Chapter Text
A chunk of white stone came careening down and crushed the crystal screen displaying all of Gin's metrics. Another shattered the thin membrane of glass over the control panel that kept him in stasis. The power went out, the backup generators blew, and for the first time in almost two years, Gin was able to move his fingers and open his eyes.
Everything was cloudy in his vision, obscured by an azure, life-preserving fluid. A few lingering bubbles of oxygen floated up through the tube in his nose. Before the halted supply could run out, he pushed towards the surface and busted out of the capsule.
Gin fell to the floor on baby lamb legs, naked except for a thin blue film of preservative reishi solution clinging to his skin. The pull of his soul led him right to Shinsou, sheathed and bound nearby. It was nothing to break it free. Gin felt his spirit settle as he finally touched fingers to steel, rubbed the fabric of the hilt, traced the guard, reconnected. The spiritual lag was unsurprising considering how long he'd been under, though he wasn't exactly sure how long that had been.
The fact the world was still standing meant Aizen had failed. The realization crossed his mind ever so briefly.
Oppressive spiritual pressures saturated and swirled in the air around him. The halls of the once-immaculate Twelfth (because really, where else was he going to wake up after having been cut down in Karakura Town) were effectively being reduced to dust. There was a division member in a lab coat dead on the floor nearby, head crushed by the stone debris. Thankfully their robes remained intact and relatively unbloodied. It was a bit distaseful, but Gin was not going to walk around what was clearly now an active war zone with his dick out.
The thick cotton of the shinigami uniform was familiar, and though it still held the heat of its former inhabitant, not wholly unpleasant. Even though Gin wanted to stretch his metaphorical legs, see how much his skills had atrophied in his internment in the goo, it was wise not to draw attention to himself as he began navigating the unfamiliar corridors. The stunted reiatsu output was probably a good thing considering the overwhelming presence of their current enemy. Quincies, he surmised. Aizen had let him be exposed to some of his research materials in the past and made sure that Gin had gotten a feel for what this soul breed was like, and of what they were capable.
For the second time, Gin briefly held the name in his mind. There was not enough time to dwell on everything that had happened in the final moments between them before four white-clad foot soldiers came into view. Gin's hand went to his sword, and he managed to draw it without being noticed. In a stroke of good fortune, the tiny squad stood single file as they surveyed the surroundings; Gin took them down with one swift extension of his zanpakuto. Good to know he still had it in him.
The last time he'd drawn his sword, it had been pointed at Aizen.
That thought came rolling in as he tenderly returned Shinso to its sheath. It was the third time Aizen had appeared in his mind, and when he finally had a moment to hold it there for longer than a second, knowledge he couldn't account for began to take shape in his consciousness. Like a false memory, unfounded; and yet he knew it all to be true. Aizen, sentenced to 20,000 years in Muken. And Gin, asleep in his tube for only two as Kurotsuchi brought him back from death; regrowing his organs and his arm and analyzing the secondhand residuals of the fused hogyoku's attack lingering in his wounds and nerves.
Some unaltered part of his brain must have been left uncomfortably lucid and aware throughout his convalescence, for the gossip being traded outside his tank had been sequestered somewhere deep in his unconscious mind. And now that he was awake, Gin was helpless to stop it. Facts and speculation conflicted with his own truth; the memory of Aizen's death conflated with his own.
It didn't matter what they said about him as they recounted the incident; fag, traitor, loser; the crude slurs they employed when they talked about him were harmless to a man like him. They didn't understand him, didn't trust him, and that was fine. Very few did — Rangiku, Izuru. And Aizen. Of course. Again, his name in his mind; his influence at his throat. Something ached in Gin's stomach.
Conscious for all of sixteen minutes, and already he was missing Aizen. It was pathetic, if he didn't take into account the two years he had already spent separated from him. Longing unconsciously for the man that was always fated to be his ruin; Gin could really be such a masochist sometimes.
There was not much worth raiding in the lab and nothing to be gained from ruminating much longer, so when he was as prepared as best as he would ever be, Gin went off to join the lines. Aizen was gone, the Sereitei had fallen, but Gin was alive. There was really nothing left for him to do but fight.
It was a sad scene above ground, where the landscape had completely ceased to be that of the Soul Society. It was like nothing Gin had ever known or thought to imagine, even as he listened to Aizen's plans to destroy it all and build his own kingdom. The air was completely fetid with death and spiritual decay and the undertones of Quincy reiatsu. As with shinigami, the Quincy infantry turned out to be overall unimpressive. Foot soldiers fell left and right as Gin cut through their ranks with superior speed and lethality. A few higher-ranking generals gave him a thrill, mystifying him with their powers and specialized abilities, but Gin was sturdy and stubborn and still incredibly strong, even after all this time.
He was curious how his old lieutenant had fared amongst all this; there was no trace of Izuru, nor of Rangiku in the thin air around him. The desire to see them contend with this whole mess was melancholic and dark. They were a curious bunch of adversaries, after all. Gin was there to watch them all fall simultaneously, their power and life force unwillingly stripped away by some presumably higher being. No mercy. Gin couldn't help but wonder what his old captain would think of all this. He wondered if he could feel it, all the way down there in the absolute darkness and depth of Muken.
But Aizen wasn't in Muken. Not any more.
The huge rush of his reiatsu gave Gin chills. Spreading like an oil slick throughout the entirety of the Sereitei, it was undeniably Aizen's spiritual energy, though it had evolved; it was darker, smoother. Gin felt it fill his throat as he swiftly cleared a mountain of rubble and headed towards the source, where the power was most dense.
Gin couldn't reasonably justify why he was heading that way; why he was heading towards what had been his downfall. Force of habit, he figured. Instinct; muscle memory. His tastes were never well-suited for self-preservation. It seemed silly to reject everything they had been to each other just because of a single mutual murder attempt. It had always been fate, and they both knew that.
Gin found himself moving recklessly, advancing quickly through the ruin. Things had been bad for a while, and the sudden lapse of shinigami reiatsu was disconcerting, yet any time for rumination or consideration was cut short, as Aizen wasn't that far away at all. Gin had traversed only a few square blocks of busted white stone and drying blood before nearly falling short of him.
Gin had never seen him wear his hair so long before. There were shadows beneath his uncovered eye and a sad thinness to his lips. The full-body bindings made him seem smaller, but it was terrifyingly dense surrounding him. A black hole, already looking in Gin's direction.
Everything in Gin's body told him to turn and run as he met Aizen's gaze. The urge to flee was startling in how deep it ran for how utterly novel it was. Even the new limb and the biomechanical kidney and large intestine that Mayuri had grown from scratch seemed to remember the trauma of his death, and knew this was the man responsible. It was one of the only times Gin had ever felt like prey.
"Well, fancy meeting you here."
The playful lilt was a knee-jerk reaction and another habit Gin would probably never be able to break. Fear masked with levity, disgust disguised as delight. Pain was insignificant when there was a thrill to be had.
Always so handsome when he scowled, the setting and the costume did not detract from it in the slightest as Aizen's brow knit together and his one visible eye narrowed. The expression on his face telegraphed shock and wonder; defensive, almost, because Gin's appearance had been completely unpredictable.
"Don't go getting the wrong idea," he said as he approached, his chest feeling tight. "I'm not nearly strong enough to kill ya now. And I figure, if I stay at least this far away, you probably can't kill me either."
He had been exposed to enough of Aizen's reiatsu to know intimately its composition and its breadth; he could feel the unnatural surface tension of it and knew that the strange black bindings and the sekkisekki chair had built a membrane around his power. It was keeping it close. It was still a risk, but one Gin couldn't help but take.
"Why would I want to do such a thing?" Aizen asked.
Two years of silence finally stopped ringing in his ears as Gin heard Aizen's voice again for the first time.
"Well, I didn't really think ya would... but a man can't be too careful," Gin sighed as he set his sword on a broken wall and pulled himself up to sit atop it. It gave him a wider field of view of their surroundings, as well as a better vantage point on Aizen bound beneath him.
"Don't worry," Aizen said, noticing his vigilance. "All of the foot soldiers have been culled. The most dangerous elements to you are all topside now. You can rest easy."
"Said the spider, to the fly."
The beat of silence that followed was not exactly confirmation, but it went on for long enough that Gin knew it was not a denial either.
"Gin..."
It held no less weight than the last time he said his name, when he thanked him, before he killed him. The density of his voice and the shape of his lips around Gin's name always felt so intentional; treasured. It made the ache in Gin's stomach grow hotter.
"Why are you here?"
"All this fighting woke up me," Gin answered, which was a mild way of putting it. "Wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Felt your reiatsu real close... and it felt like you were throwing a tantrum," he sneered. "I wanted to see that."
Gin knew why he had come. Aizen had been his everything; his ultimate prey, and for a moment, Gin had him, fangs buried in deep, ready to swallow him whole. Then Aizen had retaliated and ripped right through his throat. It was humiliating. Humbling. And no one else had ever been able to make him feel like that.
No one had ever been able to make him feel the way Aizen did, full stop.
"I wanted to see you," Gin said. It was as simple as that; it hardly needed clarifying. He rested his chin in his hand, propped on his knee, and leaned forward.
"Prison looks good on ya."
"It may be flattering but it is hardly comfortable."
"Mm. How unfortunate."
"I don't suppose you'd be willing to free me from these bindings."
"You can't really believe I'm capable of that."
"It's quite unlikely, though not necessarily impossible. The question is, would you?"
"I might," Gin admitted. "Could be interesting. But, what would happen if I got close to ya?"
"I'd be able to smell you again."
Gin felt his stomach do a traitorous little flip.
"I could see the color of your eyes again," Aizen said. "I could maybe, even, touch you again."
"Last time you touched me, you killed me," Gin smiled, choking on his own want. He worked the lump in his throat until he had a mouthful and then spit right in Aizen's direction. A skill he'd picked up in the Rukongai, the bullet of saliva flew fast and true until it came within eight inches of Aizen and immediately evaporated.
"Yeah," Gin sighed. "I figured as much."
"You could withstand it," Aizen tried to tell him. It may have been true; Aizen had once believed him to be a man capable and worthy enough to stand alongside a god for all eternity. A century of exposure had attuned their reiatsus to one another; matching wavelengths, frequencies,
Gin could steel his nerves and slip into his range as if he was merely an extension of Aizen himself.
"Not after two years in the goo, I can't."
"You mean some sort of regenerative fluid, I presume."
"You know how Mayuri is."
"I certainly do," Aizen said tersely.
"He's the one that got you all sealed up like this, huh?"
No one else would have been able to pick out the intentional tenor of a taunt behind Gin's usual tone, but a hundred years had given Aizen an advantage. A vein in his jaw twitched lightly as Gin watched him clench his teeth in a subconscious display of annoyance. Being reminded of his helplessness would of course grate.
"This level of binding is beyond what I ever imagined him capable of creating," he said through his teeth. "Of course, Urahara Kisuke likely played a part in the development somewhere along the way."
"God, how that must sting." Gin's perpetual grin widened and his cheeks ached with the stretch; it had been two years since he'd truly smiled. "And then to have me show up..."
It was cheap and childish, and Gin could not resit taunting Aizen with his presence now, twisting the proverbial knife.
"How dare he bring back to life what you had taken the time to kill... and with your own hands, for once."
"I won't deny that here. But, truthfully, I believe that I should be grateful to the man. His audacity is the reason you're here now. I would have never seen you alive again if it weren't for him."
"You should thank him, then. Assuming he survives this."
"His odds are probably better than most."
It was likely the closest Aizen would come to lauding another in this terrible, drawn-out battle. Jaded from imprisonment, cynical and over-critical, his words dripped with apathy. The world that they had known was gone. Destroyed in the wake of war. Unrecognizable. Which had been the end goal for them too, but its realization felt different under another's hand. It flooded them both with bittersweetness, and in Aizen's case, a low burning rage. Gin felt the familiar sense of helpless ennui wrap around his throat as he spoke.
"How do you think this is all gonna shake out, Aizen-taichou?"
The name fell from his mouth so casually. Gin did not even think twice about the title he had grown so used to using. He could see it register on Aizen's face, but he did not reject him or correct him. Even if he was now an enemy of the Gotei, a prisoner, a traitor, he would always be Gin's captain.
"Hard to say..." A lame evasion; being cagey was beneath him. "There are only a few people capable of having any sort of impact on this battle."
"A few? That's awfully generous of you."
"Five, to be exact."
"How d'you figure that?"
Aizen ticked them off on his tongue, spitting out the names of Urahara Kisuke and Hyosube Ichibe. No one could hold a grudge the way he did, almost covetously, pretentiously. But he did not negate any of Ywach's reasoning in deciding these threats; they all made sense to him. Aizen's placement in the list was self-evident.
"Ain't much of a threat strapped to that chair though, are ya?" Gin asked.
"Come closer, and find out," Aizen said. It did not sound like a threat, but more like a plea.
"Two years, no conjugal visit really got you wound up," Gin laughed, trying to keep himself from being drawn into the web.
"Gin."
The tone was mild; his usual reprimand whenever Gin was crude or inappropriate. Aizen could say nothing more to spite the underlying adoration in his voice. It was all he could do to chide him, to reel his reckless spirit in. Forever his captain, he could not help but fill that role even now, reminding Gin of his place and his manners.
"Come here," he said.
Gin sighed. Then he picked up his sword and slid from the rock. And then he took the first step towards Aizen.