Ever Green

Rating: T, for mild language, themes, maybe a little violence, who knows.

Summary: This is about Nel's life before she became an Espada, and a little bit of what went on there too - contains life, death, hollows, arrancars, friends and foes, aizen, shinigami, a little bit of gin, and a lot of sand! all that good stuff.

Hello, reading audience. I know I'm working on another story at the moment, but I really have most of this planned out, and I want to get it out there before the manga gets ahead and crushes all my hopes and beliefs.

1. Destiny Awaits

"Nel-chan."

Seeing a red gleam on the back of my eyelids.

"Nel-chan."

Groans.

"Good morning!"

Opening my eyes to shut them tight at the light of a sunny Tuesday morning during a particularly sticky-hot August.

"Wake up, alright," my mother leaves my room. I wake up to get dressed for another day of school.

I am (or at least I was) just an ordinary 15-year-old girl living in Japan. My full name is Neliel Tu Oderschvank. Not very japanese-sounding is it? Well my dad was a businessman from America of some eastern european descent. My mother is japanese, and they met on one of his trips. Eventually, they got married and settled down and had me, their child. But my dad died while on a cruise with his co-workers when I was 5, so now I just live with my mother in a 3-room apartment (two bedrooms, a main room, a toilet, and 2 closets). Anyway, back to my story.

So there I was, eating pancakes with my mom for breakfast. I kissed her goodbye and left to catch my bus. I always picked up the mail for our place on my way out, so I did so. In the mail, there was a thick envelope, adressed to me. There was no return address, stamp, or delivery address. Only my name, Neliel. I boarded the bus and opened up the envelope on the way. I pulled out a warning, such as I had been receiving periodically for a few months.

Three photographs. A girl with thick eyelashes, and dark-blonde hair down to her waist, wearing a school uniform with a cream blazer and red pleated skirt reaching just above her knees. Capturing the images of myself. The first one was taken from high up window or balcony as I was walking. The second showed a glimpse of me inside the window of a bus, taken from an alley at a low camera angle. Instinctively, my eyes darted out the windows. Someone could be watching me right now. As a bead of sweat rolled down my neck, I looked at the last photograph. A high-quality shot of my face. I was dressed in my pajamas, scratching my left cheek, just along the pink birthmark across my face. My dark brown eyes seemed to look almost straight into the camera angle. The closest picture I had ever received of myself. On the back of the photo, was written with a Sharpie (don't own!):

owari da

So there you have it. I'm just your average half-japanese 10th grader living with her mother in the city. I go to school, I get decent grades, I know a few people. And I had a stalker.

You might wonder, now, why I didn't tell my mother about it. Well, I'm not really sure, but I know teenagers often hide their troubles from their parents for various reasons. Why haven't you told yours? You're pregnant. You're failing a course. You're thinking of killing yourself. You think someone else wants to kill you. You broke up with him, and they wonder why he hasn't come to your house in a month. Because you're embarassed, or scared to say you failed. You don't want them to think you're weak and hate you. You want to wait until you can show them that report card of straight A's and never mention that last one you didn't show them with the two F's.

I don't think I'll ever know who it was, but I did see someone once I thought was watching me. It was after school on a rainy afternoon. It fell heavily all around, creating a drowning sound as I leaned my ear against the window. I was looking out the bus window and as lightning struck and revealed the corners of an alley, I saw a figure. It was a man, and he was extremely thin, and very tall, but it looked like he was wearing very poofy pants and a strangely styled hood. I think he must have been about 8 feet. I couldn't see the details of his face very well because I saw him in high contrast, and only for a split second in that flash of light. I have no idea if he was or wasn't my stalker, but the memory is there because of how nervous I was at the time, and since I was looking for someone staring at me, the appearance of this tall body struck unprecedented fear in my heart. It just shows how paranoid I was, that this completely irrelevant memory has had such an impact on me, and for no aparrent reason.

I should have told my mom, but I didn't. It was too late anyway. That night, I walked the last block to my apartment complex and went right into our home on the first floor. I went to my room and did my homework like always. I ate my dinner of spaghetti and meatballs quietly while my mother looked at me with a worried expression, wondering when she'd find the courage to ask me what was wrong. But like I already said, it was too late.

Next morning, my mother never woke me up. I got out of bed by myself and stepped on something wet. Then I noticed the breeze. The window was open. I turned around to redo the covers of my bed, and I froze. And then I simply stood there, staring at the view in front of me. It was me! Only my wavy hair around my shoulders was mingled with a sticky red substance—half dried blood. After what felt like hours, but was probably only about 10 minutes, I examined my dead self. No, actually, it was just a dead body that I used to inhabit now. Just a normal human body, except that it had stopped functioning. The cheek felt cold, and no air flowed in or out of the nostrils. The cause of my death was several wounds around the neck. There was a gash horizontally across the middle of the neck and then 4 stab marks on my neck, collarbone, and chest area. I guess he slashed my neck first and then took a few stabs for fun while the blood was still flowing. Maybe he used chloroform first and had some 'fun'. It would explain why I wasn't jerked awake realizing that someone had just stabbed me. I think he must have knocked me out, otherwise I would have woken up from the pain in the few seconds I was still technically alive. There was blood all over the sheets, and a pool of it had formed on the floor near my bed. My new spiritual body or soul form or something looked exactly the same as I always had, except for a chain attached to my chest, which I didn't think much of at the time. Stranger danger, kids. Trust those who have trust to give.

Speaking of my family, as I was wondering what to do next, and about to start analyzing my current situation, my mom called, "Nel-chan, wake up!" I shivered involutarily. "Nel-chan, are you getting up?"

"Mom, I'm…" I started voicing back to her, but didn't know what to say. Hey, mom, yea I'm dead, see ya later!

"Hello?" she started walking across the hall. I felt trapped and I didn't know what to do. "MOM!" I shouted, to no response. "NO, PLEASE DON'T COME IN HERE!!" Why couldn't she hear me? I was shouting quite loudly, I think.

"Oh, Nel-chaaaaan," she said cheerfully as she opened the door, and I didn't even try to hold it shut, just back away.

She looked in the room. I stared into her eyes, realizing she couldn't look back into mine. She couldn't hear or see me in this form, apparently. After a minute or two of silence, an expression started forming on her face. Her cheeks started rising, eyebrows furrowing, and she began taking centimeter paces with shaking fingers and her body tensing up everywhere with adrenaline.

I couldn't watch it any longer. I didn't want to see what happened next. I climbed out the open window, and ran as far away, as fast as I could. I started hearing screams at the edge of my hearing range, and sped up my pace. I came to the house of one of my classmates. Finally, tears and sobs came to my body as I curled up in the bushes of the garden and, at grief for my own death and the sadness my mother and the girl sleeping right through the window two stories above my head. Loneliness and helplessness. What should I do now? Where would I go? No one could hear me, no one could see me. I hadn't a friend in the world to go to for comfort, save this one girl who would never know that her friend—I mean former—friend spent the first night after her death, in her own garden right outside her front porch. Curled up there in a little ball, against the small comfort that didn't know it was giving itself to me. The mental wall holding back emotions came loose, and they silently streamed down my face, getting my cheeks and sleeves all wet. I must have fallen asleep like that.

Please tell me what you think! I have already written a few chapters ahead, and will post them soon. Maybe they'll come faster if you review : D