Aizen's eyes opened over a painted ceiling of gentle gold. Incense—cedar, plum—remained suspended around him, a fragrance too mannered to disperse. His initial point of reference arrived, however, were his fingers, his white, elongated, thin fingers, on a tatami mat of muted green. The pattern underneath his nails was unaccustomed, too clean, too precise, so his own hands now looked trimmed into submission. His chest rose and fell on a cadence not his own. Gradually, with determination, he sat up, a man coming, so it appeared, not out of wakefulness, but out of a centuries-long spell.
Seven seconds exactly before terror struck—not of the fanged, surreal kind, but of the clean, analytical kind which makes a brain spin with shards of impossibility. A mirror was placed straight opposite of the futon, and there he sat: neither he, by history or by name. Sōsuke Aizen smiled back at him with calculated amusement behind his glittering lenses. Warm brown, non-threatening, precisely the deception they were designed for.
He stroked, almost idly, the rim of his glasses, as if he were pulling a latent trigger. His voice passed out of his throat, low, mannered, and exasperatingly smooth. "Well, now," he remarked, "this is a surprise."
The recollections came in flashes—like someone had cut newspaper headlines and stuck them into a diary half-composed by him. They were immersions, not memories: Seireitei's endless halls, subordinates with names he couldn't say, Kira and Hinamori, a sword's weight in his hand, flying vibration of spiritual forces propelling him like water. Over all, however, was the chilling realization that all this must not be a dream or a delusion. His soul had been tied into a man about to betray.
Betrayal was yet to come.
That was the crux of it—the ability to do it all again. The butterflies were yet to flutter. Gin still smiled with a phantom's imitation of human, and Tōsen had yet to close his ears to sense. The Hōgyoku slumbered, hidden somewhere beneath layers of secrets. Aizen himself, by all appearances, remained the well-liked, affable Fifth Division captain.
And then came the second blow. Recoiled he did upon some alien presence shifting within him—not memory, not whisper, but a Presence, capital P, insinuating itself into cracks of his psyche like silken irons. Made no sound, only conveyed itself by sense: a vibration of omnipotence masked by boyish levity, some eldritch, impolite, and maddeningly all-knowing something.
"You've been granted something," it said, without a mouth through which it said it. "Something exceptional. Strength, based on proximity to women above you. Defeat them, placate them, befriend them—then you shall unlock your full potential. Call it... experiential leveling."
Once, twice, Aizen blinked. "You're kidding."
"No, I am not," it replied, taunting, too playful for malice. "Consent is needed. Not exploitation. Climb, you must. And with every step you take, you will receive a portion of unimaginable power... a portion of what true power can be."
He protested vocally, with an open mouth—but nothing sensible came out. The logic was preposterous, naturally, since reason had abandoned him in an instant when woke up as the man who would fight against Heaven. Curse or trial, words were already encoded within his soul. He could sense it thrumming just beneath his skin, an oath carved into his bones.
There was a knock—gentle, polite, and perhaps a bit nervous.
"Captain Aizen?" A respectful, enthusiastic voice, a young girl's, with a faintly audible intonation of admiration. "May I come in?"
He remembered her. Momo Hinamori. Faithful, wide-eyed, dedicated. Her loyalty had once been turned against her. Now, remembering that, his throat tightened with fear.
"Yes," he replied, smoothing the wrinkles from his haori with an acquired, yet natural, ease.
The door opened, and Hinamori entered, bending low, face flushed with adoration. She looked up at him with a look of adoring awe, as if he were responsible for putting stars into the heavens. He fought against wincing.
"I've brought you the patrol reports you requested," she said, holding out the scroll with two hands. "And your tea too, Jasmine with honey, which you prefer."
"Thank you," he said, removing the tray from her with gentleness. Jasmine scented fragrance arose like a recollection. Once, he sipped, merely for mere delay, and laid down the cup with caution.
"Something else, Lieutenant?" he asked, looking at her intensely.
Her eyes darted toward him, then away. "Oh! No, sir, I just—I wondered if you were okay. You were silent during yesterday's meeting."
Was this how it had begun? Gradually manipulating her emotions, spinning lies ever so subtly? Sick with knowledge, he was. In a previous life, Aizen had used loyalty as a sword. Never again would he do that.
"I'm well," he said softly. "But thank you for your concern, Hinamori."
She radiated with a soft, warm glow, like a lantern. "Of course, Captain."
As she curtsied and departed, he felt the Presence chuckled.
"Her, no. Not her." It said. "Too weak. She will surrender everything, and so teach you nothing. The trial is indeed by conquest, yes, but of equals or betters. You must rise by challenging those who, in turn, could be strong enough to kill you."
"Who, then?" Aizen murmured softly, more to himself than to it.
"You know who. Consider them—Yoruichi, Unohana, Rangiku, even perhaps the Captain-Commander's niece. They are powerful. Some hate you. Some will. However, every single one of them holds a gate, and behind it, a power you've only tasted in imagination."
He held his hands steady, but his thoughts shook. A callous game of pretending to be fate. He dared not treat it lightly, yet he could not ignore it. Even now, he could feel the limits of this borrowed body—powerful, perhaps, yet still shackled by unseen shackles. The former Aizen had built a deity upon a base of deception and fear. This time, he would become strong differently.
He passed his morning studying papers he did not remember authoring, making notes with a hand that wrote with unnatural finesse. Pretending to be the man he had assumed the life of came too naturally. He used his voice, his pen, even his smile. But underneath his smile, a tempest churned.
He had decided by noon. He would begin with just one name—a test, as it were. Not a hard one but not a simple one.
Retsu Unohana.
She was a puzzle even the old Aizen had yet to solve. Her gentleness a disguise, her smile a sheathe for an old, bloodied sword. If he could only reach her—not only win her over, but command her—then there would be sense to her madness.
As he entered Fourth Division barracks that afternoon, something shifted. Everything was too clean, too sterile, as if the walls would not allow suffering to be recalled. Aizen led the way with the silence of a specter granted form, his reiatsu kept tight so he would go unnoticed.
Unohana waited for him in her office, behind a low, lacquered desk, hair, a coiled braid, resting quietly. Her eyes rose to meet his, calm and unreadable.
"Captain Aizen," she bowed her head. "I didn't know you were coming."
He bowed. "I apologize for intruding. I've come for consultation. On... a personal matter of my concern."
Her eyebrow arched by a fraction. "Are you unwell?"
"Not physically," he said, facing her. "Although I do have questions. About power. And restraint."
There existed a silence, a precise silence.
"You never appeared to me to be a man overwhelmed by either," she said at last.
He smiled, his expression gentle and self-deprecating. "Perhaps I've simply learned to wear them better than others do."
Unohana regarded him silently, her eyes smooth and flat, far older than the kindly wrinkles around them. The silence she wove carried weight, coiled about his ankles with a fog and dared someone, anyone, to take a single, unwise step forward. Aizen did not recoil. He wrapped his hands over his knees, settled into a pose of humility less than untruthful, less at least than entirely true. It was a tightrope he had long since traversed, and yet, even so, here, now, it felt almost honest.
"I understand," she murmured at last. "And what do you want, Sosuke Aizen? You didn't come to my Fourth Division headquarters to discuss philosophy."
"No," he agreed, leaning back a bit, his shoulders relaxing just far enough that he appeared receptive. "I came because there's something beneath the surface. Something I only just began suspecting. And I think, Captain Unohana... that you of all people would be able to perceive it for what it is."
Her stillness was disturbed only by a tight closure of her eyes. The merest twitch of muscle, a taut string. "What is it that you think I see?"
He paused, not to balance his reply, but to savor the ironies: Aizen, who had previously hidden behind deceptions even his captains could not see through, now decided to unveil a truth—not all of it, merely enough to illuminate a corner of a room.
"You see blood," he said softly. "Not the one spilt upon the floor. The kind lurking just beneath the skin. And you know what it is when it stirs."
Unohana didn't blink. Something, however, shifted, imperceptibly, behind her eyes. Her fingers, which were covered with a single silver ring he hadn't previously seen, tapped once on her desk.
"A confession?" she said, her tone lower than death. "Or a warning?"
"Neither," said Aizen. "An invitation."
She studied him. She experienced a tautness now—a tension of fascination, not fear. The slow extraction of a sword, not from scabbard, but from recollection. "You speak as if you know me," she said. "More than I've allowed you to know."
"I do," he repeated, his tone low. "Not from history. Not from what is said. But from a feeling unexpressed. The way creatures know creatures in the dark."
The words dropped into the room with a fluttering, ash-like descent. Nothing flirtatious, nothing awkward, nothing romantic, his tone. Communion—meeting of two predators who, for a first, did not bare teeth, yet saw the mirrored reflection.
Unohana smiled. Thin, precise, and somehow ominous. "You're making a great number of assumptions, Captain Aizen."
"I do," he agreed. "And for good reason."
And then he made a daring move—unthinkable even for the man he had overshadowed. He leaned forward and put his flat palm on her desk. Not threatening, not provocative. But a bridge. The Presence within him stirred, growling deep within him with a sound of contentment, as a satisfied deity growls.
"I believe that that we are alike in ways no one dares to imagine," he continued. "I believe you've had your mask on for so long, you've forgotten what's underneath. And that you desire someone who can see it—and does not turn away."
There was a silence, and even the building appeared to be holding its breath. Unohana rose from her chair silently. The unnatural grace with which she moved, a predator's unconcern with mortals' worries, was apparent. She glided silently on the floor around his desk and at his side.
"And if I were to remind you what that part of me truly is?" she said, speaking hard, yet now thick with menace and promise. "Would you flinch?"
"No," Aizen replied, looking into her eyes. "But I would learn."
She looked down at him for a hard, slow instant. Not condemning—measuring. As if she were gauging his soul into sections. The instant passed. Then she merely turned, with an almost undetectable flicker of face, toward the far wall, behind which a sliding paper door concealed a quiet room for resting between operations.
"Come," she invited.
He rose and trailed behind. The Presence vibrated within him, a soft buzzing thread of amusement and anticipation. Not conquest, in the crude sense. Pilgrimage. A test.
The space was vacant and spare. A futon, a low table, scrolls of contemplative poetry. She sat at the heart of the room, back turned to him, hands clasped behind her back like an executioner at leisure.
"You're saying you feel something beneath the surface," she said. "Describe it."
He stopped for a moment. It didn't come easily—translating feeling into language.
"It feels like a pressure. Like carrying a sealed zanpakutō who wants to speak yet is still unsure if you're worth it."
"A sleeping dragon," she said, nodding.
"Affirmative," he said. "Yet unnatural. Forced, induced, not of my desire, but of my making. And with every being that I engage with which I speak and connect, however briefly, with their reiatsu. It stirs."
She regarded him. "An evolution by force?"
"In a way, yes. But with limits. With regulations. With permission. No deception."
She tilted her head. "And you're coming to me because you think that I am… strong enough?"
He held her gaze. "I came to you because I belive you remember what it means to be a killer, and not a healer. And because strength alone isn't enough. The connection must be earned. Voluntarily. It must teach me something."
"And what do you think you could learn from me?"
He stepped forward now, slow, deliberate. "How to use restraint as a tool. How to choose violence and unchoose it."
There flitted a glint of something evil at the corners of her eyes. She was, for an instant, no longer Unohana Retsu, Fourth Division captain, but Unohana Yachiru, First Kenpachi—spoken by dying spirits on Rukongai's dunes only by name. No smile curled her mouth, only a fleeting hint of a growl beneath all those years of calm.
"Then you may begin," she said.
And with it, her reiatsu surged out—not burning with hostility, but calculated. Pouring out dark and viscous, thick with bloody recollection. Not crushing him, but covering him like a judge's mantle. Weighty. Inevitable.
He pulled it into his lungs, like incense. The Presence inside him shifted once, a ripple on calm water. And then—he felt it.
The initial seal relaxed.
There was no light, no flame. Nothing so enchanted. Only a change—a gentle, inexorable change. His senses became finer. His sight expanded. And more important, he recalled what was never his to remember: a forgotten kido's name, deep within banned incantations. Hadō no Sanjūroku: Ressen Gōka.
The flames of a waterfall, summoned forth in a spiral.
He staggered back, holding his temple that held a pilfered brain's neurons, upon which the spell inscribed itself.
Unohana observed him, unwinking.
"You felt it," she repeated.
"Yes," he gasped. "Knowledge. A fragment. Power."
.
"Then, it is true," she said softly. "You are changing."
He looked up, his eyes aglow with something he had never allowed himself previously: wonder. "I do not know whether it is a gift or a trap,"
Unohana stepped forward once more, yet her hand was no longer a warrior's hand. It was a hand that rested over his chest, palm against his heart, checking for his pulse.
"It is neither," she said. "It's a path that you will only discover what's at the end of it if you walk it."
"I may have to... connect with other people," he said, hesitantly. "Women. Stronger. Willingly."
Not batting an eye. "I am not possessive, Captain Aizen. That being said, though, I am wondering. What would you do if the next was not as welcoming as I?"
The quiet hung, his gaze dropping for an instant beneath her questions. Even now, he could catch the heat of her reiatsu on the air, a lingering burn of smoke from a fight—distant, scorching, and ineffably ancient. She didn't back away, however, she enveloped him, goaded him, drew out of him a vulnerability he would never share with another. When he finally looked up, it was with an unshielded kind of openness.
"Then I would wait," he said. "I would speak, not as a predator, but an equal. I would listen, even if it took years that would go by. Because this… what I feel now… can't be taken. It has to be given. Freely. Otherwise, it is not real."
Unohana nodded barely, and something relaxed against the curve of her face. Not approbation, not indulgence, but recognition. A fleeting, silent glimmer of understanding passed between them. Her hand, still softly resting on his chest, shifted—a gentle touch along his collar, her unobtrusive and delicate fingers gauging his pulse against some unexpressed standard.
"You speak for a man who has took life, yet now lives for every breath," she said.
Aizen's lip curled into a bitter smirk. "That's because I've realized what it is. And tonight." he trailed off, his tone dropping with his last chord. "Tonight, I remembered what it's like to choose."
She was nearer now. Nearer still so that their breathing became entwined, yet lips still not touching. Her mouth immobile, yet her eyes questioning his, and within that immobility—between two edges of an immortal blade only dulled by time—was desire. Real, physical, and dangerous. For an eternity, he considered it. The final step. The surrender to dominance, connection, and desire.
But no.
Not yet.
He grasped her hand, softly, and held it palm up against his. Their fingers rested, neither retreating, yet with promise. "The next time," he said softly, with quiet admiration. "When I return to you, it will be without question or wonder. I will know then, what I am. And what I can give you."
Unohana didn't smile, yet her eyes sparkled with something more intense than amusement. "I'll be waiting."
And with it, he stepped back—not out of fear or retreat, but with calculated purpose, as if every step was calculated to convince her that he simply decided to walk away. He would take the road, yes—but on his terms. No detours, no rushing. And when he returned, it would be not as a control-seeker, but as a man who had learned the art of relinquishing control, carefully choreographing every interval until that particular point of his triumph.
The door shut softly behind him with a click that echoed through the air like a promise made. Not a sound of leaving, though, but a sound of an agenda unfolding. The cold outside air was cold to other however, but warmth for what he so deliberately had put into play. He had given her very little: the assurance that he would be back, the confidence that she had won, that she was the one who had held back.
And that is precisely what he wanted her to think.
And so he strode along the corridor, his face twisted by a stifled smile, the game afoot. He had not retreated, only taken charge of the instant, molding it with a master craftsman's skill, bringing it form and substance. His next move—whenever it came—would be all the greater for having made her wait.