Winter War: Lisa: Prisoner's Dilemma [Bleach]
Title: Winter War - Lisa: Prisoner's Dilemma
Fandom: Bleach
Characters: Lisa, Hisagi, Love, Gin
Rating/Warning: R in this part for violence in addition to the usual language and major character death.
Word Count:
Notes: This is a dark AU co-plotted with incandescens and liralen. The war against Aizen's forces went very badly. Nothing is sacred and no one is safe.
Previous chapter: Hanatarou - Underground
Summary: Everything Lisa knew about gambling she learned from her captain. But that was a very long time ago.
Prudence had done them in. It was a quick explanation, pithy and largely accurate, but every time Lisa thought about the whole notion of prudence, she invariably wound up with several tracks from the Beatles' White Album stuck in her head for hours.
That wasn't too bad, actually--running through the lyrics to 'Glass Onion' and trying to figure out what the hell they were about at least gave her something to think about that wasn't the biggest 'what if' in her life. But in the end, light diversion always gave way to darker thoughts.
Hueco Mundo was far from the first 'what if' she had wrestled with. For a very long time in the living world, far longer than she should have, Lisa often found herself just staring at words on a page rather than reading them, only pretending to be lost in a book when she was truly lost in wondering what might have happened if her captain hadn't sent her on that last mission.
Even now, she could remember the look on his face as he glanced over his shoulder. It was one of the few memories of Soul Society she was sure had not been corrupted with time. Will you do it? he'd asked. Asked, not ordered, and with a seriousness that told her there was more going on than he could tell. He was worried.
Very worried, and with what turned out to be very good reason.
It took her more than forty years to put that particular 'what if' game to bed, replacing it with less consuming thoughts. Sometimes, she might wonder if Kyouraku-taichou had any idea what had happened to her, and what he thought if he did. Sometimes, she worried about him, and how he was doing without her and whether or not he was still alive. Other times, she wanted to give him a bloody nose and a black eye, and maybe a knee to the groin by way of punctuation.
The only reason she wasn't more willing to dump blame on him was that she suspected he'd dumped more than enough on himself over the past century.
All he'd done, though, was be careful. Prudent. And look where it got her. Them.
A few months ago, her friends been careful. Prudent. Several times a day now, Lisa thought that if maybe Shinji had just said shut up, this is the way it's gonna be, this is what we're gonna do, so let's roll, everything would have been different.
Hiyori wouldn't have argued and gone on arguing. Rose wouldn't have played devil's advocate. In the lull, Kensei wouldn't have started in with Mashiro about whatever the hell they always bickered about, distracting everyone and giving Hacchi time to suggest that they make sure they had looked at all their possible alternatives. Her attention might not have wandered while she waited for everyone to settle down enough to listen to reason. They might have actually done something.
But, instead of doing, she had just stood there, thinking, running odds on scenario after scenario, trying to decide if going to action now or later was better. She was just about to tell Shinji she thought they should monitor the situation for a few hours before attempting to join the battle when the wall opposite her cracked and crumbled away.
And thus, a whole new game of 'what if' began.
Some of it was wishful thinking. The rest of it was a nauseated giddiness at how things could have gone down. If she hadn't moved within leaping distance of cover the instant she heard the sound of crumbling masonry and torquing metal. If she had followed Hiyori's lead and rushed straight at their attacker rather than falling back and waiting to see what they were dealing with.
Prudence was not always a bad thing. Lisa had learned long ago that there were times for taking crazy risks and time for playing it close and careful. She had also learned that it wasn't always easy to tell the difference.
If she had been someone else, or had had the misfortune to serve under a different captain, Lisa might well be a pile of bone and dust right now. But she was who she was, and she'd been what she'd been, and instead of having been washed down the gutter with the next rain or feeling guilty that she hadn't, she was walking down a hallway that had all the warmth and homey charm of a subway restroom.
She wasn't going anywhere in particular just then, but she walked with purpose. She had Haguro Tonbo slung across her back and a green felt-tipped marker in one hand.
Just another day in Paradise.
Lisa was convinced that whoever or whatever had designed Las Noches had picked up some pretty subtle ideas from Lovecraft. Subtle, because of the distinct lack of tentacles (except for that one Privaron she had the misfortune of meeting), and because things were only just slightly off true in a way that suggested it had all been done deliberately. Most angles were just a little off square, and the rooms were proportioned in ways that made them feel too small or too big. And the walls...
She twirled the green marker between her fingers, and whistled the theme to Lingerie Senshi Papillon Rose.
'White' was the way most people would describe the general look of the place, but in fact the majority of the public spaces were a flat, lifeless shade of very pale blue gray that managed to seem too bright and glaring when it was hot, but only added to the chill when it was cold.
Add to that the fact that the entire outside of the place looked like a fucking nuclear power plant, and you had yourself a keen place to build a couples' resort. Or something.
She tossed the marker up in the air, but when she went to catch it, she misjudged the arc and nearly swatted it away before she fumbled it into her grasp. She did not toss it again. It was no big deal, not really, but it was a good reminder that boredom led to carelessness.
Carelessness was far more lethal than prudence.
Her paranoia duly amped up, Lisa paused just before the next crossing and reached out with her spiritual sense to see if there was anyone coming down the other hallway. She did feel another presence, off to what she'd designated for convenience's sake as 'east,' but it wasn't moving.
Once she'd determined that much, she pulled back. Flickers and flares of spiritual energy were common here, but sustained interest might be noticed. Besides, there was a something near the center of the complex that scratched at her mind the way a nail would scratch across stone. If she touched for too long, she would come away feeling like she was at the tail end of the world's worst hangover--but without all the fun at the front end.
And that right there was the difference between then and now. Sixty some-odd years ago, Lisa had gradually stopped playing 'what if' because she had just as gradually begun to like being in the living world. She liked the music. The food. The movies (oh, the movies!), the manga, the shops, the nightlife. Television was a wonder. So was the internet. So was the club that had fifty-five different imported beers on tap.
This place, though, had nothing like that. Nothing she was willing to get used to, let alone like.
No, there was one thing. She did like the killer pair of white go-go boots that were part of her new uniform. They were the sort of funky-retro thing she might have stared at in a shop window for a few weeks before giving in and buying them. When things got back to normal (it was always when, never if, even though she knew she was lying to herself), she would wear them out clubbing.
She would hit every single club in Roppongi. It would take her days. Days, and it wouldn't matter how much she drank because she would dance it all off in those sexy white boots.
Afterwards, she would burn those fucking boots and all of her white shirts and everything else that reminded her of this place, and she would dance naked around the fire and shout and scream while the sparks swirled up into the air.
For now, she would endure. She had seen Tokyo burn twice. She had also seen it rebuilt twice. She knew what people--ordinary, living people--could endure, even when hope seemed too far off. And so, she would follow their example and endure, and find what little entertainment she could.
At the next crossroads, she stopped and uncapped the marker. She thought about drawing a little fire and some dancing sparks, but the marker was green, so she drew a tiny tree instead. Her first attempt looked too much like a mushroom cloud for comfort, so she scribbled in a few more branches. When she was finished, she wasn't exactly satisfied with her work, but she did have a craving for beef with broccoli.
Beef with broccoli. A bottle of good, imported beer--porter if she could get it. A pint of chocolate ice cream all to herself. A night spent watching stupid game shows.
No, wait. Scratch the ice cream. Mmm, no. Ditch the beer instead. The game was called 'Three Things I Miss from Home,' not Four. Three was nostalgia. Four was wallowing. She would miss beer tomorrow and chocolate ice cream today.
A spike in reiatsu rudely shoved all thoughts of chocolate and future beer aside. She knew who it was even before she reached the curve in the hall and came face-to-face with him.
She did not even bother hiding the way her hand rose to Tonbo's hilt, or any of the drawling contempt in her voice.
"Oh. You."
Him. The first time Lisa had ever seen him, he was only one of too many worries. What she remembered most about him was just how quickly curiosity had turned to simple disgust.
The second time she'd seen him, it was only because of the threatened consequences to another that she hadn't sliced that tattoo right off his face.
As for Hisagi Shuuhei, he'd mostly regarded her with cold apathy on the rare occasions their paths crossed. He never said much, and for a while was always perfectly professional and coolly controlled, but now...
The son-of-a-bitch had just about jumped out of his skin when she rounded the corner on him, and Lisa knew damn well he should have sensed her as much as she'd sensed him. Or he would have a few weeks ago. No, more like a month ago.
The more time went by, the more Hisagi looked like he'd been ridden hard and put up wet--and not in the fun way, either. He had gone from lean to noticeably gaunt over the past several weeks, and she could swear that each time she saw him, there were more flecks of gray in his hair. One temple was already a lost cause.
He recovered his composure fast enough, except for the rapid pulse still hammering so high in his throat she could see it.
"My apologies. I didn't expect to find anyone here."
No shit.
"Oh?" She cocked her head and did her best to look innocent, although she still kept her hand in the 'draw and then mince' position on Tonbo's hilt. "So if you're not expecting to find someone, what are you doing here?"
The composure slipped, just a little. There was a twitch in the corner of his unscarred eye and a tightening of an already knife-thin smile. "I--" he coughed, discreetly covering it with the top of his fist, then tried again. "I am trying to find someone, but was looking to find them over that way."
A nod of his head indicated the direction, and Lisa looked despite herself. Immediately in view there was nothing but a wall, but if he went a little further, and turned in that direction when he got to where she'd drawn the tree-slash-broccoli stalk, it would take him to one of the outer walls that stood between them and the rest of Hueco Mundo.
She was not allowed to go that far. Not on her own, anyway.
"I'm going to see if the last patrol found any sign of our Sixth Espada," he said, even though she had not asked. She wondered if he noticed he'd gone from looking for an individual to looking for an entire patrol.
"Sixth? Is that Grimmjow? I thought I'd heard he hadn't been seen in a while. I know I haven't seen him around much." Normally, when dealing with Hisagi, she'd keep interactions to a minimum and then move on. Not that it was difficult, given how little he normally said to her. This kind of talkativeness wasn't normal, and one of the many things Lisa had learned about Las Noches was that deviations from routine rarely boded well. "What happened?"
"I don't know." Short, sharp, and just a little too fast. "No one knows."
No one except maybe you, perhaps? "Wish I could say I was sorry." His eyes widened slightly, but the really telling part was how one corner of his mouth lifted just as slightly. She pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose, as she decided to take a little gamble, just to see what happened. The stakes were low enough. "The idiot tried to grab my ass once. He's lucky he kept his hand."
It was a lie, of course. She'd only ever seen Grimmjow from across a room (lickable abs and nice tight hips--bummer about the hole), but Hisagi didn't know that. Again, he looked startled, but this time, she thought she heard a huff of wry laughter.
She was less surprised by his reaction than she was at the low surge of anger she felt at seeing him act so... likeable.
"So, any theories? Any suspicions?" She paused barely long enough to break the rhythm. "Any likely suspects?"
The shadow of humor faded so quickly it might as well have been imaginary. And while he didn't actually flinch as she fired off her last question, his face grew so unreadable it told her volumes. Too bad for him Lisa knew far more about masks than he could ever hope to learn.
"No." The scars and tats would have held most people's eye, deflecting attention from the slight movements at the corner of the mouth or up in the forehead, or the way his eyes cut sharply to the left just before he answered. Something happened that made his cheeks seem just a little bit more sunken, the lines framing his mouth a touch deeper. His control was good, but not good enough that she couldn't see he was still jumpy as hell.
"Aizen-sama's not worried about him, is he?" She still had to remind herself to use the honorific. It was easiest just to avoid saying the man's name if she could. She forced a laugh. "I mean, wasn't Grimmjow in the doghouse once before?"
Hisagi shrugged. "That was before our time. Anyhow, I'd better go check--I don't want to get in trouble."
He set off, and Lisa fell into step beside him. Two things warred for her attention: the reference to 'our' time that pissed her off more than she wanted to admit, and the lack of reference about who he'd be in trouble with or what that trouble might be.
She had assumed that Hisagi hadn't been saddled with the same kinds of "guarantees of continued good behavior" she had, but with this new jumpiness she was no longer certain. Maybe he'd simply screwed up and was trying to keep it from biting him in the ass, but now she considered the possibility that something else was going on. She didn't waste time chastising herself for having made a potentially invalid assumption in the first place.
"What? Are they threatening you with 'quality time' in Szayel's lab or something? I can't blame you for wanting to avoid it--it's not any fun."
She counted the sidelong glare she received as a point in her favor. Two points, given the glimmer of horrified surprise that came through the annoyance. When he spoke again, he refused to look at her.
"You aren't..." He caught himself, but from what she couldn't tell. "I mean, there's no need for you to come with me, Yadomaru-san."
He could have ordered her off. Maybe he was afraid she'd start asking questions of the wrong people. She matched him step for step. "Hey, I'm bored. I don't have anything else to do."
She could see him fighting the urge to look at her more closely, to study her. They'd spoken so little that she knew he had to have no idea who she was or what she was like, and now he was curious.
She wasn't sure what to make of that, other than to wonder how she could turn it to her advantage--without putting herself any more at risk than she was.
He did a completely dorky double-take when he saw her broccoli tree. "What the hell is that supposed to be?"
"A tree."
He looked at the drawing, puzzled, then back at her, equally puzzled.
"Like I said, I'm bored." His confusion was kind of cute, really. Under other circumstances, she very well might have turned to him weeks ago to alleviate that boredom, but there was no chance in hell of that happening now. "I'm always bored. Well, except for the times when I'm scared shitless. It's either one or the other. You know how it goes."
He shook his head and kept walking, apparently resigned to her presence. As for Lisa, she rifled through her memories, working to piece together what she knew about this idiot and what she had only been able to guess at.
Well, she knew his name, and his rank, and his connection to Kensei's division.
Kensei... She willed her fist not to clench as she snuck another look at that sick joke of a tattoo. The last she'd seen of Kensei, he was falling off a roof, rot rushing up his leg like fire up dry straw. Mashiro leapt up to try to catch him, Rose's Kinshara snaked out to wrap around Kensei's thigh just above the dead part, and both of them were between Kensei and Barragan when Barragan raised his hand again.
After that, well... The best Lisa could tell, Barragan's first attack had hit a couple of load-bearing supports in a nearby building, and both she and Love were taken out by a few hundred tons of falling concrete and steel before they could do a single damned thing to help their friends. She had vague memories of fighting off someone or something while her vision was swirling and her left hand was a mass of white-hot squishy agony, but that was as much dream as reality.
She supposed it was possible that Kensei, Rose, and Mashiro were okay, that someone had pulled a miracle out of their ass at the last moment, but she chose to classify that thought as a wish rather than a hope.
Kensei's face, gray with pain. A wave of something like smoke rumbling towards Rose and Mashiro. A shock that hit every bone in her body and made everything go searing white before it went completely black.
No, not a lot of room for hope. Shinji and Hiyori were both dead. Shinji first, almost before they even knew they were under attack. Hiyori seconds later, howling with rage and leaping straight at their attacker.
Lisa didn't see Hiyori die, but she could imagine it well enough. She had seen what happened to Shinji. She heard Hiyori's screams as she pulled Mashiro out of the way and behind cover. Slapping Mashiro had been as much about keeping her own composure as it had been about jolting Mashiro out of her horrified shock.
"We left it too long," Lisa told her. Even now, she could still see the red shape of her hand on Mashiro's cheek. "We should have brought the battle to them. What we need to do now is regroup."
If she couldn't be calm, logical was the next best thing.
Unfortunately, Rose and Love decided that vengeance and honor trumped logic, and it all went downhill from there. She could almost hear her captain behind her, murmuring about how foolish it all was.
When it was all over and she came to, she was in a large, white room, so large that the ceiling and the far walls darkened to twilight grey with the distance. At the time, she assumed her vision was still off-kilter from the knock to the head, but she later came to realize that most of the rooms in Las Noches had that effect.
She was on her knees with her hands bound tight behind her, and while her shoulders ached from being pulled back at an awkward angle while she slumped forward, her left hand no longer hurt. Her fingers moved at her will, and the only sign that she'd been injured were a slight, residual weakness and something like a memory of pain. Love was kneeling to one side of her, but she couldn't feel his reiatsu. Or anyone's reiatsu, for that matter. And when she gave an experimental tug against her bonds, the sudden drain on her own power left her dizzy. Well, more dizzy.
"I already tried that. I almost blacked out again. There's something else going on, though. It's not just the shackles," Love muttered. It was odd to see him without his glasses, and Lisa had the sudden and completely out-of-place thought that he really did have the prettiest eyes. "Where the hell do you think we are?"
Lisa looked around, and the surge of vertigo made her wish she hadn't. She did see a bulky form to Love's right. It was large, and round, and vaguely human, but wrapped round and around with thick black bandages. She couldn't sense them, but she'd seen similar in higher-level binding kidou.
"No clue. Is that Hacchi?" she asked, even though she was sure that it was. As her vision cleared even more, she noticed a faint demarcation on the floor, where it went from one shade of cold white to another. "This is sekkiseki stone! Those assholes parked us on a slab of sekkiseki!"
"Aw, well, you know how it is." A cheerful voice came from the far end of the room, but sounded strangely close, as if it had slithered across the ceiling to drop down behind them. "Can't have you all up and doing something stupid."
She and Love looked in three different directions before dizzily settling on the right one. Two children had entered by the far door, one pale-haired, the other dark. At the sight of the pale one, Lisa was wracked by a chilling déjà vu. She'd seen that smirking child once before, possibly in a nightmare, or maybe in a memory that was muddled by pain and the passage of years.
But as the two walked towards them, they grew rapidly as the strange angles of the room wreaked havoc with her perception of far and near, big and small. The 'children' became men soon enough, and it was Lisa's turn to feel small.
She already hated them just for that.
"Know who they are?" Love whispered. It was much too loud.
Lisa shook her head, even though the silver-haired one tugged at some memory that would not come loose. He smiled so broadly Lisa felt sharp hooks pulling at the corners of her own mouth. It was not, of course, a sincere smile, and Lisa couldn't see his eyes well enough to gauge what he might be thinking. He didn't look injured, but his easy, slouching swagger had a hesitation to it.
"Taichou's been looking to get hold of you all for a long time, y'know." The Kansai accent and babying tone should have sounded ludicrous, but instead, it only made Lisa that much more aware of how her wrists were bound and how all her power was draining away into the stone beneath her. "Shame we only got the three of ya. Taichou wasn't real happy 'bout that. He wanted to meet up with Hirako again something fierce. Barragan might've been real strong, but he wasn't real smart. Ain't that always the case?"
He walked closer, careful to skirt the edge of the sekkiseki, circling away from Lisa and towards Hacchi.
"'Course, we did land ourselves a nice big fish, here. Oh, Aizen-taichou's got plans for this one..." He then turned to look at Love--who was so far remaining blessedly silent--and Lisa. He tilted his head slightly, and his smile gained even more of an edge. "And for you, too."
"Don't bluster," Lisa whispered, as loud as she dared. She heard a grumble from Love, but nothing more, thank heavens. She doubted Kensei or Hiyori would have been as quiet, and as soon as the thought crossed her mind she braced herself for the pain it would bring.
She didn't feel anything.
As for Love, he maintained an unblinking focus on the other man in the room, a well-built, dark-haired man who was staring off into a far corner and looking like he'd rather be anywhere else. Even though she had a good view of his face in profile, Lisa would have been hard-pressed to say what he looked like past the three deep scars that cut him from brow to jawline. For some reason, she felt sorry for him.
Love, on the other hand, just seemed angry. But why? Why wouldn't he be more focused on the silvery, smiling man who circled them like a vulture? He was the threat, with his sharp, sharp grin and a twitchy grip on his sword. The other man had his arms crossed tight across his chest. Poor form--it would take him at least two seconds to draw, and he was directly between them and the one door she could see. Distance was hard to judge in this place, but based on how long it took the men to walk from there to here, two flash steps should do it...
Lisa wondered when it would hit her, when she would stop looking around and analyzing everything coldly.
She quickly realized she was afraid of what would happen when she did stop.
"What kind of plans?" she asked. She doubted she'd get an honest answer from the silver-haired man, but it seemed he was the sort of person who liked to talk, who liked to work over his victims with words rather than blows. The more time she could buy, the better the chance she could figure out something she could do.
She got another bit of mock surprise from Silver-hair. "My, my, my... Now, how'm I s'posed to know that? I ain't the one in charge, little miss."
Fuck him. She was older than him and he knew it. She remembered him now, that creepy little kid from the Fifth. Aizen's pet project, Shinji always called him.
"But thing is, you and you and you..." He tipped his sword towards each of them in turn. "Well, y'all are Vizard, ain't you? That's real special. There's a lot you could do for Aizen-taichou--y'all had best call him 'Aizen-sama,' mind--especially this big boy here."
He reached over the sekkisekki border snake-quick, and rubbed Hacchi's head hard enough to give him whiplash. He chuckled, and Lisa saw his companion wince. It was fast enough she almost missed it, but she was sure it wasn't just imagination. Maybe... If she played this right...
"We're not doing anything for 'Aizen-sama'." Love made the honorific sound like the worst insult in the world.
"Aw, that's real cute. Ain't it cute, Hisagi-fukutaichou?"
The scarred man finally turned to join the conversation when prompted. "Yes, sir."
So that's what Love was staring at.
The bastard had Kensei's tattoo on his face.
"You're talking like you got a choice in the matter or something, Aikawa-taichou. Course, it ain't 'taichou' no more, right?"
"Don't. I've got this," Lisa hissed.
Love either didn't hear her or was too angry to listen. "As if Aizen's any better! And you! Hisagi-fukutaichou. You're Ninth, yeah? That's your division? Right? Right?"
The man turned aside, hiding the tattoo again. He said nothing.
Silver-hair was happy enough to answer on his behalf. "Sure is! Loyal to his captain all the way to his end. Not the captain you knew, o'course. You remember Tousen Kaname, dontcha?"
"Fifth seat of the Ninth. Muguruma-taichou thought very highly of him," Lisa said before Love could make things any worse. She watched Hisagi closely, but he knew enough now to school his expression. "That's his apprentice?"
Again, a carefully schooled non-reaction from Hisagi.
"Yeah. We're having to do with second-best, dontcha know. Real shame. After everything Aizen-taichou did for Tousen and all. What a waste..."
Odd. That got a reaction from Hisagi. A nauseated grimace that was there and gone almost before she saw it.
"What did he do to Tousen?" Love demanded. "The same thing he did to us? Damn, I hope so. The bastard set us up. He deserved to go through the same thing."
"Worse, actually," Silver-hair said cheerfully. He smiled, but it looked more like a wince, and when he spoke again, he sounded short of breath. "But that's neither here nor there right now. Right now, we got you, and all of the work Urahara put into you, all those things he did to make you stable, to make you strong..."
"Aizen wants to study us." Lisa was surprised at how easy it was to be calm. It only made her that much more scared for what would--what had to--come later. "He wants to see how we work."
Silver-hair chuckled and tapped the end of his nose. "You two, anyway."
"Excuse me, Ichimaru-taichou." Hisagi managed to address the man directly without looking at him. "You mentioned Urahara. Aizen--Aizen-sama said..."
Oh, damn him for that! She needed to hear more--were they going to be separated? And why? She'd hoped that Ichimaru (one reminder, and the name slotted into place) would ignore the interruption, but he turned on Hisagi, hissing as if he were in pain. Hisagi didn't flinch.
Then, after a careful blanking of his features, Ichimaru's smile brightened and he snapped his fingers. "Oh, yes! We were talking 'bout Urahara. Y'all work with him, right?"
"Some," she said, as if it was no big deal, but she was reluctant to say so anyway. Lisa ignored Love trying to shush her. Kyouraku-taichou had shown her how an interrogation could sometimes give more information to the one being interrogated than it could to the one asking the questions. "Off and on."
They needed to be valuable, but not too valuable. Kept safe, but not so safe that they could neither escape nor gather intelligence.
"Off and on, off and on..." Ichimaru nodded slowly and resumed his pacing. "Imagine you lot might need to get in touch with him real fast. Given your condition and all."
"That was Shinji, mostly." Then, with her attention more on Hisagi than Ichimaru (and again ignoring Love's protests), she threw another piece of information out there. "Muguruma-taichou was sometimes the one to contact him."
It felt weird to call him that, and not 'Kensei,' but the lack of response on Hisagi's part told her a hell of a lot.
"Ahhh.... Well, that's a real shame, ain't it? You not being the one who knows where he is right now."
This was where she had to be careful. Every word right now was a gamble, but Lisa knew she was a damned fine gambler. Kyouraku-taichou had been the best teacher a girl could have wanted on that particular subject.
He'd even taught her how to take a losing hand and walk away with everyone's pay for the week. But all that was a very long time ago.
"No, there's nothing I can tell you about where he is." She sat up as straight as she could given how she was bound. All the better to convey 'resolute defiance.' "I saw him last a week ago, when he told us about the false Karakura--"
She blanked her face so carefully that anyone looking at her would assume she was covering a big slip-up. Twisting her wrists hard against their bindings made her go convincingly clammy and pale.
Love spluttered, but fortunately was only able to get out a barely coherent "Lisa, what are you doing!"
It helped sell her ruse, which was good. If Love had guessed at what she was doing and was playing along, that was great, but Lisa thought it was only dumb luck that had kept him from fucking things up past repair just now. She had to steer this onto ground where his reactions wouldn't be as much of a variable.
"Now, now... The little lady's got it right."
Lisa decided she would castrate Ichimaru for that 'little lady' thing. Maybe not now, but definitely later.
"See, if you play along real nice an' all, you'll find it ain't so bad here."
"Nice. Right. Which is why you've got us tied up. Shit, can Hacchi even breathe, the way you got him wrapped?"
Love was usually pretty even-tempered, but this was nothing at all like 'usually.' The only good thing that happened was that Hacchi moved, nodding his head ponderously. He was all right for the moment.
"Taichou's orders!" Ichimaru sing-songed, like this was all some sort of school-room game.
"Love, you're only making it worse!" Lisa had to get this under control, and fast. To hell with subtle manipulation and artful gamesmanship. Something about Ichimaru's voice made the short hairs at the back of her neck not so much stand up as want to dive for cover. It was harder to keep the panic out of her voice than it was to let a convincing bit slip in.
"And it could be much, much worse." Ichimaru actually tsk-tsk-tsk'd as he circled the slab of sekkiseki stone. He snaked out his hand and rapped Lisa on the back of the head. She didn't even try to bite back the yelp of pain. If she was reading him right, he'd lose interest if it was too easy to get a reaction from her.
Every bit of strength she could save now was strength she could use later.
But the strike was so random. Too random.
"We can play nice," she said quickly. The worst possible people to gamble against were the erratic gamblers. You could strategize and bluff and manipulate all you wanted, but one wild play you weren't expecting could blow the entire game to pieces.
"Nice? These are the people that killed Shinji, Lisa. And you want to play nice?"
"What the hell else are we supposed to do, Love?" she hissed. She glared at him, hoping against hope he would see she was trying to buy them time. Time for what, she didn't know--yet.
She also hoped he would see that she knew their friends were dead, and what that meant. But this was not the time. Not now. Not until later. Much later.
"The lady's got a point, there, Aikawa-han. Ain't much else y'all can do right now. You know that, though. You pulled against them cuffs soon as you realized they were there, didn't you?"
Love turned his attention back to Ichimaru, straining to turn his head one direction then whipping it back in the other as he tried to follow the man's pacing. "Lisa, if they wanted us dead, we'd be dead. He said they want us alive," he whispered. "That Aizen wants us alive."
"So, what're you gonna do, then? Hm? All tied up like that?" This time, Ichimaru hit Love on the top of the head with that stupid wakizashi of his.
"Nothing." Love lifted his head as best he could, resolute. "We're not going to do a damned thing to help you. We're not going to dishonor our friends."
Lisa forced herself to face straight ahead, not to check to see if Love was talking to her as much as Ichimaru. Hisagi was looking off into the corner again, but he was sneaking a glance from time to time, following what was going on. His arms were still crossed tight over his chest.
"Your friends? You mean Muguruma-taichou and Otoribashi-taichou and all them?" Ichimaru giggled. "That's real funny."
Lisa saw Hisagi wince. His control was slipping. He didn't want to be there. She could see it plain as those scars on his face.
"You ain't tryin' to hold out for a rescue or something? Don't think that's going to happen, friend. Barragan said he killed 'em. Your friends. Killed 'em all. Course, Aizen wasn't too happy 'bout that, so we can't exactly ask Barragan no more, now can we?" Ichimaru laughed like this was the best joke ever, even going so far as to lean forward and slap his thigh.
Ichimaru's laughter turned into a hiss and a round of profanity bad enough to make Lisa's ears turn red. Then he started pacing again, pain-wracked and glaring at Love as if this were all Love's fault.
"Stupid bastard! What the hell you playin' at? Huh? Sittin' there all helpless and actin' like you're better'n me? Shit!"
A drop of his spittle hit her cheek. Hisagi was full-on staring at them now, horror-struck. She tried to catch his attention without drawing Ichimaru's.
"You lost! We won!" Ichimaru thumped his chest, even though it clearly hurt him. Lisa could still see no sign of a wound. "That means you got no right to sit there an' sass me like that. You hear me?"
Ichimaru was crazier than a shithouse rat. She could see that. Hisagi could see it. His eyes grew wider and wider as Ichimaru ranted.
Stop him, Lisa mouthed. Hisagi was looking in her direction. He had to see her. He had to. I can't. You need to stop him.
Even through his anger and grief, Love could tell that things were going south fast. But he didn't know what to do. "I am only doing what my friends' honor demands."
Lisa knew it was as close to a capitulation as Love could get.
"Honor? Honor?!" Ichimaru's mouth still turned up at the corners but it was not a smile.
Stop him. Hisagi was looking at her, through her. Please. Please. You have to.
"Yes, honor." Love just couldn't stop. Couldn't help himself. And she couldn't help him.
Help us.
For a moment, she thought Hisagi would. She saw his eyes narrow, saw him thinking. Ichimaru stopped pacing within range of his grasp.
"Aizen may have turned us into monsters, but there's nothing he can do to take our honor from us. And nothing you can do."
Please.
Hisagi still seemed to be thinking when Ichimaru drew his sword. His arms were just uncrossed when Ichimaru screamed out something she could barely understand.
Something thin and bright flared towards them, and all at once Love was not there. All she could see out of the corner of her eye was a long, narrow blade. She turned, and there was Love, pushed back several feet to the edge of the sekkiseki stone by the blade that had pierced his throat.
"Shouldn't talk so damn much," Ichimaru chirped.
Love's mouth opened and closed, but nothing came of it but a trickle of blood. Lisa forced herself to look at him, to look him in the eye and will him to understand. She had tried. Did he know that? That she had tried to save him? Did he forgive her?
But there was nothing there--no forgiveness and no understanding--and Ichimaru's zanpakuto pulled free with a slick sound she would hear every night thereafter when she was at the edge of sleep. Love slumped over, hitting the ground with a dull thump, and all Lisa could think was that someone should have been there to catch him.
"Aw, what're you looking at me like that for, sweetness?" Ichimaru's breathing came shallow and fast, as if he were in pain or aroused. He walked up as close as he dared, his toes grazing the edge of the sekkiseki. "You ain't mad at me, are you?"
She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to tell him to go fuck himself.
She gripped tight to her fear and her rage, and she let them hold her steady when Ichimaru lifted her chin with the tip of her sword. There was a faint sting where the point broke the skin, but it was the trickle of blood down her throat that nearly made her flinch.
When she looked to where Hisagi had been standing, the cowardly bastard was no longer there.
"I asked you a question, darlin'. You ain't mad at me, are you?"
Mad. Furious. Scared. Frantic. "I--"
Her thoughts flew this way and that, and she could not collect them until she asked herself one very simple question:
What would Kyouraku-taichou tell her to do?
She had asked herself the same question over a century ago. Then, as now, the answer was simple.
Survive. Survive, and remember it's all right to lose a battle if it means winning the war.
Maybe it's what he would have said, or maybe it was only what she imagined what he would have said, but either way, it gave her the clarity of mind she needed.
"What do you want me to be, sir?" she said. It didn't matter that she sounded weak and exhausted. If he thought she was beaten, then all the better. All she needed to do now was hold things together long enough.
However long that was.
The sword pulled away from her chin. "There's a good girl. Like I said, you only need to play nice. Now, let's--"
"Gin, are you being rude to our guests?"
She recognized the voice, even now that it was stripped of all its false deference. Aizen Sousuke walked into the room, growing from child to man as the walls and ceiling drew closer around him.
He'd changed. Changed in ways that went beyond slicking back his hair and getting rid of those dorky glasses. She tried to pinpoint what it was, but the best she could come up with was that there was a glassiness about him. Not like he'd gone shiny, but rather sharper or flatter, like she was seeing him in a mirror or through a pane of crystal.
"Heh. You know how it is, Aizen-taichou." Ichimaru scratched at the back of his head. He sounded like a little boy apologizing for an 'oopsie' that was more cute than damaging. "Y'know I don't like it when people get mouthy."
Aizen just smiled indulgently, and in the aftermath of all that had happened, it was like something out of a nightmare. "Perhaps you should leave this to me for now. Go tell Szayel to send some of his Fraccion to take Ushoda-san to more secure quarters."
"Sure... sure..." Ichimaru took his leave, waving casually over his shoulder. Again, his movements showed a faint hesitation.
"I've already told Hisagi to make sure your quarters were made ready, Yadomaru-san. I'm terribly sorry our reunion had to be under these circumstances. And please accept my apologies on Ichimaru-taichou's behalf. He was badly wounded by Yamamoto-soutaichou's flames, and while we were able to heal the physical burns..." He gave a smooth shrug that suggested he honestly didn't care how well Ichimaru had or had not healed.
"My quarters..." Something was being implied, but Lisa wasn't sure what, other than that she and Hacchi were being separated.
"Yes. I will have a few small tasks for you to perform from time to time, and I may require your assistance with one of our prisoners and your presence at certain occasions, but other than that, I would like for you to think of yourself as my guest. I had hoped I would have more than just you, Yadomaru-san, but alas..." Here, he cast a glance in the direction of Love's body. "Szayel and Mayuri will have to make do with what they have. You, on the other hand, will be spared their attention."
There was an unspoken 'unless.'
"Now, I suggest you pay close attention. You, too, Ushoda-san, as this also concerns you."
And so, Aizen made sure she and Hacchi understood the conditions of their stay, and of their continued safety.
Two days later, one of Szayel's Fraccion unceremoniously hauled Lisa out of her room and out of the first sleep she'd had in those two days. The next hour in Szayel's lab was one she would never forget. She still had a scar down the inside of her left arm and another curving under her belly. After the session, she'd been paraded into some sort of control room, still pale, shaking, and bleeding, and was made to stand in front of a monitor and turn this way and that to show off the fruits of Szayel's labor. She could not see who or what was on the other side, but later Aizen informed her that Ushoda-san sent his deepest apologies and a promise to be better behaved in the future.
Lisa hurt in so many places she wanted to throw up, but she fought a smile all the way back to her quarters. Hacchi had tested their restraints, just as she had known he would.
Just as she had, only her just-unsubtle-enough-to-get-caught snooping the day before had resulted in a simple warning and an almost jokingly polite reminder of the terms of her 'guest' status in Hueco Mundo. She wondered if Aizen knew just how much he had let slip then.
Beyond that, not much had happened. She'd done some exploring, and even though she only managed to explore areas where it was thought she could cause no trouble, she'd managed to learn a lot. She had even been trusted enough to bring food to Inoue Orihime on occasion. The girl only barely showed any sign that she recognized Lisa, and when Lisa tried to cheer her up with a raunchy joke, Orihime didn't even try to smile.
Hisagi remained studiously indifferent to her. Other than passing along orders, he only spoke to her once to let her know that Ichimaru had been sent to Soul Society ostensibly to run things on Aizen's behalf, but that it was exile as much as promotion.
She wasn't sure why he had gone out of his way to tell her that. She hoped it wasn't some sort of sick attempt at an apology, although he did look as if he was waiting for her to say something other than 'whatever.' He started getting noticeably more twitchy sometime after that.
She did commit a few more minor infractions. One was made to look deliberate. Two others were meant to come across as ignorance or negligence. Only on the patently deliberate one was Hacchi's safety even mentioned. The others simply merited confinement to quarters for a few days. She did get dark and hungry looks from Szayel and Mayuri afterwards, though. Szayel was openly eager to continue the tests he had begun, and Mayuri kept making a case that he should be allowed his own turn.
But they weren't allowed to touch her, even though they were sometimes given their pick of the other hostages.
Lisa tried not to think about them too much. Twice, she'd been able to intervene in ways that didn't look like intervention, but that was nothing to congratulate herself about.
One day, when she got out of there, she would allow herself to feel guilty about all of the Fourth Division members she couldn't save.
She would allow herself to think of all the things she might have said differently that would have kept Love from being killed.
She would scream and cry and grieve and break things and get drunk and cry and grieve some more.
But for now, she had to play her games and do everything she could to stay sane and strong. She had to allow herself to miss three things a day and scribble graffiti. She would revisit favorite television shows and manga in her mind as she tried to fall asleep. She had to remind herself that if she went to great lengths to save one person now, that meant she would not be able to save the majority of them later.
As long as she was safe and alive, so was Hacchi. Aizen needed him for something, and needed him cooperative. She was the key to that.
She hoped Hacchi knew she would be okay with being sacrificed if it meant he had the opportunity to defeat Aizen. She hoped he would forgive her if the reverse was true.
She wondered if the Fourth Division would forgive her, if she ever had the opportunity to explain herself.
She tried not to wonder if Love had forgiven her, in the end, for what he had seen as her capitulation. Or if he would forgive her now, for acting all chummy with the man who had stood there and let him be murdered.
It mattered, yes, but she couldn't let it matter more than what she had to do next. Whatever that was.
Whenever it was.
How long had she been here, now? Some of the days seemed eternally long, while others flew by in rapid succession. It could have been her own mind playing traitor, or it could be that time here was just as warped as everything else.
It could have been five minutes or as long as an hour, but they eventually reached the gate to the wilds outside.
"Huh. It's even more boring out there than in here," she said after staring at the wasteland for a while.
"More frightening, too," Hisagi said, squinting against the glare. There was no sign of any patrol.
Then, after she didn't say anything for a while, he finally broke the silence. "You said you were either bored all the time or frightened all of the time, didn't you?"
"Uh... yeah?" She wasn't even sure how long ago she said that. And he remembered it? Now? "Something like that. What's out there that's so frightening? More Hollows?"
"This is the first time you've been out this far?" It was an observation as much as a question.
She shrugged, and squirreled away yet another indication that he hadn't known about her special 'restrictions.' At least they'd let her keep Tonbo with her--a good thing given the run-in she'd had with one of Szayel's ex-Fraccions.
How very odd, she thought, ideas and suspicions slowly falling into place in her mind, that a prisoner should be allowed to keep her weapon. Yes, she had excellent incentive not to go berserk and start slaughtering Arrancar, but it was still odd. She watched as Hisagi kept his eye on the shimmering, wavering horizon. He gripped the top of his scabbard tightly, thumb resting on his zanpakutou's tsuba ready to push it free.
He gave orders, while she did not. He had freedoms that she did not enjoy. But then, she had freedoms that Inoue Orihime did not enjoy, and the cleaners from the Fourth were expected to show her a degree of deference if they encountered her.
"So, where's the patrol?"
"Maybe it hasn't found them yet." Lisa waited, but Hisagi didn't notice his slip. He simply smiled grimly and went on. "Or maybe something else found the patrol."
"It happens," she said cheerfully. The more of Aizen's goons that were taken out by someone else, the fewer she would have to worry about later.
"By now, though, I think they must have gotten away."
They. That was twice now he'd said they, and there was something about the way he kept his eyes on the horizon, and how even though he looked scared and wrung out, there was something else there as well.
One thing she had learned over the years was how not to let it show when she drew a card that meant the difference between a losing hand and one that might just be a winner.
For months, she'd been walking around with nothing but an eight, a nine, and a three in her hand. There was nothing she could do but bluff and wait.
But wait for what? And she certainly couldn't wait another forty years, or a hundred.
She had an opening in front of her. But what should she do with it? Should she do anything with it? Maybe a better chance would come along, a chance she would never see if she jumped at this one.
This could be a trap. But she'd seen Hisagi's state of mind deteriorating steadily. No one was that good of an actor.
"How long have they been gone?" she asked. There might have been a little bit of stress on the pronoun.
He went very, very still. It was an attempt at not giving anything away that gave everything away.
"Not long." He clipped the words off as soon as they were spoken, as if afraid of what else might slip out along with them.
If she made the wrong choice, Hacchi could pay a very high price. She could pay a very high price.
"I see." Lisa still told herself that she needed to be careful. There were so many things that could go wrong.
Trusting Hisagi was a very bad idea. He had let Love die, after all. But how many people had she let die or go on to worse fates?
It was plain that he was about to snap. It could happen at any time. Maybe Aizen had noticed and might lean on him just hard enough to make things go a little faster.
"Do you?" If she didn't know better, she would have sworn she heard something like desperate hope just then. All she had to do was make the offer...
A bluff could end with everyone's pay in her pocket. Or it could wipe her clean for the next month.
"That depends." She looked at him square on, and for the first time, she actually wondered why he had that tattoo on his face. "You thought at all about what would happen if they did get free?"
She had played the discard. The only question was if the new card would be any good.
He didn't answer for a moment. He still wouldn't look her in the eye.
Even if the new card was a good one, the play was going to speed up. It would be fast, chaotic, unpredictable.
She couldn't wait.
"Yes," he finally said. One word, and it said so much.
Or maybe the waiting was getting to her, said the small voice of caution.
"I see." There were so many risks. Too many, maybe. Maybe she had misread things. Maybe he'd rat her out to Aizen. Maybe she should just wait for a better opportunity, but...
Fuck being prudent.
"Hisagi?"
It wasn't like it had done her any good so far.
"Yes, Yadomaru-san?"
She would take the gamble.
"Whatever it is, count me in."
Next Chapter - Hinamori, Takano, Ichimaru: Taking the Bait
Fandom: Bleach
Characters: Lisa, Hisagi, Love, Gin
Rating/Warning: R in this part for violence in addition to the usual language and major character death.
Word Count:
Notes: This is a dark AU co-plotted with incandescens and liralen. The war against Aizen's forces went very badly. Nothing is sacred and no one is safe.
Previous chapter: Hanatarou - Underground
Summary: Everything Lisa knew about gambling she learned from her captain. But that was a very long time ago.
Prudence had done them in. It was a quick explanation, pithy and largely accurate, but every time Lisa thought about the whole notion of prudence, she invariably wound up with several tracks from the Beatles' White Album stuck in her head for hours.
That wasn't too bad, actually--running through the lyrics to 'Glass Onion' and trying to figure out what the hell they were about at least gave her something to think about that wasn't the biggest 'what if' in her life. But in the end, light diversion always gave way to darker thoughts.
Hueco Mundo was far from the first 'what if' she had wrestled with. For a very long time in the living world, far longer than she should have, Lisa often found herself just staring at words on a page rather than reading them, only pretending to be lost in a book when she was truly lost in wondering what might have happened if her captain hadn't sent her on that last mission.
Even now, she could remember the look on his face as he glanced over his shoulder. It was one of the few memories of Soul Society she was sure had not been corrupted with time. Will you do it? he'd asked. Asked, not ordered, and with a seriousness that told her there was more going on than he could tell. He was worried.
Very worried, and with what turned out to be very good reason.
It took her more than forty years to put that particular 'what if' game to bed, replacing it with less consuming thoughts. Sometimes, she might wonder if Kyouraku-taichou had any idea what had happened to her, and what he thought if he did. Sometimes, she worried about him, and how he was doing without her and whether or not he was still alive. Other times, she wanted to give him a bloody nose and a black eye, and maybe a knee to the groin by way of punctuation.
The only reason she wasn't more willing to dump blame on him was that she suspected he'd dumped more than enough on himself over the past century.
All he'd done, though, was be careful. Prudent. And look where it got her. Them.
A few months ago, her friends been careful. Prudent. Several times a day now, Lisa thought that if maybe Shinji had just said shut up, this is the way it's gonna be, this is what we're gonna do, so let's roll, everything would have been different.
Hiyori wouldn't have argued and gone on arguing. Rose wouldn't have played devil's advocate. In the lull, Kensei wouldn't have started in with Mashiro about whatever the hell they always bickered about, distracting everyone and giving Hacchi time to suggest that they make sure they had looked at all their possible alternatives. Her attention might not have wandered while she waited for everyone to settle down enough to listen to reason. They might have actually done something.
But, instead of doing, she had just stood there, thinking, running odds on scenario after scenario, trying to decide if going to action now or later was better. She was just about to tell Shinji she thought they should monitor the situation for a few hours before attempting to join the battle when the wall opposite her cracked and crumbled away.
And thus, a whole new game of 'what if' began.
Some of it was wishful thinking. The rest of it was a nauseated giddiness at how things could have gone down. If she hadn't moved within leaping distance of cover the instant she heard the sound of crumbling masonry and torquing metal. If she had followed Hiyori's lead and rushed straight at their attacker rather than falling back and waiting to see what they were dealing with.
Prudence was not always a bad thing. Lisa had learned long ago that there were times for taking crazy risks and time for playing it close and careful. She had also learned that it wasn't always easy to tell the difference.
If she had been someone else, or had had the misfortune to serve under a different captain, Lisa might well be a pile of bone and dust right now. But she was who she was, and she'd been what she'd been, and instead of having been washed down the gutter with the next rain or feeling guilty that she hadn't, she was walking down a hallway that had all the warmth and homey charm of a subway restroom.
She wasn't going anywhere in particular just then, but she walked with purpose. She had Haguro Tonbo slung across her back and a green felt-tipped marker in one hand.
Just another day in Paradise.
Lisa was convinced that whoever or whatever had designed Las Noches had picked up some pretty subtle ideas from Lovecraft. Subtle, because of the distinct lack of tentacles (except for that one Privaron she had the misfortune of meeting), and because things were only just slightly off true in a way that suggested it had all been done deliberately. Most angles were just a little off square, and the rooms were proportioned in ways that made them feel too small or too big. And the walls...
She twirled the green marker between her fingers, and whistled the theme to Lingerie Senshi Papillon Rose.
'White' was the way most people would describe the general look of the place, but in fact the majority of the public spaces were a flat, lifeless shade of very pale blue gray that managed to seem too bright and glaring when it was hot, but only added to the chill when it was cold.
Add to that the fact that the entire outside of the place looked like a fucking nuclear power plant, and you had yourself a keen place to build a couples' resort. Or something.
She tossed the marker up in the air, but when she went to catch it, she misjudged the arc and nearly swatted it away before she fumbled it into her grasp. She did not toss it again. It was no big deal, not really, but it was a good reminder that boredom led to carelessness.
Carelessness was far more lethal than prudence.
Her paranoia duly amped up, Lisa paused just before the next crossing and reached out with her spiritual sense to see if there was anyone coming down the other hallway. She did feel another presence, off to what she'd designated for convenience's sake as 'east,' but it wasn't moving.
Once she'd determined that much, she pulled back. Flickers and flares of spiritual energy were common here, but sustained interest might be noticed. Besides, there was a something near the center of the complex that scratched at her mind the way a nail would scratch across stone. If she touched for too long, she would come away feeling like she was at the tail end of the world's worst hangover--but without all the fun at the front end.
And that right there was the difference between then and now. Sixty some-odd years ago, Lisa had gradually stopped playing 'what if' because she had just as gradually begun to like being in the living world. She liked the music. The food. The movies (oh, the movies!), the manga, the shops, the nightlife. Television was a wonder. So was the internet. So was the club that had fifty-five different imported beers on tap.
This place, though, had nothing like that. Nothing she was willing to get used to, let alone like.
No, there was one thing. She did like the killer pair of white go-go boots that were part of her new uniform. They were the sort of funky-retro thing she might have stared at in a shop window for a few weeks before giving in and buying them. When things got back to normal (it was always when, never if, even though she knew she was lying to herself), she would wear them out clubbing.
She would hit every single club in Roppongi. It would take her days. Days, and it wouldn't matter how much she drank because she would dance it all off in those sexy white boots.
Afterwards, she would burn those fucking boots and all of her white shirts and everything else that reminded her of this place, and she would dance naked around the fire and shout and scream while the sparks swirled up into the air.
For now, she would endure. She had seen Tokyo burn twice. She had also seen it rebuilt twice. She knew what people--ordinary, living people--could endure, even when hope seemed too far off. And so, she would follow their example and endure, and find what little entertainment she could.
At the next crossroads, she stopped and uncapped the marker. She thought about drawing a little fire and some dancing sparks, but the marker was green, so she drew a tiny tree instead. Her first attempt looked too much like a mushroom cloud for comfort, so she scribbled in a few more branches. When she was finished, she wasn't exactly satisfied with her work, but she did have a craving for beef with broccoli.
Beef with broccoli. A bottle of good, imported beer--porter if she could get it. A pint of chocolate ice cream all to herself. A night spent watching stupid game shows.
No, wait. Scratch the ice cream. Mmm, no. Ditch the beer instead. The game was called 'Three Things I Miss from Home,' not Four. Three was nostalgia. Four was wallowing. She would miss beer tomorrow and chocolate ice cream today.
A spike in reiatsu rudely shoved all thoughts of chocolate and future beer aside. She knew who it was even before she reached the curve in the hall and came face-to-face with him.
She did not even bother hiding the way her hand rose to Tonbo's hilt, or any of the drawling contempt in her voice.
"Oh. You."
Him. The first time Lisa had ever seen him, he was only one of too many worries. What she remembered most about him was just how quickly curiosity had turned to simple disgust.
The second time she'd seen him, it was only because of the threatened consequences to another that she hadn't sliced that tattoo right off his face.
As for Hisagi Shuuhei, he'd mostly regarded her with cold apathy on the rare occasions their paths crossed. He never said much, and for a while was always perfectly professional and coolly controlled, but now...
The son-of-a-bitch had just about jumped out of his skin when she rounded the corner on him, and Lisa knew damn well he should have sensed her as much as she'd sensed him. Or he would have a few weeks ago. No, more like a month ago.
The more time went by, the more Hisagi looked like he'd been ridden hard and put up wet--and not in the fun way, either. He had gone from lean to noticeably gaunt over the past several weeks, and she could swear that each time she saw him, there were more flecks of gray in his hair. One temple was already a lost cause.
He recovered his composure fast enough, except for the rapid pulse still hammering so high in his throat she could see it.
"My apologies. I didn't expect to find anyone here."
No shit.
"Oh?" She cocked her head and did her best to look innocent, although she still kept her hand in the 'draw and then mince' position on Tonbo's hilt. "So if you're not expecting to find someone, what are you doing here?"
The composure slipped, just a little. There was a twitch in the corner of his unscarred eye and a tightening of an already knife-thin smile. "I--" he coughed, discreetly covering it with the top of his fist, then tried again. "I am trying to find someone, but was looking to find them over that way."
A nod of his head indicated the direction, and Lisa looked despite herself. Immediately in view there was nothing but a wall, but if he went a little further, and turned in that direction when he got to where she'd drawn the tree-slash-broccoli stalk, it would take him to one of the outer walls that stood between them and the rest of Hueco Mundo.
She was not allowed to go that far. Not on her own, anyway.
"I'm going to see if the last patrol found any sign of our Sixth Espada," he said, even though she had not asked. She wondered if he noticed he'd gone from looking for an individual to looking for an entire patrol.
"Sixth? Is that Grimmjow? I thought I'd heard he hadn't been seen in a while. I know I haven't seen him around much." Normally, when dealing with Hisagi, she'd keep interactions to a minimum and then move on. Not that it was difficult, given how little he normally said to her. This kind of talkativeness wasn't normal, and one of the many things Lisa had learned about Las Noches was that deviations from routine rarely boded well. "What happened?"
"I don't know." Short, sharp, and just a little too fast. "No one knows."
No one except maybe you, perhaps? "Wish I could say I was sorry." His eyes widened slightly, but the really telling part was how one corner of his mouth lifted just as slightly. She pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose, as she decided to take a little gamble, just to see what happened. The stakes were low enough. "The idiot tried to grab my ass once. He's lucky he kept his hand."
It was a lie, of course. She'd only ever seen Grimmjow from across a room (lickable abs and nice tight hips--bummer about the hole), but Hisagi didn't know that. Again, he looked startled, but this time, she thought she heard a huff of wry laughter.
She was less surprised by his reaction than she was at the low surge of anger she felt at seeing him act so... likeable.
"So, any theories? Any suspicions?" She paused barely long enough to break the rhythm. "Any likely suspects?"
The shadow of humor faded so quickly it might as well have been imaginary. And while he didn't actually flinch as she fired off her last question, his face grew so unreadable it told her volumes. Too bad for him Lisa knew far more about masks than he could ever hope to learn.
"No." The scars and tats would have held most people's eye, deflecting attention from the slight movements at the corner of the mouth or up in the forehead, or the way his eyes cut sharply to the left just before he answered. Something happened that made his cheeks seem just a little bit more sunken, the lines framing his mouth a touch deeper. His control was good, but not good enough that she couldn't see he was still jumpy as hell.
"Aizen-sama's not worried about him, is he?" She still had to remind herself to use the honorific. It was easiest just to avoid saying the man's name if she could. She forced a laugh. "I mean, wasn't Grimmjow in the doghouse once before?"
Hisagi shrugged. "That was before our time. Anyhow, I'd better go check--I don't want to get in trouble."
He set off, and Lisa fell into step beside him. Two things warred for her attention: the reference to 'our' time that pissed her off more than she wanted to admit, and the lack of reference about who he'd be in trouble with or what that trouble might be.
She had assumed that Hisagi hadn't been saddled with the same kinds of "guarantees of continued good behavior" she had, but with this new jumpiness she was no longer certain. Maybe he'd simply screwed up and was trying to keep it from biting him in the ass, but now she considered the possibility that something else was going on. She didn't waste time chastising herself for having made a potentially invalid assumption in the first place.
"What? Are they threatening you with 'quality time' in Szayel's lab or something? I can't blame you for wanting to avoid it--it's not any fun."
She counted the sidelong glare she received as a point in her favor. Two points, given the glimmer of horrified surprise that came through the annoyance. When he spoke again, he refused to look at her.
"You aren't..." He caught himself, but from what she couldn't tell. "I mean, there's no need for you to come with me, Yadomaru-san."
He could have ordered her off. Maybe he was afraid she'd start asking questions of the wrong people. She matched him step for step. "Hey, I'm bored. I don't have anything else to do."
She could see him fighting the urge to look at her more closely, to study her. They'd spoken so little that she knew he had to have no idea who she was or what she was like, and now he was curious.
She wasn't sure what to make of that, other than to wonder how she could turn it to her advantage--without putting herself any more at risk than she was.
He did a completely dorky double-take when he saw her broccoli tree. "What the hell is that supposed to be?"
"A tree."
He looked at the drawing, puzzled, then back at her, equally puzzled.
"Like I said, I'm bored." His confusion was kind of cute, really. Under other circumstances, she very well might have turned to him weeks ago to alleviate that boredom, but there was no chance in hell of that happening now. "I'm always bored. Well, except for the times when I'm scared shitless. It's either one or the other. You know how it goes."
He shook his head and kept walking, apparently resigned to her presence. As for Lisa, she rifled through her memories, working to piece together what she knew about this idiot and what she had only been able to guess at.
Well, she knew his name, and his rank, and his connection to Kensei's division.
Kensei... She willed her fist not to clench as she snuck another look at that sick joke of a tattoo. The last she'd seen of Kensei, he was falling off a roof, rot rushing up his leg like fire up dry straw. Mashiro leapt up to try to catch him, Rose's Kinshara snaked out to wrap around Kensei's thigh just above the dead part, and both of them were between Kensei and Barragan when Barragan raised his hand again.
After that, well... The best Lisa could tell, Barragan's first attack had hit a couple of load-bearing supports in a nearby building, and both she and Love were taken out by a few hundred tons of falling concrete and steel before they could do a single damned thing to help their friends. She had vague memories of fighting off someone or something while her vision was swirling and her left hand was a mass of white-hot squishy agony, but that was as much dream as reality.
She supposed it was possible that Kensei, Rose, and Mashiro were okay, that someone had pulled a miracle out of their ass at the last moment, but she chose to classify that thought as a wish rather than a hope.
Kensei's face, gray with pain. A wave of something like smoke rumbling towards Rose and Mashiro. A shock that hit every bone in her body and made everything go searing white before it went completely black.
No, not a lot of room for hope. Shinji and Hiyori were both dead. Shinji first, almost before they even knew they were under attack. Hiyori seconds later, howling with rage and leaping straight at their attacker.
Lisa didn't see Hiyori die, but she could imagine it well enough. She had seen what happened to Shinji. She heard Hiyori's screams as she pulled Mashiro out of the way and behind cover. Slapping Mashiro had been as much about keeping her own composure as it had been about jolting Mashiro out of her horrified shock.
"We left it too long," Lisa told her. Even now, she could still see the red shape of her hand on Mashiro's cheek. "We should have brought the battle to them. What we need to do now is regroup."
If she couldn't be calm, logical was the next best thing.
Unfortunately, Rose and Love decided that vengeance and honor trumped logic, and it all went downhill from there. She could almost hear her captain behind her, murmuring about how foolish it all was.
When it was all over and she came to, she was in a large, white room, so large that the ceiling and the far walls darkened to twilight grey with the distance. At the time, she assumed her vision was still off-kilter from the knock to the head, but she later came to realize that most of the rooms in Las Noches had that effect.
She was on her knees with her hands bound tight behind her, and while her shoulders ached from being pulled back at an awkward angle while she slumped forward, her left hand no longer hurt. Her fingers moved at her will, and the only sign that she'd been injured were a slight, residual weakness and something like a memory of pain. Love was kneeling to one side of her, but she couldn't feel his reiatsu. Or anyone's reiatsu, for that matter. And when she gave an experimental tug against her bonds, the sudden drain on her own power left her dizzy. Well, more dizzy.
"I already tried that. I almost blacked out again. There's something else going on, though. It's not just the shackles," Love muttered. It was odd to see him without his glasses, and Lisa had the sudden and completely out-of-place thought that he really did have the prettiest eyes. "Where the hell do you think we are?"
Lisa looked around, and the surge of vertigo made her wish she hadn't. She did see a bulky form to Love's right. It was large, and round, and vaguely human, but wrapped round and around with thick black bandages. She couldn't sense them, but she'd seen similar in higher-level binding kidou.
"No clue. Is that Hacchi?" she asked, even though she was sure that it was. As her vision cleared even more, she noticed a faint demarcation on the floor, where it went from one shade of cold white to another. "This is sekkiseki stone! Those assholes parked us on a slab of sekkiseki!"
"Aw, well, you know how it is." A cheerful voice came from the far end of the room, but sounded strangely close, as if it had slithered across the ceiling to drop down behind them. "Can't have you all up and doing something stupid."
She and Love looked in three different directions before dizzily settling on the right one. Two children had entered by the far door, one pale-haired, the other dark. At the sight of the pale one, Lisa was wracked by a chilling déjà vu. She'd seen that smirking child once before, possibly in a nightmare, or maybe in a memory that was muddled by pain and the passage of years.
But as the two walked towards them, they grew rapidly as the strange angles of the room wreaked havoc with her perception of far and near, big and small. The 'children' became men soon enough, and it was Lisa's turn to feel small.
She already hated them just for that.
"Know who they are?" Love whispered. It was much too loud.
Lisa shook her head, even though the silver-haired one tugged at some memory that would not come loose. He smiled so broadly Lisa felt sharp hooks pulling at the corners of her own mouth. It was not, of course, a sincere smile, and Lisa couldn't see his eyes well enough to gauge what he might be thinking. He didn't look injured, but his easy, slouching swagger had a hesitation to it.
"Taichou's been looking to get hold of you all for a long time, y'know." The Kansai accent and babying tone should have sounded ludicrous, but instead, it only made Lisa that much more aware of how her wrists were bound and how all her power was draining away into the stone beneath her. "Shame we only got the three of ya. Taichou wasn't real happy 'bout that. He wanted to meet up with Hirako again something fierce. Barragan might've been real strong, but he wasn't real smart. Ain't that always the case?"
He walked closer, careful to skirt the edge of the sekkiseki, circling away from Lisa and towards Hacchi.
"'Course, we did land ourselves a nice big fish, here. Oh, Aizen-taichou's got plans for this one..." He then turned to look at Love--who was so far remaining blessedly silent--and Lisa. He tilted his head slightly, and his smile gained even more of an edge. "And for you, too."
"Don't bluster," Lisa whispered, as loud as she dared. She heard a grumble from Love, but nothing more, thank heavens. She doubted Kensei or Hiyori would have been as quiet, and as soon as the thought crossed her mind she braced herself for the pain it would bring.
She didn't feel anything.
As for Love, he maintained an unblinking focus on the other man in the room, a well-built, dark-haired man who was staring off into a far corner and looking like he'd rather be anywhere else. Even though she had a good view of his face in profile, Lisa would have been hard-pressed to say what he looked like past the three deep scars that cut him from brow to jawline. For some reason, she felt sorry for him.
Love, on the other hand, just seemed angry. But why? Why wouldn't he be more focused on the silvery, smiling man who circled them like a vulture? He was the threat, with his sharp, sharp grin and a twitchy grip on his sword. The other man had his arms crossed tight across his chest. Poor form--it would take him at least two seconds to draw, and he was directly between them and the one door she could see. Distance was hard to judge in this place, but based on how long it took the men to walk from there to here, two flash steps should do it...
Lisa wondered when it would hit her, when she would stop looking around and analyzing everything coldly.
She quickly realized she was afraid of what would happen when she did stop.
"What kind of plans?" she asked. She doubted she'd get an honest answer from the silver-haired man, but it seemed he was the sort of person who liked to talk, who liked to work over his victims with words rather than blows. The more time she could buy, the better the chance she could figure out something she could do.
She got another bit of mock surprise from Silver-hair. "My, my, my... Now, how'm I s'posed to know that? I ain't the one in charge, little miss."
Fuck him. She was older than him and he knew it. She remembered him now, that creepy little kid from the Fifth. Aizen's pet project, Shinji always called him.
"But thing is, you and you and you..." He tipped his sword towards each of them in turn. "Well, y'all are Vizard, ain't you? That's real special. There's a lot you could do for Aizen-taichou--y'all had best call him 'Aizen-sama,' mind--especially this big boy here."
He reached over the sekkisekki border snake-quick, and rubbed Hacchi's head hard enough to give him whiplash. He chuckled, and Lisa saw his companion wince. It was fast enough she almost missed it, but she was sure it wasn't just imagination. Maybe... If she played this right...
"We're not doing anything for 'Aizen-sama'." Love made the honorific sound like the worst insult in the world.
"Aw, that's real cute. Ain't it cute, Hisagi-fukutaichou?"
The scarred man finally turned to join the conversation when prompted. "Yes, sir."
So that's what Love was staring at.
The bastard had Kensei's tattoo on his face.
"You're talking like you got a choice in the matter or something, Aikawa-taichou. Course, it ain't 'taichou' no more, right?"
"Don't. I've got this," Lisa hissed.
Love either didn't hear her or was too angry to listen. "As if Aizen's any better! And you! Hisagi-fukutaichou. You're Ninth, yeah? That's your division? Right? Right?"
The man turned aside, hiding the tattoo again. He said nothing.
Silver-hair was happy enough to answer on his behalf. "Sure is! Loyal to his captain all the way to his end. Not the captain you knew, o'course. You remember Tousen Kaname, dontcha?"
"Fifth seat of the Ninth. Muguruma-taichou thought very highly of him," Lisa said before Love could make things any worse. She watched Hisagi closely, but he knew enough now to school his expression. "That's his apprentice?"
Again, a carefully schooled non-reaction from Hisagi.
"Yeah. We're having to do with second-best, dontcha know. Real shame. After everything Aizen-taichou did for Tousen and all. What a waste..."
Odd. That got a reaction from Hisagi. A nauseated grimace that was there and gone almost before she saw it.
"What did he do to Tousen?" Love demanded. "The same thing he did to us? Damn, I hope so. The bastard set us up. He deserved to go through the same thing."
"Worse, actually," Silver-hair said cheerfully. He smiled, but it looked more like a wince, and when he spoke again, he sounded short of breath. "But that's neither here nor there right now. Right now, we got you, and all of the work Urahara put into you, all those things he did to make you stable, to make you strong..."
"Aizen wants to study us." Lisa was surprised at how easy it was to be calm. It only made her that much more scared for what would--what had to--come later. "He wants to see how we work."
Silver-hair chuckled and tapped the end of his nose. "You two, anyway."
"Excuse me, Ichimaru-taichou." Hisagi managed to address the man directly without looking at him. "You mentioned Urahara. Aizen--Aizen-sama said..."
Oh, damn him for that! She needed to hear more--were they going to be separated? And why? She'd hoped that Ichimaru (one reminder, and the name slotted into place) would ignore the interruption, but he turned on Hisagi, hissing as if he were in pain. Hisagi didn't flinch.
Then, after a careful blanking of his features, Ichimaru's smile brightened and he snapped his fingers. "Oh, yes! We were talking 'bout Urahara. Y'all work with him, right?"
"Some," she said, as if it was no big deal, but she was reluctant to say so anyway. Lisa ignored Love trying to shush her. Kyouraku-taichou had shown her how an interrogation could sometimes give more information to the one being interrogated than it could to the one asking the questions. "Off and on."
They needed to be valuable, but not too valuable. Kept safe, but not so safe that they could neither escape nor gather intelligence.
"Off and on, off and on..." Ichimaru nodded slowly and resumed his pacing. "Imagine you lot might need to get in touch with him real fast. Given your condition and all."
"That was Shinji, mostly." Then, with her attention more on Hisagi than Ichimaru (and again ignoring Love's protests), she threw another piece of information out there. "Muguruma-taichou was sometimes the one to contact him."
It felt weird to call him that, and not 'Kensei,' but the lack of response on Hisagi's part told her a hell of a lot.
"Ahhh.... Well, that's a real shame, ain't it? You not being the one who knows where he is right now."
This was where she had to be careful. Every word right now was a gamble, but Lisa knew she was a damned fine gambler. Kyouraku-taichou had been the best teacher a girl could have wanted on that particular subject.
He'd even taught her how to take a losing hand and walk away with everyone's pay for the week. But all that was a very long time ago.
"No, there's nothing I can tell you about where he is." She sat up as straight as she could given how she was bound. All the better to convey 'resolute defiance.' "I saw him last a week ago, when he told us about the false Karakura--"
She blanked her face so carefully that anyone looking at her would assume she was covering a big slip-up. Twisting her wrists hard against their bindings made her go convincingly clammy and pale.
Love spluttered, but fortunately was only able to get out a barely coherent "Lisa, what are you doing!"
It helped sell her ruse, which was good. If Love had guessed at what she was doing and was playing along, that was great, but Lisa thought it was only dumb luck that had kept him from fucking things up past repair just now. She had to steer this onto ground where his reactions wouldn't be as much of a variable.
"Now, now... The little lady's got it right."
Lisa decided she would castrate Ichimaru for that 'little lady' thing. Maybe not now, but definitely later.
"See, if you play along real nice an' all, you'll find it ain't so bad here."
"Nice. Right. Which is why you've got us tied up. Shit, can Hacchi even breathe, the way you got him wrapped?"
Love was usually pretty even-tempered, but this was nothing at all like 'usually.' The only good thing that happened was that Hacchi moved, nodding his head ponderously. He was all right for the moment.
"Taichou's orders!" Ichimaru sing-songed, like this was all some sort of school-room game.
"Love, you're only making it worse!" Lisa had to get this under control, and fast. To hell with subtle manipulation and artful gamesmanship. Something about Ichimaru's voice made the short hairs at the back of her neck not so much stand up as want to dive for cover. It was harder to keep the panic out of her voice than it was to let a convincing bit slip in.
"And it could be much, much worse." Ichimaru actually tsk-tsk-tsk'd as he circled the slab of sekkiseki stone. He snaked out his hand and rapped Lisa on the back of the head. She didn't even try to bite back the yelp of pain. If she was reading him right, he'd lose interest if it was too easy to get a reaction from her.
Every bit of strength she could save now was strength she could use later.
But the strike was so random. Too random.
"We can play nice," she said quickly. The worst possible people to gamble against were the erratic gamblers. You could strategize and bluff and manipulate all you wanted, but one wild play you weren't expecting could blow the entire game to pieces.
"Nice? These are the people that killed Shinji, Lisa. And you want to play nice?"
"What the hell else are we supposed to do, Love?" she hissed. She glared at him, hoping against hope he would see she was trying to buy them time. Time for what, she didn't know--yet.
She also hoped he would see that she knew their friends were dead, and what that meant. But this was not the time. Not now. Not until later. Much later.
"The lady's got a point, there, Aikawa-han. Ain't much else y'all can do right now. You know that, though. You pulled against them cuffs soon as you realized they were there, didn't you?"
Love turned his attention back to Ichimaru, straining to turn his head one direction then whipping it back in the other as he tried to follow the man's pacing. "Lisa, if they wanted us dead, we'd be dead. He said they want us alive," he whispered. "That Aizen wants us alive."
"So, what're you gonna do, then? Hm? All tied up like that?" This time, Ichimaru hit Love on the top of the head with that stupid wakizashi of his.
"Nothing." Love lifted his head as best he could, resolute. "We're not going to do a damned thing to help you. We're not going to dishonor our friends."
Lisa forced herself to face straight ahead, not to check to see if Love was talking to her as much as Ichimaru. Hisagi was looking off into the corner again, but he was sneaking a glance from time to time, following what was going on. His arms were still crossed tight over his chest.
"Your friends? You mean Muguruma-taichou and Otoribashi-taichou and all them?" Ichimaru giggled. "That's real funny."
Lisa saw Hisagi wince. His control was slipping. He didn't want to be there. She could see it plain as those scars on his face.
"You ain't tryin' to hold out for a rescue or something? Don't think that's going to happen, friend. Barragan said he killed 'em. Your friends. Killed 'em all. Course, Aizen wasn't too happy 'bout that, so we can't exactly ask Barragan no more, now can we?" Ichimaru laughed like this was the best joke ever, even going so far as to lean forward and slap his thigh.
Ichimaru's laughter turned into a hiss and a round of profanity bad enough to make Lisa's ears turn red. Then he started pacing again, pain-wracked and glaring at Love as if this were all Love's fault.
"Stupid bastard! What the hell you playin' at? Huh? Sittin' there all helpless and actin' like you're better'n me? Shit!"
A drop of his spittle hit her cheek. Hisagi was full-on staring at them now, horror-struck. She tried to catch his attention without drawing Ichimaru's.
"You lost! We won!" Ichimaru thumped his chest, even though it clearly hurt him. Lisa could still see no sign of a wound. "That means you got no right to sit there an' sass me like that. You hear me?"
Ichimaru was crazier than a shithouse rat. She could see that. Hisagi could see it. His eyes grew wider and wider as Ichimaru ranted.
Stop him, Lisa mouthed. Hisagi was looking in her direction. He had to see her. He had to. I can't. You need to stop him.
Even through his anger and grief, Love could tell that things were going south fast. But he didn't know what to do. "I am only doing what my friends' honor demands."
Lisa knew it was as close to a capitulation as Love could get.
"Honor? Honor?!" Ichimaru's mouth still turned up at the corners but it was not a smile.
Stop him. Hisagi was looking at her, through her. Please. Please. You have to.
"Yes, honor." Love just couldn't stop. Couldn't help himself. And she couldn't help him.
Help us.
For a moment, she thought Hisagi would. She saw his eyes narrow, saw him thinking. Ichimaru stopped pacing within range of his grasp.
"Aizen may have turned us into monsters, but there's nothing he can do to take our honor from us. And nothing you can do."
Please.
Hisagi still seemed to be thinking when Ichimaru drew his sword. His arms were just uncrossed when Ichimaru screamed out something she could barely understand.
Something thin and bright flared towards them, and all at once Love was not there. All she could see out of the corner of her eye was a long, narrow blade. She turned, and there was Love, pushed back several feet to the edge of the sekkiseki stone by the blade that had pierced his throat.
"Shouldn't talk so damn much," Ichimaru chirped.
Love's mouth opened and closed, but nothing came of it but a trickle of blood. Lisa forced herself to look at him, to look him in the eye and will him to understand. She had tried. Did he know that? That she had tried to save him? Did he forgive her?
But there was nothing there--no forgiveness and no understanding--and Ichimaru's zanpakuto pulled free with a slick sound she would hear every night thereafter when she was at the edge of sleep. Love slumped over, hitting the ground with a dull thump, and all Lisa could think was that someone should have been there to catch him.
"Aw, what're you looking at me like that for, sweetness?" Ichimaru's breathing came shallow and fast, as if he were in pain or aroused. He walked up as close as he dared, his toes grazing the edge of the sekkiseki. "You ain't mad at me, are you?"
She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to tell him to go fuck himself.
She gripped tight to her fear and her rage, and she let them hold her steady when Ichimaru lifted her chin with the tip of her sword. There was a faint sting where the point broke the skin, but it was the trickle of blood down her throat that nearly made her flinch.
When she looked to where Hisagi had been standing, the cowardly bastard was no longer there.
"I asked you a question, darlin'. You ain't mad at me, are you?"
Mad. Furious. Scared. Frantic. "I--"
Her thoughts flew this way and that, and she could not collect them until she asked herself one very simple question:
What would Kyouraku-taichou tell her to do?
She had asked herself the same question over a century ago. Then, as now, the answer was simple.
Survive. Survive, and remember it's all right to lose a battle if it means winning the war.
Maybe it's what he would have said, or maybe it was only what she imagined what he would have said, but either way, it gave her the clarity of mind she needed.
"What do you want me to be, sir?" she said. It didn't matter that she sounded weak and exhausted. If he thought she was beaten, then all the better. All she needed to do now was hold things together long enough.
However long that was.
The sword pulled away from her chin. "There's a good girl. Like I said, you only need to play nice. Now, let's--"
"Gin, are you being rude to our guests?"
She recognized the voice, even now that it was stripped of all its false deference. Aizen Sousuke walked into the room, growing from child to man as the walls and ceiling drew closer around him.
He'd changed. Changed in ways that went beyond slicking back his hair and getting rid of those dorky glasses. She tried to pinpoint what it was, but the best she could come up with was that there was a glassiness about him. Not like he'd gone shiny, but rather sharper or flatter, like she was seeing him in a mirror or through a pane of crystal.
"Heh. You know how it is, Aizen-taichou." Ichimaru scratched at the back of his head. He sounded like a little boy apologizing for an 'oopsie' that was more cute than damaging. "Y'know I don't like it when people get mouthy."
Aizen just smiled indulgently, and in the aftermath of all that had happened, it was like something out of a nightmare. "Perhaps you should leave this to me for now. Go tell Szayel to send some of his Fraccion to take Ushoda-san to more secure quarters."
"Sure... sure..." Ichimaru took his leave, waving casually over his shoulder. Again, his movements showed a faint hesitation.
"I've already told Hisagi to make sure your quarters were made ready, Yadomaru-san. I'm terribly sorry our reunion had to be under these circumstances. And please accept my apologies on Ichimaru-taichou's behalf. He was badly wounded by Yamamoto-soutaichou's flames, and while we were able to heal the physical burns..." He gave a smooth shrug that suggested he honestly didn't care how well Ichimaru had or had not healed.
"My quarters..." Something was being implied, but Lisa wasn't sure what, other than that she and Hacchi were being separated.
"Yes. I will have a few small tasks for you to perform from time to time, and I may require your assistance with one of our prisoners and your presence at certain occasions, but other than that, I would like for you to think of yourself as my guest. I had hoped I would have more than just you, Yadomaru-san, but alas..." Here, he cast a glance in the direction of Love's body. "Szayel and Mayuri will have to make do with what they have. You, on the other hand, will be spared their attention."
There was an unspoken 'unless.'
"Now, I suggest you pay close attention. You, too, Ushoda-san, as this also concerns you."
And so, Aizen made sure she and Hacchi understood the conditions of their stay, and of their continued safety.
Two days later, one of Szayel's Fraccion unceremoniously hauled Lisa out of her room and out of the first sleep she'd had in those two days. The next hour in Szayel's lab was one she would never forget. She still had a scar down the inside of her left arm and another curving under her belly. After the session, she'd been paraded into some sort of control room, still pale, shaking, and bleeding, and was made to stand in front of a monitor and turn this way and that to show off the fruits of Szayel's labor. She could not see who or what was on the other side, but later Aizen informed her that Ushoda-san sent his deepest apologies and a promise to be better behaved in the future.
Lisa hurt in so many places she wanted to throw up, but she fought a smile all the way back to her quarters. Hacchi had tested their restraints, just as she had known he would.
Just as she had, only her just-unsubtle-enough-to-get-caught snooping the day before had resulted in a simple warning and an almost jokingly polite reminder of the terms of her 'guest' status in Hueco Mundo. She wondered if Aizen knew just how much he had let slip then.
Beyond that, not much had happened. She'd done some exploring, and even though she only managed to explore areas where it was thought she could cause no trouble, she'd managed to learn a lot. She had even been trusted enough to bring food to Inoue Orihime on occasion. The girl only barely showed any sign that she recognized Lisa, and when Lisa tried to cheer her up with a raunchy joke, Orihime didn't even try to smile.
Hisagi remained studiously indifferent to her. Other than passing along orders, he only spoke to her once to let her know that Ichimaru had been sent to Soul Society ostensibly to run things on Aizen's behalf, but that it was exile as much as promotion.
She wasn't sure why he had gone out of his way to tell her that. She hoped it wasn't some sort of sick attempt at an apology, although he did look as if he was waiting for her to say something other than 'whatever.' He started getting noticeably more twitchy sometime after that.
She did commit a few more minor infractions. One was made to look deliberate. Two others were meant to come across as ignorance or negligence. Only on the patently deliberate one was Hacchi's safety even mentioned. The others simply merited confinement to quarters for a few days. She did get dark and hungry looks from Szayel and Mayuri afterwards, though. Szayel was openly eager to continue the tests he had begun, and Mayuri kept making a case that he should be allowed his own turn.
But they weren't allowed to touch her, even though they were sometimes given their pick of the other hostages.
Lisa tried not to think about them too much. Twice, she'd been able to intervene in ways that didn't look like intervention, but that was nothing to congratulate herself about.
One day, when she got out of there, she would allow herself to feel guilty about all of the Fourth Division members she couldn't save.
She would allow herself to think of all the things she might have said differently that would have kept Love from being killed.
She would scream and cry and grieve and break things and get drunk and cry and grieve some more.
But for now, she had to play her games and do everything she could to stay sane and strong. She had to allow herself to miss three things a day and scribble graffiti. She would revisit favorite television shows and manga in her mind as she tried to fall asleep. She had to remind herself that if she went to great lengths to save one person now, that meant she would not be able to save the majority of them later.
As long as she was safe and alive, so was Hacchi. Aizen needed him for something, and needed him cooperative. She was the key to that.
She hoped Hacchi knew she would be okay with being sacrificed if it meant he had the opportunity to defeat Aizen. She hoped he would forgive her if the reverse was true.
She wondered if the Fourth Division would forgive her, if she ever had the opportunity to explain herself.
She tried not to wonder if Love had forgiven her, in the end, for what he had seen as her capitulation. Or if he would forgive her now, for acting all chummy with the man who had stood there and let him be murdered.
It mattered, yes, but she couldn't let it matter more than what she had to do next. Whatever that was.
Whenever it was.
How long had she been here, now? Some of the days seemed eternally long, while others flew by in rapid succession. It could have been her own mind playing traitor, or it could be that time here was just as warped as everything else.
It could have been five minutes or as long as an hour, but they eventually reached the gate to the wilds outside.
"Huh. It's even more boring out there than in here," she said after staring at the wasteland for a while.
"More frightening, too," Hisagi said, squinting against the glare. There was no sign of any patrol.
Then, after she didn't say anything for a while, he finally broke the silence. "You said you were either bored all the time or frightened all of the time, didn't you?"
"Uh... yeah?" She wasn't even sure how long ago she said that. And he remembered it? Now? "Something like that. What's out there that's so frightening? More Hollows?"
"This is the first time you've been out this far?" It was an observation as much as a question.
She shrugged, and squirreled away yet another indication that he hadn't known about her special 'restrictions.' At least they'd let her keep Tonbo with her--a good thing given the run-in she'd had with one of Szayel's ex-Fraccions.
How very odd, she thought, ideas and suspicions slowly falling into place in her mind, that a prisoner should be allowed to keep her weapon. Yes, she had excellent incentive not to go berserk and start slaughtering Arrancar, but it was still odd. She watched as Hisagi kept his eye on the shimmering, wavering horizon. He gripped the top of his scabbard tightly, thumb resting on his zanpakutou's tsuba ready to push it free.
He gave orders, while she did not. He had freedoms that she did not enjoy. But then, she had freedoms that Inoue Orihime did not enjoy, and the cleaners from the Fourth were expected to show her a degree of deference if they encountered her.
"So, where's the patrol?"
"Maybe it hasn't found them yet." Lisa waited, but Hisagi didn't notice his slip. He simply smiled grimly and went on. "Or maybe something else found the patrol."
"It happens," she said cheerfully. The more of Aizen's goons that were taken out by someone else, the fewer she would have to worry about later.
"By now, though, I think they must have gotten away."
They. That was twice now he'd said they, and there was something about the way he kept his eyes on the horizon, and how even though he looked scared and wrung out, there was something else there as well.
One thing she had learned over the years was how not to let it show when she drew a card that meant the difference between a losing hand and one that might just be a winner.
For months, she'd been walking around with nothing but an eight, a nine, and a three in her hand. There was nothing she could do but bluff and wait.
But wait for what? And she certainly couldn't wait another forty years, or a hundred.
She had an opening in front of her. But what should she do with it? Should she do anything with it? Maybe a better chance would come along, a chance she would never see if she jumped at this one.
This could be a trap. But she'd seen Hisagi's state of mind deteriorating steadily. No one was that good of an actor.
"How long have they been gone?" she asked. There might have been a little bit of stress on the pronoun.
He went very, very still. It was an attempt at not giving anything away that gave everything away.
"Not long." He clipped the words off as soon as they were spoken, as if afraid of what else might slip out along with them.
If she made the wrong choice, Hacchi could pay a very high price. She could pay a very high price.
"I see." Lisa still told herself that she needed to be careful. There were so many things that could go wrong.
Trusting Hisagi was a very bad idea. He had let Love die, after all. But how many people had she let die or go on to worse fates?
It was plain that he was about to snap. It could happen at any time. Maybe Aizen had noticed and might lean on him just hard enough to make things go a little faster.
"Do you?" If she didn't know better, she would have sworn she heard something like desperate hope just then. All she had to do was make the offer...
A bluff could end with everyone's pay in her pocket. Or it could wipe her clean for the next month.
"That depends." She looked at him square on, and for the first time, she actually wondered why he had that tattoo on his face. "You thought at all about what would happen if they did get free?"
She had played the discard. The only question was if the new card would be any good.
He didn't answer for a moment. He still wouldn't look her in the eye.
Even if the new card was a good one, the play was going to speed up. It would be fast, chaotic, unpredictable.
She couldn't wait.
"Yes," he finally said. One word, and it said so much.
Or maybe the waiting was getting to her, said the small voice of caution.
"I see." There were so many risks. Too many, maybe. Maybe she had misread things. Maybe he'd rat her out to Aizen. Maybe she should just wait for a better opportunity, but...
Fuck being prudent.
"Hisagi?"
It wasn't like it had done her any good so far.
"Yes, Yadomaru-san?"
She would take the gamble.
"Whatever it is, count me in."
Next Chapter - Hinamori, Takano, Ichimaru: Taking the Bait