Title: All We Are
Companion to: All We Lost (Hiyori-centric), and All We Want (Lisa centric, not yet posted)
Centric: Grimmy-neko
Length: 1100 words
Review for Grimm-kitty?
Discidium
They weren't monsters.
He was tired of the filthy looks, the judging glares, and the high-handed idealism of the shinigami.
They were just predators who hunted their prey to survive.
His kind, hollows, espada, arrancar, and all the like, they weren't warped creatures who tortured when they killed. No, they were like a cat chasing after a mouse, a hawk catching a rat, a dog eating a squirrel.
They were just surviving the way they knew how.
He was an Espada, a hollow, not a filthy shinigami. He hadn't chosen to be this way, indeed it was something that happened because of who he was. Did he decide to prey on his former kind? Did he decide to forgo going to the soul world? Did he choose to be forced into an existence where it was eat or be eaten, kill or be killed, maim or be torn apart at the seams?
Damn straight he didn't.
Yet the shinigami took it upon themselves to break the masks they had grown, and to kill them. Being a hollow was a part of who they were, but the soul reapers decided that it was up to them to play god and protect the humans.
Even if they did devour souls, that was the way of life. If they didn't, they would starve to death.
Did humans look at a hamburger and think, I'm a murderer?
No.
They didn't. Instead, they ate the hamburger, and didn't think about the cattle that had been culled because of their need to eat meat. Humans could survive without killing animals, but their survival was based around killing. If it was a plant they wanted to eat, they killed it so they could consume it. If they wanted meat, they killed an animal.
Hollows didn't have that choice. Instead, they were forced to devour the souls to survive. Very little hollows intruded on the human world, though. Instead, because the shinigami had hunted them like a terrier hunts a rabbit, they were driven into their burrow and forced to consume each other to live, and continue on.
Grimmjow slammed a fist against the wall, reliving the horror filled looks on the shinigami's face when he had appeared. He was following orders, just as the human followed orders from the shinigami. The sexta espada had followed Aizen for a reason. The man, even if he was stronger, didn't see them as freaks of nature.
No, he saw them as tools.
Grimmjow didn't mind being seen as a tool. He wasn't against it. If one shinigami could look on them and not see them as a farce, but instead as something that could think and work, could the rest change?
He doubted that, even if Aizen wasn't seen as a traitor, the rest of the shinigami would just mock him.
Thinking hollows that showed intelligence?
Something seen as worse than a dumb animal being accepted?
No, it would go against the goddamn mantra that the shinigami had.
If they saw something they didn't understand, just reacted in anger, seeking to shatter its reason and to wipe it out of every memory. They thought that if they pretended that they didn't exist, things would be fine. If they pretended they were nothing more than dumb brutes acting on instinct, maybe they would disappear. If they let fucking traitors pull wool over their eyes, maybe things would go on just like before.
Sure, and maybe at the same time Grimmjow would sprout wings and start barking like a dog.
The espada leaned against the wall, feeling the cold stone caress his cheek. He wondered if any of the others went through these thoughts and these uncertainties. Did Stark look in the mirror and think things like, what in the name of fucking hell am I doing with my existence? Did Nnoitra ever think is it possible to make them see us as equals? Did anyone but the goddamn pacifist Neliel wonder if they could do more in their lives then just sit and eat, and fight?
Grimmjow snarled again, knowing that it was the most unlikely thing he had thought of yet. Why would Nnoitra think of anything but fighting? Why would Stark wonder if he could be doing anything but sleeping? Why would anyone but Nel see how much like the shinigami each one of them was?
So the Espada went, and picked up his sword, and he knew that he was going to die one day. He fought on Aizen's orders, let his thinking mind retreat and Pantera's personality come to the foreground, and he felt the blood of the stupid shinigami stain his clothes. At night he would wonder if he should just give it up, and he knew that soon he would.
He knew that he was evolving, that they all were evolving. They thought too much, with the exception of Nnoitra, and they didn't want to have those thoughts in their mind. He could see all of them retreating away, and letting their thoughts take their backseats.
Maybe they were allowing themselves to return to what they used to be after all, souls that fought on instinct, that attacked on instinct. They followed their orders to the letter, and gave up questioning. They had the fight beaten out of them, and they changed. Soon they didn't care, soon they didn't mind being used and soon they just decided that giving up was the best thing to do.
But Kami, he didn't want to be seen as a monster.
So he struggled with the pieces he had left, and saw the kindred souls that faced him. The shinigami brat, Kurosaki faced him with hatred in his eyes. Did he hate the Espada because he realized he would become like that one day? A tool used by the ones with power until he didn't want to think anymore? Did he realize that just like Grimmjow, he would struggle to pick up the pieces and to not let himself be torn?
Grimmjow knew it would happen to the brat. The kid was going to just let go one day, and wake up years later wondering if he made the right damn choice. By that time, he'd regret it, and then he'd just give in, knowing there wasn't a single goddamn thing he could do to make his fucking choices change.
He might fight against it, might reject the certainty in his mind.
But Grimmjow Jeagerjaquez, the sixth strongest Espada, knew the truth.
He was a monster.