroughly, just because he can. He does these things because he can.
Some people don't need a reason to do horrible things. They're not abused by by their parents in childhood, they're not suffering from a mental illness that could extract pity, they're not traumatized souls that just want to find some peace. Some people are just fucking evil. Hichigo is one of these fucking evil people.
"How's it feel to know that you're gonna die right here, and nobody is going to fucking miss you?" He asks again, cockily, and Ulquiorra's eyes look dim, glassy almost; he looks so fucking tired. The hollow draws a breath, and meets Hichigo's eyes again. What will he say, Hichigo wonders. Is he going to say something heroic? Something...dramatic? 'You're wrong!' 'I will live on in the hearts of my allies'?
"It doesn't."
His tone comes apathetic, but there is a note of something else in it as his eyes divert from Hichigo's to something right behind Hichigo; they widen by a tiny fraction, but enough to pique Hichigo's interest. He glances over his shoulder, foolishly looking away from Ulquiorra and not just taking a step backwards and turning sideways to see both Ulquiorra and what's behind him; he turns around, and sees a small fairy about an inch from his head. Past Tsubaki's diminutive form, he sees her. Her eyes are glassy and icy cold grey, like concrete in winter, and her face is as passive as Ulquiorra's.
"I reject you." She says in her cool monotone, as the explosion occurs.
The world is spinning.
He can't hear out of one ear, and the other is ringing horribly loud. The entire world is off-kilter. He can't even feel which direction is up or which one is down. He just knows that there is pain, there is so much pain, and that he can't hear out of one fucking ear and his eyes are closed and it's hard to breathe. When he opens his eyes, vision only returns in one of them; the other is still pitch blackness. He coughs and spits and hard things drop to the ground beneath him; he gets a dizzy look at them and sees that they're bone white and bloody. Teeth.
He then realizes that something's different. He's in control again.
Ichigo Kurosaki regains control of his body now, and realizes it. Hichigo is back, chained down in his soul where he fucking belongs. He's filled with joy, or something that resembles it, until he tries to move.
"Da...mn." He gags, hoarsely, as the attempt at moving causes him untold pain. Rolling, with great difficulty, onto his back, he looks down with his one good eye and sees, with horror so complete as to be dull and almost manageable at the moment, that his right arm is gone from shoulder down. Zangetsu is shattered into pieces, scattered by the force of the attack along the roof of Las Noches. His legs are broken, or at least, one is; he's not going to be able to stand either way. With a soft, very soft groan, he lays his head back down onto the roof of Las Noches and stares at the backwards moon and the lack of stars, making the sky seem like a gigantic black void filled by only one gigantic monster hanging heavy and grinning, an eldritch being waiting to drop and devour all of them. It looks so alien.
Quietly now, he hears footsteps, and sees feet approach at his left. Forcing his head to move, he sees Orihime, but this...this is not Orihime. Her eyes are vacant, and there is no humanity left in her empty shell. He could never have imagined her destructive potential to be so great. But that's not what bothers him now, as he begins to speak quietly, trying to assure her that it's not Hichigo anymore, that it's him, Ichigo, her friend.
"Ori...hime..." He rasps, and sees no glimmer of recognition in her eyes. "Orihime...it's Ichigo...it's me, not my...hollow...we came to save...to save you..."
She does nothing but look to his left, at what he guesses is Ulquiorra, and then back to him. She doesn't believe him. Is there any fate worse than this? His hollow is banished again, but Ichigo himself, virtuous of heart and only meaning the best, is here to suffer the consequences of his hollow's actions. What he did to all of them, what he did to Rukia, what he did to Nel. What he did.
'Don't you forget, King,' He hears a snide voice inside his mind, but God it sounds so fucking weak and exhausted, 'It's not just me you can blame all your troubles on. I'm you, and you're me. I just did all the things you wish you could have.'
"That's...not true," Ichigo says aloud, closing his eyes a moment, his voice desperate now. "I never wanted to do all...all of this..." He chokes, tastes blood. Internal injuries? Likely. Humorless laughter reverberates through his soul.
'No matter what I did, you, whether you fucking wanted to realize it or not, wanted to do all of it on some level. Maybe subconscious, maybe just those dirty little thoughts you never wanted anyone to know about. But it's true. I just did what you wanted me to.' Hichigo's tone turns resigned at the last words, before fading out into silence entirely. Is it another guilt trip? Is it the truth? Ichigo can't...can't honestly tell. But he wants it to be a lie, he wants it to be a lie so fucking bad that he can taste it, and it tastes like his blood. Orihime stirs, slightly, before him, and he realizes that she's preparing to attack again.
"Orihime, please...help me." He beseeches, but when she merely aims her open palm at him, he thinks he feels his one good eye beginning to tear up. He doesn't want to die. He was invincible, whether it be through Hichigo or his own power. He doesn't want to die. He's so young, and the shade of death on his shoulders is so heavy as to be suffocating, terrifying. He doesn't want to die.
"What did I ever do to you?" Ichigo Kurosaki asks Orihime Inoue now, and it's a stupid, stupid question that neither of them has to really think to learn the answer to. There are thousands of reasons why she's doing what she's doing, but only one moment to say them all.
"Nothing."
Orihime's voice comes soft and feminine and girlish again, infinitely sad, and Ichigo's warm brown eyes go wide as he hears her voice. Not this new Orihime's voice, but her voice. He looks up into her eyes as tears run down her cheeks, and the warmth in her face is so soft. "And that's the point. Goodbye, Kurosaki-kun."
A moment later, Ichigo mouths 'I'm sorry' as her Koten Zanshun takes his life. There is...nothing left when she's done, when her eyes harden into icy steel again, when she turns and walks away from the gory mess and kneels beside Ulquiorra's prone form. His eyes focus on her face, as she heals him, and they are silent. He stands, returning to his sealed, normal form, as she remains kneeling. He offers a hand to her, and she takes it gently, pulling herself up with his help. He has a grip on Murcielago.
"Orihime," He says in his unaffected monotone, and she looks up at him with something that comes as close to passion as either of them can manage. He brushes away a tear, though his gaze remains neutral, hers does too. She doesn't speak and neither does he, as he dips low for a kiss, stiff and mechanical. It's the first time that she actually feels him slip his tongue into her mouth, and it's the first time that she realizes that the acidic tendencies do not end at his blood. His saliva burns her mouth like fire, like acid, and after a desperate moment where he pins her against him and she valiantly attempts to soldier through the pain, she screams in his mouth and jerks away from him, spitting blood and a section of her tongue out, tears of pain running down her cheeks, blood running down her chin. It's only now that Ulquiorra realizes that, in a burst of something resembling a sudden onset of intense, prominent hunger, he has bitten a section of her tongue off. He spits it out onto the white roof and stares at it as it dissolves through the effect of his saliva, as, no doubt, the inside of Orihime's cheeks must be doing as well. She is healing herself with her fairies, as he contemplates these recent developments in his silent manner.
"Orihime," he repeats her name, very softly, as she turns to look at him, blood on her lips, a pale look about her and a surprised expression, he draws Murcielago and with one fell slice, cuts her throat. For a moment, her eyes bulge with shock, terror, confusion, and they set on Ulquiorra with every shade of betrayal. But after a moment, as he watches blood gush from her throat and stain her bosom, her white outfit, she seems to understand, and he almost wishes that she does, almost hopes that she understands what he's doing, why he's doing it, but he knows she doesn't and never will, because she's not a hollow. She's not like him. She'll never understand. Her eyes grow glassy, dim, and close halfway, as the grip she has on her throat loosens slightly, and her expression becomes almost serene. When she drops, Ulquiorra is quick to catch her in his arms, and it's so close to chivalrous that you might think they were Romeo and Juliet, in another world, in different circumstances. They are. They were. There was just less passion, and more tragedy. Star-crossed lovers? The stars were never there at all.
Orihime doesn't say anything, doesn't try to, as she spends the few seconds she still has staring at his face. She doesn't mouth 'I love you', she doesn't try and kiss him. She just waits, and wilts, until she is dead and Ulquiorra closes her eyes, sheathing Murcielago before adjusting Orihime to a bridal style position, sonidoing down to ground level and away from the mess that was once Ichigo Kurosaki, past Nnoitra and Neliel's pathetic corpses, past Grimmjow who may or may not be still alive, but won't be for long either way. Ulquiorra knew from the very moment that she cried for Kurosaki that she was dangerous to him, and the unfamiliar stab of pain to his heart when she rejected his one show of real affection, his kiss, cemented it. She was dangerous to him, to his detached and efficient manner, to everything that made up his being; she was becoming too important to him.
He will not let her become his Delilah, and he would not be her Sampson.
This is why she needed to die. Right now, his memory of her will be pristine, as he always wants it to be; now that she is dead and cannot betray him, she will remain a queen in his eyes, a being on a pedestal far above him, something innocent and beautiful and precious and far more than he ever deserves. He wanted her, and he did have her for a very, very short amount of time, but he knows that if he were to keep her around, her pedestal would crack and she would no longer be his diva. She won't be able to injure the heart he never wanted. She won't be able to be used against him. She won't hinder his decisions and abilities.
Does it hurt him, as he walks across the sands with her in his arms, halfway wanting to throw her away and the other half wanting to cling to her and never let go? Yes. And this is why she needs to be put away forever. He doesn't need emotions or love or anything humane. He needs to be a monster, and she was turning him human. But he won't just forget her; he'll never forget her, and Ulquorra knows this too well. And that's why he's going to preserve her, and keep her around forever, for something innocent and pure and lovely to look at to remind him of what he's never going to become.
But there is time for that later, Ulquiorra decides, as he carries her into the Hueco Mundo desert. There will always be time for him, and now, there will always be time for her, too.
Right now, he wants to lay with her in the sands and tell her all those sweet little nothings that he never really wanted to say.