#i wonder if aizen fed him to his hogyoku now actually...

[keikakudori]

sometimes i think of what aizen could have been like if naoko had lived longer or survived his power eating away at her ( though her health would've been irreparably damaged to be really honest here ) and i think he might've been much more stable. i know that she would have loved gin and kaname and adopted them without hesitation. naoko was a wonderful woman and, sure, she might've been a sex worker ( indeed she was one of the top earners at the brothel she worked at ) but she loved her son deeply and she would have absolutely mothered both gin and kaname if she'd ever had the chance to meet them. her loss really did damage aizen, especially since he lost her during what's considered the formative years for a child, and though he can't remember her face so clearly anymore? he remembers the smell of the incense she favored and her perfumes and the beautiful kimono she wore on a constant basis. i'm just really thinking about aizen and his mother right now because i just get very soft thinking of how much aizen loved her too, with all the adoration of a child. he doesn't think about it, but she still does influence him, though not overtly as others have done. i don't know i'm just. i'm thinking about it. i'm thinking about it a lot.

[ramblingkat]

I’m not sure exactly where this came from. And it’s four, almost five in the morning. Have random eldritch blurbs. 

Fandom: Bleach

Characters: Isshin, Kisuke, Ichigo

Notes: Eldritch things are about. Headcanons as well. Here be monsters. 

He wouldn’t stop crying. 

At this point, Isshin was getting desperate. He could see that Masaki was as well. Both of them were going around with dark shadows under their eyes, and Isshin was feeling sluggish from how little sleep he was getting. Every time one or the other of them started to get to sleep, the crying would start again. 

Ichigo wailed, reedy voice raspy for all near constant crying he did. Even when the baby fell into some fitful sleep, he whimpered and fussed still. If Isshin thought he and Masaki looked horrible, it was nothing compared to their baby. 

He was so -thin-. They had taken him to their pediatrician. They had taken him to the specialist the pediatrician had recommended. They had even taken him to Ryuken, who was still working on finishing his training as a doctor. None of them could offer any reason on why Ichigo would not stop crying. Why he would eat greedy and almost as constantly as they could feed him, and still continued to lose weight. 

There was no fat baby cheeks for him. No pudgy little arms and chubby belly. Ichigo was thin, and Isshin could swear he was getting thinner in front of their eyes. 

He was desperate. 

So, after telling Masaki his plan, Isshin went across town and let himself into a candy shop. 

Inside, Tessai was cleaning, though his head came up as the sound of the wail that came from Ichigo. Before Isshin could say anything, there was the soft sound of the door in the back of the public area opening and a head of mussed pale hair sticking out. 

“What,” Kisuke said after a moment, blinking sleepily, “is that?”

He seemed to have just woken up, and Isshin had a moment of jealousy that the man could get to sleep. But he shook it off. He wasn’t sure if he trusted Urahara, there was always too much in that man’s head for him to fully trust anyone. Plus, having heard the official story that was told in the Seireitei over why the twelfth’s former captain was no longer a captain, Isshin had a hard time shaking off his paranoia. Even with everything the man had done for him since he’d come to the living world. 

That was not important now. 

“Ichigo,” he said, short and to the point. “He cries constantly. He barely sleeps. He’s always hungry.” 

Kisuke looked at him, a faintly dubious look on his face. “Don’t...all babies do that?” he asked slowly. Likely, Isshin thought  uncharitably, this was the closest he’d been allowed to a baby. Most people knew not to let assassins and madmen pretending to be scientists near children. 

“He doesn’t gain weight,” Isshin continued. “It’s not a physical thing. Masaki and Ryuken both say he’s having odd bursts of reiatsu. Masaki says she feels cold when she feeds him.” 

Just as he expected, that piqued Kisuke’s interest. The other man came closer. He looked at the baby in Isshin’s arms, then held his own out. “Give him here.”

After a moment of hesitation, he did. 

For being so uncertain about how babies worked in general, it was obvious that Kisuke had not been looking at Ichigo so much as how Isshin was holding the infant. He settled Ichigo into his arms with surprising ease. It was actually something of a shock, though Isshin couldn’t put his finger on why. 

Kisuke held his hand over Ichigo a moment, eyes glittering strangely all at once. 

Isshin looked away. 

When the light reflected that way, it was just safer to not look directly at Kisuke. Every instinct in Isshin’s body and soul screamed to take Ichigo away from what held him, even as his brain tried to reject that anything was holding Ichigo. 

Kisuke might not have corrupted his fellow captains like it was claimed, but he had definitely done -something- that was wrong. 

Then Ichigo stopped crying. 

His neck popped, Isshin whipped his head up to look at his child. But Ichigo was still there, Kisuke’s hand on his body. Eyes caught between bluish and brown slowly blinked close, tiny fingers curled around Kisuke’s.

“Go away,” Kisuke said softly. “For at least an hour. I need to focus.”

Isshin bristled. He was not going to….

“If you want your son to live for much longer. Go. Away.” 

Kisuke’s tone echoed in Isshin’s skull, and he swayed. To the side, he saw Tessai murmuring, hand held up, a faint glow around his head. Trying to think past the buzzing in his ears, he swallowed hard. “What are you doing to do?” 

Even his own voice sounded far away and distant. 

“I’m going to help,” Kisuke said after a moment, sounding like himself again, cheerful and like a human. A muffled human, but human nonetheless. 

He turned and vanished back into the private rooms. Isshin went to follow, only for Tessai to grab his arm. 

“We should go,” he said quietly “It would not do for you to die while your son is saved.”

He wanted to stay. Wanted to shrug off Tessai’s hand and go after his son. Whatever Urahara was going to do, it wasn’t going to be good. He knew it. 

But…. Urahara had saved Masaki, all those years ago. He’d helped Isshin settle into this life he had now. He was a monster, but he had kept his word so far. 

Isshin allowed himself to be tugged along and wondered what his son would be when he saw Ichigo next. 

<center>***</center>

Humming to himself, Kisuke slipped back through the shop. He came to a section of the hall, smiled, and then stepped sideways. The world twisted, and he followed his new path. In his arms, Ichigo mumbled, still pulling power through the grip he had on Kisuke’s fingers. 

“Poor little thing,” Kisuke crooned at him, allowing the poor thing to eat. “They make you half a monster and leave it at that. You’d think they’d know better than that.” He smiled. “Quincies and hollows, so similar in their needs, if not volume.” 

He felt power being pulled from him, being soaked up by Ichigo as the baby fed in a way he so obviously needed desperately. What had they been thinking? Oh, he’d expected something to happen, but to let a baby starve like this. 

Hollows and Quincy fed off spiritual power, even if the Quincy denied it. They could pretend with all their twisted little souls that they were just regular humans with powers. If that was the case, he wouldn’t need Quincy -and- human power to make a vaccine for the visored. 

Poor little Ichigo fed off reishi around him when it was free, and off the reiryoku inside of people when he could touch them. But he couldn’t get enough. Not for the hollow that was in the heart of his soul. Even as a baby, he could feel that hunger.

What were Masaki and Ryuken doing? Isshin was blind as any regular person now, so Kisuke could understand him missing it. But those two were still talented in their own way. How could they miss the fact Ichigo -hungered-?

Not that it mattered. Kisuke had plans for this malleable little soul. 

He always wanted a child of his own. 

Some more walking took them to the place he kept his precious little toy, the beat of her breathing echoing in his heart, pulsing in time with his blood. Kisuke could hear her singing, wanting to stretch out and reach for things not even he could see. But she was too small, too weak. Even as he fed her, there was not enough power for what she wanted.

But the core of that broken star was his own soul, and Kisuke knew she’d get what she wanted someday. Right now, she was quiet other than her soft song, though he could feel her buzzing as he got closer. 

The closest thing he had to a child so far, something pure and distilled of himself and Benihime. A thing of destruction, creation, and everything between. 

Her singing grew louder as he settled near the ornate wooden box that held her. Keeping Ichigo tucked against his chest with one arm, he opened the box and curled his fingers around the humming darkness that was the Hogyoku. 

She seemed to shiver under his grasp, pulling a bit of power from him, just as Ichigo had been before Kisuke had pulled his hand free. The boy whimpered, but was otherwise quiet. Though he’d just fed quite heavily on Kisuke’s power. Poor thing probably needed to settle that first, but Kisuke knew he’d be starving again soon enough. 

That gave him time for this. 

A sigh, and he shut his eyes. 

“Come on, we need to help feed your brother,” he said cheerfully, reality going hazy around him for a moment. 

When he had made the Hogyoku, Kisuke had started with a simple thing. A mix of the four powers. It hadn’t been hard to get what he needed. Though he had chosen to use a piece of his own soul, using Benihime to weave shinigami will with Quincy light, Hollow hunger, and pure human strength. Weaving the strands over and together, breaking them apart at the most basic of layers until they stopped being separate. When they went from being four different types of power and flavors to a glorious, radiant whole. 

He still didn’t remember everything, but it had ripped something apart, and he had killed half the people who had been in the labs that night. If Central 46 had discovered that, he’d have been facing them long before Aizen had made his move. 

But Kisuke had figured out how to put himself together again, to separate his mind and body from what it -could- be. 

He simply wasn’t done being Kisuke  and Benihime yet. 

But the Hogyoku was still this pulse infant of possibilities. Everything and anything was a potential reality for her. Once she fed enough. Once her song stopped having a note of hunger. 

Convincing her to share her food with her new brother took some doing. Kisuke was sure he was going to sleep for a week and then go hunting to feed all of them.

Well, that was what a good parent did, he supposed. .

Shifting, he held the Hogyoku above Ichigo’s chest. “Come on now,” he said cheerfully, even as she pouted in his fingers. “Be good.” 

Still, she resisted until Benihime sent a pulse down Kisuke’s arm into beating black creation. When would she learn that Kisuke was the nice parent?

Then a shift in his fingers, and a thick, oozing drop of something formed, dripped and shifted downwards. As it went, the bit of darkness shifted through solid, liquid, what he thought might be plasma, and a few other states of matter Kisuke had never seen. 

How interesting. 

Then it landed on Ichigo, soaking into his skin almost instantly.

Kisuke waited. 

A sensation that felt like a grumble through his fingers, and he felt the power drift from the Hogyoku towards Ichigo. Who absorbed it.

Then reality warped again. It had done it once with his first child, and now, it did it with his second. 

Ichigo’s eyes opened, a brilliant, faceted golden rainbow of colors with no names, and a chill ran down Kisuke’s spine. Fear and interest all at once. 

The two looked at each other for a long moment, then Ichigo yawned, blinked his eyes a few times. Kisuke was almost disappointed when they returned to the color they had been when Isshin brought the boy. But he also felt a bit of pleasure at a job well done. Already, even in just this few seconds, Ichigo’s cheeks were starting to fill out. 

“Really,” he said, putting the Hogyoku away, back into her box. “If your parents wanted to create a monster, they shouldn’t have stopped half way. That’s simply bad science.”

He stood, and then headed back to the front. 

Children were an interesting idea, but feeding them was the most Kisuke wanted to do with them until they were able to talk. 

“Remember,” he said to the drowsy infant he carried. “This is our little secret.”

Ichigo yawned and went to sleep.