Darkest Blue

Chapter 16: The End Where I Begin

"Sometimes tears say all there is to say

Sometimes your first scars won't ever fade away

Try to break my heart, well it's broke

Try to hang me high, well I'm choked

Wanted rain on me, well I'm soaked

Soaked to the skin…

It's the end where I begin; the end where I begin…"

- The Script

'Why didn't yah jus' kill him?' The silver fox frowned out of the darkness, looking almost disappointed at the lack of actual bloodshed that had occurred upon the previous night. Aizen smiled back at him from his position of contemplation, staring out over the vast desert landscape that made up the view from his throne room, just as he had done on the night that Ichigo had first been dragged before him against his will, the night that his plans had been set in motion. Everything since then had been leading up to this night, everything had been running according to his plans and tonight would see them come to fruition. He smiled softly at his lieutenant through the permanent dusk as he wondered where to begin his explanation.

'There are a great many reasons why I allow Urahara Kisuke to continue breathing.' He smirked to himself, secure in his convictions of absolute power.

'But there are also many reasons that yah should'ah killed him.' Gin replied, his narrow eyes opening very slightly to peer questioningly at his lord.

'True. But, for now at least, he is of more use to me alive.' Gin clicked his tongue in irritation.

'Are yah ever going to share yer plans with me Sosuke, or are yah gonna just leave me in the dark like always?' The teasing edge to Gin's voice was the only thing that kept Aizen from growing angry at his inquiries. Nobody was allowed to question him, not even his second hand man, and this was something that Gin had learned very early on. Everybody was below Aizen and he shared his ideas only with those who he saw fit, and the number of these people was few and far between. It irritated the former captain to know that his lord considered Urahara Kisuke of all people to be more of a worthy opponent and confidant than Gin himself. He held no love for the man who had been labelled a traitor due to their actions, and could not understand why, even after all the trouble he had caused and the claims he had laid upon Aizen's favourite pet, the lord had seen fit to leave the irritating shopkeeper alive.

Aizen regarded Gin curiously for a moment, almost able to read the slight flickering of emotion across his face. For a moment it looked as though he was torn between laughter and anger, opting for the former as a sly smirk stole across his face.

'Urahara has, unintentionally of course, done more damage to Ichigo than I could ever have.' He spoke cryptically, leaving the other man even more puzzled than before.

'What do ya mean?' Gin questioned again, furrowing his pale brows in confusion.

'What I want is for Ichigo to be subservient, yes, but I need him to have broken by his own hands, to have willingly surrendered and become totally submissive to me.' He paused for a moment. Gin looked at him perplexingly, but was smart enough to keep quiet until he continued. 'This is not something I could have achieved on my own; I needed something more powerful than fear or hatred…'

'Yah mean…' Gin almost felt silly saying the word in the company of his lord, casting aside the connotations of long blonde hair it conjured up almost painfully in his mind. 'Love?'

'Precisely.' Aizen's upper lip curled in a sneer at the mention of the word as he turned to stare back out of the window. 'Everything that Ichigo does is out of love and a strong need to protect, and now I have turned that immense desire to serve me. Rather than having the broken, defiant and ultimately useless shell of the boy, which is all I would have achieved had I killed Urahara, I needed to have him betray the man he loved and come to serve me of his own violation. I need him strong, not broken, as it is he can't even materialise his zanpakuto.'

'But he's never gonna serve yah, not with the same passion that he has for his comrades.' Gin only half understood what Aizen was getting at, but he thought he was beginning to understand bits and pieces of the end game.

'Not as he is, no.' Aizen paused again, and though Gin could not see his face he knew that it would be split with a cruel smile as he continued speaking. 'But once the final stage is completed, he won't even remember that Urahara Kisuke, and indeed the rest of his loved ones, ever existed.'

'The final stage… You mean, when yah turn him into an arrancar.' Gin's heart sunk a little as he realised what Aizen was planning, and he wasn't entirely sure why. 'Hollowfication.'

'Yes.' Aizen turned around swiftly to face his subordinate again, leaning back casually against the balcony railing 'I will strip away his memories, and what he shall be left with is base desire and instinct. Hollows have no feelings, they cannot love. But even without the emotions as fuel, his wishes and needs will still be there, ingrained in his soul. Most importantly of all, the desire to serve me will still be there, and it will be stronger than any other, because it was the one that was ultimately born from his strongest emotion, love.'

'But won't he also retain the other feelings, the hatred and fear of you?' Gin had opened his eyes wider than before, as though he was having a hard time believing that the man he had chosen to follow could really be so cruel. A pointless question, he already knew just how far Aizen would go to achieve his goals, and to him both Ichigo and Gin alike were just pawns in his war against Soul Society.

'I should think so.' Aizen smiled that sadistic smile again, and Gin thought that he really didn't want to know what his cruel lord was thinking about. 'But it cannot hurt; a healthy dose of fear will only further underline his subconscious need to serve me.'

'So, yah let him escape, let him go back with Urahara, in order to set this all in motion?' Gin should have been having a hard time believing that this whole time everyone had really just been dancing in the palm of Aizen's hand, but in his heart he knew that this was really nothing surprising. Aizen really did think of everything and nothing would be allowed to play out without him manipulating it in some way. Aizen merely smiled back at him with that cold expression as he pushed his body up off the balcony and made for the door. Gin didn't even need to ask to know where he was going.

Aizen had almost reached the doorway when something else occurred to Gin, and he spoke again, his voice cutting through the silence of the night.

'Yah still could've killed him though; you just didn't have to let Ichi know about it.' Aizen stopped in the doorway, one hand resting against the frame as he turned his head back to smirk at his lieutenant.

'Again you are quite correct. However, I still have plans for Urahara Kisuke, he hasn't quite outlived his usefulness.' He turned his head back round, away from Gin and spoke one more word before leaving, exiting into the darkness that lay beyond the doorway. 'Yet.'

So there was more that Aizen was not telling him. Somehow he knew that what had been revealed to him was merely the tip of the iceberg, and Gin couldn't do anything but smile, his grin cutting the gloom like a knife as he wondered to just what extent he was dancing in the palm of the lord's hand, and for how much longer he would allow himself to be manipulated and disregarded. His smile turned weary as he walked over to the balcony where Aizen had stood, running his long fingers along the cold steel of the railing as he stared out into the darkness, wondering if his lord could also see things that he could not, out there in the endless desert of the dead.

---

Cold steel bracelets encircled his wrists, pulling his hands up above his head and chaining him to the stone wall. The cool metal cut into his skin enough to leave a burning ache that spread its roots down through his otherwise numb arms. Tattered wide sleeved shinigami robes fell down around his head, the ragged edges tickling the bruised skin of his neck. He could taste blood in his mouth, a flavour that had become so familiar to him over the course of his life that now it barely registered. His body ached all over from the uncomfortable position he was forced to sit in, back braced against the cold, slippery marble wall as much as possible to stop himself from slipping down which would cause the bonds rubbing against his wrists to dig in further. The cold air of the hollow world crept under the slashes in his robes, caressing the cuts and bruises that marked his skin. He had been shivering so hard and so long that he had ceased to notice it. His split lip ached and still leaked a thin trail of blood from his soft flesh, and his head was starting to hurt from leaning against the hard wall. The moon hovered just outside of the window, almost mocking him with its freedom as it bathed him in rays, softly lighting the otherwise pitch black room.

Gone was the hospitality of a soft bed and attached bathroom, he would almost have laughed at that thought if not for the numbness that had set in behind his eyes. The spark of life within him was all but extinguished, his mind resigned to the unavoidable truth. He would never win, he could never have won, never had any hope to begin with. He was trapped in his fate ever since the moment Aizen had first laid eyes upon him atop Sōkyoku Hill, and nobody could save him, least of all himself.

He had always believed that there was always a point in defiance, in standing up for what you believed to be right, but now for the first time in his life he did not want to fight anymore. His legs were shaking so much that they couldn't hold him any longer; he was too weak to stand up again.

He didn't know what would happen from here; all he knew was that as long as he was here, Urahara would be safe. His family and his friends would be safe. They would be heartbroken, he knew, trying to block out thoughts of how their faces would contort in pain at the news of his death. But they would still breathe, they would live on, and eventually they would move on… eventually his lover would love again. A sharp pain assaulted his chest and he knew that it had nothing to do with his current physical state. But no tears were shed; there was no room for such sorrow within him anymore. He was numbing over, shielding himself from the great floods of pain that threatened to crash through his barriers should he give them the opportunity to do so.

Ichigo closed his eyes, hanging his head against the cold gloom, but knew that it was already too late, the darkness had already invaded his soul, and he was losing himself within it.

Footsteps echoed through from the guarded corridor outside his room, and even if he had been unable to sense the reiatsu he would still have recognised the owner of those steps. He had gotten far too used to the sounds of Aizen's quiet footsteps clicking against the cold marble floors of the palace. He didn't even bother opening his eyes, didn't look up as the ex-captain entered the cell like room where he had been chained ever since they had returned, his solitude being only interrupted by painful visits. It seemed like he had already spent eternity in the white room, when in fact it had been less than two days. Indeed back in the human world it had only been a matter of hours since Urahara had awoken in the cold room, confronted by his worst fears made flesh.

The lord crouched in front of him, bringing himself down to Ichigo's level. He gripped the tip of the shinigami's chin with strong fingers and forced his head upwards, eyelids opening slightly to frame drained brown irises.

'Come along now pet.' Aizen murmured as he ran the pad of his thumb along the swollen flesh of Ichigo's bottom lip. 'It's time.'

Ichigo responded by letting his eyes slip shut, barely feeling the touch of the lords skin to his own as he pressed down on his lip. And then the cold hands were gone along with the biting metal around his wrists. His body slumped forward onto Aizen, unable to support himself momentarily at the sudden loss of the bonds, and he couldn't even find the energy to push himself away from the other man. The blood started rushing back to his arms making them prickle unpleasantly, but Ichigo barely had time to feel this new sensation before his arms were forced behind his back, metal bracelets suddenly reappearing around his wrists to bind them behind his back. Aizen stood swiftly, gripping Ichigo's arm like a cold vice and pulling him up onto his feet. He struggled to maintain his balance, having difficulty coordinating his feet after sitting down for so long.

Aizen didn't pause, didn't wait for him to catch his balance, as he pulled him over to the doorway, out into the harsh artificial glare of the corridor lights. Blinking his eyes shut against the brightness Ichigo was totally disorientated, not that he would have known where they were going even if he was able to see perfectly. All he knew was that he was being pulled along bright corridors and endlessly twisting hallways until they reached an unknown destination. He was rudely shoved into a gloomy room that was entirely new to him, and if it wasn't for the fact that all the fear and emotion in his body had been shoved down somewhere deep inside of him he would have been taken aback by what he saw.

Sitting on various platforms around the edge of the dark room were arrancar. Espada, he could tell by the terrific amount of power flowing around the cavernous room and from the numbers of them he expected that all of them were present, and they were all staring at him. Some of them he recognised, the teal lined face and raven hair of the quarto who looked altogether uninterested by the proceedings, looking not at Ichigo but through him with those piercing green eyes, and the massive bulk of the particularly dim witted looking one that had attacked Orihime and Chad in Karakura Town. He felt hints of some familiar reiatsu but could not recognise the faces that the power may have belonged to, whenever espada came to the human world he always seemed to end up distracted by…

Grimmjow. Ichigo noticed him then, sitting on a ledge high above the ground, glowering down at him with an unreadable expression, as though he was trying to decide whether to attack or ignore the fallen shinigami. His sapphire irises gazed intensely down at the redhead, their eyes meeting in a clash of will. Grimmjow curled his lip at the look of utter defeat dulling the shinigami's brown eyes, but did not break the glare. Ichigo felt something crumble inside of him as he remembered what Grimmjow had said to him the last time they had clashed;

'You're pathetic shinigami. You're not even worth killing anymore and you're definitely not worth fighting… I can't believe I considered you my rival.'

He turned his head away at the memory, breaking the gaze. Grimmjow was right, he had always been right about him. And he must have looked so terribly pathetic in that moment, bruised, broken and bound at the mercy of all with blood running down his chin. But Ichigo was beyond caring, beyond everything as he teetered on the brink of oblivion. And oblivion, he had come to realise, was just what he was about to receive. He knew what was about to happen, and he knew that there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

'So this is it?' he croaked out wearily as he turned to face Aizen, his voice fading into the anticipation that hung heavy in the silence of the room.

'Yes pet.' Aizen took him by the arm again, moving him into the centre of the room where Ichigo knew he was about to become the main attraction. In the centre of the floor was a strange looking thing, an object not unlike a glass box, but he knew instinctively that it was less of a box and more of a cage. Shining at the forefront of the cage was a small glowing orb, and with a leap of his heart Ichigo immediately knew what it was. The hogyoku, the crumbling orb. The little bluish purple thing that had caused all of this, the creation unwittingly fashioned by two men, his greatest enemy and the man he loved, intellects working in harmony but at cross intentions. He felt a small pang of something deep inside of him as he thought that, but quickly pushed it deep into the recesses of his soul. Now was no time to break down.

His gaze flickered away from the orb and rested upon the silver haired fox and the blind ex-captain who stood expectantly by the cage. For some reason that he could never explain Gin's eyes slipped open ever so slightly as he approached, but instead of the usual mocking glint they were filled with something else, something softer, something like empathy? But surely that was impossible, just a trick of the light. He had already experienced Gin's sadistic side and there was no way that the same man who had carved up his flesh could be looking at him in that way. It must all be a part of his madness, of his mind shutting down as he slipped under.

'Do you remember what I told you,' Aizen murmured in his ear as they stood before the cage, 'about what would happen when I turned you?' Ichigo's expression did not change one iota as Aizen grasped his shoulders so tightly, holding him in his grasp with his back pressed against the traitor's chest.

He remembered.

'All your precious memories will leave; you will have no emotion, no concept of love or companionship. You will have no friends, no comrades, no family, but you will not be as you are now. You will not be silent and broken; you will be finally be free. Ichigo, imagine it, no more pain, no more guilt or shame or such destructive emotion as love. You will fight no longer for those too weak to defend themselves, you will leave it all behind and fight only for me. And in your mind it will always have been that way, you will not remember this life and so, you will hurt no longer.'

'I… I don't want to forget. I don't want to lose them.'

'Yes.' His voice was barely a whisper as he nodded, but it contained no fear. And neither did his heart as those cold fingers dug into his shoulder and icy breath laced his bruised skin. He could feel the strong muscles of the cruel lord's chest rising and falling against his back, but the feeling sparked off no disgust in his stomach. His fingertips were numb with the coldness that had enveloped his insides.

Then the hands curling around his shoulders pushed him forward, shoving him unceremoniously into the glass cage, the walls seemingly shifting around him as the purple orb hummed with power. The cage was too small to stand up in, and Ichigo was forced to his knees before Aizen, the metal bracelets around his wrists moving seemingly unassisted, pulling his arms up and out to his sides so that he was kneeling with his upper body splayed out like a martyr on a crucifix. The front of the cage snapped back into place, and directly in front of his face was the hogyoku, so close that he could have touched it if he were able to move.

'I don't want to forget.'

But he had to; for the sake of everyone and everything he loved. He would become a monster, and he could only trust in their strength to stand up where he had failed. Aizen turned from him and started to speak; addressing the creatures gathered in the room, but Ichigo wasn't listening. All sound seemed to fade out around him as the walls closed in, his vision obscured by glowing purple. He could hear nothing but the steady drumbeat of his heart thumping away in his ears, a strange serenity enveloping his body like narcotics flowing with every beat of his heart. He was painfully aware that every single beat may well have been his last, that soon the rhythm would end and the song fade out, but he faced the darkness without fear.

'I don't want to lose them.'

And suddenly he just wasn't there anymore.

Aizen turned back to face the cage, frowning slightly at the expression on Ichigo's face. He had expected distress, tears even, but the redhead kneeing before him had an expression altogether unlike anything he had seen on the boy's face before. It was almost like acceptance. His mocking words died on his tongue; with the boy looking like that he somehow knew Ichigo would give him no joy from any further torment. But he could never resist having the last word. He knelt down again, bringing himself down to Ichigo's eye level.

'Any last words pet?' Those brown eyes stared out at him, so fogged with dullness that they could've been dead. Aizen almost felt stunned as they stared straight through him, for the first time barely seeing him at all. Ichigo gave one slow blink and he spoke, his last words mumbled through cracked lips in what was barely a whisper, so low that Aizen himself had difficulty hearing him, the words that he managed to catch holding no meaning for him.

'… it feels as though the rain has stopped.'

The hairs stood up on the back of Grimmjow's neck as he watched the proceedings, a strange feeling coiling in the pit of his stomach that he could not place. As he glanced around the room he could tell that, with the exception of the emotionless Ulquiorra, not a single being in that room, arrancar or shinigami, was unaffected by Ichigo's stillness in that moment.

Aizen sneered at the kneeling shinigami as he stood, casting aside the slight unease that he had felt momentarily at the oddness of Ichigo's calm. But after all, how the boy acted now mattered not, for in a few moments he would cease to be. Aizen reached out his hand, fingers stretching towards the crumbling orb as power began to flow from it, seeping into his body as he began to manipulate the boundaries of Ichigo's soul. The power shot out like lightning bolts, surrounding Ichigo, bathing him in its cold light. Ichigo felt the power enter his body, his muscles tightening at the intrusion, hairs standing on end. His hollow was screaming somewhere as his inner world crumbled, his very soul being ripped apart and fouled. The sound of the rippling hogyoku cracked in his ears as it built to a crescendo, draining out both sound and light.

Then Ichigo closed his eyes. The cold palace melted away around him, and everything was warm again. And he just was not there, kneeling on the cold hard floor as the demon that was Aizen Sosuke ripped apart his soul. When the barriers fell and he began to change, becoming something else, he simply was not there.

'Wake up Ichigo.'

A warm nose was nuzzling his ear, soft breath curling against his neck. Through his eyelids seeped the warm golden light of the dawn and all around him was the warmth of another's skin in peaceful bed sheets. The voice that played in his ear was crystal clear and playful as it sang him awake. Ichigo felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. His eyes flickered open and all he could see was those beautiful grey irises and soft curling pale hairs.

'Will it hurt?' he whispered softly, with no trace of fear in his voice. His lover smiled at him, his grey eyes shining with warmth as he ran his fingers along Ichigo's face.

'I shouldn't think so.' The blonde murmured quietly, 'Just like falling asleep.'

'Will you stay with me?' Ichigo whispered against his fingers, making sure to etch into his memory every feeling of those calloused fingers against his skin. The other man stroked the soft skin of Ichigo's cheek with his thumb and whispered softly as he pressed their lips together,

'Always…'

Ichigo shut his eyes, and in that kiss everything began to fade. But Ichigo could still feel that hand squeezing his so softly as he was washed away. The song of his voice still reverberated in his ears. The beat of his heart was still there, just under the surface. The warmth of his skin smouldered in the darkness as his consciousness faded into blackness.

'Hey Kisuke.' He whispered through his last breath. 'I wonder, can an arrancar be born out of pure love?'

Then, finally, the flame of Ichigo's consciousness burned out as his soul shifted loyalties. And in the spiralling darkness of the void between worlds, that question faded out, unanswered.

And something new began to arise from the ashes.

"Now I'm alive, and my ghosts are gone

I've shed all the pain I've been holding on

The cure for a heart is to move along

So move along

So move along

What don't kill a heart

Only makes it strong

It's the end where I begin."

- The Script

**** END OF PART ONE ****

A/N: Part 2 coming soon!