intermission one. in screaming color

Coming home to find Kaori in the kitchen on her days off was normal; she was enrolled in college, she had coursework to do, papers to write, things to read.

Coming home to find Kaori in the kitchen on her days off with Ichigo Kurosaki was a little less normal and way more annoying than it was maddening. But it wasn't completely unexpected, as they were friends and Kurosaki possessed a protective streak a mile wide.

Grimmjow only had himself to blame on that point, he knew; he had dedicated his being to killing Kurosaki Ichigo where he stood, and he could see how that could come off as the entirety of his personality. It probably didn't help that he had tried to kill Kuchiki Rukia, either.

But whatever. What happened happened, and he would probably do it all the same way again if he was, somehow, given the chance to do so.

He would also know better when it came to fighting the fucking Quincy that had, for all intents and purposes, sealed up his reiatsu nice and tight and made him human. Like, okay, being human was alright-no hollow hole in his stomach, no mask remnant on his face, constant access to Kaori without any Shinigami watching his every step like blood hungry hounds.

He would have preferred to be an arrancar, however, Shinigami watching his every movement like dogs or not. Then he wouldn't suffer from annoying paper cuts, could feel power thrumming through his veins like a gentle reminder that he wasn't tethered down to the human world, not really, wouldn't have to worry about if Kaori ran into a hollow she couldn't outrun.

At least if he were an arrancar, he would be able to kill something without getting in trouble.

He had, however, been told a number of times that he had 'adjusted' obscenely well to having little to no reiatsu at all to work with. That it was almost hard to tell that he had even been an arrancar in the first place. Kaori hadn't been the one to say any of those things, though-she just beamed at him and told him that he was 'so much better at this adult stuff' than she was on a weekly basis.

Mainly when she completely forgot about the groceries, or dinner, or putting on pants. Or even her coursework, though that seemed to be shunted to the side most days in favor of complaining about said coursework.

But Kaori did much, much better than she gave herself credit for. She had been ostracized and marginalized since childhood, and was trying to learn how to cope without suddenly being on the outside, like she had been her whole life.

Really, they were both trying to adjust to living like normal people with the occasional paranormal encounter.

But did she really have to invite Kurosaki to stay for dinner?

He walked back into the kitchen to find Kaori on the phone with her mother yet, pained and panicked look on her face as she probably tried to talk her way out of something. He had a pretty good idea of what it was-Kaori had, after all, been successfully talking her way out of the same situation for six months at least.

That occurrence just so happened to be dinner with her mother, which was normal enough. He knew what it was the older Kozume wanted, though, and that was for him to be present. Kaori, for whatever reason, was vehemently against the very idea of it happening.

Except for the fact that he had already met her mother, almost three months ago.

Kaori didn't know; she would probably murder him in his sleep if she knew. And it hadn't even been his idea, really-he had been at work, teaching a class of snot nosed brats, and one of his co-workers (he wasn't the best with names; he hadn't really bothered to recall everyone's, after all) had told him someone had asked for him specifically.

He hadn't been expecting a tiny force of maternity in a nurse's uniform with a bob the same color as Kaori's hair.

"You must be Grimmjow, yes?" The woman didn't look Japanese in the slightest, green eyes a shade startling similar to Kaori's.

"Yeah?" He was confused. What the fuck would anyone want with him? His history was entirely fabricated, thanks to Urahara and whatever the fuck he had managed to pull together. There would be no real reason for anyone to seek him out-he wasn't aware of any enemies he had made in Karakura town, other than with Kurosaki.

"Great! Kaori's told me a bit about you."

Wait.

What.

"Kozume Moira," she had said in explanation, catching the obvious confusion on his face. "Kaori always seems to neglect to mention I'm American."

"She neglects to mention a lot of things." The statement was truer than he cared to admit, though he knew that he was more aware of what Kaori had been through than her mother was.

But what the fuck. What the fuck.

The sharp smile that flashed across her face was identical to Kaori's in a way that made him feel like he was looking at an imperfect clone.

"I'm here because I wanted to see what kind of man my daughter was living with," she said, straight to the heart of the matter and in a no-nonsense way that Kaori lacked. He blinked, startled.

"Uh." What the fuck is one supposed to say to that. "Oh . . . kay?" That explained basically nothing-neither for an answer to her statement, or even what her statement was supposed to mean.

That had been the start of what seemed to be a weekly standing appointment for coffee.

And now he was standing on her doorstep, his hand in Kaori's, and his girlfriend was in the middle of what could have easily been a full blown panic attack. He knew she had probably been in one since she had fled the apartment that morning, lacking both her coat and her watch, though she showed no real outward signs of it.

He had gotten good at noticing them, after a time.

She was just about to knock when who he knew to be Mizuri flung the door open, wild smile on her face at the mere sight of Kaori.

Or, more accurately, at the fact that she was eye level with Kaori. Which he knew immediately pissed Kaori off, because she was more than a little sensitive about her lack of height.

Other than her height, Mizuri looked next to nothing like either Moira or Kaori. Her hair was long and dark, dark black and her eyes were a bright, bitter blue.

But when she opened her mouth, it was easy to tell that despite her looks, she had more in common with the other two women than he realized. It was easy to hear, the second she started speaking, that she was just as diabolical as either of the two older women in her family, if not more.

Fuck, it was cold, and she was making them stand outside as her skinny frame blocked the doorway. If he hadn't been hanging onto Kaori's hand, he was pretty sure his girlfriend would have pushed her way through, little sister blocking the way or not.

Then Kaori's mother's voice drifted from the kitchen and to them outside, telling Mizuri to get out of the way and let them in. Mizuri, to her credit, moved as quickly as she possibly could to comply; Grimmjow was kind of surprised when she didn't bow with a flourish as they moved past her.

Kaori would have; he figured theatrics might have been one of the bigger differences between the siblings.

After his 'introduction' to Moira, the rest of the night went by easily enough. Kaori seemed to be on edge, freezing when her mother inquired as to how they had met. Moira, of course, already knew parts of how they had met. But Kaori hadn't moved fast enough, hadn't opened her mouth, and Grimmjow realized that she didn't have some kind of fake cover story at the ready like she normally would have.

But no matter what he pulled out of his ass at that moment, it wouldn't matter, because Moira had just wanted to see how Kaori would cover up for herself.

But after that, his girlfriend seemed to relax just a little more.

The very idea that Kaori might have seen a hollow was more than enough to warrant him walking her home the next day, just in case. She had been completely frazzled the night before, but it was Karakura Town. The chances that it was just a cat that she had managed to catch a glimpse of before he could focus his attention on it were pretty big.

He wasn't so great at sensing hollows anymore, but having Kaori jump the gun and point them out so he could actively attempt to see them was a little demeaning. His ego deflated just a little more each time she did it, but he wasn't about to let her know that.

Which was why, just in case, he insisted on walking her home from work the next day and wouldn't take no for an answer. And, oh, had she tried to tell him no.

Repeatedly.

"What are you, my mother?" she grumbled, one hand in the pocket of her much too large hoodie and the other on his arm. "I am fine, Grimmjow. Really. This is completely unnecessary."

He just shook his head and fought back a smile. "I can't just walk you home?"

"If you were doing it just to be nice, then yeah. It would be sweet, actually, then. But you have ulterior motives this time. I can see them." She raised her eyebrows and narrowed her eyes at him, almost like that was going to drive her words home.

He just rolled his eyes and glanced over his shoulder. "What fuckin' ulterior motives?" He knew how to play this game, now; knew that if he could play dumb for as long as possible, she would give up eventually.

Kaori's elbow drove lightly into his ribs, and he really started to think about making her get elbow pads sewn into her coat because fuck that was painful. He tried to jump away, half startled and on instinct, but her grip on his arm was iron tight.

It was a common dance they went through often, familiar and repeated time and time again. There was no ill will behind their movements, but he really should have seen it coming at that point.

All he could do was laugh though, and ask his question again.

Kaori screwed up her face, like she hadn't really thought through what his motives could be and simply expected him to come clean immediately. But as she did so, she tripped over her foot and they both almost wound up face first on the sidewalk.

"The one where you're thinking I might be in danger or something. Y'know, all of that knight in shining armor stuff. Because I am a big girl, Grimmjow. I can take care of myself."

"Knight in shining armor bullshit? Where the fuck did that come from?"

"The Netflix history. I know I didn't watch all of those chick flicks."

Well shit. Foiled again.

They had come to a compromise of sorts, after that. While he wouldn't walk her home, she would stay on the phone with him. Just in case.

And it worked out pretty well, all in all. Kaori made it home safely every night, smug look on her face every time she pranced through the door. "See? I made it home fine. We can stop doing this."

They kept doing it anyway-Kaori partly to appease what she mistook as his nerves, Grimmjow to see how far he could push it before she was pissed off and just didn't call him or pick up her phone. He knew there was always a chance of that backfiring on him in a deadly way, but he didn't think about that part.

But then she had texted him I have an escort and then didn't show up for hours.

The first hour was okay. He had read the text, set the phone down, and returned to what it was he was doing (which was not watching chick flicks). He wondered who it could be that was 'escorting' her.

At the end of the hour, he called her.

When she didn't pick up, he assumed that he had pushed a little too far with his insistence that he be on the phone with her as she walked home. So he decided to give her another hour-she could have been with Kurosaki for all he knew, and he was fully aware that, combined, the two of them had the attention span of a goldfish sometimes.

At the end of the second hour, he had a decision to make.

Should he call her? Make sure she was alive? Make sure she hadn't jumped into traffic yet again and no one had been there to save her? But she had an escort. Had the escort pushed her into traffic?

He was already hitting the call button on his phone before his mind had fully processed what he was doing. And every time she didn't answer, he would hit the redial button.

Try number five, and he heard a click.

"Are you dead?" he heard himself ask. All of the tension seemed to flow out of him the second Kaori answered with a slightly confused tone to her voice.

While it might not have been the best thing to say, it was the only thing he could manage to get out of his mouth. He was weirdly relieved that she had answered, despite having started to call her only as a joke.

By the time he had managed to open the door, Kaori had already hung up her phone. It wasn't until he caught sight of her that he noticed the other woman towering next to her, smile on her face. A shiver ran up Grimmjow's spine at the sight of her-he knew her as a Shinigami immediately.

Old biases die hard.

Kaori was hallucinating again.

Which was, well, not good.

It had always been a possibility, he had known. They had both known for a long time. And when she had first admitted that she was hallucinating again, it had been with hesitation. Like she was going to be afraid of his reaction.

Except, he had met Kaori when she had been hallucinating. Although, 'met' was a term he used lightly, seeing as 'abducted on Aizen's behalf' was a lot more creepy and way less eloquent. He had fallen for her while she had been hallucinating, which in retrospect was a little weird, but she also technically wasn't hallucinating.

They didn't really talk about Hueco Mundo. It was there, it was looming in the backs of their minds, but none of the words ever made it past their lips. For whatever reason, neither of them really brought it up, let alone discussed what had happened in the two years they had been apart.

What they had was a fragile thing, and Kaori knew that. He figured it was part of the reason she had been treading so lightly since admitting to the hallucinations.

He had talked to Moira about them, of course, with the full knowledge that Kaori would murder him in his sleep if she ever found out. But it was the only thing he could think of, because he wanted to help her, even if she figured they were temporary. Moira had raised Kaori, had stood by her through thick and thin and every hallucination large and small. She knew what to do and how to address it.

So he took her advice and tried to talk to Kaori about accepting that the hallucinations she was suffering from might not be temporary at all.

And, well.

She got pissed.

Left.

Moira was waiting for him at the cafe, like she was every week since they had initially met, coffee's already ordered and waiting. He was pretty sure Kaori would flip if she knew that her mother and himself were meeting weekly, especially since they had been doing so since before the family dinner where they totally pretended they had never met before.

As far as he knew, Kaori hadn't picked up on any of that yet.

He folded himself into the chair across from Moira, thanked her for his coffee and took a sip.

"So, Kaori showed up at my door last night."

"Uh, yeah," he said. "What did she-what did she say?" He had never seen Kaori that mad before. He hadn't thought she was actually capable of getting so angry, of storming out of a room with her presence still lingering, a fiery crackle and nerves on edge.

"That you argued about bonsai care. Which I know that neither of you would ever have a bonsai because it sounds like you both have a hard enough time remembering to feed yourselves." He shouldn't have been surprised-Kaori didn't want to tell Moira about the resurgence of hallucinations, wouldn't want to explain it in the rage she had been in when she had left the apartment.

But he had told Moira, carefully and cautiously and armed with the full knowledge that Kaori would be forever furious at him if she found out. To her credit, Kaori's mother had not panicked; she had just sighed and shook her head, told him to give her some space and time.

Two weeks later, when the hallucinations still hadn't stopped and Kaori still hadn't told her mother, Moira had suggested that he breach the subject of the hallucinations not going away gently.

And, well, gentle wasn't exactly in his vocabulary.

"I tried to take your advice and talk about the hallucinations and the possibility that they weren't going to go away, but she. Uh. Didn't want to think about that and got really pissed when I suggested it. Which was when she left." Moira didn't know anything about reiatsu or Hollows or how he and Kaori had actually met, and he wanted to keep it that way.

But she nodded knowingly. "She is stubborn," she reminded him gently. "But she'll come around."

He opened the door, half hoping to see Kaori, a part of him knowing that the chances of that happening were more than just a little slim.

Instead, the rather tall Shinigami that had walked Kaori home a number of weeks ago stood there, hands shoved into the pockets of her short jacket. He still wasn't sure what, exactly, it was about her that put him so on edge-her status as a Shinigami might have been part of it, but her willingness to help Kaori so quickly outweighed that much of it.

The expression on her face was neutral, and Grimmjow didn't know her well enough to know if that was a good or bad thing. He had only met her once, after all.

"Are you just going to stand there frowning at me or are you going to say something?" she asked. He couldn't remember her name.

So he said the only thing that could come to mind.

"Kaori's not here."

"I know."

Uh. Oh?

"If you know that, then why are you here?"

"Because I need to speak with you."

Yuna. Right. Her name was Yuna.

"Uh. Come in?"

Her footsteps made no sound as she padded into the apartment past him, hands still in her jacket. He frowned at her back, but shut the door.

He turned to find her standing awkwardly next to the wall, shoulders tense and the neutral look firmly on her face. In the light of the hall, he noted that there were at least five piercings in each of her ears, something he hadn't been able to see in the poor light of their first encounter.

"So," she started easily, voice contradicting her body language. "I know you don't like me very much, probably because I'm a Shinigami, you're a former arrancar, I'm rolling around on the floor with your girlfriend for hours a day, you are not. Like I understand that those can be some pretty big things to get over or come to terms with, but really there is no need for hostility at this time."

At this time. Which meant that there would be plenty of time for hostility later.

"And I totally get that my sudden appearance and interest in Kaori is more than a little suspicious, but I honestly don't mean her nor you any harm. I don't mean anyone harm. Not today, at least. I mean, I do mean some people harm on certain days and-oh, shit. There I go incriminating myself again." She pulled a hand out of her pocket just to smack herself on the forehead, leaving a bright red angry spot. "Anyway, I just wanted to get all of that out there. And I understand that I am rambling and I know I am so totally overusing conjunctions but I don't recall where it was I going with any of this."

That was probably more words of nonsense strung together than even Kaori could manage, and he almost had to give Yuna kudos for that much.

"Uh." He hadn't been able to follow her, really. "Okay?"

"I am leaving soon, though. So you can go back to rolling around with your girlfriend when she decides to come back. But I should probably warn you, she has improved. I wouldn't take her lightly anymore."

And that was the heart of the entire situation, wasn't it? Yuna had been teaching Kaori to fight, and-as she had admitted herself-it had been sudden. All of a sudden, she had shown up, learned about Kaori and her hallucinations. Insisted on teaching her how to fight, and Kaori had jumped on that chance.

Grimmjow just didn't understand why.

There was something the Shinigami was hiding, and she wasn't going to give it up.

The bed was really cold without Kaori in it. He learned that on the first night, and was constantly reminded by that fact every time he woke up. Eventually, every spare blanket in the apartment was piled onto the bed.

And Kaori still wasn't back.

But he did what he could in her absence, going grocery shopping and keeping the apartment mostly clean-he got rid of the unimaginable amounts of pizza boxes!

And then, of course, Karin came.

It had been the middle of the night, and she had pounded on the door weakly. It had been a miracle he had even heard her; he wouldn't have, had he been sleeping like he should have. He had gotten up to pee; it was weird to think, later, that if he hadn't, he would have opened his door to a dead girl in the morning.

As it was, he was half asleep and confused as to why anyone would be knocking on the door at whatever the fuck time it was.

He wasn't quite as asleep when he opened the door and just barely managed to catch a bleeding, mauled Karin before she hit the floor.

"Uh," he stated, mind drawing a blank. The cold air was gusting in from outside; the girl in his arms was freezing and slick with blood and, most important, still bleeding. Ichigo and Kaori would kill him if Karin died on his watch.

Only, he wasn't sure what exactly it was that he was supposed to do with the bleeding human in his arms. It had been years since he had had to do any sort of first aide, especially on someone other than Kaori, and he was drawing a blank on what it was that he was supposed to do. And, sure, he had seen Kaori at work on Karin a handful of times before, but it was never anything as bad as this.

Bleeding. Injured. Cold. Bleeding.

Oh, right.

He moved Karin into the bedroom, knowing time was of the essence and that Kaori kept one of her many first aide kits stashed in there. His phone was also in there, which was a plus, because he needed to call Kaori and keep calling her it she didn't answer.

But she did answer, which was the important thing.

More than that, she stayed on the phone with him the entire time he tried to staunch Karin's bleeding and keep the teenage girl alive for as long as he could.

It still felt like eons, waiting for Kaori.

Kaori came sliding into the room, her hair a rats nest from sleep and the rain, legs bare and mud specked as she dropped to the ground across from him, eyes on Karin. There was blood smeared on her face, and she hadn't bothered to change out of her pajamas before making a mad dash to the apartment, the shorts with the bunnies on them damp.

She took over immediately, telling him to call Tessai as she threw her phone at him.

He caught it, miraculously, and did exactly as he was told.

And when Tessai had arrived, finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, Kaori moved herself into a corner. The blood on her face had dried, and Grimmjow could almost make out what looked like long, deep scratches on her cheek. He sunk down to his ass beside her to watch, realizing that he was covered in blood as well.

But unlike Kaori, the blood wasn't his. And he didn't know what could have caused the cuts on her face, why she wasn't saying anything about them, why they didn't seem to be bothering her.

And when they had been brought up, she honestly didn't know about them, not until he had handed her her phone and she had looked. Seen the cuts and the almost hand print for herself. She looked nauseous then, like she was going to lose whatever it was that she had in her stomach.

He could only assume that since she didn't know they were there, since she didn't remember getting them, that she had blacked out for the first time in a long time.

And if that was the case, then her hallucinations were far worse than he had originally thought.

He shuffled into the apartment like the walking dead, stripping of his hoodie and his shoes. The apartment was completely quiet, which meant that both Karin and Kaori were likely gone. And it wasn't like he was holding out any sort of hope for Kaori to still be there, not after the week they had had, despite their truce in the early hours of the morning.

So he locked the door and moved into the kitchen, throwing his keys onto the table as he moved toward the fridge because fuck he was thirsty.

He turned around, and saw Kaori sitting at the kitchen table, tiny hands folded on the surface before her and a smirk on her face. There were dark patches under her eyes, announcing just how little sleep she had really gotten the night before, and all of her hair was piled at the top of her head.

And then she laughed, throwing her head back and covering her mouth with her hands at his reaction. Except now the counter was digging into his back and there was water all down the front of his shirt, and his heart had upticked the second he had caught sight of Kaori, mostly because she startled him.

Kaori wanted to fight him. And in a semi-serious manner, if the determined look on her face and the steady rise and fall of her chest was anything to go by.

She moved first, taking him completely off guard; she never moved first unless it was to get food. When they were fighting, she was always hesitant, waiting for him to attack first so she could respond in turn hesitantly.

There was nothing hesitant about how she moved, not now.

She swung her shinai at his head, and he reacted in a heartbeat, completely on instinct but a little off balance. He brought the weapon up to guard, leaning back-

But her shinai never hit his own.

He felt all of the air forced out of his lungs as her shoulder slammed into his stomach, one of her feet hooked behind his ankle. Already off balance, the shinai flew out of his hand as he crumbled to the floor, breathless and in more physical pain than he thought Kaori could ever put him in.

"Shit," he heard Kaori mutter vaguely. "Did I kill you?" Her face was suddenly over his own, her shinai still in her had. His vision was blurry, mind a little fuzzy as he tried to process the idea that Kaori-below-average size Kaori who he was sure could never hurt anything in her life (himself excluded from that list for a number of reasons)-had actually managed to knock him flat on his back for something other than a bedroom activity.

Instead of answering her verbally, he shook his head and started sitting up, mind already working on how he was going to manage to get her back. He knew it wasn't a real fight; knew he could never really fight Kaori, knew that the notion of fighting her was no where near as appealing as fighting Ulquiorra or Ichigo.

But he had to fight back somehow.

Which was why, as she scuttled backwards while trying to help him stand, he made a quick decision.

And grabbed her.

And tossed her with enough force to send her to the couch, where she would land safely. Because it wasn't like he was going to try and hurt her on purpose-she had, after all, used her momentum and size along with his own momentum and habits to take him down.

Yuna had said she was doing 'alright'-not that she had advanced so quickly that he almost didn't recognize the way his own girlfriend fought.

Except, Kaori didn't land on the couch. She twisted her body in the air, landing on her feet about a foot from the couch. Her shinai was held tight in her hand, pointed directly at him, a somewhat startled expression on her face. Part like she hadn't expected him to throw her, part like she hadn't actually expected to be able to regain her footing and land before she was at a disadvantage.

She charged at him again before he had a chance to grab his shinai, wherever it had landed.

He was too startled, by her sudden recovery or her sudden ferocity or her sudden increase in skill.

And by the time he realized that he would be dead if it wasn't Kaori, that he should probably find his shinai and defend himself and fight back, it was too late. The ceiling was above him, same with Kaori's flushed, grinning face, framed by chunks of her chestnut hair that had fallen out of the bun at the back of her head. Her shinai was pushed up gently against his neck.

Despite his short talk with Yuna, he hadn't actually thought that Kaori had been learning anything. She had been working much longer with him, and with very few results. To see how much she had improved in such a short time stung, just a little, because it hadn't been him who had shown her how to do things.

But however it was that Yuna had decided to teach her, it had worked.

But he wanted to see the extent of her ability, so once he was done cuddling her for a short moment, he moved to find his shinai and engage with her again.

After that, things went downhill, but in a good way.

In the 'Kaori is underneath me shirtless and fuck why is it so hard to grab someone's ass and undo their pants at the same time?' kind of way. Her hands are in his hair, and he's not entirely sure where his pants went, but who the fuck needs pants?

But then her phone rings, and he rips his mouth from where it was on her neck, startled and confused because where is that sound coming from?

Kaori, in his moment of confusion, managed to wiggle out from underneath him and dive off of the bed, snatching her phone from the nightstand while landing with a thud on the floor.

"Hello?" she yelped into the device as she stood, rubbing her ass where she had landed on it. Her pants had slipped down below her hips, and if he reached out and tugged, he could probably get her back into bed without her pants.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah." He didn't know who she was talking to, nor did he really care. But they had been in the middle of something, and if that 'something' didn't resume when she hung up, he wasn't sure what he was going to do.

In an almost lazy moment, he reached out and tugged on the back of her pants, pulling her back down onto the bed.

She smacked his hand away immediately, but didn't move from the bed.

"Sure. Fifteen minutes? Yeah. Yeah, we'll be there."

Well fuck. There went that idea.

Kaori hung her phone up and stood, turning to face him with a wicked smile on her face. "Ichigo needs some help," she told him cheerfully, slipping her phone into the back pocket of her sagging pants.

"And?" He did not like where this was going. This was not how this was supposed to be going.

Instead, Kaori's grin turned even more wicked as she scooped his pants off of the floor.

"Get your pants back on," she said with a grin, throwing his jeans at his head. He caught them easily and frowned at her because, no, this was not how they were supposed to be spending their night.

"Wh-"

"Where did you throw my shirt?" she continued, turning and scanning the room, talking over him completely.

That was when he knew two things.

One, their night was a lost cause.

Two, he was going to kill Kurosaki Ichigo.

"I think the removal of your shirt was a group effort!" was his only answer. Kaori frowned at him from over her shoulder as she buttoned and zipped up her pants. "But I would look in the hallway," he amended quickly, hoping he could somehow salvage what should have been happening.

It wasn't looking like their evening was going to salvageable at all. Not only had Kurosaki succeeded in cockblocking him, he was late.

And when he did get there, all he wanted to do was walk around in a sour attitude and, well, it kind of matched Grimmjow's own. For different reasons, of course, but still.

So, in the end, he was forced to traipse around Karakura Town in the cold with his girlfriend and his mortal enemy for no apparent reason other than 'someone was attacked'. He had nearly opened his mouth then, told him it was Karin that had been mauled by some hollow, but then he remembered what his goal for the night was and how sharp Kaori's elbows were.

Both were pretty good deterrents.

But then he saw the Thing and stopped dead in his tracks at about the same time Ichigo saw the same and mimicked his movements.

Kaori, on the other hand, kept walking, asauchi in one hand and the other shoved into the pocket of the pants he had almost gotten off of her.

She didn't stop until they pointed out the freaky looking creature, covered in blood and grinning at them.

That was about when things got weirder than they already were, because Kaori freaked out. Not about the creature specifically, or that she was so close to it, but about the fact that he and Ichigo could see it.

Over Kaori's shoulder, as she's busy yelling and asking questions with her back turned to the Thing, Grimmjow can clearly see the Thing. Can see how it's attention is focused on Kaori, how it's bloody mouth is opening slowly by surely in a move he half-remembers from what feels like a lifetime ago.

He's grabbing her by the arm and pulling her toward him with more force than necessary just in the nick of time. Added with the force of the Cero that wasn't quite a Cero, they stumble back a couple of feet, a tangle of limbs and tension.

Kaori starts yelling more, things about dicks and fighting and hallucinations, none of which Grimmjow completely understands. He's not even listening to her, really, just staring past where she's jumping up and down in excitement to the hole in the ground the Thing that made it.

Whatever it was, it wasn't a hollow. He could tell that much; there was no way a Hollow that looked and acted almost like an Arrancar could be there, no way things in Hueco Mundo could evolve that quickly in the year he's been gone. Or that poorly, based on the way it's body curls and how tiny it's limbs are.

For a moment, he remembers the Quincies that had come, the way that had captured Harribel and tied her up and did things to her.

But then Ichigo's giving him an order and his thoughts are focused again on the present.

And it's not like he would have actually run on Kurosaki's orders, not if Kaori hadn't been there. But Kaori was there, and she was.

Well, she was Kaori.

She was excited, she was unpredictable, she was trembling, she was armed, she was untrained, she was in danger.

His grip on her hand tightened, and he yanked her after him, running. He could have picked her up, could have carried her all the way back to their apartment if she resisted. But she found her footing, let out a whoop, pumped her fist in the air.

Even in the dark, she looked more alive and happy than she had in a long time, wide smile stretched out across her face, sharp eye teeth catching the poor light put off by the street lamps, brown hair bouncing around her shoulders as she moved.

And she was laughing. There was some kind of murder-beast stalking the streets of Karakura, and she was laughing, breathless, running through the streets with her frozen hand in his and her footing surer than he had seen it since she had first run from him and straight into the path of a car.

This was Kaori as she should have been; Kaori without years of mental strain, without her PTSD, without the weight of the things she had been through pushing on her shoulders and tearing at the back of her mind.

Kaori, had she never been in Hueco Mundo.

a/n: so sorry this took so long! the words were there, they just didn't want to come out. thank you so much for sticking with me this far, and things should start picking up in the next chapter or so. but i am coming down with a nasty cold (again) so it might take a while?

in the meantime, follow me on my tumblr (link on my profile under 'tumblah' (or just go for jaegerjagues)) to tell me to get my butt in gear, or drop a review?