#[ like Michael Keaton's Bruce Wayne brooding over monitors ]

[midnightactual]

Hayden wasn't the first person to think that—not that Yoruichi knew his mind or that of others before him, but she might guess. She didn't though, because she didn't care about how what she had to say was perceived—not immediately, anyway.

His eventual defiance gave her a moment's pause. It was impressive in a way, and equal parts surprising yet not. While present in the moment and listening with utterly stoic impassivity as he approached her and vented, another part of her was also coldly analyzing the situation.

Right now he reminded her of no one so much as Grimmjow, and to some degree even Hōgyoku—there was no 'the' in front of it anymore in her thinking—and Kisuke. As she realized that, she had to mentally stop herself from reflexively giving a sardonic smile—such an expression wouldn't be understood in context by Hayden and would not help the present situation.

Was this perhaps fate? Was this its sense of humor? An endless parade of largely men of iron convictions standing before her, literally or figuratively. Many mortals qualified, but she truly thought of other spirits. Her father. Kaien. Yamamoto. Byakuya. Aizen. Ichigo. Tokinada. Hōgyoku. Grimmjow. Kisuke. Hayden.

To an extent she could respect it when she saw it. It could be attractive or repulsive. It was a part of what attracted her to Kūkaku—having conviction like that being on her side for once.

She had her own too.

At a high level, she knew that she and Hayden weren't really so different. She too was a soldier. She too had a kind of beast inside her. She too could wreak terrible destruction. She too could even like it. She too didn't appreciate orders anymore. She too had fought and killed for many of the same teams, many times over.

The difference was she did not miss it. There were other differences too, which had sometimes put her on opposing teams from him, but that was where they really diverged.

She was like George Washington, like Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. She always wanted nothing more than to go back to her proverbial Martha at Mount Vernon, to her figurative farm. She only wanted to go home to Kūkaku, to her wife's comforts. Everything else, no matter how richly dressed up in rhetoric about doing the right thing, was to make that possible, feasible, and sustainable as much as possible, for as long as possible.

This difference was made explicitly clear when he raised his voice at her, though the delivery bothered her not in the least. The words were all that mattered to her.

She knew what he was ultimately trying to say: he was attempting to draw a comparison between them, suggesting that she fought out of obligation to retain all that she had been born into, while he had come from 'nothing' and gained 'what little' he had from fighting.

That was of course complete bullshit, and she could prove that easily. He had been born into a title: citizen. He had been born into a land: America. He had been born into a history: American. He had been born into a family name: Hayden—he went by it for heaven's sake. He had been born into a legacy: American exceptionalism, can-do attitude, rugged individualism, and self-determination. Whatever that nation's foibles and failings—and she knew they were many, as she had lived there, fought for it, paid taxes to it, and considered it a place she belonged as much as Tokyo or Paris—she could say he embodied it, but he hadn't gained any of those things by fighting. They had been given to him first, then he had fought in their names. It was a kind of nonsense typical of his countrymen, inheriting so much yet somehow believing themselves to be self-made. As if his parents hadn't made him, as if the U.S. Army hadn't made him, as if the Gotei 13 hadn't made him...

Her memory itched.

It cast his fear voiced moments earlier in a completely absurdist light. Of course he had existed! She'd literally seen the records! There was a long paper trail in his wake: citations, after-action reports, histories, doctrine. She had no doubt there were plenty of his comrades in arms wandering around with clear memories of him. He could drop dead this very moment before her and there would still be, if only somewhat collated, a thick binder of evidence testifying to his existence. His deeds echoed through history among the living and the dead alike. It was a typical fear, but no less ridiculous for it.

Yet here he was, holding up his hands and all but saying that was all he amounted to: not even a man, merely a wielder of tools in the name of causes he did not even really enjoy himself. Was that not also an absurdist paradox: fearing destruction, yet feeling pointless unless he risked destruction?

For a moment she could again feel their similarities. She too could never stop fighting to secure what she had gained, but she fought to keep having it. Yes, to a great extent she understood him, but their differences once again became a yawning chasm between them: she fought to live, he lived to fight. It was clear as day to her.

Once he'd gone quiet, she stared at him implacably in total silence. Her thoughts returned to that list of men.

When one of them met another, or when she met one of them, in time one would yield somehow. Ichigo had quite the record of operating against the others and changing their trajectories in life, but his too had ultimately been bent. No one was either an irresistible force or an immovable object—not even herself.

This was indeed a battle as much as it was a conversation, but it wasn't about right and wrong. It wasn't even about winning or losing. He had defied her order and in so doing challenged her authority, but she held no formal command over him and cared nothing for a social pecking order. He had not disrespected her any more than she had him. She stood nothing to lose from simply walking away, so why didn't she? The same was true of him if he didn't like what he was hearing, so why didn't he? It wasn't a matter of being heard, or even being understood either. They had communicated and understood one another. She saw him plainly. Their differences were bright and clear. What was left then?

This was about willpower. It was as simple as an elastic collision in physics: who would continue on their course and who would be deflected from it? That sounded really macho, and maybe it was, but maybe their relationship always had been. Who got in the other's head more?

As she'd considered earlier, everyone was originally a product of their circumstances, but adults could choose what they wanted to be, hard as it sometimes was to make that a reality. As she had once told Tokinada: 'Yeah, and I’ll say it as many times as I need to. Regardless of who my ancestors were, I am still me. And you are still you.' And as she'd also said another time: 'Fuck you. I make myself.'

Her mind turned to relatively more recent experiences again: Hōgyoku, Grimmjow, and Kisuke. Words had served her poorly with all of them—with most of the others too, if she was perfectly honest. Had they deflected her more than she had them? Did that grate on her? Was this petty? Was it as simple as being about bringing up her score? Did she even care how Hayden thought or saw the world?

The truth was yes, she did at least kind of care about how Hayden saw the world, and what he'd said was concerning and rather sad. He might acquire greater power and take more risks than her because he seemed to think he had nothing to lose but himself, but as much as she'd derided nakama and the power of friendship earlier, truly fighting for something was always stronger than just fighting alone. One could grow fat and weak in victory, but a need for victory kept one hungry, and winning and victory were leagues apart.

Her memory itched again.

Even more than that though, she cared about how she saw the world herself. She liked where she was at now with things, whereas he was conflicted about where he was. She had the better position. She had a sustainable reason to fight, and as she saw it he did not—any undergrad in psychology could tell you bottling up rage inside was foolish. She had the better fuel. Beyond that, she had more experience and had seen lower lows and higher highs than him. She had the better certainty.

She would not be deflected here.

Now she only needed the better means. She could defeat his perspective in detail and talk him to death if she wanted to, but that wouldn't work. He wasn't that kind of man. None of them had been. Pointing out logical inconsistencies was for debate club, not this kind of battle. The trite remark of 'The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,' scrolled through her thoughts. By association came a title: 'Mountain and Sea Changing'. Its neighbors came with it: 'Crushing', 'Knocking the Heart Out', and 'Becoming New'.

She would become new, crush him, and knock his heart out with one blow—one relatively brief statement.

The memory which had been tugging at her thoughts made itself fully known to her then. What she had to say would hurt, but she did not say it with malice or spite.

Things had been quiet for four seconds when she spoke up, her voice thoughtful and composed: "The Visual Department has been largely defunct for a while now—in no small part due to uncoordinated actions by myself and Kurotsuchi—but it used to record just about everything. I first broke into it a little while before I had Tokinada killed, but afterward I took advantage of the chaos there to copy the bulk of their records. Those from the latter part of the war with Wandenreich are fragmentary at best, but the earlier part is well documented. I've sat through everything they have from it in the time since."

There was a slightly longer pause between her sentences, an allowance for his state of mind in order to let what she'd just said really start to sink in, before she continued, "I know exactly how the Sōtaichō died back then. It gives me no pleasure to inform you that I've realized different things we've said today remind me of some of Yhwach's final words to him."

She had memorized that scene, pivotal as it was to history, and with only a slightly deeper tone to indicate she was quoting that wretched mockery of a man, she echoed his cadence in saying, "You've gotten weak. Shigekuni Yamamoto. You were different before. The original Gotei 13 that you founded… were defenders in name only. They were a group of cold-hearted killers. But because of that… they were to be greatly feared. And it was you who kept them in line. You were truly a beast with the sword. You used anything and everything to slay an enemy. The lives of your men weighed only as much as ash to you. But that all changed when you killed us Quincy off. Once you people had peace… you had more to protect, more to love. You became a hesitant and gutless bunch over some foolish sense of justice and pride. You died… not realizing this, but I'll tell you now. The Soul Society is about to die… but the Gotei 13… died with us, a thousand years ago.'"

With that she fell silent, only audibly inhaling and then exhaling slowly, as if that man's words had somehow tainted her mouth and throat, and she sought to expel such corruption from herself.

She didn't editorialize aloud any further. Hayden wasn't stupid. He didn't need for her to articulate his own relationship with Yama-jī, or for her to point out what reminded her of what, or for her to belabor that what he had said just now sounded like a rebuke of how his sensei had lived his last millennium and an agreement with that man's killer.

He didn't need to hear it from her that everything had been different when Yama-jī had gotten mad too, and that Yama-jī had not been made for peace either. He didn't need to hear it from her that nonetheless, Yama-jī had waited through comparatively peaceful times like an intercontinental ballistic missile in its silo, patient and poised. He didn't need to hear it from her that Yhwach was wrong in saying having things to protect had made Yama-jī weaker. He didn't need to hear it from her that Yhwach had only won against Yama-jī through trickery, like Aizen before him. He didn't need to hear it from her that Yama-jī had actually grown stronger by being a human than by being a beast or a demon. He didn't need to hear it from her that Yama-jī had made everyone else stronger that way too.

She could recall with perfect clarity the faces of pride she'd seen in the Visual Department's footage, and then the shock and horror that'd followed. She knew Hayden knew all these things because she'd seen them on his face in that footage too.

After long seconds of respectful silence, Yoruichi turned from Hayden and began to walk away. Five steps later, she stopped as if to say something.

A moment passed. She thought better of it and kept walking to get her zanpakutō and leave. If he had something to say, or wanted to find her sometime later, he was fully capable of deciding that by himself.

With every step, her own certainty grew. She had not fully put it together until this very moment in time that the Sōtaichō, Sōshireikan, and Sōsui had all decided to become more human in their own ways, as had many others. For such different people to all come to the same conclusion, the probability that they were all wrong wasn't just infinitesimal, it was zero.

They had all become stronger for it, living or dead. She was not deflected.

She talks a lot.

To some it would prove a daunting thing. Annoying even. To Hayden it was simply another facet of Yoruichi, simply the nature of the beast. You didn't step into the cage with a tiger with the expectation everything would be fine. You knew the dangers and the risks, the reward might not even be worth it. Unless you where one of those masochists or thrill-seekers.

Hayden was arguably both, just not in this context.

He hated being verbose. Speaking too much. His thought process was not as focused as some so he ran the risk of rambling. He preferred to be a silent worker, to do what needed to be done. Take the hits like she said, and strike when the moment was best. And yet, he found himself in opposition to her right now.

Surely, she did not believe him the same man he was ten years ago?

He was a soldier. A man of war. A student of the art, and virtuoso in all manners of killing men. It was a skill set he cultivated and took pride in. But Desmond Hayden was on the cusp of becoming something more. No that wasn't quite right. He was something more.

"Rage itself, does not carry the day." He bites bark, as if planting his flag in the ground.

Come and take it. Yes, it was going to be that type of struggle.

One of his hands lower off his Zanpakutou, his previous posture which was that of a fighter relaxing. His hands go to make the unmistakable motion of sheathing his weapon, a silent indication he was indeed not going to attack her. That time had passed the moment she cast aside her own.

He could not say if this action was lowering himself to her level, or raising himself to her. But whatever the semantics it brought them to even footing. Unarmed, engaged in a different confrontation. The bruises and marks on his body still visible contrasted to her flawless body.

He walks towards her slowly. One foot in front of the other, crushing rocks and dirt beneath his stride as he speaks.

"But you take that rage, you bottle it. You distill it. You get something powerful, something that can turn feeble men into monsters. Topple nations. I think you know this. Bushidou or not, it works. But that ain't what this is about."

By the time he nears the end of the sentence he stands in front of her. His face is tensed, anger is still palpable. What is anger really? What is rage? That simmering feeling that boils beneath one's skin, the destructive feeling that settles in your gut. The need to inflict harm on those around you. It is that influx of strength, of power, to change things violently. Without regard for the wounds left behind.

Even now, he is struggling to bring it down. Yoruichi might have been the catalyst to spark it, but she isn't the fuel. The bottomless pit of energy that sustains his rage, it's deeper than being knocked around in a fight. Double edge blade that it is.

"We're at a strange place right now, Yoruichi. Because I should do what you say. Every sensible part of me, is telling me I should take that knee. Because I am a soldier. And I follow the lawful orders given to me."

He has never concerned himself with the why of what she does. Force of nature that he knows she is. Normally he either agrees with her, or doesn't. They have no need to have debates and arguments, for both of them are two willful to be changed. So he has to wonder why they are now at this point. He thinks he knows, internally. He thinks he knows why he needs to speak today.

"But being a soldier, requires me to be a violent man. And I've been trying to change, you see. I've been trying to not be that man anymore, because he scares me. But I miss him. I miss him so much."

Has she felt these emotions before? Looking at her now, he thinks she has. Nothing to substantiate this. Just a gut feeling.

"Truthfully. I think I'm just tired of taking orders from people. I think if I have to be that violent man, I want to do it on my own accord..."

"BECAUSE I CAN'T BE A PEACEFUL MAN! I AM NOT MADE FOR IT!"

His temper flares, a vein explodes on his neck as he roars at her.

"YOU WANNA KNOW WHY I FIGHT!? BECAUSE IT'S THE ONLY GOD DAMNED THING WORTH DOING! BECAUSE IF I DON'T FIGHT, THEN DID I EVEN EXIST!?"

This feels good, cathartic.

"I have no titles, I have no lands, I have no history. I have no family name or pedigree, no legacy. All I have is because I fought, I stood at the front of gunfire! I died for a country not my own! I fight because it makes me feel alive! It gives me purpose!"

All the causes he ever fought for, that he killed for, he did so because he believed them just and righteous. He lifts his hands up, displaying his palms to her.

"Everything IS different once I'm mad. You want the truth, you want all the bullshit stripped away, this is what I am. Discipline isn't merely just regimentation for me."

He struggles with the next words. Because he cannot form them clearly to convey his intent.

If he gave into the rage, he'd be stronger. So much stronger. Feeding that demon, riding that lightning so to speak. But he becomes less him, less Hayden. Less human.

He is a visored. And although he does not speak of his condition, it is because he likes to not think of it. Because his Hollow is not merely something he can tame. The rage comes from somewhere.