O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o Rain
"You remember, don't you?"
"Yes."
A raindrop hit Ulquiorra then. He glanced at it, and then looked up at the sky. Another raindrop fell, and then another, and soon it was raining. It was rare for rain to fall. It seemed strangely appropriate. He looked back to where Toshiro stood and the pain in his chest intensified. His brother's right arm still hung uselessly at his side, his gait had only just begun returning to normal, and it was his fault. Ulquiorra frowned. Toshiro looked mildly pleased. Contented, even.
Those bright turquoise eyes were squinting at the sky, working arm out to catch the rare water that fell in heavy sheets. He knew the words he should say. I'm sorry. He had taken a psychology course as a human. He would feel better after saying it. He would be relieved by Toshiro's acceptance of that apology. It wouldn't come, though. In the end he swallowed hard and began walking back.
It was after they got back that Toshiro spoke again. Ulquiorra stood in the doorway, making sure that Toshiro was comfortable and had fresh bandages. "What happened that night with our parents? I…I'd like to know about them." Ulquiorra hesitated. These new surges of emotions and memories were alien to what he had known. But, in a way, familiar. He still had to dig to find what Toshiro was talking about. "Our mother was an alcoholic," he said. The words didn't seem right on his tongue. "Our father was abusive. You were…too young to remember. Our mother shot him that night and we lived with our grandmother until I became eighteen. Then I became your legal guardian."
Brief silence. Ulquiorra could see the questions even before Toshiro said anything.
"Were they always like that?"
"…No. On rare days we would do things together."
Toshiro looked down. "I see." Ulquiorra shifted his weight, about to shrug. He stopped himself. These new human habits were incredibly undignified. He cleared his throat, looking to the side. "I apologize for injuring your dominant arm and legs." He said. The pregnant silence seemed to drag on forever. Ulquiorra watched Toshiro who looked out the window and waited. Finally, "It's alright."
With that Ulquiorra backed out, the door closing. He wandered the halls, ignoring the movements in his peripheral vision, the lack of life that was becoming increasingly disturbing. He knew. Aizen was dead. No one would be coming back. He went into the throne room again, looking at the Hogyoku. The forbidden fruit. A source of limitless power that called to an Arrancar such as himself. The item that had sealed his doubt that Aizen would come back by its return to its pedestal, pulsing lightly. He turned, not looking back. He went to Szayel's lab for fresh bandages, went to Yammy's room for food that he could now tell was edible or not. He tried, once, to eat 'normal' food. He could taste it, enjoy it, but his stomach rejected it. It couldn't be helped, he supposed. He was an Arrancar. His diet was composed of the souls of those weaker than him.
These days his life was much like when he was alive. His world revolved around Toshiro anything else was extra. He made sure Toshiro was sleeping, and then left the box of food – his mind supplied 'pop tart' – on the small table.
That night he slept. He despised sleeping – it was a waste of time – and yet he required a certain measure of it. He lay on his back, waiting for the newfound memories/dreams to come.
And come they did.
Tonight, it was a prelude to his first dream of jumping.
They told him it was unfortunate. They told him he was lucky to have gotten away with only a small fracture. They told him they were sorry. It didn't help. After asserting that, yes, he was mentally well and no, he would not continue in a hospital room when his baby brother might never wake up again, he sat in the plastic chair by Toshiro's bed.
Everything in here smelled of antiseptic and oxygen. It made Ulquiorra's stomach churn uncertainly and his head throb. He rested with his elbows propped on his knees. He couldn't sleep. He knew he needed to; his bags had bags. Already he had missed two days of work. He didn't care. He could miss months before he cared. Shiro-kun needed him. He needed to be here.
Time went by. The doctors told him that his insides weren't healing properly. Ulquiorra stayed, silenced calls from well-meaning co-workers and his grandmother and anyone else who tried to contact him. A week later Toshiro woke up. Ulquiorra was thrilled, hiding his exhaustion. Three days after that they went home. Toshiro was in a wheel-chair until he was completely healed. Ulquiorra didn't care. The things he cared about were different. He cared about how Toshiro seemed more tired than usual. He cared about doing things with his right hand. He cared about how to get Toshiro's pills into a thin enough powder that Toshiro wouldn't notice them in his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He cared about getting watermelon ice-cream because Toshiro said his throat was sore.
Three weeks later Toshiro died.
Doctors told him that it was an aneurysm. They told him that his aorta had been weakened when the bus hit and caused internal bleeding. It didn't help, Ulquiorra noted bitterly, to know that his baby brother had died because the main artery of his heart had exploded.
Going home that night hurt the most. He couldn't stay. He lay in bed at first, trying to sleep. But knowing the room across from his was empty was worse than leaving. At midnight he couldn't take anymore. He stood, left, and wandered the streets and in and out of pubs and sat on the bench in the park and tried to find a place where he wouldn't hurt quite as badly.
It was after passing the middle school that Toshiro had just started attending that he broke down. For the first time in his twenty-one years he cried. He leaned against the brick and sobbed until he had nothing left to give. As the sun went up he made a choice. It seemed logical. He felt too hollow for it to be impulsive. He thought it out, found the tallest building, slipped inside and climbed the stairs.
And he woke up. His heart was racing, skin slick with cold sweat. He itched to get up and go to the cell, just to make sure. Just to make sure his younger brother was there and he wasn't dreaming or that it was empty and clean and he had been the subject in one of Szayel's hallucinatory experiments that Aizen granted him clearance to do.
Either way he needed to get up and move. He dressed quickly, striding out of the room.
It was darker than the day. Without the moon and without the canopy Las Noches was pitch black. Ulquiorra stopped in front of the cell, the door sliding open without a sound. The room was empty. He knew as soon as the door opened it was empty. A shred of a very human emotion rose, one that he refused to name at the moment.
Traces of reiatsu still lingered in the air. Ulquiorra narrowed his eyes, turning slightly. An adjucha had been here recently. If Aaroneiro had not been an adjucha himself he never would have recognized it. That emotion grew. Adjuchas did not come this deep into Las Noches, not since Aizen had come. The effects of Aizen's death were becoming clearer. He was sure even the fraccion knew by now. And apparently the adjucha did too.
He ran. He never ran. He realized this halfway down the hallway while following the scanty reiatsu trail. Then he sonídoed. The cero already crackling against his skin was more than enough to warn away the night monsters of Hueco Mundo. He would teach a measly adjucha who dared steal his brother for an easy meal. The path led out a side exit, one few knew about. Ulquiorra waited a moment for his vision to adjust, and then continued.
That emotion needed a name. He tried to identify what it was. After several normal humans' lifetimes of not feeling it was a little difficult. It should have been easy. Cross-referencing it with his memories should have made it go faster. He looked up, making sure he was still on the trail.
On the horizon was a speck of something very hard to find in Hueco Mundo. On the horizon was an oasis. He crossed the remaining distance in a matter of seconds, scrawny trees rustling as he stopped. He heard the angry hiss of the feral adjucha. But more than that, he saw the blank eyes staring back at him, the gaping red of the torn open chest, and the thin trail blood from the corner of his mouth.
That emotion was fear.
He lunged forward, ripping head from neck, arms from sockets, and the excuse for a heart from its chest. He stopped, half-focused on the adjucha's thin wailing to where Toshiro lay. The turquoise eyes flicked to him, empty. Ulquiorra flicked his hand to clear the blood, reaching out to the gaping wound. Blood flowed freely from the torn arteries that would have surrounded a heart. His hand shook. His mind unhelpfully supplied images of those he had killed in a similar manner and memories of being human in a hospital with sickly flickering fluorescent lights.
Carefully he picked up Toshiro and began to move. He knew what he had to do. He didn't like it, but he knew. He would not let his brother die this time. The minutes it had taken to get to the oasis felt like hours on his way back. The hallways that he knew so well seemed like endless mazes.
Then, the throne room. The Hogyoku seemed almost alive in its desire to serve. Ulquiorra moved forward, cradling Toshiro to his chest with one hand and reaching for the Hogyoku with the other. His hands were shaking as they closed around the small blue orb. Bright light erupted in the room. His eyes hurt as they hastened to adjust from total darkness to the blinding amount of light now in the room. He focused on the thought he wanted the Hogyoku to accomplish. Heal him heal him heal him heal him heal him –
As quickly as it had been there the blue orb went dark. Ulquiorra blinked rapidly as his eyes readjusted to the dark. What he saw made him go cold. Toshiro was fixed – where there had once been torn open flesh and missing organs was smooth unmarked skin. But, the bone mask stretching from over his right eye to the back of his head made Ulquiorra's chest ache. The design was eerily similar to that of a dragon, a somewhat familiar dragon. "What did it do to you?" He murmured. He knew, though.
It was just that he held on to a shred of hope that insisted that perhaps it was a side-effect, not what it seemed. Anything but the hell that he may have just inflicted upon his younger brother, the brother he had wanted to protect at all costs. He took the unconscious Toshiro to Harribel's old room, depositing him on the bed. At least here Toshiro could get out and Ulquiorra would be relatively close by.
Again Ulquiorra could not sleep. He had forgotten something; he knew it. He just couldn't remember what though. It should have been important. And yet, it seemed like something Ulquiorra should have experienced if it was important to being an Arrancar. At last, he fell into an uneasy sleep, muscles tensed to run if necessary. And, he dreamt.
It was hot out. Ulquiorra was trying to finish the work his boss had assigned – the slave driver – and he still hadn't heard the end of it from eleven-year-old Toshiro. "Its sooooo hot and you promised we would get watermelon and go to the beach and not be hot for at least three hours. Is three hours so much to ask?" Ulquiorra sighed, setting down the pen. "I guess it can't be helped. Any hotter and my paper will burst into flames, and then I'll have no excuse not to go." He said, running a hand through his hair. He didn't miss the triumphant smirk. "I'll go get my baseball bat." Toshiro said, running down the hall.
Ulquiorra stood and changed into swim trunks and a loose t-shirt, grabbing beach supplies. By the time he came to the front door Toshiro was there looking mildly annoyed, tapping the baseball against his shoulder. They walked to the nearest grocery store, getting half a dozen watermelons and taking the tram down to the boardwalk. The beach was crowded, hundreds of other people apparently having the same idea for such a sweltering day. Ulquiorra looked for a spot that looked as female-free as possible, one eye on Toshiro as the white-haired boy ran down to waves.
As Ulquiorra finally found a spot away from where the bulk of the young women seemed to be, Toshiro came back, dragging the baseball bat with a sort of sick glee. Ulquiorra chose not to comment, slathering sunscreen on his equally pale brother. For the next three hours(exactly – he made it a point to count) they splashed through the waves, smashed hapless watermelons, and fended off flirtatious women. It had cooled off somewhat when they went back, Ulquiorra tired and sunburnt (go figure) and ready to try and siphon some of Toshiro's boundless energy.
He woke. Ulquiorra didn't know why, as he stared up at the pale ceiling. The answer came a few seconds later: the unmistakable sound of an adjucha dying. Ulquiorra was following the sound before he even knew what he was doing. His sleep-fogged mind was trying to catch up with what he was doing. He skidded to a stop. The pristine white walls were covered with blood. The dark smear told where someone was dragged, the hole indicating where someone was punched, the crouched figure and twitching body telling him the rest.
"Toshiro, step away from the adjucha." He said. Toshiro's head whipped around, teeth bared in a feral snarl. Ulquiorra took a step forward, narrowly avoiding the…something…smeared on the floor. A low growl rose in the still air. The hollow moaned, distracting Toshiro. Ulquiorra waited, both dreading and forced to accept what this was.
This was an Arrancar half-starved and devouring prey. He waited, careful not to make any sudden movements. Halfway through devouring the intestines Toshiro stopped, groaning. Ulquiorra watched confusion, realization, and then disgust pass over Toshiro's face. And then his younger brother was retching, leaning against the wall. Ulquiorra stepped forward, holding onto his brother's shoulder. "I'm sorry." He murmured. Toshiro groaned in reply.
"What happened? I was dying. I knew I was dying."
Guilt. Another foreign, very human, emotion. "I used the Hogyoku."
"What?!"
Guilt guilt guilt. Ulquiorra didn't like it. "It was the only thing I could think of."
"The Hogyoku started the Arrancar problem. Why would you do that?"
"Technically, the Hogyoku helped remedy a Vizard problem."
"That's not the point and you know it. Why?"
"I didn't want to lose you."
"…"
"I'm sorry, Toshiro."
"…"
They parted ways that night. Ulquiorra watched Toshiro dry heave more, and then walk back to where Ulquiorra had left him. Ulquiorra stood a long time in that bloodstained hallway, feeling the presence of fraccion who would clean the mess and eat the leftovers. Then, he too went back to his room, stripping out of the bloodstained clothe he had been wearing and dressing in a fresh uniform.
Tonight he slept without dreams.
When he woke Toshiro had crawled into his bed. It was curiously reminiscent of their human lives. The circumstances were so different it was almost laughable. Something else was flashing red warnings in his mind though. He slipped away, trying to pinpoint the anxiety he felt. Finally, on the east end of the castle, he found it. Foreign – and very powerful – reiatsu on the fringes of Las Noches reach.
Years of serving Aizen automatically provided several options. Kill the hostage. Defend the castle. Organize the remaining Arrancar and fraccion. Fight at all costs. But Aizen was dead, the army dead, the hostage definitely not going to die on his watch, and the remaining fraccion and Arrancar pathetic. He debated waking Toshiro up. It was likely him they had come to rescue, anyway. Ulquiorra stood on the balcony, feeling the reiatsu approaching.
Would they try to kill him, because he was an Arrancar now? Would they think Toshiro had lost his mind? That he was a traitor? Ulquiorra shoved his hands in his pockets and made a decision. He flared his reiatsu, no limits, and strong enough that it would mask Toshiro's, and went down to the gates. He was there when the Soul Society's army came, a handful of Soul Reapers with white coats and those with armbands. He stood there, drawing his blade slowly, ready to go into his second release and take down as many as he could before they slaughtered him.
"No!"
That single word seemed to release much of the tension in some of the Soul Reapers air. Ulquiorra stiffened, turning to Toshiro. Too late to try and convince him to go back. His younger brother looked different, drawing himself up in as much a dignified way as possible when your clothes are covered in crusted blood and half of your face is covered by a strange mask. "Matsumoto, come here." He said. Ulquiorra watched as a woman peeled from the group and ran forward. "I am Captain Toshiro Hitsugaya, Captain of Tenth Squad with Lieutenant Rangiku Matsumoto. I was initially abducted, but recently had the opportunity to escape. I did not." He paused, eyes raking the group of Captains. Ulquiorra waited, tense.
"Due to…circumstance and perhaps fate I regained the memories of my human life."
"Ulquiorra Schiffer, former fourth Espada of the traitor Sosuke Aizen's army,"
"Is my brother."
A/N: Ello, Bubblegum here! Chapter Two! WOW! I wonder if I can make it before I get bored? I wonder if I'll be forced to write the ending under pain of watching my OTP die before my eyes? These questions and more! Thank you for reviews, views, read, favorites, follows, etc. Waaaaaah! Ulquiorra on the beach! Gotta go ;)