Greetings everyone! This is my third story and my first one-shot. I hope you readers like it, though I must warn you that it is basically me venting. Thank you to everyone who reads my stuff and double thanks to those who review. Have a nice day!
What Fairy Tales Entail
Inspired By: Tite Kubo's "Bleach"
Orihime Inoue had always loved fairy tales; ever since she was a child, she would entertain herself by reading stories and connecting them to her own life any way she could. Though she hated the experience, her time in Hueco Mundo was the most fairy tale-like moment of her life.
Locked away in the white walls of her room, Orihime had nothing but time to think and her thoughts often led her down the road to lala land. Within the first couple days of her imprisonment, she had all the basic elements of what the classic fairy tale entailed. The stories she loved always consisted of a curse, a lovely princess, a handsome prince, an evil witch that could be beautiful, the prince's loyal steed, a castle or tower with a dragon guarding it, and helpful little forest animals. In her head, Orihime had sorted out all the elements of a fairy tale and began connecting them to her life.
When her friends arrived to rescue her, Orihime easily saw the similarities to her favorite stories Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. As expected of her, Ichigo was immediately given the role of handsome prince. Though she had only the upmost respect for them, she somehow couldn't get rid of the idea that Chad was the loyal steed, while her other friends where the helpful forest animals. Rukia was the bunny, Renji the fox, and Uryu was the deer. She was the princess cursed to always bring trouble to the ones she cared about then locked away in the evil witch's castle. Comically, she decided that Aizen was the witch while Hueco Mundo was of course the castle. Ulquiorra was the dragon guarding her; Orihime would sometimes picture him with big dragon horns, large bat-like wings, a long lizard tail, and billows smoke puffing out of his nose. Later, when she saw his released form, the girl thought for a brief millisecond that it was rather ironic that she had imagined something so similar to what he actually looked like. The other arrancar, Espada included, were of course the witch's pet flying monkeys that did her bidding; at least that's how Orihime saw them until a certain incident occurred.
When the two arrancar girls, Loly and Menoly, came to her room, Orihime was frightened, but simply placed them as disgruntled monkey-lackeys. She told them to leave and they started beating her and all Orihime could do was wait for Ichigo to save her or the "dragon" to return from wherever he went and stop them from killing her. However, what actually happened was something the girl didn't see coming: she was saved by the sixth Espada Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez. He marched in like he owned the place, incinerated the top half of Menoly and ripped of Loly's leg. He said it was for healing his arm, but Orihime had always thought that bad guys didn't have honor, so why did he? He then threatened her and laughed while claiming she was stupid; it was as if he was trying to make excuses for doing something nice for her. He even let her heal the girls he had just saved her from. Adding to the surprises, Grimmjow took her to Ichigo and told her to heal him, even answering her question on who hurt her friend and how he managed to temporarily get rid of Ulquiorra. Though it was just so he could fight him, he wanted a fair fight, which is not something Orihime's definition of a bad guy is supposed to want.
Grimmjow left Orihime stumped; he was an enigma, a paradox she couldn't place in her little fairy tale. She had at first grouped him in with the others under Aizen, but after he saved her and proved he was much more than just an arrancar out to destroy the world, she couldn't decide what he was. The last time she saw him she had been too busy worrying about Ichigo and the others to really think about it, but once the war was over and she had, once more, nothing but time to think while waiting for Ichigo to wake up from losing his powers, the thought crept up into her mind. How exactly did the Sexta Espada…well…former Sexta Espada fit in her story? He wasn't the prince obviously, that was Ichigo. Nor was he the witch, the horse, the dragon, the castle, or a helpful forest critter. He worked for Aizen, but did things that could cause trouble for the villain; there was never anyone like that in the books she read. The lackey's were always mindless drones following orders blindly until the end.
He was so different from every one she'd ever met; from humans to soul reapers and to arrancars. He was ruggedly handsome, she supposed, though her heart would always belong to Ichigo and how he looked wasn't the issue. There was something about him that she had trouble recalling that made her continue to think about him even after so much time had passed. It wasn't his lean, muscular physique or his wild blue hair and beautiful blue eyes; no…it had something to do with how he and Ichigo were so much alike yet he somehow managed to stand out more. Even if he didn't look the way he did he would draw attention to himself the moment he entered a room just by the way he moved and spoke. He had a confidence in himself that Ichigo couldn't match. Her friend had suffered defeat against Grimmjow before and only insisted on fighting because he had to win in order to protect everyone; he did not know he would win, just that he had to. That was their real main difference: not how one was a hollow while the other was human or how one fought for himself while the other did to protect the ones he cared for.
Eventually she came to the conclusion that he had created a new role in her fairy tale. Suddenly Grimmjow became the not-so-bad guy that she had to thank for not only her freedom, but also Ichigo's survival and Aizen losing the war. If he had not saved her and had her heal Ichigo, her friend never would have defeated Aizen. In fact, if he had not even invaded the human world against his leader's orders, than Ichigo never would have decided to train with the visoreds to get stronger. It was Grimmjow that gave everyone the push they needed to grow. Orihime realized that, in a way, he was an indirect hero.
While visiting Ichigo's still unconscious form, she would stare at him and think back to his fight with the feline arrancar. They had both fought so hard; it had been a fair fight between a visored an arrancar. When Grimmjow let an attack fly at her and Nel, she knew it was only because he expected Ichigo to block it and fight even harder. She recalled how in the end Grimmjow refused to be defeated only to have Nnoitra stab him in the back; it was a sad end to the fight. The last time she saw him he was still breathing as he lay in a puddle of his own blood. Now that it was all over, Orihime found herself wondering if he survived his wounds and if Captain Kurotsuchi of Squad Twelve had taken him to experiment on. She hoped Grimmjow had escaped and was still alive somewhere; it was the least she could do after all he did for everyone, even if it was unintentional.
After Ichigo woke, Orihime forgot about the Espada and focused on living her life again. She dreamed her dreams and wished for happiness for herself and for her friends; everything was normal again, or at least as normal as it could be. Then came the day Uryu was attacked, she and Chad were put under a sort of hypnosis, and, most importantly, Ichigo got his powers back. She had to fight again, which, though she knew it would happen and she did want to help Ichigo, she was sad that the peaceful times were over.
The sight of Ichigo standing in the sky with his huge zanpakuto and the soul reapers behind him stirred her memory, bringing up past visions of a blue blur and orange blur attacking each other. It was not until later when she was free from the spell she'd been under completely that she recalled how Ichigo was the orange blur and Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez was the blue.
Why was she thinking about him when it had been two years since she had last seen him wounded on the battlefield? She realized that it was because deep inside she wished she'd healed him to pay him back for taking her to Ichigo.
Though now the whole incident was behind her and she and her friends had new foes, every so often she would look back and wonder how the blue-haired arrancar would fit into her story should they ever meet again. Whatever happened to him, she hoped he found a happy fairy tale to follow like she did.