“I should hate you, for everything. Yet somehow, seeing you sitting here in this cell. I can’t help but feel pity.”
unprompted asks | always accepting
❝ ... starrk. ❞
the name of his primera emerges quietly, a slow note in a voice that has grown faintly rough from disuse before that head lifts and the hollow is given the weight of that stare. this is no longer the man garbed in ivory itself, no longer the one who ruled las noches with such ease. there is something that is missing from the shinigami, if shinigami he still is, something essential and vital that's faded like morning fog beneath the heat of the sun itself. far gone are the ivory halls and tiled floors, for he is ensconced here within the deep of the world, bound within darkness and by darkness itself bound.
would anyone understand why he did not simply leave this place? probably not. yet it seems impossible for a god to be so bound by the efforts of those who are lesser. if bound he is, then it is because aizen sousuke is bound by choice.
he is here, after all. he is here and here he will remain until the time comes for him to be used once more, bound to the will of the seireitei to be their warhound and a weapon both. he does not know who permitted the espada into this place but perhaps it was shunsui. it did seem as if the two had shared a strange bit of a bond on that winter's day, with the sun cold and bright overhead. whatever the case, he does feel a vague hint of pleasure that starrk's not dead. a vague joy that the primera did indeed survive. he heard him on that day, senses taking in everything.
sorry, aizen-sama. it looks like i can't repay my debt to you.
and now here starrk was, saying he should hate him, saying that he could only pity him instead. slowly, his eye closed and a sigh heaved from his lungs. or was it muken itself that sighed, shaped as it was to press down upon the traitor with the depths of stygian pressure and umbral might? did the air itself glide with the noise that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once? it was difficult to determine but the shinigami shifted himself, once, and then his eye was coming open once more to meet the gaze of the one who he had raised to his primera so long ago.
❝ i rather imagine you aren't alone in that. i think more than a few people likely hate me these days. ... either way, i am glad to see that you survived, starrk. ❞
yet he and starrk could relate on something else now, couldn't they? they both lost a piece of themselves on that day.
