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kinkfestTitle: Ill Met by Moonlight
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sophiap
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None.
Word Count: c. 2,600
Summary: They say that knowing your zanpaktou's name gives you power over it. They never talk about the other side of that equation.
A/N: For the prompt Bleach, Aizen/Kyouka Suigetsu: femdom - over the precipice. Sorry for the late posting, but sleep won out over proofreading.
The only thing Aizen Sousuke could remember about how he first entered the inner world where he met his zanpakutou was this: he fell.
He might have been dreaming when it happened. It felt very much like those times, just before sliding into dream-sleep, when the body thinks it is falling. He had the same kind of sudden drop in his stomach, and the dizzy flurry of movement as he sought to save himself from falling.
On the other hand, he also remembered not being able to sleep and deciding to take a walk in the Academy's gardens. A step up he thought was there was not, and he stumble-ran trying catch himself.
Or maybe that was part of the dream.
It didn't feel like a dream, though, when he picked himself up. It was a hard fall, for such a short one. Bones ached. The heels of his hands stung from where he caught himself, and he felt small shards of gravel pull away from skin as he wiped his hands on his yukata. The crickets' singing was so loud it must have been real, and the cool humidity made the air feel strangely heavy, as if he had to push it aside as he walked.
That was the one part that felt like a dream. It was hard to move, as if he were still tangled in blankets.
"Is this real?" he asked, and his voice sounded unusually loud, even though he was sure he had whispered. He held his hands out in front of him, and he could see them, white in the moonlight, while the sleeves of his yukata were so dark as to be invisible. It almost looked as if he was not looking at his own hands. But if this was a dream, was it a dream of his hands, or was it real...
Then, he heard his name.
Sousuke.
Or perhaps it was no more than lapping of water at the edge of the pond, or the chatter of the stream ahead. He looked off to his side, and yes, there was the darkness of the lotus patch and the gleam of the moonlit pond surrounding it. How had he come this far? This was the far side of the garden, wasn't it?
He heard his name again and set off in search of the speaker.
The garden pond seemed much larger, and the island much further away. But it was the Academy garden. He knew this. He also knew how to find the thin path that led through the lilyturf, feet finding each stepping stone without error, despite the fact that they were not evenly placed. It forced him to slow down. Forced him to listen to the crickets singing and the dried reeds clattering together in a whisper that rose and fell with the wind.
As his spirit slowed and quieted, he began to notice other things. He had seen the flowering trees that all but glowed in the moonlight, as they rippled above their reflections in the pond, but it took him a while to understand why they did not fit.
He smiled, and veered off to the left without looking. There just happened to be another set of stepping stones hidden among the turf.
"You're out here, aren't you?" he said. There was no need to speak loudly--his voice carried well enough on its own.
He smiled, wry and humorless as he berated himself for taking long enough to figure out what was happening. His zanpakutou. He thought he had started to sense it. A sense of something flowing out of his hand even as he had a firm grip on its hilt. A faint rippling around the blade that showed up only when he was lost in a kata, his mind lost in the motion.
Ever since he had noticed this, he had spent hours in quiet meditation, offering himself up, opening his mind, welcoming the being that would become his partner and his power. One of his professors had warned him about becoming obsessed, but he knew better. And now he had proof. His efforts had started to pay off.
The path now paralleled the stream. The stream sounded like it was laughing at him. He allowed himself a soft chuckle, doing his best to share in a joke he didn't understand.
Always so polite, always so kind, right, Sousuke?
Well, yes. He was. Why wouldn't he be?
Why wouldn't you be?
He had an uneasy feeling that he was being mocked.
He was now walking up the middle of the stream, following a path of stones that rose barely above the water. His feet were wet, and cold, but he was aware that the discomfort was not real. The stream led him down the hill and towards the pond. Trees white with out-of-season flowers waved and warped overhead. He looked up, and saw that the stars, too, were rising and falling as if the sky was a pond and someone had dropped in the moon.
Ahead of him, barely visible through the trees, the garden pond shone smooth as polished steel.
Let me see you, Aizen Sousuke. Let me know you.
"Where are you?" he called out. He tried not to sound desperate. Desperation was for others. More than half his class at the Academy had named their zanpakutou. Many of those who were left had started darkly speculating about the number of students every year who never did learn their swords' names. They talked around their fears of being left behind, or of having to return to their old lives.
The only thing he was afraid of was not knowing. He wanted to know everything. What was real. What was true. Being so close to finding out and yet so far... the closer he got the more frustrated he became.
"Tell me! Who are you?"
There was no answer, but he reached the edge of the pond sooner than he should have. A crooked wooden bridge led far out into the pond. He stepped up on it and followed it out across the water, turning every few steps to follow the zig and zag of the bridge.
"Where are you? What do I call you?"
What happened to that politeness, Sousuke? There was a ripple of laughter. Or was that only pretense? Illusion? Deception?
It was a woman's voice. That surprised him. The majority of his friends, including nearly all of the women, had implied that their zanpakutou were male.
He had thought, too, that he might have had a water-type zanpakutou, but he was no longer sure, despite the pond and its variable boundaries.
Her words stung, and he wondered why simple and joking rudeness on her part would cause his back to stiffen with fear.
The pond's boundaries shifted again, and the bridge zigged back towards the shoreline. Petals fell up towards the surface of the pond, while the reflections in the air rippled and tore apart and came back together again. The shoreline lifted and receded and came back, as if it were moving, and not the water. The water beneath him remained still, while above him, stars were scattered in the currents of the sky.
The only still object in the world above water was the moon. But even though it remained still, it was two-faced, full and crescent at once.
The bridge took him closer to shore. From his right, a wolf howled. From the left, a dog barked. A small creature, armored and masked, crawled out onto the shore in front of him. He paused, watching in disgust. It looked like a scorpion, but... In his dream, he knew it was something other than that. Why was something like this in his dream world?
Laughter rose up from beneath him, from the too still water.
Are you going to pretend you're better than that? Are you going to pretend you don't know your own heart? That you don't know where you are? Are you, Sousuke?
Looking past the shore, and that miserable creature, out towards where he thought the Academy should be, he saw two strange towers rising far into the sky. They were real, and yet they were not there.
Yet.
Her voice cut through him. He felt so naked it was a wonder that bone did not show through skin, or that every thought had not been made plain for all to see. He wrapped his arms tight across his chest, but that did not make him feel any less vulnerable.
"What are you? Where are you?" He turned in place, nearly missing his footing and falling off the bridge. His sandal slipped halfway off his foot, and his glasses had slid partway down his nose.
There was low laughter, and a prompt to look up. Somehow, he knew this meant to look down. Down to the solid original of the false sky, the false trees, the false hills above.
"Oh. I see." He knelt down on the bridge.
This world was layer upon layer, lie upon lie. Deceptive moonlight and false reflections.
"Yes, I see." He peered down into the water, flush with pride and triumph.
Do you, now? The voice sounded gentle. Later, he would remember it as mocking.
He saw his own reflection on the mirrored surface of the water. Beneath that, the moon's reflection sat in the water like a coin. He knew that if he looked up, the other moon would not be there. The trees were gone, but the petals still rose up from far beneath the water, from real trees that he could not see, under a real sky that he ached to know.
Layers and lies, and he longed to see the truth beyond them.
Illusion was spinning away around him. Cracks appeared in the fake sky overhead. There wasn't much time. He reached down into the water, feeling only the barest resistance. His hands came together slowly beneath the moon. The water remained still. Petals rose and rose and rose until the surface of the water was dappled with white as far as he could see--except for the moon, and his face reflected in the water.
He laughed. Was it this easy, then?
Mirror. Flower. Water. Moon.
"Kyouka Suigetsu." He savored each syllable as he lifted the moon from the pond. Water trailed through his fingers.
"Aizen Sousuke." He no longer held the moon. A woman knelt before of him on the bridge, his hands framing her face, her hair winding between his fingers. In the darkness, it was hard to see her clearly, but she had fair skin, red lips, and a robe the color of moonlight on cherry blossoms. Her dark hair was halfway braided, as if he had interrupted her at her mirror. She smiled at him, and for a moment, he could not have been happier.
Then, she reached up and took his wrists. She pulled his hands away from her face, and while she still smiled, it was not a kindly smile.
"Do you know my name?" she asked. His wrists were held firm.
Yes. He did. He knew it as well as he knew his own. He said it again, just to be sure.
She leaned forward until her mouth was against his ear. Her breath was warm as she spoke to him. "Well, I know yours." Her tongue flicked out, teasing the curl of his lobe. "Sousuke."
When she said his name, the weight of it nearly crushed him.
"All those times you called out to me, so freely giving yourself to me..." Small, sharp teeth nipped lightly at the bend of his jaw. "Showing yourself to me."
He tried to pull his hands free, but could not. She curled her fingers, pressing her nails to the undersides of his wrists, not digging in, but promising what she could do if he did not cooperate.
"Showing me what you wanted me to see. No more masks," she whispered. "Tear them all away."
She brushed her lips against his, pulling away before he could respond. But in that brief touch, he saw. Saw the emptiness behind the sky. Saw the void that needed to be filled--that he would fill. He saw the towers that would rise above a plain devoid of all illusion and all pretense.
She released one of his wrists and raised her hand to brush his hair back from his face. Her hand on his forehead was as soft as flower petals and as smooth as glass. Her smile was as cold as the moon.
"Do you know why you keep yourself so hidden, Sousuke?"
He tried to protest that he wasn't hiding, but she rested a finger on his lips then reached up to lift his glasses away from his face.
"Wait--I need those!"
His protest was answered by a flick of her wrist and a nearby splash.
He lunged for them, but Kyouka Suigetsu pushed him back. He fell heavily against the boards of the bridge, and his breath was knocked out of him in a loud whoof.
She lay on top of him, forearm resting on his chest as she propped herself up. Lazily, she pushed his hair back again. "You should see yourself like this. So different. Not like the self you let everyone see. Not like the self you tried to sell to me. But I can see more than that. Oh yes. Much, much more."
He stared up at her. His glasses were gone, but he could see as clearly as he ever had. More clearly.
She traced his jawline with the fingers of her free hand, but he could not pull back from the touch.
"You want things you don't even know you want--yet."
Without his glasses, he could see what she really looked like. Before, he had only seen the mask.
"Mask. Illusion. Whatever," she said. "And yes, I can read your mind."
Her hand trailed down his neck and down towards his chest, unerringly finding all the right places.
"What you need to understand, Sousuke, is that I create illusions, but I see the truth. I see what you can do. What you will do. What will be."
Kyouka Suigetsu's face shone like the moon. He could stay here like this, forever, in this little construct of a world.
He loved her. And every time she said his name, he fell a little further. By now, he felt like the boards beneath his back were the only thing keeping him from falling forever.
"What you will do for me."
Anything. Everything.
"I know your name."
Yes. She did.
"But you only saw one of mine. The very least of all the names I wear. And never my true one."
He knew that, now, but it didn't matter. What she wanted, he wanted. And what she wanted was everything.
"You are mine."
He was hers.
"My perfect weapon."
Yes.
Yes
The sky fractured and fell down in shards around them.
Aizen Sousuke never did remember waking. He was conscious of sitting up in his room in the dormitories, dressing and going through his normal routine. But this world was just as false as the other one. So it couldn't be called waking, could it?
And all he was doing was observing, watching, waiting until he would be of some use.
One day, though, he would be used peel away the lies and the layers. The one he knew as Kyouka Suigetsu would show everyone the emptiness behind the skies.
And when she did, he would be right there by her side.
Author:
sophiapRating: PG-13
Warnings: None.
Word Count: c. 2,600
Summary: They say that knowing your zanpaktou's name gives you power over it. They never talk about the other side of that equation.
A/N: For the prompt Bleach, Aizen/Kyouka Suigetsu: femdom - over the precipice. Sorry for the late posting, but sleep won out over proofreading.
The only thing Aizen Sousuke could remember about how he first entered the inner world where he met his zanpakutou was this: he fell.
He might have been dreaming when it happened. It felt very much like those times, just before sliding into dream-sleep, when the body thinks it is falling. He had the same kind of sudden drop in his stomach, and the dizzy flurry of movement as he sought to save himself from falling.
On the other hand, he also remembered not being able to sleep and deciding to take a walk in the Academy's gardens. A step up he thought was there was not, and he stumble-ran trying catch himself.
Or maybe that was part of the dream.
It didn't feel like a dream, though, when he picked himself up. It was a hard fall, for such a short one. Bones ached. The heels of his hands stung from where he caught himself, and he felt small shards of gravel pull away from skin as he wiped his hands on his yukata. The crickets' singing was so loud it must have been real, and the cool humidity made the air feel strangely heavy, as if he had to push it aside as he walked.
That was the one part that felt like a dream. It was hard to move, as if he were still tangled in blankets.
"Is this real?" he asked, and his voice sounded unusually loud, even though he was sure he had whispered. He held his hands out in front of him, and he could see them, white in the moonlight, while the sleeves of his yukata were so dark as to be invisible. It almost looked as if he was not looking at his own hands. But if this was a dream, was it a dream of his hands, or was it real...
Then, he heard his name.
Sousuke.
Or perhaps it was no more than lapping of water at the edge of the pond, or the chatter of the stream ahead. He looked off to his side, and yes, there was the darkness of the lotus patch and the gleam of the moonlit pond surrounding it. How had he come this far? This was the far side of the garden, wasn't it?
He heard his name again and set off in search of the speaker.
The garden pond seemed much larger, and the island much further away. But it was the Academy garden. He knew this. He also knew how to find the thin path that led through the lilyturf, feet finding each stepping stone without error, despite the fact that they were not evenly placed. It forced him to slow down. Forced him to listen to the crickets singing and the dried reeds clattering together in a whisper that rose and fell with the wind.
As his spirit slowed and quieted, he began to notice other things. He had seen the flowering trees that all but glowed in the moonlight, as they rippled above their reflections in the pond, but it took him a while to understand why they did not fit.
He smiled, and veered off to the left without looking. There just happened to be another set of stepping stones hidden among the turf.
"You're out here, aren't you?" he said. There was no need to speak loudly--his voice carried well enough on its own.
He smiled, wry and humorless as he berated himself for taking long enough to figure out what was happening. His zanpakutou. He thought he had started to sense it. A sense of something flowing out of his hand even as he had a firm grip on its hilt. A faint rippling around the blade that showed up only when he was lost in a kata, his mind lost in the motion.
Ever since he had noticed this, he had spent hours in quiet meditation, offering himself up, opening his mind, welcoming the being that would become his partner and his power. One of his professors had warned him about becoming obsessed, but he knew better. And now he had proof. His efforts had started to pay off.
The path now paralleled the stream. The stream sounded like it was laughing at him. He allowed himself a soft chuckle, doing his best to share in a joke he didn't understand.
Always so polite, always so kind, right, Sousuke?
Well, yes. He was. Why wouldn't he be?
Why wouldn't you be?
He had an uneasy feeling that he was being mocked.
He was now walking up the middle of the stream, following a path of stones that rose barely above the water. His feet were wet, and cold, but he was aware that the discomfort was not real. The stream led him down the hill and towards the pond. Trees white with out-of-season flowers waved and warped overhead. He looked up, and saw that the stars, too, were rising and falling as if the sky was a pond and someone had dropped in the moon.
Ahead of him, barely visible through the trees, the garden pond shone smooth as polished steel.
Let me see you, Aizen Sousuke. Let me know you.
"Where are you?" he called out. He tried not to sound desperate. Desperation was for others. More than half his class at the Academy had named their zanpakutou. Many of those who were left had started darkly speculating about the number of students every year who never did learn their swords' names. They talked around their fears of being left behind, or of having to return to their old lives.
The only thing he was afraid of was not knowing. He wanted to know everything. What was real. What was true. Being so close to finding out and yet so far... the closer he got the more frustrated he became.
"Tell me! Who are you?"
There was no answer, but he reached the edge of the pond sooner than he should have. A crooked wooden bridge led far out into the pond. He stepped up on it and followed it out across the water, turning every few steps to follow the zig and zag of the bridge.
"Where are you? What do I call you?"
What happened to that politeness, Sousuke? There was a ripple of laughter. Or was that only pretense? Illusion? Deception?
It was a woman's voice. That surprised him. The majority of his friends, including nearly all of the women, had implied that their zanpakutou were male.
He had thought, too, that he might have had a water-type zanpakutou, but he was no longer sure, despite the pond and its variable boundaries.
Her words stung, and he wondered why simple and joking rudeness on her part would cause his back to stiffen with fear.
The pond's boundaries shifted again, and the bridge zigged back towards the shoreline. Petals fell up towards the surface of the pond, while the reflections in the air rippled and tore apart and came back together again. The shoreline lifted and receded and came back, as if it were moving, and not the water. The water beneath him remained still, while above him, stars were scattered in the currents of the sky.
The only still object in the world above water was the moon. But even though it remained still, it was two-faced, full and crescent at once.
The bridge took him closer to shore. From his right, a wolf howled. From the left, a dog barked. A small creature, armored and masked, crawled out onto the shore in front of him. He paused, watching in disgust. It looked like a scorpion, but... In his dream, he knew it was something other than that. Why was something like this in his dream world?
Laughter rose up from beneath him, from the too still water.
Are you going to pretend you're better than that? Are you going to pretend you don't know your own heart? That you don't know where you are? Are you, Sousuke?
Looking past the shore, and that miserable creature, out towards where he thought the Academy should be, he saw two strange towers rising far into the sky. They were real, and yet they were not there.
Yet.
Her voice cut through him. He felt so naked it was a wonder that bone did not show through skin, or that every thought had not been made plain for all to see. He wrapped his arms tight across his chest, but that did not make him feel any less vulnerable.
"What are you? Where are you?" He turned in place, nearly missing his footing and falling off the bridge. His sandal slipped halfway off his foot, and his glasses had slid partway down his nose.
There was low laughter, and a prompt to look up. Somehow, he knew this meant to look down. Down to the solid original of the false sky, the false trees, the false hills above.
"Oh. I see." He knelt down on the bridge.
This world was layer upon layer, lie upon lie. Deceptive moonlight and false reflections.
"Yes, I see." He peered down into the water, flush with pride and triumph.
Do you, now? The voice sounded gentle. Later, he would remember it as mocking.
He saw his own reflection on the mirrored surface of the water. Beneath that, the moon's reflection sat in the water like a coin. He knew that if he looked up, the other moon would not be there. The trees were gone, but the petals still rose up from far beneath the water, from real trees that he could not see, under a real sky that he ached to know.
Layers and lies, and he longed to see the truth beyond them.
Illusion was spinning away around him. Cracks appeared in the fake sky overhead. There wasn't much time. He reached down into the water, feeling only the barest resistance. His hands came together slowly beneath the moon. The water remained still. Petals rose and rose and rose until the surface of the water was dappled with white as far as he could see--except for the moon, and his face reflected in the water.
He laughed. Was it this easy, then?
Mirror. Flower. Water. Moon.
"Kyouka Suigetsu." He savored each syllable as he lifted the moon from the pond. Water trailed through his fingers.
"Aizen Sousuke." He no longer held the moon. A woman knelt before of him on the bridge, his hands framing her face, her hair winding between his fingers. In the darkness, it was hard to see her clearly, but she had fair skin, red lips, and a robe the color of moonlight on cherry blossoms. Her dark hair was halfway braided, as if he had interrupted her at her mirror. She smiled at him, and for a moment, he could not have been happier.
Then, she reached up and took his wrists. She pulled his hands away from her face, and while she still smiled, it was not a kindly smile.
"Do you know my name?" she asked. His wrists were held firm.
Yes. He did. He knew it as well as he knew his own. He said it again, just to be sure.
She leaned forward until her mouth was against his ear. Her breath was warm as she spoke to him. "Well, I know yours." Her tongue flicked out, teasing the curl of his lobe. "Sousuke."
When she said his name, the weight of it nearly crushed him.
"All those times you called out to me, so freely giving yourself to me..." Small, sharp teeth nipped lightly at the bend of his jaw. "Showing yourself to me."
He tried to pull his hands free, but could not. She curled her fingers, pressing her nails to the undersides of his wrists, not digging in, but promising what she could do if he did not cooperate.
"Showing me what you wanted me to see. No more masks," she whispered. "Tear them all away."
She brushed her lips against his, pulling away before he could respond. But in that brief touch, he saw. Saw the emptiness behind the sky. Saw the void that needed to be filled--that he would fill. He saw the towers that would rise above a plain devoid of all illusion and all pretense.
She released one of his wrists and raised her hand to brush his hair back from his face. Her hand on his forehead was as soft as flower petals and as smooth as glass. Her smile was as cold as the moon.
"Do you know why you keep yourself so hidden, Sousuke?"
He tried to protest that he wasn't hiding, but she rested a finger on his lips then reached up to lift his glasses away from his face.
"Wait--I need those!"
His protest was answered by a flick of her wrist and a nearby splash.
He lunged for them, but Kyouka Suigetsu pushed him back. He fell heavily against the boards of the bridge, and his breath was knocked out of him in a loud whoof.
She lay on top of him, forearm resting on his chest as she propped herself up. Lazily, she pushed his hair back again. "You should see yourself like this. So different. Not like the self you let everyone see. Not like the self you tried to sell to me. But I can see more than that. Oh yes. Much, much more."
He stared up at her. His glasses were gone, but he could see as clearly as he ever had. More clearly.
She traced his jawline with the fingers of her free hand, but he could not pull back from the touch.
"You want things you don't even know you want--yet."
Without his glasses, he could see what she really looked like. Before, he had only seen the mask.
"Mask. Illusion. Whatever," she said. "And yes, I can read your mind."
Her hand trailed down his neck and down towards his chest, unerringly finding all the right places.
"What you need to understand, Sousuke, is that I create illusions, but I see the truth. I see what you can do. What you will do. What will be."
Kyouka Suigetsu's face shone like the moon. He could stay here like this, forever, in this little construct of a world.
He loved her. And every time she said his name, he fell a little further. By now, he felt like the boards beneath his back were the only thing keeping him from falling forever.
"What you will do for me."
Anything. Everything.
"I know your name."
Yes. She did.
"But you only saw one of mine. The very least of all the names I wear. And never my true one."
He knew that, now, but it didn't matter. What she wanted, he wanted. And what she wanted was everything.
"You are mine."
He was hers.
"My perfect weapon."
Yes.
Yes
The sky fractured and fell down in shards around them.
Aizen Sousuke never did remember waking. He was conscious of sitting up in his room in the dormitories, dressing and going through his normal routine. But this world was just as false as the other one. So it couldn't be called waking, could it?
And all he was doing was observing, watching, waiting until he would be of some use.
One day, though, he would be used peel away the lies and the layers. The one he knew as Kyouka Suigetsu would show everyone the emptiness behind the skies.
And when she did, he would be right there by her side.
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