Aizen strode through the sand, not walking to Halibel so much as walking into her line of sight and then simply being there as if he'd always been standing in front of her. She didn't move. Her green eyes constricted a little and her sword hand rested over the hilt at her hip but did not draw. Her Tier Harribel hunched behind her, their hands spasming in their holsters for weapons they already knew wouldn't do them any good. Aizen smiled.
"Strength without destruction," he said, and leaned his head to one side as though observing an intriguing bug impaled on a needle. "A hollow who will not hollow. How… refreshing." The sound of Halibel's breath escaped her control, and her shoulders tensed; she didn't like him, and that was a good sign. But she didn't turn around and go away, either, which was a better sign. Aizen's smile grew.
"You are not Barragan," he continued, advancing another step, their sand quivering beneath them like a page turned, "He seized control through brute force. You, on the other hand, refrain from exerting it, for honor? For your honor?" He brought himself down to a whisper, as if he were a lover. "Or because you know that consuming them would turn you into nothing more than the rabble you refuse to be." Halibel's eyes twitched. He had struck a chord.
"I can offer you what you desire," he said instead, arms wide open - not with a gun or with a knife, but with an offer. "Power without loss of identity. Direction without loss of honor." The space between them crackled with something more solid than reiatsu. "But you have to give yourself to me in return," he went on. "Not as a servant. Not as a subordinate. But something... more."
Halibel's green eyes narrowed. "More," she said, flat.
Aizen, however, didn't even blink. "Lover," he revealed, and this time the term had meaning. The three Fracción behind the queen tensed at the implication, but Halibel merely scrutinized him in an attempt to gauge his intent. Aizen allowed her to, let her read the sincerity of his proposition. Aizen was an attractive man, of course, but that was hardly the issue. The issue was the palpable aura of his energy and the way even space itself seemed to distort to accommodate him.
Halibel snorted. "And if I refuse?"
Aizen grinned. "Simple. I leave."
She knew he wouldn't. They both knew.
A tense moment passed. Then, Halibel raised her head. "Alright," she said. "But I'm not going to get on my knees."
Aizen laughed—amused and gentle. "I wouldn't ask you to."
Mila Rose spat an insult behind her, but Halibel didn't respond. Her eyes didn't move from Aizen's. "You'll have what you desire," she said. "But so will I."
Aizen nodded. "Of course."
The breeze changed, and the smell of sea and shore was brought to him. Halibel moved closer — not closer to him, but closer than she was, and she stepped by him, so that for a moment her shoulder touched his. Aizen did not turn to follow her. He did not have to. He knew what she had to do.
***
Even after Halibel disappeared amidst the sand, the desert breeze brought Aizen the smell of salt and sand, with just a hint of blood. He breathed it in deeply, enjoying the subtle touch of her reiatsu that was like the aftertaste of a rich wine. He knew she would be back. Destiny dictated it. But for now, he had to concentrate on someone who was so powerful, they had been split into two just to coexist with the rest of the world. He didn't have to do anything to find him. The way to Starrk was laid out before him like the reflection of the moon on a quiet pond.
He discovered them in a ruined metropolis, Starrk slumped over an empty archway like a carelessly shed cloak, Lilynette seated on his breast, gesticulating to some unheard rhythm with her feet. They might have been a pair of children, pretending to be a pair of bodies. As soon as Aizen entered the scope of his gaze, Starrk's eyelids—languorous, exhausted—dropped open. Not to alertness. Not even to interest. To simply note, the way a body might note the presence of dew.
"You," Starrk said. Lilynette looked back at Aizen with a frown.
"Me," Aizen replied, moving closer. He didn't stomp the rubble beneath his feet, for the rubble crumbled into dust before he could do so, as if the earth itself didn't have the energy to resist him.
Lilynette snarled. "Shoo. Go away. We're not interested in whatever you're selling."
Aizen disregarded her. His eyes still on Starrk, still on that nothingness he had behind his eyes. "You split your soul into two because you were so lonely, weren't you?" He asked, in a hushed tone, like he was revealing something confidential. Starrk didn't say anything. He didn't have to. The answer was written between them, as evident as the very mirage above the sand. "And yet, you're still empty. Aren't you?"
Starrk sighed. "Yes."
Lilynette clenched and grabbed onto Starrk's coat with her small fingers, "Hey—!"
"It's okay," Starrk said quietly, ruffling her hair. "He knows already."
Aizen smiled. "Join me," he said, arms open in the same gesture of phoney beneficence. "I'll give you a purpose. Friends who won't die under your power."
"Why?" Starrk asked, not looking away from him.
"Because you're wasted here," Aizen said, stepping closer still, until his shadow covered the both of them. "Because I can make the void worthwhile."
"Shut up!" Lilynette spat. Starrk merely sighed, ruffling the dust at his toes with his breath. "You're lying," he said, but not as if it was a crime. It was just the truth.
"Of course," Aizen admitted, smiling. "But, will it change anything? You'll come regardless."
Starrk closed his eyes. There was a long silence, filled only by the whistling of the wind as it passed through the ruined city and the mournful cry of a Hollow in the distance. Then, quietly: "Yeah."
Lilynette's eyes snapped open, and she sat up, shaking. "Starrk—!"
He grasped her wrist, not tightly. "Hey, it's alright," he said softly. "We'll be less alone this way."
Aizen's voice was a soft, dry whisper. "Welcome to the Espada."
Time seemed to distort as Aizen opened the Infinite Reflecting Archive of History. The destroyed landscape gave way to a maze of mirrors, each one reflecting versions of Starrk and Lilynette, some of them younger and some of them older. Some were bleeding while others laughed. Some were sleeping together. It had no effect on Starrk. However, Lilynette gasped. She grabbed Starrk's arm more tightly.
Aizen gazed at them, and a very slow smile spread across his face. "This is just the start," he said.
###
The throne room of Las Noches was not constructed. It was imagined into being, every column and arc a concretion of the ripples on the surface of Aizen's mind. Before him the Espada were ranked, their silhouettes drawn out into grotesque parody across the gleaming glass-like surface of the floor and reflected a thousand times in the mirrors which lined the room. Halibel stood nearest, her arms folded, the unspoken meaning between them as solid and real as the glasses-smooth floor beneath their feet. Behind her, Starrk lounged, Lilynette clinging to his shoulder like a sullen bird, and Barragan, a breathing anatomy skeleton in a crown, his very bones visibly itching to get on with the job in hand. The rest... Ulquiorra's empty stare, Grimmjow's caged grin... completed the assembly.
"Rules," Aizen said, leaning back in the throne and folding his fingers together as he regarded them. Not as soldiers, or even as people, but as assets. "You will recognize Tōsen and Gin as speaking with my voice. To disobey them is to disobey me." He paused and looked at Grimmjow, who showed him his teeth. "And we all know what becomes of those who disobey me."
Barragan's laugh was like the rustling of skeletal remains. "A blind man and a snake, giving orders to us?"
Aizen didn't flinch. "I think you'll find that they can." The mirrors on the walls began to ripple – not reflecting, but altering. For one disorienting instant, Barragan saw himself on his knees, his crown in ruins at Gin's feet. Then the vision was gone. Barragan went rigid. Aizen's smile broadened. "Any questions?"
There weren't any.
"Our aim," Aizen went on, standing up and walking on the glass floor with no sound, "is the Soul Society. Not as conquerors. As surgically to remove the cancer and reconstruct it in its own likeness." He touched Halibel's shoulder as he walked by—a gesture a little too studied not to mean something. She didn't respond, but the others did. Starrk's eyes fell shut, either from lack of interest or resignation; Grimmjow's flared, like an animal that smells the blood.
"The part that she plays in this?" Ulquiorra asked, his voice emotionless for the first time.
Aizen, "That is something for Halibel to tell you if she wants." It was a practiced lie, nothing harder than breathing. Halibel's mouth quivered, almost a smile. She knew better. She was his anchor, his focus, to become stronger. The rest were swords. She was the scabbard.
Grimmjow popped his knuckles. "What if we don't care about your rules?"
Aizen stopped. He paused. And without even facing him, he raised a finger and sent Grimmjow crashing down to one knee as if the sky itself had been heaped onto those shoulders. His snarl was almost bewildered rather than enraged, thick corded veins pulsing against his temple as he struggled to get back up. Aizen's fingers curled. Grimmjow's head was snapped back, his neck straining toward the roof, and his breathing was harsh and rough.
"Because," Aizen said mildly, "I can unmake you." He let him go. Grimmjow crashed to the floor, coughing, his dignity bruised more than his flesh was. The others said nothing. That said it all.
Halibel walked forward now. "Alright." she said, slicing the air with her words. "That's enough. We get it."
Aizen's smile was for her alone. "Good." He faced the throne once more; the mirrors swiveled to reflect him an infinite number of times - different reflections, different Aizens, different lies. "Prepare. The Soul Society will not conquer itself."
When the Espada were dismissed, Halibel remained. The sound of their feet disappeared into the labyrinthine halls of Las Noches, lost in the infinite mirrorings of Aizen's throne room. The mirrors hung on the walls appeared to be waiting. Halibel did not look back to see them go. Instead, her eyes remained on Aizen, and they were fixed and firm, like one hunting beast to another, who is trying to figure out whether she should fight and kill it, or mount it and fuck.
Aizen didn't respond right away. He allowed the moment to simmer, letting the anticipation simmer in the air like wisps of smoke from a flame that refused to be extinguished. He moved finally, stepping down from the dais with languid elegance, his feet making no sound as he crossed the glass floor. "You stayed." He said it softly. As if they were the only people in the world.
Halibel snorted faintly, her nostrils flaring with a touch of irritation. "You knew I would."
"Of course." He halted short of contact, the heat of his body warm against hers. "Anticipation is half the fun, after all."
She didn't back down. Didn't even take a step back. Her green eyes glinted as she looked him over, and then—very slowly—walked toward him. She reached out, and curled her fingers in the folds of his haori. She pulled him down. Aizen allowed it. He could have simply pulled away and forced her to stand on her tip-toes. But, then, where was the fun in that?
She crashed into him, mouth-first, biting down on his lower lip and grabbing fistfuls of his robes, as if she were trying to shred the fabric. Aizen laughed against her lips, the noise dampened, and rumbled with pleasure. "Impatient," he said, drawing away just enough to see her eyes, which were unfocused with dilated pupils. His eyes dropped, noting the soft rise and fall of her chest, her ragged breathing.
"Shut up," she said. "You talk too much." She kissed him again.
Aizen was the one who dominated the kiss this time. His hands framed her face, digging into the damp locks at the back of her neck to adjust her position just the way he wanted it. The kiss intensified, growing languid and deliberate. He could taste the desert on her: salt and baked skin and the metallic aftertaste of the blood she'd drunk recently. He liked it. He liked it for her. The Aizen he had been before would have been revolted by the notion of laying hands on a Hollow like this, even of desiring one. But he was long dead. And this new Aizen...this god...had no such squeamishness. Power was power, no matter what its shape. And Halibel, strong and unrelenting, was power personified.
It was she who pulled away from the kiss, her breathing ragged. "Nothing has changed." The shaking in her tone told him otherwise.
Aizen smiled and stroked the corner of her mouth with his thumb. "Of course not." The hand at her back descended to rest on the swell of her hip. "But you didn't stay behind to talk politics."
Halibel's expression turned somber. "No."
Her hands crept to the knot of his obi, steady, slow. Aizen allowed her to disrobe him, his gaze drawn to the motion of her hands—efficient even in affection, not a single gesture of waste. When the folds of his robe opened, she laid her palm flat on the naked plane of his chest, her touch feeling the drum of his heart. Her nails clawed, but did not pierce.
Halibel's hand drew itself along the outline of his cock, tracing every inch as if trying to judge and understand and commit to memory the shape and the heft of it before she actually did anything about it. Aizen opened his eyes, gazing at her through his eyelashes, his breathing steady even as his belly churned with desire. She wasn't going to be kind. It was evident in the way she clenched her hand around him, her fingernails raking along his length until he felt his heartbeat stutter.
She didn't go down on her knees. She never did. For him or any other man. She did, however, push him back against the steps leading up to the throne, her fingers digging deep into the muscle of his chest as she forced him to sit on the cool glass step, his skin sizzling where her hand touched, before she bent and began to lick the head of his cock, once, twice, like she would a new blade.
Aizen breathed out, almost a chuckle. "Teasing looks different on you," he whispered, his fingers petting through her hair, not yanking or pulling but just existing, a simple reminder of who was really in control.
"Impatience doesn't either." Halibel sunk her teeth into his thigh, deep enough to hurt slightly, and then finally took his dick in her mouth.
She wasn't very good at it, either. Her mouth was tense and her lips bulged, her teeth sometimes scraping against him in a painful way. But she made up for it in effort, as much as she could, her tongue firm against the bottom of his dick and her throat swallowing over and over as she tried to swallow the urge to gag. Aizen's fingers clenched in her hair, not really pulling, just enjoying the feeling of her head heating under his touch.
She backed away, her lips puffy, and her breathing full. "Fuck," she whispered and shrugged off the top half of her tunic, revealing her to the waist. Her breasts were high, her skin tanned and lightly scarred from many battles. She closed her fingers around him once more and pulled him against her breasts, between them, and her flesh was soft as she pushed them against each other around him.
It was different. Neither pleasant nor unpleasant, simply different. The warmth of her, the give of her breasts, the calluses on her hands as she pumped him with slow, precise strokes. Aizen allowed his head to roll back, his eyes closed as the reflections of Halibel, hunched over him, shifted and rippled on the ceiling mirror. Some versions of her were biting her lip, others were looking up at him with naked desire in their eyes.
"You're thinking too much," Halibel snarled, her voice a little too husky to be called irritation.
Aizen grinned. "Yeah."
She growled a response that was lost when she leaned back down, tongue stroking the head of his dick, her mouth closing around it once more, breasts sandwiching the rest of the shaft. The combination of his hot mouth above, hot breasts below coaxed a growl from him and his hips jerked upwards. Halibel's hand closed around his thigh, holding him to the bed, leaving marks that would have been bruises had he not been a god.
Aizen did not complain. Instead, he let her manipulate him, single-mindedly with a fervour bordering on savagery, her green eyes burning into his with a demand he was in no hurry to ignore.
As Aizen came, it wasn't with a heaving sob of exhausted relief, but a gritted moan, his hand in Halibel's hair clenched just hard enough to make her wince. She didn't let him go, though; she held him in place while she used her tongue to lick him until he was finished shaking, her smirk apparent even with her mouth full of him. And when she drew back, she deliberately swallowed, forcing the muscles in her throat to move audibly before swiping the back of her hand over her mouth.
"Pathetic," she said, despite the shine of pleasure in her eyes.
Aizen breathed out a laugh. "Is that what you call it?" He pressed his thumb to the corner of her mouth to wipe away a drop that had escaped. "Or is it just that you're satisfied that you managed to get a reaction from me?"
Halibel bared her teeth in a smile. "Both."
He might have responded by pointing out that it had been her who was kneeling in the dust, not he, but action was more to his liking. He grabbed her wrist and twisted her onto her stomach across the glass. She sucked a breath in, not in resistance, but in expectation, her body tightening as his knee pressed her thighs apart.
"Pompous," Aizen whispered, the fingers of his free hand slipping along the curve of her back, over the grooves of scar tissue. "But successful." He slid those fingers further down, checking her state of arousal, and finding her already wet. Halibel snarled at the intimate touch, her hips shifting back, not pulling away but asking.
Aizen laughed, a low, sinister sound. "Impatient," he reprimanded her, as if she were a child. The paternalistic condescension of his tone made her hackles rise, even as the tension in her abdomen increased. "You'll take it how I give it."
She swore, incoherently, and he had no opportunity to remind her to speak intelligibly before he slid his cock in her with a long, slow push. The noise she made was rough, little, a hiss of breath whose end she tried to swallow. Aizen didn't give her time to catch her breath. His fingers closed on her hips, pinning her to him while he battered into her, each stroke sending her slapping against the glass.
"You like this," he said, observing the desperation with which her hands sought traction on the smooth surface, the way she arched her back when he thrusted in the right spot. "Being told what to do. Being used."
Halibel's reply was reduced to a moan as he emphasized his point with a very strong thrust, so strong that Halibel's nails scraped against the dais leaving behind faint marks on its surface.
"Admit it," Aizen whispered, lowering his head to her ear, his hot breath enveloping it. "You're mine."
She shook, not because of the words, but because of how his teeth grazed her shoulder, because of how he moved his hips against her with deliberate, precise movements. Despite her arrogance, her body responded, clenching around him in slow pulsing movements.
Aizen smiled against her skin. "Good girl."
Halibel came in a silent cry, her body locking around him, her thighs shaking. Aizen followed shortly after, his groan buried against her back as he emptied himself into her, his fingers digging into her hips hard enough to leave bruises.
For a long moment, only their combined breathing could be heard, the echoes of their movements mirrored endlessly in the mirrors surrounding them. Then Halibel moved under him, her voice husky but smooth. "Next time," she said, "I'm on top."
Aizen laughed, pulling out slowly, his hand tracing down her side in something like affection. "Promises, promises."
She rolled onto her back, glaring up at him, her breathing still full with the aftershocks. But there was no real anger in her eyes, only the smoldering embers of an unfulfilled challenge.
Aizen reached down to brush a stray lock of hair from her forehead. "Rest," he whispered. "We have work to do."
Halibel let out a deep breath, closing her eyes, but not before he saw the glimmer of pleasure in them. She had gotten what she wanted. A lover.
And so had he.