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[Bleach] War to End... (part 4)
The War to End All Wars, part 4.
All headings and disclaimers can be found in part one.
In his office, surrounded by stacks of paper - copies from the library of Urahara’s confiscated notes - Jyuushirou felt as though there was something terribly obvious about the prism that sat on his desk, something missing. Kurotsuchi-taichou doubtless meant no particular harm towards Abarai-taichou, though that was not to say that he cared whether the other man was hurt - but Kisuke had never been one to unduly harm a person, even though he had not been a pacifist.
Yet the utter absence of notes, other than obscure equations that doubtless only one of the Twelfth Division researchers would understand scrawled in the margins, worried him. Urahara, although a genius, was like all scientists and believed in documentation for future generations. He would not have left Kurotsuchi-taichou an object without an explanation, although whether that explanation would have been coherent was debatable, and Jyuushirou wondered, looking at the dwindling stacks of notes that had even a chance of being relevant, if the device was just such an item.
He found himself tiring, the lamp on the corner of the desk over-bright to his eyes, the light of the stars and moon through his window cold and welcoming. He wondered what Shunsui was thinking, left alone for the night in favor of an investigation prompted only by camaraderie, but pushed it away, examining the object for a moment. Its surface, a warm shade of red, was opaque and pliable, slightly sticky to the touch but not unpleasantly so.
Leaning back in his chair to think, he stared up at the ceiling before realizing that he was staring into a lamp, whereupon he shut his eyes to save himself from the glare.
He must have fallen asleep, because soon the crick in his neck from looking upwards had faded into a background distraction, his attention concerned more with his surroundings, which had changed from the low-lit, wooden comfort of his office into the night-shadows of his own inner world, his sanctum. The clouds beneath his feet, serving as solid, foggy ground, were interrupted at intervals by trees that grew towards the ground, which was above his head - the land, speckled with small lights, seemed to be the sky, which was beneath him. Some of the clouds served as stepping stones over the sky.
Sitting beside the river that flowed vertically towards the earth far above him, Jyuushirou realized that he was carrying something that resembled a folded-up note, on which was inscribed, “Open me.”
He was not an idiot. He would not merely unfold the note, like some unschooled horror-movie victim. He just - investigated it with some reiatsu, first. Made sure it didn’t seem inimical, which it didn’t. It thrummed oddly, red-colored, but it didn’t seem evil. So he undid the first fold, then, seeing no horrors jumping out at him, unfolded the note and read it - Refold for blue - and left it open, puzzled, as red ink seemed to spread over his hands before evaporating. Not blood; he could tell the difference. Red ink. And as it faded from his skin, the earth above him, heavy and dark, faded, leaving only phantom rice paper, its texture marked with characters, finely written. Easy to read, but marred in places, whole stanzas as well as single words burnt out of the poem, scorched away as though a candle had been taken to those spots.
Jyuushirou was left standing in a poem, and as he read it, he began to understand that it was the poem of himself, describing who he was, where he had been, perhaps his future - and it was missing parts, deliberately. Yet as he saw the paper begin to re-form, those missing stanzas reappear, he realized what it was that was missing - the portion of him that was the beast, the Hollow that rested inside the heart of every shinigami - that it would return if the poem became whole. And unable to find some other way to keep the unwanted parts of himself from becoming active, he tore at the paper, tore out Greater agility and, as it evaporated from his hand, fell coughing to the ground, blood seeping through his fingers with the pain in his lungs.
Words continued appearing unseen, rushing one after the other to return to where they’d been forcibly removed. The time between each new word shortened as if the poem itself could see where the forgotten additions were going and suddenly rushed to meet that end. The parchment fluttered and shook, jerking under the force of an unfelt wind as the last word flew into being as if branded there.
A rise in spirit energy and a sharp, sideways jerk accompanied the motion; the solid clouds beneath the shinigami slipping out of focus and then snapping back into place under him. “You should know better,” a clearly-amused, highly-distorted voice chimed, the owner of it stepping closer so that slim white pants and shoes entered into Ukitake’s small cone of vision. “You can’t fight yourself without losing the battle.”
Setting his hand down on the clouds, watching the blood drip away into the sky from his palm, Jyuushirou glanced farther up, seeing a mirror image of himself, the face pure white as though in a mask and the eyes empty-glowing, like a Hollow’s.
“I can try to keep myself from becoming a Hollow,” he pointed out, voice raw as he stood, not moving away from his alter-self. Although he was not averse to temporary retreat, he did not want to show weakness so early in what might turn out to be a fight. The piece of paper, left on the ground in the distraction of his own pain, read Into the Air and had become flat, without even the creases from being folded. “That is a fight with myself I won long ago.”
A black eyebrow rose at the statement. “You cannot win a fight that never occured,” the Hollow answered, lips drawing back into a feral grin. He stepped forward again, intent on nullifying any distance between them. “It drips from you.” He extended a hand towards the shinigami, but retracted it before it could make contact, plucking words from the air. Exposure drifted by as he released it, rising into the air to join the parchment there. “It fills you and you reek of it - misplaced and broken.” He laughed degradingly, the tone harsh and dissonant.
“I would rather not fight,” Jyuushirou responded easily, seating himself on a knot of cloud, not sensing any immediate threat from his Hollow-self, “but if you wish, I suppose I could. And not wishing to fight is peacefulness, not being broken. I would rather be a pacifist than a blood-seeker like Zaraki-taichou.” Jyuushirou smiled briefly. “I do admire his spirit, though.”
“Have I anything to fight with? That sword retreated before the words were in place,” the other answered, both unconcerned by his current, weaponless state and showing a distaste for his words. “Can’t see, won’t hear - what did that fool choose you for if not the strength you so despise in your blood-seeker?” The Hollow crouched down in front of his shinigami, leaning forward slightly. “It’s spilling over.” His hand reached out again, this time pulling a word from Ukitake’s shoulder. “You are in pieces.” Doubt floated up between them.
Jyuushirou ignored the insults to his zanpakutou, preferring to think that the sentiments were meant to offend rather than genuine. “I’m always in pieces,” he remarked instead, seizing upon his Hollow-self’s last comment. “Come, sit.” He made a gesture and another cloud-seat gathered to meet his outstretched palm, though the change came more slowly than usual. He was unaccustomed to the slow responses of his own psyche, and ignored the to hesitate that detached from his thumb and clung, damp, to his sleeve before joining the poem that fluttered like a banner all around them.
With a roll of his eyes, the Hollow dropped into the chair with little regard for how he landed. “Fear,” he sniffed, black hair swaying to the side as he tilted his head away from the shinigami, “crawling, seeping, flowing, streaming, sticking, blocking, veiling, always fear.” He laughed vacantly, laying a hand over his face and then pulling it back; half scrawled in red, drifting up. “You want to talk but say nothing,” the Hollow pointed out with a mild amount of irritation. “Words are weapons; you cannot drift. You do prefer slaughter.”
“There is, of course, something within all people that prefers slaughter to words. It’s easier,” Jyuushirou responded. “As for the fear that you speak of - we all do our best to defeat it. Strength is not the counter to fear; it is an amplifier. Yes, you can defeat what once defeated you. But now that you are stronger, what comes to fight you is still able to defeat you. You fear for those under your protection, always, no matter how strong you may be.” He turned away, eyes closed, thinking of Kaien, who had been strong but not strong enough, and of he himself, who had been strong in power but not in soul.
Even with his eyes closed, he could still see the glittering outlines of the words as they fluttered in his vision.
“This is not a reversible change, is it,” he murmured. “Regardless of my acceptance, you have joined me.”
“I’m not leaving,” the Hollow confirmed, his grin smoothing to a smirk as he straightened. “Once something has been known, you cannot return to the state before you knew it; You will tear and retreat - thoughts of slaughter turned inward to keep me from your mind and bar me my existence. That option always exists, but for what cost? Ah, but what else?” He sat back, lounging against the clouds they sat in as he regarded the shinigami.
“Shackles and a cage - pieces are only part of a whole, no matter the power of the present pieces, nor the size and angle; the whole cannot be achieved without every piece. An existence divided, scattered and weak - worries of protection when what could be had nullifies the need.” He clucked softly. “A shame indeed.”
“You threaten me?” The question, as he’d intended, didn’t sound angry, which pleased him. “That if I don’t embrace you - accept you I must, obviously - I will become sicker than I already am, and lose my power as a Captain? You realise,” he murmured, smiling, setting a hand on his other-self’s shoulder, “that that kind of threat just makes me want to resist you more? I’m stubborn like that.” He thought of how Shunsui did it, persuading him to take the other dish of sake despite his own misgivings (and other temptations, great and small, in addition to mere drink), and knew that he was not so stubborn as he liked to think he was, or at least, not in so many ways, but did not say it.
Black eyes lidded, a pleased expression crossing inverted features. “Nothing would change,” the Hollow answered simply. “I am you.” His hand covered Ukitake’s at his shoulder so he could lean in close without being completely moved away from. “I have always been - locked away and hidden; burned and erased, but there and waiting in your instincts, in your desires. My wait is over - your choice irrelevent there.”
“Am I threat?” The sentence was purposefully simple. “I am not weakness. I am not fear. I am broken, I am jagged, I am dyin’ for... excitement,” he laughed, the sound as grating as before, and released the shinigami’s hand, sitting back in his own chair. “How you perceive things - behind a white cloth. Remove it and see. See and understand. Where is threat?”
“The threat is to others,” Jyuushirou responded, the line of his back straightening with tension. “Who is to say that I can control you? I can hardly trust you; the stories I hear from Kuchiki Rukia of the outward effects of Kurosaki Ichigo’s battles with his own inner Hollow are enough to make me believe in the rightness of forbidding the transformation to Vaizard. I cannot become it when I cannot accept being a threat to those I am supposed to protect.” He tucked his hands into his sleeves, his left hip feeling empty without the scabbard and hilt of Sougyo no Kotowari there, though it was probably wiser of his zanpakutou to have left him to his own battle.
“I believe that you are a part of me, yes. But your goals are unknowable. What is ‘excitement’ to you may be mass murder to me. I’m not going to be host to a creature like that.”
“Yet I am forced to trust you,” the Hollow returned, bitter in spite of his smirk, though it seemed more subdued now. “Coming out of a cave, even the smallest wind is delight - yet if the cave cannot be forgotten, I would rather see the view at the mouth of it than return to its depths.” He shifted back on his cloud, reclining to look up at the parchment weaving around and above them. “Fear again,” he murmured vaguely. “Jagged edges tear at any close enough to touch them, while what is whole can support without harming and fight without breaking. You cannot afford pacifism and are too strong for it besides; endeavor beyond.” A hand reached up and plucked another word from the air. Chance hovered and floated sideways in the upside-down space.
Jyuushirou stopped for a moment, well-aware of how his double’s throat, exposed, was a handsome target, before pointing out, “You can’t promise me - nor all your kind in Seireitei - a victory in battle against Aizen’s forces. Don’t hold the sun over my head, making me reach for the brightness as it burns my fingers.” He paused, took a heavy breath that tickled, deep in his chest, though he didn’t begin coughing.
“If I were certain that you could be trusted with a gentleman’s agreement, I might suggest a compromise,” he remarked finally.
“Certainty is not something you possess in high quantities,” the Hollow returned, remaining where he was, as he was, and acutely aware of the weakness inherent in his current position. “It makes me wonder how such a thing could be given to someone who doesn’t believe in it.”
Jyuushirou stood from his makeshift chair, then knelt beside his Hollow-self. “Given no choice about your presence, I would rather have your cooperation than have you fighting me at every moment. If I have your word - your oath as a creature of any plane, as an aspect of myself and perhaps, therefore, honorable, that I will have final say in what is done and not done, then I believe we can reach an agreement.” He left his hands on his own thighs, feeling the heat of his other-self’s body as Duality was scrawled, red and wet, onto the parchment.
Considering himself lucky that his shinigami self didn’t realize the power of his dominant position, the Hollow allowed his smirk to broaden again, black eyes turning to rest on the man kneeling beside him. He lurched up again, returning to a sitting position and bringing them closer together than before. A long moment passed in silence as the Hollow observed his counterpart. The fear he’d been itching to tear from the man’s psyche seemed far more subdued now, hidden away by resignation and resolution. It was better, he decided.
“Then we’ve reached agreement,” he answered some time after the original proposal.
“I believe so,” Jyuushirou stated, nodding faintly, leaning back on his heels as the tension between himself and the Hollow-aspect faded. “However, if we could state specifically, here, what it is we have agreed on, I would be obliged.” His smile had steel-shards in it, as kind as it might have seemed, and he met the eyes of his alter-self without blinking. He was not afraid of him, merely wary, and cautious.
It disappeared. The Hollow chuckled; seeing slices of the exact nature his shinigami half tried so hard to keep at bay manifesting itself in that defiance. Ukitake really had no idea what he was capable of, but, he supposed, that was where they merged. If only he could see the possibilities - he’d just have to show the man. “Then you have my word,” he began, pausing to ensure their gazes locked, “to give you final say in what is done and not done.” Freedom always came with chains, it seemed. “Will you now embrace this?”
“I will,” Jyuushirou said, and watched the Hollow lean forward towards him, falling into his body, the heat of him lightning-bright and then cold as the sensations faded. He opened eyes that he had not realised he had closed, and found his inner world as it should have been, the poem hidden beneath a ground-sky and the upward-flowing river, the piece of paper abandoned on the ground still reading Into the Air. He stood, taking it in hand and folding it up, and found himself with an aching neck and exposed to the dry-warmth scent of Fourth Division’s wards, the box in his hand red once more.
----
Scene One
Scene Two
Scene Three
Scene Five
Scene Six
Scene Seven
All headings and disclaimers can be found in part one.
In his office, surrounded by stacks of paper - copies from the library of Urahara’s confiscated notes - Jyuushirou felt as though there was something terribly obvious about the prism that sat on his desk, something missing. Kurotsuchi-taichou doubtless meant no particular harm towards Abarai-taichou, though that was not to say that he cared whether the other man was hurt - but Kisuke had never been one to unduly harm a person, even though he had not been a pacifist.
Yet the utter absence of notes, other than obscure equations that doubtless only one of the Twelfth Division researchers would understand scrawled in the margins, worried him. Urahara, although a genius, was like all scientists and believed in documentation for future generations. He would not have left Kurotsuchi-taichou an object without an explanation, although whether that explanation would have been coherent was debatable, and Jyuushirou wondered, looking at the dwindling stacks of notes that had even a chance of being relevant, if the device was just such an item.
He found himself tiring, the lamp on the corner of the desk over-bright to his eyes, the light of the stars and moon through his window cold and welcoming. He wondered what Shunsui was thinking, left alone for the night in favor of an investigation prompted only by camaraderie, but pushed it away, examining the object for a moment. Its surface, a warm shade of red, was opaque and pliable, slightly sticky to the touch but not unpleasantly so.
Leaning back in his chair to think, he stared up at the ceiling before realizing that he was staring into a lamp, whereupon he shut his eyes to save himself from the glare.
He must have fallen asleep, because soon the crick in his neck from looking upwards had faded into a background distraction, his attention concerned more with his surroundings, which had changed from the low-lit, wooden comfort of his office into the night-shadows of his own inner world, his sanctum. The clouds beneath his feet, serving as solid, foggy ground, were interrupted at intervals by trees that grew towards the ground, which was above his head - the land, speckled with small lights, seemed to be the sky, which was beneath him. Some of the clouds served as stepping stones over the sky.
Sitting beside the river that flowed vertically towards the earth far above him, Jyuushirou realized that he was carrying something that resembled a folded-up note, on which was inscribed, “Open me.”
He was not an idiot. He would not merely unfold the note, like some unschooled horror-movie victim. He just - investigated it with some reiatsu, first. Made sure it didn’t seem inimical, which it didn’t. It thrummed oddly, red-colored, but it didn’t seem evil. So he undid the first fold, then, seeing no horrors jumping out at him, unfolded the note and read it - Refold for blue - and left it open, puzzled, as red ink seemed to spread over his hands before evaporating. Not blood; he could tell the difference. Red ink. And as it faded from his skin, the earth above him, heavy and dark, faded, leaving only phantom rice paper, its texture marked with characters, finely written. Easy to read, but marred in places, whole stanzas as well as single words burnt out of the poem, scorched away as though a candle had been taken to those spots.
Jyuushirou was left standing in a poem, and as he read it, he began to understand that it was the poem of himself, describing who he was, where he had been, perhaps his future - and it was missing parts, deliberately. Yet as he saw the paper begin to re-form, those missing stanzas reappear, he realized what it was that was missing - the portion of him that was the beast, the Hollow that rested inside the heart of every shinigami - that it would return if the poem became whole. And unable to find some other way to keep the unwanted parts of himself from becoming active, he tore at the paper, tore out Greater agility and, as it evaporated from his hand, fell coughing to the ground, blood seeping through his fingers with the pain in his lungs.
Words continued appearing unseen, rushing one after the other to return to where they’d been forcibly removed. The time between each new word shortened as if the poem itself could see where the forgotten additions were going and suddenly rushed to meet that end. The parchment fluttered and shook, jerking under the force of an unfelt wind as the last word flew into being as if branded there.
A rise in spirit energy and a sharp, sideways jerk accompanied the motion; the solid clouds beneath the shinigami slipping out of focus and then snapping back into place under him. “You should know better,” a clearly-amused, highly-distorted voice chimed, the owner of it stepping closer so that slim white pants and shoes entered into Ukitake’s small cone of vision. “You can’t fight yourself without losing the battle.”
Setting his hand down on the clouds, watching the blood drip away into the sky from his palm, Jyuushirou glanced farther up, seeing a mirror image of himself, the face pure white as though in a mask and the eyes empty-glowing, like a Hollow’s.
“I can try to keep myself from becoming a Hollow,” he pointed out, voice raw as he stood, not moving away from his alter-self. Although he was not averse to temporary retreat, he did not want to show weakness so early in what might turn out to be a fight. The piece of paper, left on the ground in the distraction of his own pain, read Into the Air and had become flat, without even the creases from being folded. “That is a fight with myself I won long ago.”
A black eyebrow rose at the statement. “You cannot win a fight that never occured,” the Hollow answered, lips drawing back into a feral grin. He stepped forward again, intent on nullifying any distance between them. “It drips from you.” He extended a hand towards the shinigami, but retracted it before it could make contact, plucking words from the air. Exposure drifted by as he released it, rising into the air to join the parchment there. “It fills you and you reek of it - misplaced and broken.” He laughed degradingly, the tone harsh and dissonant.
“I would rather not fight,” Jyuushirou responded easily, seating himself on a knot of cloud, not sensing any immediate threat from his Hollow-self, “but if you wish, I suppose I could. And not wishing to fight is peacefulness, not being broken. I would rather be a pacifist than a blood-seeker like Zaraki-taichou.” Jyuushirou smiled briefly. “I do admire his spirit, though.”
“Have I anything to fight with? That sword retreated before the words were in place,” the other answered, both unconcerned by his current, weaponless state and showing a distaste for his words. “Can’t see, won’t hear - what did that fool choose you for if not the strength you so despise in your blood-seeker?” The Hollow crouched down in front of his shinigami, leaning forward slightly. “It’s spilling over.” His hand reached out again, this time pulling a word from Ukitake’s shoulder. “You are in pieces.” Doubt floated up between them.
Jyuushirou ignored the insults to his zanpakutou, preferring to think that the sentiments were meant to offend rather than genuine. “I’m always in pieces,” he remarked instead, seizing upon his Hollow-self’s last comment. “Come, sit.” He made a gesture and another cloud-seat gathered to meet his outstretched palm, though the change came more slowly than usual. He was unaccustomed to the slow responses of his own psyche, and ignored the to hesitate that detached from his thumb and clung, damp, to his sleeve before joining the poem that fluttered like a banner all around them.
With a roll of his eyes, the Hollow dropped into the chair with little regard for how he landed. “Fear,” he sniffed, black hair swaying to the side as he tilted his head away from the shinigami, “crawling, seeping, flowing, streaming, sticking, blocking, veiling, always fear.” He laughed vacantly, laying a hand over his face and then pulling it back; half scrawled in red, drifting up. “You want to talk but say nothing,” the Hollow pointed out with a mild amount of irritation. “Words are weapons; you cannot drift. You do prefer slaughter.”
“There is, of course, something within all people that prefers slaughter to words. It’s easier,” Jyuushirou responded. “As for the fear that you speak of - we all do our best to defeat it. Strength is not the counter to fear; it is an amplifier. Yes, you can defeat what once defeated you. But now that you are stronger, what comes to fight you is still able to defeat you. You fear for those under your protection, always, no matter how strong you may be.” He turned away, eyes closed, thinking of Kaien, who had been strong but not strong enough, and of he himself, who had been strong in power but not in soul.
Even with his eyes closed, he could still see the glittering outlines of the words as they fluttered in his vision.
“This is not a reversible change, is it,” he murmured. “Regardless of my acceptance, you have joined me.”
“I’m not leaving,” the Hollow confirmed, his grin smoothing to a smirk as he straightened. “Once something has been known, you cannot return to the state before you knew it; You will tear and retreat - thoughts of slaughter turned inward to keep me from your mind and bar me my existence. That option always exists, but for what cost? Ah, but what else?” He sat back, lounging against the clouds they sat in as he regarded the shinigami.
“Shackles and a cage - pieces are only part of a whole, no matter the power of the present pieces, nor the size and angle; the whole cannot be achieved without every piece. An existence divided, scattered and weak - worries of protection when what could be had nullifies the need.” He clucked softly. “A shame indeed.”
“You threaten me?” The question, as he’d intended, didn’t sound angry, which pleased him. “That if I don’t embrace you - accept you I must, obviously - I will become sicker than I already am, and lose my power as a Captain? You realise,” he murmured, smiling, setting a hand on his other-self’s shoulder, “that that kind of threat just makes me want to resist you more? I’m stubborn like that.” He thought of how Shunsui did it, persuading him to take the other dish of sake despite his own misgivings (and other temptations, great and small, in addition to mere drink), and knew that he was not so stubborn as he liked to think he was, or at least, not in so many ways, but did not say it.
Black eyes lidded, a pleased expression crossing inverted features. “Nothing would change,” the Hollow answered simply. “I am you.” His hand covered Ukitake’s at his shoulder so he could lean in close without being completely moved away from. “I have always been - locked away and hidden; burned and erased, but there and waiting in your instincts, in your desires. My wait is over - your choice irrelevent there.”
“Am I threat?” The sentence was purposefully simple. “I am not weakness. I am not fear. I am broken, I am jagged, I am dyin’ for... excitement,” he laughed, the sound as grating as before, and released the shinigami’s hand, sitting back in his own chair. “How you perceive things - behind a white cloth. Remove it and see. See and understand. Where is threat?”
“The threat is to others,” Jyuushirou responded, the line of his back straightening with tension. “Who is to say that I can control you? I can hardly trust you; the stories I hear from Kuchiki Rukia of the outward effects of Kurosaki Ichigo’s battles with his own inner Hollow are enough to make me believe in the rightness of forbidding the transformation to Vaizard. I cannot become it when I cannot accept being a threat to those I am supposed to protect.” He tucked his hands into his sleeves, his left hip feeling empty without the scabbard and hilt of Sougyo no Kotowari there, though it was probably wiser of his zanpakutou to have left him to his own battle.
“I believe that you are a part of me, yes. But your goals are unknowable. What is ‘excitement’ to you may be mass murder to me. I’m not going to be host to a creature like that.”
“Yet I am forced to trust you,” the Hollow returned, bitter in spite of his smirk, though it seemed more subdued now. “Coming out of a cave, even the smallest wind is delight - yet if the cave cannot be forgotten, I would rather see the view at the mouth of it than return to its depths.” He shifted back on his cloud, reclining to look up at the parchment weaving around and above them. “Fear again,” he murmured vaguely. “Jagged edges tear at any close enough to touch them, while what is whole can support without harming and fight without breaking. You cannot afford pacifism and are too strong for it besides; endeavor beyond.” A hand reached up and plucked another word from the air. Chance hovered and floated sideways in the upside-down space.
Jyuushirou stopped for a moment, well-aware of how his double’s throat, exposed, was a handsome target, before pointing out, “You can’t promise me - nor all your kind in Seireitei - a victory in battle against Aizen’s forces. Don’t hold the sun over my head, making me reach for the brightness as it burns my fingers.” He paused, took a heavy breath that tickled, deep in his chest, though he didn’t begin coughing.
“If I were certain that you could be trusted with a gentleman’s agreement, I might suggest a compromise,” he remarked finally.
“Certainty is not something you possess in high quantities,” the Hollow returned, remaining where he was, as he was, and acutely aware of the weakness inherent in his current position. “It makes me wonder how such a thing could be given to someone who doesn’t believe in it.”
Jyuushirou stood from his makeshift chair, then knelt beside his Hollow-self. “Given no choice about your presence, I would rather have your cooperation than have you fighting me at every moment. If I have your word - your oath as a creature of any plane, as an aspect of myself and perhaps, therefore, honorable, that I will have final say in what is done and not done, then I believe we can reach an agreement.” He left his hands on his own thighs, feeling the heat of his other-self’s body as Duality was scrawled, red and wet, onto the parchment.
Considering himself lucky that his shinigami self didn’t realize the power of his dominant position, the Hollow allowed his smirk to broaden again, black eyes turning to rest on the man kneeling beside him. He lurched up again, returning to a sitting position and bringing them closer together than before. A long moment passed in silence as the Hollow observed his counterpart. The fear he’d been itching to tear from the man’s psyche seemed far more subdued now, hidden away by resignation and resolution. It was better, he decided.
“Then we’ve reached agreement,” he answered some time after the original proposal.
“I believe so,” Jyuushirou stated, nodding faintly, leaning back on his heels as the tension between himself and the Hollow-aspect faded. “However, if we could state specifically, here, what it is we have agreed on, I would be obliged.” His smile had steel-shards in it, as kind as it might have seemed, and he met the eyes of his alter-self without blinking. He was not afraid of him, merely wary, and cautious.
It disappeared. The Hollow chuckled; seeing slices of the exact nature his shinigami half tried so hard to keep at bay manifesting itself in that defiance. Ukitake really had no idea what he was capable of, but, he supposed, that was where they merged. If only he could see the possibilities - he’d just have to show the man. “Then you have my word,” he began, pausing to ensure their gazes locked, “to give you final say in what is done and not done.” Freedom always came with chains, it seemed. “Will you now embrace this?”
“I will,” Jyuushirou said, and watched the Hollow lean forward towards him, falling into his body, the heat of him lightning-bright and then cold as the sensations faded. He opened eyes that he had not realised he had closed, and found his inner world as it should have been, the poem hidden beneath a ground-sky and the upward-flowing river, the piece of paper abandoned on the ground still reading Into the Air. He stood, taking it in hand and folding it up, and found himself with an aching neck and exposed to the dry-warmth scent of Fourth Division’s wards, the box in his hand red once more.
----
Scene One
Scene Two
Scene Three
Scene Five
Scene Six
Scene Seven