AN : The more I think about the Arrancar arc, the less it makes sense. There were no espada or completed arrancar until Aizen brought the Hougyuka, correct? So why are there flashbacks of the espada that seem to be years and years ago ie: Nel and Nnotria. Also, what is up with the Primaveron Espada, their existence would have to mean that Aizen created them and then unseated them weeks later, just to put the current 10 espada to their seats.

I know Kubo Tite is a god at lucking into fixing his plot holes (lol Kenpachi uses two hands?) but these are going to be super hard to fix. He'll probably just ignore them so they go away.

ITT : I'm messing your shit up.

I sat under the dark night with it's stars glittering like dew drops and it's moon a giant smile yawned across the scenery, waiting patiently for him to come to me. And come to me he did. With his feathers puffed up and his zanpakutou drawn in the most menacing way he could muster. Comical, really. He always looks so serious.

"Didn't get enough the first time?" he laughed at my back as I sat completely motionless and stared at the heavens I would never touch.

"I'll never get enough," I said quietly, not certain what I meant. I stood then, retching myself from my rather comfortable position. As I turned to look at the man I knew would eventually end my life, I smiled. It wasn't a sadistic smile, nor was it a happy smile. It was a smile that sat somewhere between the death of a second cousin and the marriage of a previous love.

"What happened to your arm?" Ichigo asked, slowly letting the tip of his zanpakutou fall until it sat on the still sun-warmed grit of the shingles.

"Same thing that always happens," I laughed.

"Don't fuck with me," he spat.

"I would never do something like that," I muttered sarcastically.

He simply stared at me while I shifted my body and began walking toward his prone frame. Something changed in his demeanor as I came closer, it was almost as though with each step, he became more and more nervous. Like I was some deadly disease he could catch just by being in the same general area.

I found out later it was that he was extremely confused as to why I was coming after him when I left Pantera lying on the roof like an abandoned toy.

I stopped several feet in front of his chest, wanting to move forward, but something tugged me back into reality and slapped me across the face each time I tried. I raised my hand to touch the face of that angel, but he beat me back with a resounding smack.

"Don't touch me, filth," he said with a disgusted and commanding tone. I should have known that someone fallen so far from the grace of divinity would never be able to touch the pure so effortlessly. For quite a substantial amount of time, I never wanted anything sexual from him. I only wanted to touch him and revel in him with a sense of awe, the same way people yearn to touch wet paint or run their hands over a marble sculpture. Because he was a true work of God, a being perfect in both form and function.

I retrieved my hand and wrapped it across my chest and over my shoulder, shuddering slightly at the lack of meat beyond my stump.

"I almost wish you'd have taken it from me," I spoke slowly, turning slightly to give the boy a cold shoulder.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"My arm. I was unseated the second you scarred up my tattoo, this is just the grinding blow," I said with anger, speaking to the stars. Slowly, I sunk back down to my seated position and stared at the dark sky, admiring the moon peeking out from behind the gray clouds. A small smile crept across my face as I felt him sit down beside me.

"Who cut it off?" he said quietly.

"Tousen."

"Why?"

"Apparently, I'm bad at doing what I'm told and needed to be taught a lesson."

"So he cut off your arm?"

"And incinerated it. Right in front of me. Nearly bled to death on my way back to the room."

I felt him move, "Then why are you here?"

His question took me off guard. I originally came because I was angry, hungry and wanted to take it out on something. But as I thought about it more and more, I didn't really know why I went to the human world. To feed, perhaps, or maybe even to beat the shit out of the kid. But the second I saw him, I faltered and couldn't do anything but feel his presence wash through me like a drug.

"I just needed out of that place," I finally managed to come up with. Horrible excuse, but he bought it. I pushed my lone hand behind my head and laid back, watching as the stars began to pop into the dark sky.

"What is it like?" he asked timidly.

"What is what like?" I responded.

"Hueco Mundo, is that what it is called?"

"Yeah. Hollow World. I can't say the name doesn't fit it."

"Is it really that awful?" he said as he shifted his body and glanced down at me.

I stared back into those warm eyes and sighed, "It's not bad but it's not good. It's mostly just very boring. I mean, you have to understand that even before I was turned, I was with the elite of the elite."

"I could never imagine the life of the strong being boring." He is so naïve.

"Most boring thing I've ever done. Even feeding becomes a chore because we have to actually look to find something worth our time," I said to the sky. "The reason you people didn't have accurate readings on the vasto lorde is simply because we never left Hueco Mundo. There was no reason, nothing in the human world is worth our time."

"I would have just gone to Soul Society," he said with a small grin.

"Which is why you could never live as a Hollow, boy." His innocence was something pure and beautiful, his complete ignorance to the entire situation between worlds was both annoying and relieving. Of course he would never understand why we wouldn't just pop into Soul Society and eat everything we could find. First of all, the vasto lorde, while having a complete respect for one another, hated each other with a loathing that ran so deep we would never manage to group ourselves together long enough to make a coup of the other world. Second, how could we ever take on the strength of that world? Of course, as Espada, we really are stronger than they are, but as simple gillian we were harmless flies to an army of captain class shinigami.

He stayed quiet, with his knees bent to his chest and his chin on his folded arms. I finally broke the silence, hoping he would muse me.

"Tell me a secret," I said, turning my eyes from the sky to his body.

"What kind of secret?"

"Anything you've never told anyone before."

He seemed to think about it for ages before he came up with the most unlikely response I've ever heard. "My dad came home one night and found that someone had put dish soap in the VCR player, and to this day I've blamed my little sister Karin. But it was me. I put the dish soap in the VCR."

I couldn't help but laugh. I watched him then, as he laughed until tears spotted his eyes and he began shifting his weight. Suddenly, before I could even fathom what he was doing, he had the back of his head resting on the still bruised expanse of my torso. I winced as he moved to get comfortable, with his orange locks gracing my stomach and his legs bent skyward. He moved one of his hands upward and rested it on my ribcage gently, making me wonder what exactly he was up to.

"I didn't really mean a secret like that," I laughed at him slightly. I wanted nothing more than to wrap my missing arm around his body, but the still painful throb of the bandaged stump of useless flesh was the annoying proof I will never be able to have what I want.

"That was my secret, if you want another, you have to tell me one," he said quietly, laying completely frozen, almost scared to move.

A smirk crossed my features as the words left his gorgeous lips. I couldn't help myself as I simply blurted out the first thing that came to my mind. "I want to spend the rest of the night staring at stars I'll never touch, playing with the hair of a man I can never have."

He fidgeted slightly, moving to keep his shoulder blades from grinding into the hard rooftop. "Okay," he muttered, soft enough that even I almost missed it. We lay their for hours, idly chatting about nothing of real consequence. And as I lightly brushed the tips of his wildly colored hair and began to drift to sleep under that pale moon, I felt a kind of content that I hadn't felt since I was alive. Hard to describe, I had left my troubles of Aizen and Luppi in a place that wasn't on that roof. I drifted to sleep and had another dreamless night, constantly startling myself awake to look down at the boy curled up on my chest.

I knew I shouldn't have let myself fall to sleep. Because once I woke up, Ichigo was no longer there.

AN : As I'm sure some of my previous readers can see, this story is sort of several different experiments for me. I want his interaction with Ichigo to be completely different from that which we see from the original writing, because these are clips into their life we don't get to see. I'm trying to establish their hatred for each other when it's needed, but their adoration for each other when they don't have to hate.

Make sense? Probably not. I know what I'm doing, and that is all that matters to me.

Review and give me lots of e-love.