Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Negative Space ❯ Memory Lane ( Chapter 12 )

"Are you really alright Isa?" Raacharg asked from the edge of my bed where I had put him down.

"Yes," I said in a soft tone as I ran a towel over my sixth vertebrae, removing the last bit of water that remained from washing the blood off the bone. "I kept my spine off for too long. If it had only been a day or two it would have been nothing to be hit like that, but I've had them off for almost two weeks now."

"Why is your spine any different from the rest of your armor?"

"It's actually my mask," I explained as I set the towel down and turned the vertebrae in my hand to make sure I had gotten everything. It was white, just like the sun bleached bone should have looked like. "My spine, feathers and mantel actually belong to my mask. I can take them all off as needed, but they all weaken me in some way if I leave them off for too long."

"Even your feathers?" he asked.

"No, they work differently." I stopped there as I lined up the vertebrae and pushed them together to recreate the bottom of my spine. Like they were magnetized they each stuck back together on their own, allowing me to pick them up as if they were one piece. I reached out and lifted my zanpakuto from where I had put it on the table and released it, allowing the metal to ring on the table. Wordlessly my armor flowed into existence around me, but before it had formed all the way I held my spine to my back, feeling it be joined by the rest in shockwave of power.

I let out a long sigh and slouched, reaching for my zanpakuto to make it ring again before my armor vanished. I could have dropped my true form without my zanpakuto, but it was easier this way. The ringing made the power come from it rather than me. It was why I always had to make my zanpakuto ring to take down my Negative Space. I had no spirit energy inside its boundaries, but it constructed the Negative Space so it could always take it down.

"How?" Raacharg asked.

"My feathers are… special. They are a way to make connections, and to keep them." I frowned for a moment, but it went away when I considered his question.

"What do you mean by connections?"

"Do you really want to know?" I asked as I threw the towel on the table and went to my closet to find the wash basin. My skin was still dirty with dried blood and sand, and I wanted to be clean before I really interacted with anything inside my home.

"Yes. I never asked you to explain yourself before, but I think now the circumstances warrant knowing more."

What he was saying was probably logical, but my brain had shut down to most complicated thoughts at Aizen's palace. Regaling the past to him would be easy, but planning and plotting? That never was my thing.

"I suppose there's no point in keeping things to myself anymore, is there?" I asked him, but it was more for my own benefit. "I kept secrets from you so I wouldn't scare you off, but now that my past is coming back to bite me in the ass I should be the one to tell you things. Being told things second hand is never ideal, and I'd rather you hear it from me than prissy pants and his lackies."

"Arnau?"

"Yeah, him."

"You think he'll try to turn me against you?"

"Yeah, it's kinda his thing." I let out another of what was probably a hundred sighs and and turned to look at myself in my mirror. I looked like hell. Those people, probably some of the other Espada, probably thought I was a sewer rat. I had made an utter fool of myself in front of them, which was a fantastic first impression.

"Arnau isn't a good person. He's like a leech that feeds on spirit energy, but at the same time his spiritual pressure has a draw to it. He enthralls lesser beings, then binds them to him so they are tied and he can draw on them whenever he wants. The God Maker permitted him only five Fracciones at a time, which was a pretty small pool to draw from at any given time. Under normal circumstances I had up to half a dozen bound to me at one time, but most others kept far more."

"Would he really be able to turn me against you?" Raacharg asked, his voice sounding worried.

"Outside the range of our bond where I have no influence on you, probably. But, so long as you have my presence within you I can always steal you back."

I shook my head knowing he couldn't see it and turned to the mirror in the corner of the closet to ensure I was clean of blood and dirt. I wasn't answering the question he had asked, and I knew it was my own misdirection. Since when had I avoided what I was?

Aizen had made me pathetic.

Mentally kicking myself I turned back to the basin and made quick work of washing my hair. Once I was satisfied I snatched my less favorite robe from it's hanger and donned it before I emerged from the closet. Raacharg was still sitting on the edge of the bed so I went to him, crawling up onto comforter and curling into a comfortable ball beside him. Yellow eyes met my own gold ones and I lifted the corner of my mouth in a lopsided smile.

"You've refrained from asking questions for years because I kept you at arm's length for so long," I reached out and let my hand rest on his paw, lightly stroking the fur in a way that wasn't petting him, but intended to more of a friendly touch. If I even knew what that was. "Ask your questions, and I will answer. You should know everything before the coming days shed light on the past."

He blinked and his head tilted to the side in a curious gesture. "Did you really kill them all?"

I knew what he was referring to even if it was out of context. "Most of them, yes."

"Why?"

"I was ensuring that Hueco Mundo developed in the way the God Maker wished it to," I said softly. "He wanted us to be a power, but to not be monsters. The living see us as demons, devils, and nightmares. We didn't need to be worse than we already are, and when raising someone into power you cannot always determine how they will turn out. The God Maker released Arrancar who were worthy of being on their own, but kept the ones who either wished to remain tied to him or couldn't be trusted on their own."

"When the God Maker was killed, it wasn't even hours later before they began to exercise their freedom in ways that were unacceptable. It was the God Maker's wish that they be eliminated before they could gain power. So, I killed them all, using the power I had gained from taking my bond back from the God Maker to overwhelm each and every one of them." I dropped his gaze as my mind trailed back to the past. "Or I thought I had killed them all."

"How could you have missed them?" He asked in a soft tone. It wasn't accusing like the words would have been from someone else's mouth. I took it like the prompt it was and searched what I could remember of the time.

"I don't know. The God Maker's death had torn away every shred of my humanity at the time. It was like silence in my head for years. I thought with logic and instinct rather than the morals and pride that I developed later."

I frowned as I chewed on my bottom lip. I couldn't seem to get my memories to flow in the right order, let alone from the same period of time. I knew how I could, but I didn't know if Raacharg was ready for something like that. Then again, he could handle what I had done to him with Grimmjow's power to aid me. If that didn't kill him, then this wouldn't drag him down with me.

Or would it?

"I can show you," I said slowly.

"Show me what?" He asked.

"A glimpse of a world long past," I said, my sight filling with images of the past that began to replace the walls and ceiling of my rock with their sensations. Long, billowing curtains filled the room, moving with a wind that didn't exist. In their movementment columns of white marble appeared and sunlight filtered into the room to cast shadows that were long with the rising sun. I knew it was all in my head, but I didn't fight it. This was what I wanted to show Raacharg. Shoving it down now would just make it harder to fight it later.

"You told Grimmjow that you could share things through touch that you can't normally. Like your healing and...memories."

"Oh," I said with a hint of surprise. "You heard that, huh?"

"I heard most of it after you woke," he answered, sounding embarrassed. "When he forced the bond on you, the pain of it rattled through ours and I startled into consciousness."

"Ah. Well I suppose the cat's out of the bag." I hadn't realized until then that he had seen my meltdown and how I had allowed myself to find comfort in Grimmjow. It wasn't something to be ashamed of, but I didn't know if Raacharg would see it that way. It had been just he and I for years now. Was he jealous? If he wasn't, would he be?

"I want to share with you a memory. It will feel real, like you're experiencing it as I did. Will you accept?"

"You don't need to share-"

"I want to," I interrupted him. "I want you to know what I am."

That wasn't the only reason that I wanted to share this with him. I couldn't communicate like he could. Where I got frustrated and lost, he could string together words that anyone could understand. The more he knew, the better that he could assist me like I knew he wanted to.

"I will always accept whatever you want to do, but I know what you are, Isa. Who you were doesn't really matter to me."

I gave him a soft smile, trying to show him that he words meant something to me. His fur was gleaming in the sunlight that filtered in behind him, a figment of a memory that looks so real I couldn't tell if it was happening or not. With the billowing fabric and the hues of pink and orange that were beginning to filter across the sky behind him, it seemed right. Our room had always been open to the air. It only rained once every hundred years or so in Hueco Mundo, and Aether had never been afraid of being attacked by the people who served him.

I closed my eyes and gripped Raacharg's paw tighter before I gave into the sensations of the past creeping over me. The memories I dove into were all focused around one thought. Aether. I had to start with the one person that had started it all. Raacharg needed to understand what it had been like. He needed to know the old me that reflected so strongly in what I was now.

A deafening scream ripped from my throat as I impaled a soul on my extended finger. The bone of it had grown like a short spear that extended from my hand, acting like a weapon rather than the talons I normally kept. I lifted the still struggling soul from the ground and pulled him to me. I met his brown eyes, and relished in the fear that radiated of him in waves. Slowly I closed my other hand over his skull and tightened my grip, feeling bone crunch under the pressure. His body went limp and I smiled to myself as I greedily devoured his corpse.

Once I was finished with him I lifted my gaze to look around at the rest of the village I was on the outskirts of. There were no more souls to feed on here, not unless I wanted to make some. That thought wasn't particularly appetizing to me, so I turned my back to the village and began walking to my next destination. People were always dying these days. Famine, illness, war. I loved stalking such places, eating the souls of the people who couldn't pass to the upper realm on their own.

"You must be decently powerful to be here as an Adjuchas," a rough male voice said from the path I had been passing. I had remembered Raacharg's presence in time to translate Aether's words in a language that he would understand, knowing that the old tongue wasn't something he knew.

I turned, my sharp avian sight taking in the man who seemed to fill the entire path with his girth. I said nothing as my eyes took him in, and the mask that I knew he wore. Many of the details in my memories were blurred with time, making the images surreal and dream like.

"You're not Human, but you have the body of one," I observed aloud as my head tilted to the side in a curious gesture.

"You're right, I am not." He moved toward me, and I turned to him. My instincts told me he was dangerous, but I was too mesmerized by the power held in his eyes to even consider keeping distance between us.

"What are you, stranger?" I asked as he stopped before me.

"I am Aether," he answered smoothly.

"That is a name, not a thing." I pointed out. My mind was simple, but I was not stupid.

"Then I am an Arrancar," he answered this time.

"What is that?" I asked, understanding the meaning but not the context.

"What I want to make you."

Time flew by, images of the events afterwards flashing through my mind. Aether's hand resting over my mask, covering my eyes as I entrusted myself to him and he bound me. The day that I became a Vasto Lorde, earning in my own mind the name that he had bestowed upon me when he had bound me. Amechania. The feeling of my claws digging under my own mask as I tore it from my face to become an Arrancar. The first emotion that I had ever felt as my body trembled with rage, fueled by Aether's efforts to make me experience such things for the first time.

And love…

My body shuddered above him as the pleasure coursing through me climaxed into something incomprehensible. My hands clasped down on Aether's body beneath me, my nails drawing blood as I lost myself in the sea of sensations. Darkness flickered around me as for just a moment, I lost all control over myself and my Negative Space flashed around us. Hands large enough to encircle my thighs took hold of my hips and forced my body to wed tighter to his, drawing a delighted gasp from my mouth. He let out guttural groan that vibrated through his body and into mine, making me shudder all over again.

Panting heavily I let myself slowly fall forward until I was draped across his heaving chest. Arms surrounded me, the weight of them resting on my smaller frame in a secure embrace. Our bodies were slick with sweat, making the air seem cold despite the heat radiating off our skin. As my body calmed I let out a sigh of utter contentment and nuzzled my nose against his chest that was rough with criss crossing scars.

"I've never felt so perfectly content before," I murmured softly. I found one of the wounds I had gouged into his body with my mouth and licked at it in what I felt like was a caring gesture before I pushed power down his bond with me, coaxing his body to heal the damage I had caused.

"Do you know why that is?" He asked as his hand found the back of my neck. He caressed my spine for a moment before his large fingers found the bone over my ear and he began teasing the sensitive spot where my feathers would protrude in my true form.

"No," I breathed out, unable to come up with more words as I enjoyed the sensation of his touch.

"It's love," he answered softly.

"I don't know what that is," I said, my words coming out slowly with my distraction.

"It's this, what you are experiencing now. This feeling is love," he murmured as he let his touch trail down to my jaw and he guided my head to turn up so he could gaze upon my face. His eyes, a color I had forgotten, were full of tenderness. For a long moment I didn't understand what I was seeing in him, but slowly my mind seemed to comprehend something I had been unable to before.

"Is it your love I am feeling, or my own?"

His thumb caressed my cheek as a his lips lifted into a gentle smile I had only recently started seeing on his normally stoic face.

"It's ours, Isabellia."

"I like this feeling," I murmured as I tilted my head into his hand. "I like this feeling a lot."

"Stay with me, and I will help you feel like this for eternity."

I blinked up at him with surprise. "You want me to stay? You have urged all Arrancar who are worthy of your trust to take to their own territory and their own people. Why am I different? Have I upset you?"

"I want you to stay. I want you to be my Amechania and no one else's. I won't force you to, but I want to keep you if you will accept being mine forever."

I slowly rose to my hands and knees, fighting the boneless blob that my climax had made me want to be. I drew myself up his body so I was above him. He was so much bigger than me that I had to press the line of my body against his to manage the position, my legs straining to spread over the girth of his abdomen.

"You want to keep me?" My voice sounded hurt even to me, and instantly he reacted, shaking his head.

"I do, but not like what you're thinking. I keep the others on a leash because I have to. I want you to be mine and wed our bond."

I blinked as the capacity for words escaped me. Desperate to not let him hear silence I quickly scrambled to come up with something to say.

"B-but that would change everything. I am not your equal, Aether. How could I be? No one would accept it."

"We'll convince them."

"And if they can't be convinced?"

"Then I'll make them."

I shook my head, unable to think around the enormity of what he was asking. I started to pull away, but he caught my arm and tugged to make my elbow bend and my body roll as he flipped me over. His mouth found mine, consuming any protest I could have formed in a devouring kiss. I let myself fall into the feel of him as his body weight pressed me into the bed, trapping me beneath him.

"I want you to be mine, Amechania. You have just discovered what love feels like, but I have felt it for you for some time now. I want to make you feel more, to feel everything. I want to keep you because without you, nothing seems new anymore. I have been alive for far too long. Through the bond, it's like experiencing something for the first time every day. You are the counterbalance to fog that had become my life, bringing with you new and extraordinary things I had forgotten even existed."

Aether's head dipped and he kissed me again. This time it was a slow, teasing kiss that made my body shiver with anticipation as I felt him shift against me, eager to repeat the activities we had just finished.

"You want to keep me not because I am a liability, but because you actually want me for me?" I asked slowly, trying to make sure that I actually understood what he wanted.

"Yes," he cooed as he began to trail soft kisses down my chin towards my neck.

"Then I am yours," I breathed out as my hands slid into his long hair and my back arched in anticipation.

My memories flew by, ghosting over images of the next several hundred years. The trials I went through to prove myself worthy of being at Aether's side instead of standing behind him. The day we wed our bond, the ceremony that brought us together in a way that could never be broken. Ruling at his side had been peaceful in a way that I hadn't understood until after he was gone, and I made sure to show Raacharg the life that I had once lead.

Then, images of the Soul King flashed by. The day that I had been so utterly defeated for the first time, and the day that Aether had died at his hands. My memories wavered for a moment as they played and I felt myself being sucked into the moment, reliving the events instead of just remembering them.

My hands were covered in my own blood as I reached out to his fallen form. The rational part of my brain new he was dead, but I couldn't seem to convince the rest of myself as I feebly shifted his body so I could pull his head into my lap. His skin was still warm where I touched him, but his eyes stared sightlessly into the sky colored pink and orange with the break of dawn.

"Aether," I called softly to him. I knew I should have been sad in this moment, but when his power had left me I had lost the ability to feel anything. There was no sadness to be felt at his loss, and I desperately wanted to feel it.

My hand stroked down his cheek, covering his skin in red streaks. When he didn't respond to my touch I carefully slid his eyes closed and folded my body over his, sheltering his face from anyone else's sight. I could feel that my bond with him was the only thing holding his body to this plain, but I wasn't quite ready to let him go. He had been killed by the Soul King. His soul would move on to the next stage to rejoin the flow of souls as soon as I let him go. As I memorized the feeling of the bond I still held, I silently vowed that I would never forget this feeling. He had never said it was possible, but maybe, just maybe, I could find him again.

Maybe…

Removing a feather from my hair I held it up, examining the white bone. I wouldn't allow myself to forget what he felt like. I would keep a piece of him with me forever, and maybe…

Gently, I pressed the feather to his forehead and called to the part of me still within his body. It came to my call without any resistance, and with it I pulled everything I could from his body. The residual spirit energy that resided with him, the feel of his power, the essence of his soul - I took it all into myself through the feather pressed to his skin.

As the last bit of his power and mine left his body, the physical presence that has been under my hands vanished in one abrupt moment and I curled down on myself. My fist slammed into the ground making pain radiate up my arm, but it was nothing compared to hole that had just torn itself open in my chest. The pain was real. I could feel pain. It was something to fill the void.

Aether was gone. I could feel it in my bones, in my mind and in my heart that no longer fluttered at his will. He had given me everything I had lacked, but without him I felt an emptiness I had never known could be possible.

Gods…

Shaking, I opened my palm to gaze down on the feather that held his memory. I couldn't return it to my hair. This piece of him was far too precious to lose so easily. Without a thought I closed my hand around the feather and sat up. In one swift movement I tore the broken armor that covered my sternum from my body, crying out as the pain of it roared through my body. I didn't let the pain slow me down as I plunged my fist into my own chest, breaking through bone and flesh to do it. My breath shoved from my lungs and my heart stopped with the force, but it only fueled my motivation as I buried the feather deep within my body and released my grip on it, leaving it inside of me as my hand withdrew.

Blood ran freely down my body as I stared down at the hole I had made. What remained of his power coursed through me, rushing through my veins as I turned it into healing my wounds. He may have been dead, but I would keep his memory alive. I would enforce the beliefs that he held and execute his will as if he were alive. It was the least I could do for having been unable to be there when he needed me.

Slowly I got to my feet, surveying the area as I did so. The Soul King had left with his entourage as soon as they were certain the God Maker wouldn't rise, but the impression of their spiritual pressure lingered in their place. I frowned and held my hand out for my zanpakuto. It came to my hand, the pole of it vibrating with the impact.

"Depress," I murmured as I flicked the metal with my gauntlet. Darkness swept over the area, engulfing everything in my Negative Space to rid the area of the feeling of their residual spiritual pressure. I only let it remain for a moment before I called it back to me and turned away from the area. I didn't want to linger here. The God Maker wouldn't have wanted me to. I needed to police his people. There would be time for honoring his memory when I had quelled the storm that had most certain risen in his wake.

I would force them to heed the God Maker's rules and if they refused, I would kill them all myself.

Time leapt forward again, flashing images of the palace we resided within and faces of the people who served me as they greeted me. I had expected the palace to be quiet with the loss of the God Maker, but instead I walked into the chaos that had arisen in his absence. The storm had already began.

Great.

"Amanta," one of my people exclaimed as they ran up to me. "Amanta, we felt the bond-"

"The God Maker is dead," I said in a flat, monotone voice as I brushed past her.

"Then who will stop them?"

I knew who she spoke of. Them, the Arrancar that the God Maker had kept bound to him to control them.

"I will," said stiffly. "Retrieve my other kin, or at least Mattius. I will need his fire once I have cleansed the filth from our home."

There were twenty-seven Arrancar that Aether kept bound to him, and of those only nine were his because they chose to stay. The rest were his because Aether, no- The God Maker had kept them to control them. He had warned me about what they would do if they were free, and standing at the entrance I could already see that he had been right. Bodies littered the courtyard, more joining them as I watched Aurelia and Sampson toss another corpse from the third tier balcony to the crystalline base the palace was built upon. Unlike the God Maker, these Arranear had been killed by our own people. Their bodies would become food for whom ever was organizing this mess.

If I let them. Which I wouldn't.

Walking into the courtyard I tapped my zanpakuto on the ground, letting the metal ring as I refreshed my armor in a burst of power. Clad head to toe in white bone I strode over the bodies, pushing my power into their corpses as I went and pulling their reishi into myself. The energy I gained from their bodies was nothing compared to what I had received from the God Maker when I had taken my bond back, but to them it would have been like a boon in the middle of a fight. Then again, I did not know how many corpses were lying around.

No matter.

"Depress," I murmured as I rested my zanpakuto on my shoulder, making the metal ring for only a moment.

Darkness engulfed the courtyard and quickly spread to encompass the entire palace. Where people were not hidden by walls and other structures they stood out like a beacon of light in my Negative Space. I wasn't a predator, but in this moment I acted like one, stalking through the halls that I knew so well I didn't have to see their edges to move without hindrance.

A woman I only remembered by her bitter disposition fell to the floor as I stabbed my zanpakuto into her back and twisted the blade as I withdrew. She was dead before she could even think to scream.

A man with a faintly canine appearance was next, his body crashing into the wall as I caved his head in with the butt of my zanpakuto. He was quickly followed by the smaller man that was his lover as I took his leg off in one swing and in the same series of movements his head parted with his body.

A head flew, cleaved from broad shoulders as used the sharp edge of my shield to break through bone and flesh.

Aurelia and Sampson were next, falling to my assault as easily as those who I had killed before them.

I killed all the Arrancar I could find that would possibly oppose me like they were no better than a simple soul. I had only fought against a very few people that the God Maker had kept. They knew my secrets, how I fought and how I won. They would barricade themselves in, hoping that the others would be lucky enough to strike a blow against me. But, it never happened. My armor was thick and my body conditioned for this sort of fight. They were lost in the dark and unable to fight without their spirit energy to aid them.

"Amanta Isabellia," a dark and masculine voice greeted as I stepped into the main hall of the palace. "Or I suppose it's just Isabellia now, isn't it? Without Aether beside you, you're just another Arrancar."

"Shit stain," I greet him back. Twenty or so people stood around Arnau, ranging from Vasto Lordes to Arrancar. He'd been collecting the strongest subjects that he could, just like the God Maker had said he would. "Only four of you who were bound to Aether remain. I only killed ten of you, yet four remain. Were you responsible for killing the others?"

"Are you really asking me that?" He scoffed and shook his head. "I suppose you never were very smart."

"It doesn't matter," I said flatly. "I know what you've been doing since the God Maker passed. It hasn't been three hours and you've already started killing your fellow Arrancar so you can steal their kin while they are in shock from the loss of the bond."

"I wouldn't do that," he chided. "They just happened to die, and I have been kind enough to give them the power they crave."

My eyes narrowed. I knew he was lying, but it mattered little.

"I know how you work, Arnau. You will die before-"

Time froze as a sensation crawled from my chest, beckoning me. My eyes flew open as my heart pounded and my mind reeled as I tried to figure out where I was. Golden eyes blinked at me from behind a white bone mask. Eyes very similar to my own. I looked down at my hand clasped over a furred paw and narrowed my eyes in confusion.

"You're mine, aren't you?" I asked the Adjuchas. Even before he spoke I knew the answer. The bond between us was open so wide that I must have been sharing something with him.

"Yes," he answered hesitantly.

"Raacharg," I said, pulling his name from some unknown place in my mind. I had said that name before in that large plant filled room.

"Isa?" he answered in kind, his eyes expressing worry.

"No," I corrected him as I sat up. I rubbed my neck, my fingers trailing back to find my spine. Feeling the bone under my fingers I sighed and turned, moving to slide off the bed.

"Where are you going?" Raacharg asked as I stood.

"He's calling."

"Who?"

I turned back to him and gave him an assessing look. "Aether. Whom else?"

"Aether is dead, Isa."

I smiled at him, his words passing me by without being heard. I observed the break in the smooth line of his fur that had most likely been caused by a grave wound and reached out through our bond. He had indeed been wounded, was even still recovering from the damage it had done. I couldn't see to remember how he'd been injured, but it mattered little.

"Come," I said as I turned and presented him my back.

"Shouldn't you put some clothes on first?"

I looked down at myself, finding with a bit of surprise that I was clothed in only a very thin fabric. If Aether had been nearby this would have been sufficient, but I could tell he was beyond even the edge of my senses. Traveling in such a garment would be unacceptable.

"I suppose."