It had always been traditional for me to do wrong things from the right motives. So when Stark asked me a question I never had thought I'd ever get the honor of answering, I just stood there, stunned, as if ambushed by more than just words.

"Are we over, Grantz?" he repeated, now drawing even closer.

Warily, I flinched, taking into account the privileges of someone of his rank; I wasn't just about to turn my back on the strongest, most formidable one. Even so, I wanted only to scamper away because I was going mad, no questions about it, while he did what he could to see to that.

"Right from the start, Stark."

As it was obvious enough without elaboration, these words were due to pride, coupled with madness, other than the honest truth. He seemed astounded now, just as much as I was with my own audacity, so much that I came to doubt what I was seeing.

"So this is how it ends."

He said it like it hardly meant anything profound, not like the way it should when grieving for old friendships impossible to revive… not that I was familiar with friendship and whatever else that came along with it.

"We all will end-as we were broken from the start."

"Submission, huh? It isn't like you."

"Why do you think our powers embody aspects of death? Is something like that necessary, Primera Espada?"

"To convey fear? Frankly, analysis isn't my specialty, so that's barely a decent answer. Isn't it sufficient to know we're strong in a degree beyond its scope?"

I was, above all, a lover of knowledge. Evident as it was, my intellectual pursuits never really covered the nature of our powers and what they were said to represent, granted that Aizen's explanations were accurate. I didn't know if Madness was something inherent in me or if I was ordained or obligated to inspire it from people. As for Stark, it was no less confusing. Loneliness, whatever it might've been, roused no association with him.

And then it dawned on me, unexpectedly, like a reward that came late or never.

"No, it's never sufficient. I understand it all too perfectly now. We do not reek of the stench of death for all the world to fear; rather, we are plagued with this curse whose only cure is death. I'll die of madness, and you of loneliness, though I don't know what's keeping Segunda alive if he's supposed to die of old age, from which he, without a question, has for so long been suffering."

He forced a laugh, if my eyes weren't deceiving me or if it was possible to force him into anything. And for someone who could practically do anything by merely willing it, he must really be having much difficulties for having to smile without meaning it.

"Death. Is it the only thing that awaits all us Espada?"

"I have good reasons to believe so."

His palm reached out for his forehead, perhaps to convey how far he'd gone over the limits of his patience. I was starting to imagine him walking away, fists stuffed in his pockets, heading towards a place where a nice bed awaited him or something more worthy than the headache I might've been giving him all the while. But he inched in closer, and my vision began to distort as though time, not space, was decreasing between us. Suddenly it occurred to me that I was in no shape to endure any of this, when he now was going further afield than he had done yet. And even more disquieting was the silence, absurd as it sounded. I deemed, with quite enough theories to convince anyone, that someone like him was a hundred times more terrible in silence than even when he'd produce noise.

"That's just too bad."

"What is?"

"That you have to make me chase you around, Szayel."

If it was so hard to notice that he was driving me insane, perhaps I ought to suggest trying harder. I reckoned I was sending enough signals to have me enlisted in some psychiatric ward somewhere, but perversely he kept on advancing as though merely brushing aside some impalpable obstacle.

"What do you want, Stark? We're not allowed to combat under this roof."

"Nothing as complex as what you're thinking. And you're no match for me, just so you know." he informed me, as if that wasn't etched in stone.

With the least resort to effort, he lifted my chin with the tips of his fingers. I wanted to struggle, out of panic or simply indecision, only to be faced with the fact that I could no more do it than I could punch the sky above. As it was, the next thing I knew was he was running his other hand over my shoulder, in what seemed like an attempt to bring our faces closer than they already were.

"Stark…"

"Don't worry. If you don't think you're strong enough to conquer the death our lord promptly assigned to us, please know I'm strong enough for the both of us. Aizen didn't make me Primera for nothing."

"W-what do you know? We're just pawns to him, instruments, Stark! Do you not see it?"

Plain and manifest, I was beginning to show early tendencies of madness for reasons that stood so far away from my faculties. My voice, if I had heard it correctly, was stricken with earnest, utmost panic, as if this was the very hour in which Aizen's designs would finally come to full play. And neither I nor Primera Espada had the making to prevent our doom. Thus I had to prevent myself from falling where I had never stumbled before; to allow my raw feelings for this man to thrive. But this feeling wouldn't spare anyone, that much I knew.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe you're wrong. Come to think of it, I don't know much either. But do you want me, Grantz?" I heard him ask with no special solemnity.

I wished he hadn't said that to subdue me because the only progress it did was to take me a yard closer towards Death's scythe. He had said it nonetheless, and I was left to think he had fallen in love with me without my giving him any cause for it. So now that he was unsure of himself and was beginning to lose conviction, we only had to stand close to each other, to somehow disperse these heavy, stony clouds, if only to comfort two lost souls.

"There are only as many realities as one cares to imagine. I think I'm in love with you, Stark, and though everything now is a clear proof of the inevitable, that the Shinigami race shall annihilate us, I believe you when you say you're strong enough for the two of us. Save me."

"I'll pull you out of madness, even from death, if that time comes. In the meantime, let me take you away." Sounding as convincing as truth itself, he assured me.

"Then be plagued with loneliness no more."

He kissed me.

Days later I came to know firsthand that everything had been an illusion. Stark would fail to keep every promise, and to prevent the Shinigami bastards from decimating us. I, in return, could do nothing as Aizen summoned him to lay siege on Karakura Town, where he and the other two strongest Espada were destined to skirt the particular methods of death decreed onto them. Down here, I was being reduced to total madness by a level of torment I had never known before it consumed me, little by little, slowly, unendurably, eternally, down from grade to grade of wretchedness as promised by a mad scientist whose name I never would have known. And somewhere above Hueco Mundo's sky, I knew that Stark had failed to escape his doom as well. Sensing what had become of me, alone and lonely he had died, to go where I couldn't have followed.

END

a/n: alright, you can kill me for this crap. just wanna say happy endings don't happen to a lot of people =)