Title: Our unlikely connection
Rating: T (violence, language)
Characters: Rukia, Grimmjow
Pairings: Rukia x Grimmjow if you really squint
Setting: Manga chapter 202+ (and subsequent spoilers) – right after Grimmjow enters the real world for the first time and pierces Rukia's chest
Description: With his hand in her chest, only inches from her heart, it is only natural she would recognize their unlikely connection.
Worry, pain, anger, pain, worry, pain, disappointment, pain. At first they were separate entities flickering in distinct shades of black and white, but then they began to meld together. First, a kaleidoscope, then marbled, and finally a smoky gray with neither beginning nor end.
There was a roar in her ears, but she thought she could hear Ichigo's shout. Damnit. She was choking on her own blood; the goddamn bastard's hand was in her lungs, and the sacrifice had been for nothing.
When Grimmjow lifted her high and regarded her as some broken doll, she met his eyes and meant to look defiant. But their faces were only inches apart, and suddenly the intimacy of their position struck her, though not nearly as hard as her absolute inability to do anything about it did.
'I am a failure,' she thinks, and when she looks into the depths of his seething, frustrated eyes (cerulean blue – who knew a hollow to have such pretty, pretty eyes?), she realizes that perhaps he was a failure, too.
Finis
Author's Notes: Yes, I'm reposting outside of my one-shot collection, because it occurs to me that I can't tag my stories appropriately inside the one-shots… So here it is again!
SPOILERS!
If anyone should have problems with the way Soul Society is managed, it should probably be Rukia. Her Captain made her stand back and watch her beloved teacher and Vice Captain be slaughtered, she was put on death row for saving someone, and then Soul Society even tried to keep her from helping rescue a girl who had served as her first real girl-friend. And yet Rukia takes it all and blames herself for being a failure and not being strong enough.
Grimmjow is equally dissatisfied with the way Heuco Mundo is being run, and he seems to have a little bit of a complex about not being strong enough as well in later chapters. So I thought the parallelism was interesting, if vague and underplayed.
Grasping? Maybe, but ye gods, that scene was so hot!