"Makiko!" Yazu yelled as she ran down the long hallway where her sister was standing.
The pale girl turned around look at Yazu, her face expressionless as usual. "What is it?" she asked. "I was on my way to see the Quincy for training this morning."
"I know, I know!" Yazu exclaimed as she caught up with the other young woman. "I wanted to come along. I had a couple new scans to run by Ishida-san."
"Are you again going to take up half my time with the Quincy for your work?" Makiko asked, blinking her green eyes at Yazu.
Yazu stuck her tongue out at Makiko. "I just want to talk to him for a minute!"
Makiko sighed, about the only expression of emotion that the daughter of Ulquiorra ever had. "Very well. Come along if you must."
Yazu's blue eyes lit up as she smiled at her sister. "I knew you would come around."
"Only because you will pout if I do not permit you to see the Quincy," Makiko commented as they came to one of the training rooms.
They came into the room to find Uryū waiting with their Dam. Yazu took off immediately to go give him a hug. She hadn't seen him in the last couple days, she'd been so busy with her research.
"Dam!" she called and wrapped her arms around him. She'd grown almost equal to him in height, which wasn't unexpected consider her father was a bit taller than her Dam.
"Yazu, how are you?" he said, and Yazu knew it was one of those weird days because his eyes shifted above her head and back to her face.
Every single time it happened she felt terrible. She only wanted to find a way to heal Dam. That was her aim in life, and she would certainly try to do so for as long as it took. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
"Is it the butterflies today?" she asked, watching as his eyes flickered again.
"Just a few. It's not that bad," he said, but Yazu knew that it was worse than he was letting on about it.
"You should go lie down with Uncle Sōsuke, or with Father. Where's Hisashi?" she asked, looking about for her brother that was normally minding their Dam.
"He needed to go do something, so he left your Dam here with me," Uryū said and patted Dam on the shoulder.
She supposed that was alright. She knew Hisashi would never leave Dam alone, and they all trusted Uryū with him, even on the bad days he had. She noted that Dam was still looking off into the distance and she renewed her resolve yet again to make a day come where he didn't have to suffer the hallucinations in his mind. At least lately, he had not had any of the scary images that sent him screaming. Those were the worst. When he got irrationally angry, it was easy enough to handle. Either her father or Uncle Nnoitra would take him and spar with him for a couple hours. Yazu couldn't really watch them spar because Dam always, always, was reckless and ended up getting hurt enough to go see Uncle Szayel.
When Yazu had been almost grown, she had the talk with Urahara-san about what happened to Dam. It had been her choice to hear the story, in fact, she had been insisting since she hit her adolescence and gained her resurrección. She knew that it was a hard story to tell, but she knew it was important for her to know what had happened. She had still been on track to continue working on a cure for Dam, and to do that, she needed to know the whole truth.
When the story came out, when Urahara-san told her everything, she cried. In fact, she had never cried so hard in her entire life. She had always suspected that something truly horrible had happened to Dam, but to find out that his own friends had turned on him was almost too much for her to bear. And she had been angry. How could she not? To find out that people like Abarai-san and Kuchiki-san had let something like that happen to him.
"But always remember, Yazu-chan. Your Dam forgave them all for what they did. He never held it against them, and he accepted them afterward. You can't imagine the strength it had to take for him to so freely love the very people that were at fault for his torment."
So, Yazu couldn't hold it against them because it would have made Dam sad if she did. However, she forever looked at the people from Soul Society with suspicion and wariness from then on. How could she not? What they had done had caused irreparable damage to Dam. But even that, Dam didn't regret.
"Also know that your Dam will never regret what he's been through. If it had not been for what happened to him, he would have never been made into an Arrancar, and he never would have been able to have children. He happily gives up part of his sanity in exchange for you all. It was a trade he didn't intend to make, but one that was made nonetheless."
Since then, many things had changed for Yazu. She had worked side by side with Urahara-san and Uncle Szayel, learning all she could. She'd also worked with Ishida-san to get a broad knowledge of medicine and psychology. She was always happy when he brought her more textbooks from the World of the Living. She read them voraciously and absorbed as much knowledge as she could. In this way, she was her Dam's daughter.
But she wasn't only Dam's daughter. She had inherited more than her eyes from her father. She occasionally suffered bouts of anger and resentment toward everyone and everything. At those times, she would take her sword, Puma, and go into the wastes for a few hours to work out the burning aggression that would sometimes arise. She may have been a scientist by trade, but she had been trained since she was young to handle herself against just about anything. She had no doubts in her physical abilities, and much pride in her intellectual ones.
The one thing she had avoided thus far was meeting Kurotsuchi-taichou. She knew that he was the source of much of her Dam's insanity, and no matter how much of an impressive scientist and researcher he was, and no matter how good the twelfth division was in Soul Society, she could never take that step. She was afraid that her anger would take hold and she would end up going after the man that had caused her Dam such pain and suffering under the guise of "research". Even thinking about it set her stomach to turning.
She shook away thoughts of the past and put an arm around Dam's shoulders, hugging him tight to her again. He didn't really respond much, but she wasn't expecting it considering the kind of day it was. That was okay. As long as it wasn't a bad day, everything would be okay.
"You wished to see the Quincy, Yazu. You are wasting my time," Makiko said blankly, blinking at her with as close to an annoyed look as she ever got.
"Oh yes," she exclaimed and looked at Uryū. "Ishida-san, I have a couple sets of scans for you to look at with the new PET scans I performed during the last occurrence. I've also come up with a possible way to modify the PET."
"You managed to get a PET done during an occurrence?" Uryū asked, surprised by that.
"It wasn't easy; it took Hisashi, Father, Uncle Nnoitra, and Uncle Sōsuke to get him to the lab to start with, and I had to use a paralytic on him to keep him still enough for the procedure. I managed it, though." She smiled, proud of being able to wrangle her Dam during one of his bad days, or an occurrence as they officially called it, into the lab at all. But it was necessary to see what was happening in his brain at his worst, so they had to try to get readings when they could.
Uryū looked at her for a minute in stunned silence. "That's truly impressive, I would be interested in seeing those scans. Can you have Urahara send them to me?"
"Of course! I could show you now if you…" she trailed off, seeing that Makiko's bright green eyes were zeroed in on her. "Or later is fine. I don't want to take up any more of your time with Makiko. If you want to start practicing, I'll sit here with Dam and watch."
Makiko arched a brow and turned to Uryū. "Quincy, I am ready."
Uryū sighed and shook his head. He walked out into the practice area and began working with Makiko. So far, the Arrancar was exceedingly strong in Quincy abilities, much to everyone's surprise. Yazu remembered the first time Ishida-san had come to train her. He had been doubtful that she could show any abilities since she was an Arrancar and not a human. To his shock, she managed to manifest a bow by the end of the first session.
After watching for a few minutes, Dam started to reach for something. Yazu reached out and put a hand on his.
"Dam, what do you see?" she asked, always intrigued by the things he saw no matter how disturbing they were.
He was quiet for a moment then looked at her. "Butterflies converge in a point to the south, then they explode in a circle of infinite space and time," he said very seriously.
Yazu sighed, patting him on the back and looking in the direction he was staring. Of course, there was nothing there. She wasn't even sure if the direction he was looking was even south. She was about to say something when she jumped because someone put a hand on her shoulder. She gasped and turned around to see Hisashi had returned.
"Hisashi! You scared me!" she told him, slapping him lightly.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to. I was talking to Uncle Szayel about some possible medical treatments I've come up with. A couple ideas for serums that might work to help alleviate some of Dam's hallucinations," he explained, sitting down on the other side of Dam.
"Dam, are you there?" he asked, passing a hand in front of Dam's face.
"I haven't gone anywhere," Dam said, frowning and looking at him.
Hisashi smiled. "I know, Dam, I know. Do you want to go draw with your pencils or paint in the art room? I think Gin and Kin were working on some of their projects today."
Dam was silent for a minute then nodded. "Okay, that's fine," he said and stood up slowly.
"I'll come with you," Yazu said gently, taking Dam's hand in hers. He looked at her curiously for a minute, then looked at Hisashi. Hisashi took his other hand and pulled slightly to get him moving in the direction of the art room.
The art room had been their playroom when they were younger. As they had grown older and acquired their own rooms, things slowly changed in the room to contain just the things that Dam enjoyed doing. This included painting, drawing, and coloring. Even at his worst times, if he could be sat down in front of a pad of paper with a red colored marker or pencil, he would start drawing madly, sometimes for hours at a time. More than once he'd drawn for so long his fingers bled from holding the implement, whatever it was. The walls were still covered with pictures they had colored when they were younger, but there were some new additions, in particular, Gin and Kin had taken to art quite readily. Gin was quite adept at watercolor, and Kin at realism.
When they got there, Gin and Kin were both at easels, working on paintings. Gin was painting a watercolor landscape of Hueco Mundo, while Kin was painting an oil portrait of Dam. They looked up as they entered. Yazu wouldn't have been able to tell them apart at all if they didn't wear different clothes. Usually one of them was in a skirt. However, the one in the skirt might be Gin as easily as Kin, so each day, she had to figure out which one was in which outfit.
"Good day, Dam," Gin said, wearing a pleated skirt today, turning and walking over to him to kiss him on the cheek. "How are you?"
Kin put her paint on the tray and came over with Gin. "Is today a good day, Dam?" they asked.
Gin and Kin had both stayed shorter than Dam by a few inches, and both wore their pink hair in a braid at the base of their neck. They were both thin like Uncle Szayel. The also never carried their sword with them, instead preferring to keep it put away in the room that they shared.
Dam smiled at them and nodded. "I came to draw today."
Kin and Gin each leaned over and kissed him on the cheek on either side. They knew that conversation wouldn't be had in that kind of mood today. They both quietly went back to their work without another word. Yazu grabbed a chair and sat down at the table where Hisashi was placing a pad of paper and the box of markers for Dam to use. Immediately, he grabbed the red one and Yazu's heart fell a little. That wasn't a good sign. It meant another bad day might be coming soon.
She watched as he began drawing a messy scene, quickly putting strokes of red on the paper. It progressed to almost angry seeming and frantic after a few minutes. It was enough that Hisashi came over and took his hand he was drawing with. He looked up at him, eyes wide and unfocused.
"Dam, easy, easy," he said gently.
Dam was a little out of breath, but he focused on Hisashi's face. "You turned into a handsome boy," Dam said finally, staring at him. "Where are your ears?"
"Remember, Dam, when I gained my resurrección they went away unless I release? Just like Yazu and Tamashini." Hisashi had to remind him of this now and then.
He was silent for a minute. "Oh, that's right. I forgot."
Yazu looked at the picture to see what he'd actually drawn. It wasn't very clear at all, and it seemed to be the cell again. He must have had another nightmare, she thought. Usually, he only had the worst flashbacks at night where he saw himself in the cell he'd been confined to. Now that Yazu knew what had occurred, she understood many of the things Dam had drawn over the years. There were often pictures of the cell and twisted images she now knew to be of Kurotsuchi's face and visage. Sometimes he would draw dismembered bodies in gruesome detail. It wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't been so good at it. It was obvious where Gin and Kin got their talent from.
She watched as he put his hand down and stared at the red that had rubbed off onto his hand from the marker and the paper. He tilted his head to the side and stared at it for a long time and Yazu began to worry. This was not a good sign for him.
"Dam, hey, why don't you tell me about what you drew?" she said, putting a hand on his shoulder.
He turned and looked at her, blinking for a minute. "Drowning in red," he whispered finally. "I'm drowning in red."
"It's okay, Dam, you're not drowning anymore. You're safe with us, I promise. Do you want something different to draw with? The pencils or the paints?" she asked, picking up the pad and flipping the page over to the next one.
"I think I need Sōsuke." He stared at her for a second blankly.
"Okay, I'll go get him, you stay here with Hisashi, okay?" she said and stood up, watching him as he picked up the red marker again and began violently scribbling on the paper.
Yazu got up and wound her way to the main room where Uncle Sōsuke was sitting and reading a book quietly. He looked up as she approached.
"Yes, Yazu?" he said, closing the book and placing it in his lap.
"He wants you. I think he's headed into a bad one," she said sadly.
Uncle Sōsuke nodded, standing up and following her without a word back to the art room. Dam was still coloring in the red marker, but now had red marks all over his hands and his forearms. He even had a smudge of red on his nose.
"Oh, my, look at the mess you've got yourself in, my dear," Uncle Sōsuke said as he kneeled beside the table.
"I was drowning in red," he whispered seriously to him.
"Let's go to the baths, alright?" Uncle Sōsuke said and took him by the hand and pulling him to stand.
"Dripping water?" Dam asked, looking at him curiously.
"Yes, my dear, all the water. Let's go get you cleaned up and get the marker off your arms and face. Then we can go to bed for a little while," Uncle Sōsuke said and led him out of the room to the baths.
Yazu sighed, putting her head down on the table until Hisashi put his hand on her back. She turned her head to the side and looked at him.
"How do you do it?" she asked him.
"Do what?" Hisashi said, rubbing her back lightly.
"Keep your head around Dam? Nothing he does or says ever seems to affect you," she said, sitting back up and looking at him.
Hisashi smiled, his brown eyes sparkling a little with unshed tears. "It does affect me, sister. Believe me."
Yazu nodded, putting a hand over Hisashi's on the table. "What do we do?"
"Everything we can," Hisashi told her. "Everything we can."