kaname: what went wrong for all of us?
random asks | always accepting! ( even the painful ones like this. ow. ) / @njnth
kaname asks what went wrong. he asks because no one else has yet. perhaps no one ever will. he asks what went wrong and aizen knows what the answer is, just as he always understood why hollows would appear if he stayed in one place too long. a few months here, maybe a year there -- but they would always turn up. and he had always been running, running, running. back then, the only thing he could do was run, powerless and scared as he was. back then, it took everything one had to survive. but the common factor had always been him. no matter where he went, no matter what he did -- they seemed to find him. and he’d learned, he’d learned to stay away from people. because it was the best way to protect them from him. from what he could do.
he hadn’t planned for so much of what had happened. and yet it’d still happened. how could he ever explain it. but the sigh which passes from his throat is a slow thing, quiet. it is one of the few times he has come by the house of his former left hand. sparing visits. small ones. just long enough to hear some news, maybe share a bite to eat, and then he’s gone again. kaname seems at peace and he doesn’t want to disrupt that peace. not for him. not for kaname who should have had better than aizen fucking sousuke in his life. and the brunet is aware of it. he’s clipped the tether ropes and he fell. sometimes -- he still feels like he’s falling, even despite the impact of his back upon the street of karakura town. despite the fingers which pressed to his chest, the voice which seemed to carry a vindictive mourning to those words.
the visits have been growing longer, here and there. he comes by only perhaps once every few months and never does he tell kaname where he’s been nor where he’s going. he comes by from time to time to sit by the indigo patch in the back corner, when he has to clutch his head in his hands and rock quietly for a time, here with the presence of someone he knows. he never shows him the worst of it. and today is a day where aizen feels strained by it, pained, the unbearable loneliness making him stay longer than he probably should have. but he doesn’t sit idly, no. he tends to the plants, pulling out weeds, mixing in fertilizer. he helps if he can. it’s something to do with his hands. it’s something for him to do, something for him to feel like he’s doing something right. gods -- has he ever fucking done anything right in his life? he wonders about it.
he doubts it.
the bowl of soup in his hands is hot, but the question has his head bowing low, his eyes closing tight for a second.
❝ ... i did. ❞
he came to that answer years ago but verbalizing it is painful. but the answer is obvious. for all that he saved kaname’s life on the night they met, he also bound the other Shinigami to him. for all that he trusted gin with everything, his mind has had time to work at puzzle pieces, to slot things together but for that vital missing piece. and always, always, ALWAYS is he the common denominator. he’s the one who has wrecked so much. who has ruined so much. aizen has always been a man of keen self-awareness. he never lied to himself about what he did. about what he was doing. he refused to lie to himself about it. he would never tell himself what he did was sanctimonious nor just. aizen always knew better than that. but fuck’s sake. this is the way it feels, the way it is. and he knows, so intimately, that he fucked so much up for others.
sometimes he truly does wish that shinji had been that extra thirty seconds too late in saving him when he was a boy. sometimes he thinks that it would have been best for everyone. but he knows that’s not the case. if he had not been there to take that hit for ichigo from yhwach, then the realms would have perished. if he had not gone through Deicide, if he had not been killed and then thusly made immortal, they would have perished. some part of him wonders what god he pissed off for his life to have been that of the martyr, perhaps. or perhaps the sacrificial lion. was it his blood that had to have been spilled on the rocks that made everything to prepare him for what had come? he did not know.
❝ i’m ... what went wrong, kaname. it was never you -- and it was never gin -- ❞
another moment. another pause. another second of silence.
❝ ... it was me. and -- i’m sorry, kaname. i’m sorry. i’m sorry for what i did. i’m sorry that i failed you. i don’t expect you to forgive me -- but i am sorry for it. for what i did to you -- and to gin. i’m sorry-- i’m sorry. ❞
he didn’t expect forgiveness. he didn’t deserve forgiveness for what he’d done. not to kaname, not to gin -- not to anyone else.
