Sichere Reise

Chapter 1: When You Were Young

The story is going to take a huge turn after this first part, so sit tight and wait for the next chapter. This'll be a long one, and will have a visible plotline soon.

Grimmjow and Ichigo's relationship will be a slow gradual thing; come on, you know it tastes sweeter that way!

-.-

The first time I ever laid eyes on Grimmjow was a ways back, back when I was young, young enough to not have a solid sense of the world and what I was doing in it. My mother had already died and yes that made me quiet, inverted, and depressed, but I still had those normal childhood experiences. Ones where you learn what bothers you and what doesn't. When you think about questions that have no answers, and constantly ponder them until you're mentally exhausted from trying to comprehend something that doesn't exist.

Grimmjow was a boy without that opportunity. No, that's not right. Grimmjow was someone who was forced into the real world way too soon. He was forced to make those decisions before any normal boy should have even thought about them.

I was nine, Grimmjow was eight. Isshin, my outrageous father, had taken me to the city to see an old museum, so of course we drove and parked a few blocks from the actual building.

I was bouncing with the excitement, not just from the prospect that soon I'd be peering in glass at real bones and crawling inside re-created historic places, but from the city. My ecstatic mood was induced by so many people milling around, passing in and out of buildings, talking in little alleys, all the cars slowly crawling along with eyes out for pedestrians.

I would stop and run up to every little vendor and make sure I knew exactly what they were selling before I let dad take my hand and pull me towards our destination.

"Ichigo, you little rump, we'll never get there if we keep going like this," Isshin smiled down at me, and ruffled my hair. I grinned at him, and took off before he could grab me. I went running down the next alley, glancing every few seconds behind me. I knew he realized I was only running to get him to chase me.

I could hear his heavy breathing behind me. "ICHI-GOO, COME BACK TO DADDY!" he wailed. I hid behind a trash can. With my head pressed against the wall I was sitting against, my lungs moved in and out as I waited for my dad to come find me. But he never would.

After about 2 minutes I was bored, and I leaned out of my hiding place.

I barely saw Isshin in the dark corner. It was a little after dusk, and the corner had no source of light. He was crouched over something, and I approached him. He heard my footsteps.

"Come here, Ichigo." His entire attitude had changed. He didn't sound worried, just very serious and observative. I reached him, and peered over his shoulder.

The first thing I saw, and the most important to me at the time, was a bright mass of blue hair. It was long enough to be considered a mullet, but it was sloppy and badly cut. Two blue orbs of burning cold fire glared up at me as I stared, and instantly I moved behind dad. I was scared of the ferocity in this boy's glare. From behind dad, I observed him as a whole.

He was tiny, smaller than I was, and wore dark dirty jeans and a long white sleeve t-shirt. The clothes seemed normal to me; I wore outfits similar to them. But they were worn and had tears in them. The boy was in a fetal position, but it was obvious he wasn't hiding. I don't know how I knew it, but the blue haired boy wasn't a coward. Isshin's voice startled me.

"Hey. Where are your parents, kid?" It was obviously the wrong thing to say. At the word "parents" the boy's lip rose up into a curled sneer.

"Get away from me, old man. None of your business."

Isshin at first was startled by the young boy's cheek. But compassion wasn't something my dad lacked. Isshin reached forward and brushed a strand of the boy's hair out of his eyes.

It was my turn to jump when the boy's teeth snapped. Isshin was quick enough to pull back his hand, but the boy was shaking now and his eyes were watering with livid fury.

"I can't leave you here, kid. That's out of the question." Isshin eyed the boy with a certain level of pity.

"I ain't going with you!"

Isshin sighed. Very quickly, without giving him any time to realize what was happening, Isshin scooped up the small boy over his shoulder. Seconds later, my dad was completely bombarded with tiny fisted punches.

"Pervert! Put me down!" the kid flailed, and almost fell, but Isshin hefted him up again, "I'll kill you! I swear to God!"

I followed dad wide-eyed, completely unsure of what he planned to do with this boy. We walked out of the alley and turned in the direction of the parked car, attracting more than a few stares. I watched the strange blue haired boy try to squirm around Isshin's neck in manner that was if anything desperate. But suddenly I heard a sharp call that made me turn my head, and I saw that dad turned around too.

"That's my son!" shouted a red faced man who, I can't really describe him anyway else, looked like a complete bum. He was lopping over to where we were standing on the sidewalk by the gutter.

His hair was greasy and uncombed, and he wore an old wife beater that must have been white at some time. This supposed-father's hair wasn't the bright blue of his son's; the dull brown wasn't even close. For some reason that didn't make me think the boy dyed his own.

"What the hell are you doing?" the man spat in my dad's face. I stood, frozen.

Isshin slowly lowered the struggling boy to the ground. The boy took one look at the man who called himself his dad, and took off in a bolt. Apparently the man was prepared, because he caught the boy by the shoulders before he had time to run four feet. The man growled in the boy's ear. "You fucking stay at home. Run away like that again and you'll regret it."

The boy's eyes were glowing as defiant as ever, but he looked down at the ground; apparently he saw it a good time to stop fighting.

"I'm sorry for the trouble. We saw your son alone and I thought perhaps I could find his parents," Isshin smiled at the man. "I'm glad you're here."

The man glared at dad, and then turned with two hands still on the boy's shoulders. It gave me a sick feeling in my stomach as I watched them walk away.

My dad saw my frown, and put an around my shoulder, and we stood there for a minute. I suppose we both knew it didn't need to be said that we weren't still going to visit the museum. Dad just started walking back towards the car, and I followed him in silence.

In silence at least until the one thing that had been on my mind had to burst out.

"Dad, how come you let him go away with that boy?"

Isshin took in a huge tired breath. "Ichigo, I know right now it's hard to understand, but there's a lot of hurt and pain in the world. No one can fix everything, not even your mom could," Isshin smiled sweetly down at me, "Some people need kindness and respect for their dignity more than anything, and that's all we can give them. That boy might have a poor home and not a loving and caring family, but when he's older he will come to a choice. To let his past overrun his life and to treat others in the same awful way he was treated, or to forget and to make amends with his childhood, and do for the people around him what he wished he had as a child. Everyone has a choice Ichigo, and you have to realize that you can only help others to a certain point. They have to be able to make the choice."

He looked towards the sky, and I saw him once again like the strong and powerful wise man who was my father.

I looked down at my shoes, and said quietly, "Thanks, dad."

He flashed a grin at me. "Let's go home."

Today wasn't the first day of school. It was probably the sixteenth day, or something like that. Enough days had passed that all of my friends and I had started to settle into our freshmen year.

"RENGI! Get your bright red ass over here!" Ikkaku had casually leaned over my desk, and then bellowed right in my ear over at the pineapple head.

"Ow! Have a little consideration so that others might not go deaf idiot!" I clapped my hands of my ears.

Renji was across the room sweet-talking one of the many brunettes at our school, so when he finally did get himself over to my desk, he had a deep scowl across his face.

"Better be important."

"Of course it is. I have no doubt that you, master of all evil deeds in this world, managed to crash Orihime's pansy party this weekend with a clipped airsoft gun, a wig, and a tux, but did you really afterwards get Uryuu to fall for the cop cover too?"

Renji grinned savagely. "Damn right. Me and Shuhei left Orihime's house and ran into a nice surprise outside. Who would be there but the dick licker himself, lurking below the windows like a fucking squirrel."

Shuhei was listening in now, and added in. "God knows what he was doing."

Renji glanced at his friend. "Probably waiting for a bra to drop out or something. Anyway, we marched over, and when he saw our guns he almost fainted, the little pussy." Shuhei laughed. "I thought he was gonna punch us or something once he realized it was us, but nah he just looked like a deer in headlights," Renji grinned savagely at the part that was next to come, "So all I did was put a hand on his shoulder and said, 'Son, you have two minutes to get clear of this property,' and he ran before I could even finish the sentence!"

Ikkaku cackled.

Alright, so maybe my friends aren't the most mature, but hey, they have their moments. Even though we never say it, we all care for each other a lot.

"The bell's about to ring!" Rukia yelled at us. Everyone around my seat scrambled.

Shunsui was a good teacher. I liked the way he was so relaxed when he taught, and he was really intelligent. I respected him, and I think my classmates did too.

He gave us an American article to analyze, and everyone in the room was working hard. A low buzz of conversation was at a comfortable level, and I could easily concentrate.

"The writing of history is one of the most familiar ways of organizing knowledge. And yet, if familiarity has not always bred contempt, it has at least encouraged a good deal of misunderstanding. All of us meet history at a tender age when tales of the past easily blend with heroic myths of the culture. In Golden Books, Abe Lincoln looms every bit as large as Paul Bunyan, while George Washington's cherry tree gets chopped down yearly with almost as much ritual as St. Nick's Christmas tree goes up. Despite this long familiarity, or perhaps because of it, most students absorb the required facts about the past without any real conception of-"

I stopped reading. The polite buzz of conversation in the classroom had suddenly gone tense. I could almost taste it in the air. I looked up, and saw a teenage boy with the bluest fucking hair I'd ever seen.

This is why I mentioned it not being the first day. This kid had a bad ass air about him, and we all knew he probably had only came because of the cops. He was a skipper.

Anyway, his hair was blue, but that wasn't his only noticeable feature. He had a tall, full body, and I'll admit, he was hot. But while it should have drawn everyone to him, there was something else about the way he carried himself that repelled everyone.

His eyes were blue orbs that pierced everything he looked towards.

"I'm Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez. I ain't writing it on the board." It's not like his low gruff voice sounded anything like that little boy's, but all of a sudden, I remembered that day. When I was nine years old.

The memory of the smell of that alley hit me like a truck.

The seat in front of me was empty, and I watched in awe as this living piece of my past made his sleek way over to the desk. I suppose I shouldn't have been so obvious as I stared, but hell, his hair was sky blue.

Grimmjow turned around to look at me as he sat down, and said in a clear loud voice, "What the fuck are you staring at?"

He hadn't changed one bit.

-.-

'When You Were Young' by The Killers

~More about the title if anything, but listen to it.

Review! Even if it's just a few lovely words or a few nasty ones, they'd be very cherished.