Desert Rose
In the Wasteland, the world remains stagnant. It does not move, does not breathe, and does not shift in its shiftless state.
Here, Nel takes her stance against the others naturally excellent killers (born to fight and plunge daggers six inches deep).
"I do not like to kill."
He gives her a perplexed stare, why.
"It burns me. All this blood. I feel it in my throat, on my hands, everywhere. It never rinses off. I can't explain it. I can never change it. It just…stays."
"It's the head. Remove it."
"What?"
"Let go of thinking and just act. You are Arrancar, and Arrancar kill. That's all they know how to do. So do it."
"No."
She walks (into the barren desert where rain comes down once three thousand years).
-
In a moment of near rapture and overwhelming, excruciating hate, Nel is born. She reaches for listless milk (soaked in wine and rice) and lifts her limbs above the arid air and sunken riverbeds.
"This one is special," Aizen remarks.
And Gin replies with a shrug and a shifty grin.
Perhaps.
So when Nel grabs hold of his collar and neck, entwining her sickly long fingers around the skin—breaking and making in the waking—Gin's grin grows bigger. And more sadistic. And more pragmatic. And almost says something poetic and beautiful but remembers that this advent is a not-advent, is a horrifying mistake.
Nel cries and elongates herself. Her body stretches thin and weakly and out of the ashes, she carves out a heart (for herself).
"This one is powerful."
This one is different.
"This one is perfect.
This one will die.
-
Desert roses in Las Noches bloom only if blood seeps through. Into the dirt and filtering out of the filth and bones, Nel struggles for life. There is no such thing as conscience. There is no such thing as thought. There is only blood and death and more death.
And when death is not enough, there is always greed.
Nel sighs and waits for Aizen's orders. He smiles at her and waves his hand and encourages her forward.
The blow comes across furious and brilliant (which she sidesteps easily). It screams in her face, wants acknowledgment. Memory and lacquer, miasmic and laced. Her arms ache and her artificial heart beats (thump, it becomes passionate). She stops.
And looks Aizen directly in the eye and challenges him.
And that's when the severing comes.
-
Her body is rebuilt and embellished with improvised synthetic love and perfumed grace. She is nobody again (the Doctor strokes her false-shoulders and chest happily).
-
She meets someone new and clumsy and gauche and stupid. He calls himself Nnoitra, and she sees ugly in him immediately. His face washes over blank like a fresh, laundered sheet bleached pale and berserk.
"Fight me!" he demands.
"No."
"Come on, bitch. Get on with it."
Cloaked and shielded with smoke, Nel drains him of blood. He shrieks in agony and horror. She wipes her face clean and leaves. Death is death and they are all dead.
And the dead keep it.
-
Nnoitra seeks the friendship of a strange man, calling himself Doctor-This and Doctor-That (likes to make panacea out of placebo). Doctor S— is a peculiar man with peculiar talents still (specializes in dis-embalming, he sneers).
"She plans to leave tomorrow, you know."
The Doctor does not look up. Engrossed in his work, he raises his left shoulder and brow and mutters some curses.
"Tell me."
"Tell you what?"
Nnoitra pauses. "Why was she created?"
And Doctor laughs. "I don't know."
"Why…why does she look at us with that expression? It's like…she's not even seeing us."
And Doctor hisses. "Will you shut up? Why do you care? What is she to you? Your enemy, you say. But—"
"But nothing."
And Doctor drops—
Unhinged. Some things are better unsaid (and unheard).
-
He could've sworn the hanged man took his revenge, could've sworn he saw stars when she collided face-down onto the ground. But when she stands firm and reclaims her crown, Nnoitra's mouth falls open and void.
"I warned you."
Dawn breaks, sounds fly, and they are scattered to the winds—bodies torn and mutilated. The excoriation comes blunt and brutish. Elegance, he thinks, of an unusual sort.
And then he makes impact: her mask is defaced, her face is unmasked. Neliel Tu fades into a nobody-nothing.
-
"We have to take her away."
We must. Must. The word quivers as they sob heavily, weeping years away.
-
They wander the badlands for years, and Nel never seems to age. Their rage subsides (they are afraid). They grow old in their souls. But here—away and languid and hidden—Nel is happy and herself.
From the dust, they brew whiskey and feed her gold-brown liquid at night (for strength, love). And when her head is spinning and her feet dancing from a dizzy craze, Nel is almost Neliel. Her hair lengthens and turns more teal.
Teal for tears, for terse, for the terror she used to instill.
"Thank you," she whispers.
She rubs at her reddened cheeks, chaffed and weathered by withering rocks and sand dunes, and hugs them (her brothers) close. And calls them family, and knows this is contentment. This is wonder, marvel, everything and nothing.
And in the place where the end begins, unfolding—singing—she can be anyone she wants to be. Can do and feel any way she wants.
-
One day a boy with orange air and ferocious eyes appear. They are hesitant and curious, and she runs gladly towards him waving her arms. She shouts out hellos and other baby-sweet phrases.
She enchants him unwittingly with her un-wants. And he would say that he pities her if that were true, if she needs (deserves) pity and his concern. But Nel is Nel and has no remorse.
-
Nnoitra dies, and she could (should) say that she wants to skip with joy and glee, but her tongue falters and cakes into honeyed venom in her thickened mouth.
You're not worth anything.
She screams with anger and newfound reason. And drags her body to finish the job—duty, whatever they called it, she couldn't care less.
(But could and should are different from would.)
Nel strikes and collapses.
-
"Are you okay?" Ichigo asks.
She smiles, yes.
Everything is all right now. Nnoitra crumbles from his meteoric dignity. And they watch, grim and amused.
-
Pesche and Dondochakka urge her to depart with them (into the Wasteland where freedom is truly free). She claps her hands together, the tiny fingers curling around theirs.
"Home?" Nel asks, hopeful and eager and heartfelt-ignorantly innocent.
They nod and lead her away. She turns and waves Ichigo and the others goodbye (thinking they'll be waiting just on the opposite side of the cloudy sky).
Arrancar is Arrancar and their playground is a massacre.