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Reflection

Tousen Kaname had never thought to look into a mirror.

Anyone who knew the 9th Division's captain would know better than to suggest it, for obvious reasons.

Having been blind his entire life, he did not know what the word "look" meant. Oh, he knew what the concept of sight was, but just as a man with working eyes could not imagine what it was like to be truly without them, so a blind child could not know what it was like to see. He lived in a world without light, and it never even entered Tousen's mind that there might be something he was missing until they told the child that he was blind. At first, he did not know what they meant. Then, eventually, he came to understand.

It meant he was different.

It wasn't that, really, they said. It just means your eyes don't work like other people's. It means you can't see. It means...

In the end, Tousen knew, they all meant the same thing.

In a kinder place, a gentler place, perhaps being different would not have been so crushing. But Fate had turned her smiling face away from Tousen, and the village where he was born had no tolerance for a boy who could not see where to throw his spear, no tolerance for a boy who could not reliably wield a sickle or a hoe. His family tried to care for him, but in the end they could not support a growing youth who could do nothing but eat and sleep and bump into things, and one day Tousen awoke to find himself abandoned.

Tousen starved to death alone, knowing to his last, pain-wracked breath that he was different.

Soul Society was heaven, a paradise after life where all worldly illnesses were cured. Soul Society was a place where nobody was never hungry, because nobody needed food. Soul Society, said the shinigami who sent him there, was a place where he would be accepted.

Soul Society, Tousen found upon arrival in the 9th sector of East Rukongai, was not much different from the world he had lived in. He was still hungry, though he would not realize until several years later that the fact meant he had the potential to become a shinigami himself. He was still not accepted by his peers, because he was still blind.

Still different.

As he matured, Tousen grew bitter. Even in the families of Rukongai, which were more often than not unconnected by blood, nobody was inclined to take in a blind man. Even though Tousen eventually learned how to stop walking into things by focusing his spiritual senses, he was still clumsier than those who could see. Thankfully, the 9th sector was relatively close to Seireitei and therefore more lenient, so the shopkeepers merely beat the thieves they caught stealing instead of killing them. Hate began to rot his heart.

Then, one day, Tousen met her, and he decided that perhaps being blind was not so bad as it had seemed, after all.

She did not want sight from him, did not demand something from him that he did not have to give. She was content in talking to him, and he was content to listen. In her melodious voice Tousen found the peace and acceptance he'd craved ever since he was born. She was the first person in his entire life he had ever called friend. Still, even those idyllic days could not last forever, even in timeless Soul Society. Time passed, and she left him, though she promised to see him again soon.

There was no again and there never would be, and when Tousen learned this, he knew that there was no justice in the world. The seed of hate in his heart that had been nearly eradicated began to fester once more, filling and permeating the emptiness inside him. It whispered questions to him in the dark, eternal night that was his world.

What is paradise, if it extinguishes hope?

What is paradise, if it takes away the one you call friend?

What is paradise, if it holds no justice?

Tousen knew the answer, and it was Hell.

To grasp the strength he needed to make his justice, he extended a hand to the devil and became a shinigami. He honed his already sharp spiritual senses until he walked with languid grace and utter confidence. He learned to hear the thin, high whistle of the blade slicing through air, learned to smell the scent of battle. He had to tell his examiners that he was blind, and even then they did not believe him for a time. He began to rise through the ranks at a speed which drew attention and astonishment from his superiors.

One such superior was named Aizen Sousuke. Tousen came to learn that Aizen, too, sought justice. The man was strong and utterly without fear or doubt, but even he could not accomplish his goals alone. Tousen pledged his allegiance to the man eagerly, perhaps aware at some level that he needed Aizen's help far more than the other needed his.

Under Aizen Sousuke's care, Tousen changed. Aizen cultivated the black beast inside Tousen, teaching him that sometimes sacrifices had to be made and bridges had to be burned. The path he envisioned would not be clean, nor would it be without hardship. But in the end, when Aizen Sousuke sat upon the throne of Heaven and remade the world, there would be justice.

Somewhere within the realm below conscious thought Tousen knew, of course, that Aizen was feeding him lies. He ignored the fact, something that he had plenty of experience with. After all, he had been lying to himself ever since his first friend died and he refused to recognize the malice inside himself for what it was. He ignored the falsity of the truths Aizen gave to him, because to do otherwise would be to acknowledge that the world had no justice and, more importantly, it never would. Tousen could not accept that, and so he believed Aizen's illusions even though Kyouka Suigetsu held no power over him.

Mirrors, they said, showed only the truth. A mirror could not lie; it could only reflect what was set in front of it. Some even went so far as to say that mirrors showed the truth of one's soul as well as the body that housed it, to those who looked deep enough and hard enough.

Tousen Kaname had never thought to look into a mirror, so he had no way of seeing the monster he had become.