.butterfly effect.

It wasn't until after he had killed a man that Ishida Uryuu realized the magnitude of that act. Cutting down a mindless Hollow was one thing, but it was another thing entirely to kill a person, even an evil person -- because people create connections, build relationships, and wiping out a person created ripples that stirred everyone who knew them, everything they ever touched, strong enough to change lives.

He realized because the dead man's daughter stumbled out of the wreckage, holding her mauled arm to her side and bleeding profusely from the head, and said softly, tonelessly, "Mayuri-sama?" with tears running down her impassive face.

Uryuu couldn't remember her name. "Miss," he said, his breath still rapid. "You should seek medical attention-- please allow me to help you to the 4th Division hall."

"Mayuri-sama is..."

She wasn't even looking at him, but he felt the universe accusing him like a slap to the face: You killed him. Uryuu flinched.

"It was self-defense," he told her as firmly as he knew how, but it just sounded harsh in his ears. "You must know that he was obsessed with my bloodline -- planning to experiment on me."

He killed my grandfather, he thought desperately. And so many other members of my family that I will never know. Surely avenging all those lives against one man was justified!

But justifying the act seemed to make no difference. The young woman stared at the broken body of her father, the stained remnants of his white haori, and then up at Uryuu, still crying without seeming even to have noticed. "What do I do now?" she asked him breathlessly.

He didn't think there was anything strange about that question.

"You let me take you to the 4th Division," he said, keeping his voice gentle, and limped forward to help her to her feet.

She did.

Uryuu was shocked to find that they were almost turned away. The shinigami who should have rushed to find their seniors instead gave each other uncertain looks, and asked, "Captain Kurotsuchi is dead? Are you certain?"

"Quite certain," Uryuu said coldly. "And this woman needs medical attention."

One scratched his cheek. "It's just that... Captain Kurotsuchi never let us treat Lieutenant Nemu. He said, well-- he said, it's just meat. He always did it himself--"

"A person isn't just meat!" he snapped, unable to believe his ears. His own hypocrisy rang in his head, but he steeled himself against guilt. "Is this how shinigami treat one another?!"

They still hesitated, until Uryuu shoved his way past them in disgust, and the woman Nemu followed him as best she could without so much as blinking to indicate that this treatment fazed her at all. One of them started to come after him, but then a voice called, "Stop! Let them come in. We'll take care of her."

Looking ahead of them, Uryuu's eyes fixed on a tall shinigami with plaited silver hair -- he recognized her from the wooden plate on her arm as Kotetsu Isane, the lieutenant of the 4th Division. She offered him a weary smile, and he thanked her, stiffly.

It was strange, he thought, that no one had been shocked or dismayed that he had murdered one of their captains. There was no talk of hosting a trial. No one even asked him why.

Uryuu let them close and bandage his wounds, and then he went to sit by Nemu's bedside. She was still undergoing treatment, but her eyes were open, staring straight ahead, unseeing.

It felt like a thousand years ago that he had asked her why she'd been glad that Kurotsuchi survived their battle, and she had said that she didn't know, but for some reason felt relieved anyway. The man had hurt her, abused her verbally and physically, and still she had wept when he died.

Kurotsuchi had been a monster, but Uryuu felt like a criminal. He had stolen that small, twisted happiness from her.

I will find a way to make it up to you, he promised her.

As if sensing his thought, Nemu turned her face to him, with that same blank expression that seemed so wrong on her pretty face.

"What do you want to do now?" Uryuu murmured.

"What do you want me to do?" Nemu asked, immediately.

That was when he realized, for the first time, that there was something strange about her behavior; all her emotions were reflexive, unconscious, like she didn't really know that she was feeling them, and so without Kurotsuchi's presence to guide her, she had nothing to act upon.

The bastard probably hadn't wanted her to be able to think on her own.

Uryuu said finally, "I want you to live."

Nemu's eyes were on his, dark and unreadable. "How?"

His experience with women was extremely limited. It stung to admit to being deficient to Kurosaki in some way, but Uryuu had never had a girlfriend -- or the serious possibility of one. At least Kurosaki had managed to get interesting women to like him (whereas Kuchiki and Inoue didn't seem to realize that Uryuu was, in fact, male) and so in that sense he was 'winning.'

Uryuu hated losing to Kurosaki, especially when Kurosaki didn't know they were competing.

However, in Uryuu's limited experience -- largely books and TV programs -- there were some things that could make every woman happy. Like new clothes and personal gifts. He had the needles that could craft both.

If he had bothered to ask any of the shinigami, they could have told him that he was wasting his time. In fact, several of them had volunteered the opinion, when he took her back to the physical world.

"Impossible," said Kotetsu Kiyone in flat tones, and her sister agreed miserably, "Nothing has ever gotten through to her." Rangiku sighed, and said, "The girls and I have done a lot to try and make her act more like a... well, a person. It just doesn't work."

But Uryuu had to make it up to her somehow, and he wanted to see her smile.

The most discreet way to get her measurements was to buy her some clothing to wear in the interim, and have an employee fit her.

"I'm sorry to take you away from your duties for such a petty thing," he said as they stepped into the department store.

"There is no need to worry," Nemu murmured. She refused to move in ahead of him, even though he tried to hold the door open for her. "Akon will be confirmed as the new captain of the 12th division, and he will make Hiyosu his lieutenant."

Uryuu didn't pretend to understand the way the shinigami worked: the 3rd, 5th, and 9th divisions had been without a captain for months while their lieutenants toiled under a workload meant for two, but the 12th division lost its captain and was immediately appointed a successor who unseated the previous lieutenant? He said, "At least I'm sorry to take you from your duties as a shinigami--"

"I have never attended to the duties of a normal shinigami."

No, Kurotsuchi probably kept you locked in a cage when you weren't following him around like a doll, Uryuu thought. He gave up, just telling her, "If you need to return at any point, please don't hesitate to say so."

Nemu nodded once, but didn't seem interested in the repsonsibilities she apparently no longer had. Uryuu waited patiently while the staff took her size, and then escorted her to the clothing rack and tried again to engage her, saying, "Take a look and see if there's anything here that you like -- any particular fabric or style or color."

She tilted her head thoughtfully and regarded the hangers. Too late, Uryuu wondered if she had ever worn modern clothes before today, and if she wouldn't prefer something more traditional, like the bright summer yukata that girls sometimes wore around town. But then again, the hem of her shihakusho was awfully short...

"What do you think would suit me, Uryuu-sama?"

"You don't need to be so formal," he said immediately, flushing, and it took him a beat before he really understood the question. "Oh-- Well, I'm sure you can pick out something you would like for yourself, right? Anything here would look good on you."

That was where awkward silence would probably have fallen with Inoue or Kuchiki, uncomfortable at the suggestion that he thought about them in that way, but Nemu only said again, "I would like whatever you would pick out for me."

She hadn't touched a single article of clothing, or taken anything off a hanger, or held anything against her body to get a better impression. Uryuu pushed up his glasses, suspecting that getting her opinion might be more difficult than he had originally thought.

Something that would suit her... A treacherous part of him thought that she might look good in the Quincy colors, but, he reminded himself, his ancestors would never have stood for such an outrage. Instead, he ran through the rack, periodically asking her opinion on the texture or cut.

She invariably said, "If you like it..."

Uryuu was the one who narrowed down their options to a few choice items that he thought would flatter her. He arranged them carefully, and asked her, "Which one do you like the best?"

"Which one do you like best?" she returned placidly.

"I'm asking you-- you should choose one that you like."

Nemu tilted her head, puzzled. "I like whichever one Uryuu-sama likes."

He took a deep, stabilizing breath, and told her, "I am not... him. Nemu-san, I don't want to take his place, that isn't why I brought you here. I will not tell you how to dress and how to behave. I would like for you to make those choices yourself."

There, he had said it, finally. Nemu stood there, stock-still, like she had been de-animated after all this time, and it was a long minute before the set of her shoulders finally eased, as if... relaxing, or crumbling.

"I should choose one of these myself?" she echoed.

"Yes, please," Uryuu said, holding them out again.

Nemu stared at them, and several times seemed about to say something before stopping herself. Finally she lifted a hand and pointed to one -- not terribly decisively, and perhaps at random, but it was a step, a first step, and Uryuu was extremely relieved as he smiled at her and hung the other two up again.

"Was that correct?" Nemu asked, sounding almost concerned.

"There was no correct-- Never mind. The red was an excellent choice."

She smiled.

Uryuu wondered what his father would think, if he knew that he was spending his own pocket money buying clothing for some woman he barely knew. It seemed like the sort of thing Ryuuken would find disgusting, morally wrong, perhaps even worse than killing some girl's father.

To spite him, Uryuu stopped in front of one of the frilly pink stores in the mall, and turned to Nemu. "You'll need something to sleep in," he said. "Take my credit card and buy yourself something in there." He almost hoped she would spend a shocking amount that Ryuuken would be scandalized over.

"Aren't you coming in?" she asked, hesitating.

"No," Uryuu said, his face heating just at the idea. This was not the kind of place he felt comfortable going into. "You can -- ask one of the employees if you need help picking something out. But I won't have you sleeping in a... a ratty old t-shirt."

It hadn't occurred to him that he was bringing her back to his apartment, but he assured himself quickly that his intentions were pure. She just needed someplace to stay until he could make her a dress of her own, to take back to the Soul Society.

The moment his eyes closed, there were soft rustling sounds. Uryuu started back to alertness, almost sitting up before Nemu's cool hand fell on his bare chest, urging him to lie on his back. Suddenly it was hard to breathe, hard to swallow, and Uryuu knew that he was turning red, flushing in reflex.

"Wh, what are you doing?" he forced out, clumsy fingers searching for his glasses on the nightstand.

"Shhh," she said softly. She brushed aside the quilt and blanket, until there was nothing between them but his thin sweatpants, which were already beginning to feel insufficient. "I must thank you."

Uryuu thought wildly that she must have been reading the wrong kind of books. Her hand was already low on his belly, sending an embarrassing surge of wild heat between his legs before he could snatch at her hand and hold it still, away from him.

"This-- You don't have to thank me this way! Just saying it is enough!"

Nemu tilted her head, barely visible without his glasses and in the dark. He was grateful for that, because what little of her he could make out suggested that she was in the nightgown she had bought for herself, and it was pink and silken and semi-transparent shrouding her slender body. If he could see more of her, he might forget how to speak entirely.

Then she said, "This is how I always thanked Mayuri-sama."

That cooled his ardor so fast he'd swear he could feel the aftertaste souring on his tongue.

She had--
For him--
That bastard.

His fingers tightened on her wrist automatically, and she made a soft sound but didn't protest. Uryuu yanked his hand away from her, shocked, and she didn't move, hovering between his legs expectantly.

"Do you not find me desirable?" she asked softly.

"N-- No, it's not that, I just--"

"If I am too stupid and slow for you, I apologize for my assumption."

"No, that's not it!"

Nemu's head dropped, and he imagined (curse his imagination) that she was looking at his sweatpants, trying to discern if he was at all interested in her bold advances.

Quiet, perhaps confused or hurt, she said, "If I may ask, why is this not appropriate?"

Uryuu cursed Kurotsuchi to the deepest hell, loathed him for creating a beautiful girl and giving her the capacity to feel -- to cry and hope -- only to batter her relentlessly until she was nothing more than a doll. The man was... "Because," Uryuu said, as gently as he could manage, "you don't have to do this. Just saying 'thank you' makes me happy."

Her eyes lidded, slow, and she said in an even quieter voice, hardly a whisper on the night air, "This is how I say thank you."

Then her hands were at the waistband of his pants, and he couldn't for the life of him think of another objection.

"What will you do?" he asked the darkness.

Nemu was still in the bed at his side, hardly touching him although she was curled to face him. "I don't know," she said. "I have always done what other people wished of me. That was... my life."

Uryuu closed his eyes. "Now you can do what you wish. Everything that happens from here on out is something you want for yourself."

As if she hadn't heard him, she mused, "Mayuri-sama would have wanted me to bring samples of your semen and blood back to the laboratory." Her nails trailed eerie patterns over his ribs, so light and purposeful that his skin prickled with icy horror. To the laboratory--

"I don't know what I want, yet," Nemu added. "I will have to think on it for a while."

Uryuu swallowed, hard, and told himself that she didn't realize what a nightmare she had suggested -- didn't understand the senseless depravity that Kurotsuchi had indulged in with his 'samples', or the terrible things that he had done to innocent people. He said, his voice a little ragged, "Good. That's -- good."

"Thank you," she murmured, and slid closer to him over the sheets. "Is it... all right if I stay here, while I think?"

He thought about his father, and her father, and the laboratory that had stripped his beloved mentor of dignity and humanity and finally life. His voice seemed very far away when he finally said, "Of course."

And although he knew that he was only trying to make amends for what he had stolen from her, Uryuu lay awake long into the night, feeling her eyes on him, dark and empty.