Prologue
"No! Don't die," I find myself yelling as I run towards the person I love most in this world and the next. His face is set in disbelief as he stands a few paces away from us and he watches as his hand disappears in front of him. I'm with him on this one.
How can this be happening?
I thought I'd have more time. Hell, I thought I'd done everything right.
I guess I've failed again.
Ironic; had it been a couple of weeks ago, I would have laughed at the idea that I would ever beg someone not to leave me. I'd grown up alone and had raised myself while my father had looked for happiness in a bottle and Mother had run out the door without a second glance. And, after all, had I not claimed that the only person I needed in my world was Luz. Had I not promised that I'd be with her forever?
And look where I am now: dimensions away from her and my life.
"Please, please," I plead as I reach him and cling to the ruined remains of his top. It's in tatters and they all but dissolve in my hands as I grip them too hard in my desperation to keep him with me. He's powered down in an attempt to prolong what is starting to look the inevitable. I know my pleading is useless but as his time with me winds down, I can't stop mumbling pleas, and as sobs tumble from my lips, his hand comes up to wipe away my free-falling tears.
"It's okay," he whispers and I'm appalled by his words. In what realm was this okay? How can him dying in my arms ever be okay especially with my—our adopted daughter sobbing not too far away in Grimmjow's arms? Sure, our time together had been short and his and hers even shorter but this is something that will never be okay. How will I ever be able to get the image of him dying out of my mind?
Much less hers?
I turn to the others, rage coursing through my body as I remember that they're still here. Why aren't they helping? They fucking owe me! If it hadn't been for me, they would have died. And even though I'd gone to hell and back for them they just stand and look on like my family isn't on the line. Like my daughter's father isn't two seconds from death.
"Please heal him. Reject fate! Please," I beg and the girl with the power to do just that. To make it so it never happened looks at us with tears in her eyes but she doesn't budge or summon her powers. The strawberry looks more broken than her and there's guilt written all over his face because he knows this is his fault and I will forever hold him accountable for doing this to me, to Nel, to all of us.
And Nelliel means more to him than anyone else here save Orihime and Ishida.
But it's as my eyes lock with the eye glass wearing teen at the edge of the group who looks like he couldn't care less that a family is about to be ended that I'm hit with the truth. They can't help. We are the enemy. And even though I had promised to help them in the war we will forever be the enemy because we are different. We are different beings with different desires.
And the Shinigami hate different; they fear it.
Because different can be dangerous and dangerous is not acceptable. We never stood a fucking chance because I'm just a human girl who hangs around Arrancars and has managed to carve herself a family out of the shattered remains of Aizen once proud army. I'd helped them more than they will ever know but that will never change the fact that we aren't like them.
"Shh, it's okay," he shushes me but his words do nothing to ease my horror as I watch the hand that is busy wiping away my tears turn to dust faster than the first. I wrap my arms around him as best as I can and sob into his shoulder. This is it. This is where we part. In a few short days he'd become my whole world and during those days I managed to find us a beautiful daughter in the desert and now he is leaving us both.
And I don't think I can live without him.
"ULQUIORRA!"
A/N:
Chapter one is already finished and only waiting to be polished by my Editor (beta), Mrs. Alex Kurosaki, and should be posted up in a day or two! Hope you guys enjoy it!
- Trixy
P.S. For those who are reading this story for the first time and haven't been with me since the original, my username is only the same as the character's because I've grown a fondness for it and my OC. In no way what-so-ever is this story about me!
