Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach, or any of its characters. Tite Kubo does.

Torn

Chapter 11: Scar Tissue

The main hall of Las Noches was completely still, and for once even Nnoitra wasn't smiling at the sight before him. Suzumushi fell to the ground with a clatter, followed immediately afterwards by the head of Kaname Tosen. Grimmjow's eyes, still wide with shock as they realized that they could still see, looked over to behold the figure of Ichigo Kurosaki. The Soul Reaper was half-crouched, having just completed the fatal sword-stroke that had cut off the head of the blind former Captain. A single drop of blood slid down the edge of his bone-white bankai's blade, hitting the ground and echoing with the noise of a thunderclap in the silent room.

Aizen's smile widened as he looked down at the orange-haired warrior, whose yellow eyes stared back up at him with the purest expression of hatred Sosuke had seen in a long time.

"How does it feel, Ichigo," he asked, his voice laced with twisted amusement, "to have taken your first life?"

Ichigo didn't say anything for a few long moments, and when he finally did speak his voice was hollow.

"His life… you threw it away, just like that?"

"I would not say that I threw it away, Ichigo," the Soul Reaper replied casually. "Kaname had outlived his usefulness to me. You might call it a courtesy that I allowed his last act to be one of such great importance; just like the mythical phoenix, my new Lieutenant will rise from the ashes of the old."

Kurosaki could feel the edges of his vision begin to cloud as the enormity of what he had just done finally settled over him like some great, inescapable gloom. Even though he had done it to save Grimmjow's life, the fact remained that he had killed someone and that Aizen had manipulated him into doing it. Ichigo felt sickened, used and utterly powerless as he staggered from the hall, fighting down the urge to vomit.

"That kid is going need some serious therapy by the time this is all over," Szayel Aporro Grantz opined, and some of the Espada nodded slightly in agreement while others just shrugged.

"I just hope he's got the balls to pull off taking Tosen's place," Nnoitra spoke up. "I'm not gonna follow that brat into battle if he's just going to make stupid decisions and get us all massacred, even if he does have what it takes to kill after all."

Neliel snorted in disgust and rose from her seat sharply, buzzing away with sonido. Grimmjow, for his part, didn't even spare Aizen a glance as he walked slowly out of the room. The former Captain had made it abundantly clear that he saw the Espada as nothing more than pawns and means to an end, and Jaegerjaques would die before showing someone like that an ounce of respect.

"Well," Aizen said after the tense moments had passed, "I believe that concludes our meeting. From this point onwards, please treat Ichigo Kurosaki with all of the deference you show me: as of right now, he outranks each and every one of you," the Soul Reaper finished evenly, finishing up his cup of tea as the Espada dispersed.

Nel walked towards Ichigo's reiatsu with a rising sense of dread, afraid of what she might find as the haunted look he had been wearing earlier flashed through her mind. Taking a deep breath, the Espada rounded the final corner and stood in front of the door to the orange-haired Soul Reaper's room. She was about to knock, but when Neliel saw the state the boy was in she walked quickly over to his side, sitting down next to him on his bed as Ichigo stared blankly at the wall.

"I killed him," Kurosaki said softly, almost as if he was begging the Espada next to him to prove him wrong. Realizing that it was best for him to get everything off of his chest before she did anything, however, Nel stayed silent.

"I didn't have a choice," he continued, his voice rife with desperate rationalization. "If I hadn't done it, Grimmjow would be dead right now. Aizen never gave me a choice… God," he said desperately, looking at his hands as if they were covered in blood, "what have I done?"

Neliel reached over and took the young Soul Reaper's hands gently in one of her own, using the other to turn his head gently towards her.

"You did nothing wrong," she said softly, but insistently. "Look at me, Ichigo," the Espada said with quiet force as the Soul Reaper tried to avoid her gaze for a few heartbeats, before bringing his brown eyes up slowly to meet with her pale-golden orbs once again.

"You did what you had to do to save your friend," Neliel continued. "Aizen may have manipulated the situation to suit his own terms, but if you keep seeing yourself as powerless, that bastard's already won. What you did, you did on your own terms, following your own conscience.

"Do you understand that, Ichigo? Aizen holds only as much power over you as you let him; do not let his illusions and mindgames break you before his sword is even drawn, or any hope you have of bringing him down shatters as well."

Ichigo was silent for a few moments, looking almost blankly into the face in front of him. Suddenly, it was as if the Soul Reaper came to some kind of decision and he shifted forward, drawing the Espada into an embrace. Neliel got over her shock at the unusual gesture of vulnerability and reciprocated, trying to convey as much comfort as she could to the troubled warrior even as she felt the innocence bleed out of him. After a few moments Ichigo pulled back, the warmth that had been so evident in his eyes now sealed under layers and layers of emotional armor.

"Thank you, Nel," he said softly, in one last act of openness. "Thank you."

"Kid," she said seriously, "you'll never have to thank me." As she rose to her feet and prepared to sonido away from the room, Neliel stole one last look at Ichigo's face and comprehension flashed into her eyes.

That outwardly cold, determined gaze hiding the fragile emotions underneath it was eerily similar to Ulquiorra's, but with one key difference: Ichigo still possessed the inner fire kindled by the desire to protect something, his reason for fighting. Ulquiorra had no such reason, no such desire; that deficiency was what had extinguished the strength that had once shone deep within his emerald eyes.

A small smile rose on her face before she vanished with a buzz, off to jolt the Fourth Espada out of his permanent melancholy. If Schiffer didn't have a reason to fight, Neliel would be more than happy to give him one.

As he felt Neliel's reiatsu leave the room, Grimmjow waited a few more moments before entering. A companionable silence settled in between the two warriors, broken a few moments later by the Espada's gruff voice.

"You didn't have to do that, you know," he said.

"Yes I did," the Soul Reaper replied simply, and Grimmjow chuckled.

"You're an idiot, kid," the Espada spoke shortly, and Ichigo smirked.

"No, Grimmjow," he answered, "I'm your friend."

The Arrancar's eyes widened slightly at the declaration, before returning to normal as he smiled.

"You're still an idiot, Ichigo," Grimmjow answered, before yawning widely. "Shit, I'm tired," he said. "I'm gonna go grab some shut-eye; catch ya tomorrow."

"See ya," the Soul Reaper replied, waiting until his room was empty once again before falling on his back with a sigh. He wasn't naive enough to think that he would never kill again; after all, he was going to be the one to strike down Aizen, but in that moment Ichigo promised himself that the next time his sword took a life it would be on his terms, and no one else's.

Rukia struggled to control her whirling emotions as she slipped though the front door of the Kurosaki household using the spare key; the young Kuchiki was trying to make as little noise as possible to avoid waking up Karin and Yuzu. The two twins had been through a rough time since Ichigo had left and gone to Hueco Mundo, and they needed all of the rest they could get. School, after all, was still being held the next day.

Sighing, the violet-eyed Soul Reaper couldn't help but feel responsible for the gaping hole in the Kurosaki family's domestic life. Ichigo had left to learn how to control his Inner Hollow to keep from hurting her again, in the hopes that one day, when the war was over, they could be together. And now that original intent had turned into a need to overthrow Sosuke Aizen himself, the most powerful Soul Reaper in eons.

"Stop beating yourself up, Rukia," Isshin's deep voice called out softly from the living room, "and come have some hot cocoa."

Alternately ashamed at being caught and thankful for the chance to unwind after a very hectic day, Kuchiki padded softly into the room and accepted a mug from Isshin before sitting down in an armchair, gazing thoughtfully into the fire across from her.

"So, how's my boy?" the patriarch asked, and Rukia took a sip of the warming beverage before replying, reveling in the feeling of warmth creeping into her fingertips.

"Stubborn, as always," she answered, her eyebrows furrowing into a slight frown that reminded Isshin of his son's, although he tactfully refrained from mentioning that.

"He wouldn't be Ichigo if he wasn't," the older man replied, taking a pull from his own mug. "Sometimes I wonder where he gets it from, honestly. Must've been Masaki."

"What was she like?" Rukia asked softly, not wanting to open up any old wounds but pushed on by her curiosity; despite the obvious place Ichigo's mother still held in his heart, Kuchiki knew almost nothing about her.

"Masaki was… a lot of things," Isshin spoke after a few heartbeats of silence. "She lived every moment to its fullest, and always looked to Ichigo, Karin and Yuzu before worrying about herself. She could be the most kind-hearted woman I've ever known, but if you got between her and the kids, she could make an angry Retsu Unohana look like a cute, cuddly teddy bear in comparison."

Rukia shuddered involuntarily at the image of something that fearsome, before realizing that if she ever had kids, she would probably go to whatever lengths it took to protect them. Pushing that thought aside to keep a blush from rising to her face, the Soul Reaper took the opportunity to ask the elder Kurosaki another question.

"Kurosaki-san," she began, "how do you know so much about us? Soul Reapers, I mean."

Isshin's mouth curled up into a conspiratorial smile, and all of a sudden a brief surge of reiatsu sprung up that was so strong it almost knocked Kuchiki breathless. As soon as it had come the power vanished, and the elder Kurosaki's smile widened.

"How do you think?" he said smugly, and Rukia's mouth dropped open in surprise as she connected the dots.

"You're… you're a Soul Reaper?!" she half shouted, and Isshin quickly motioned for her to be quiet.

"Former, technically," the patriarch said after a moment. "It's a long story, one which I'll tell you when the time is right. For now, though," he finished seriously, "I'm trusting you to keep this a secret, Rukia."

The violet-eyed Kuchiki nodded, finished her drink and walked softly upstairs. As she fell asleep, Rukia felt relieved that she had come one step closer to fully understanding the enigma that was Ichigo Kurosaki.

Despite his earlier statement, Grimmjow was finding it very, very hard to get some sleep. Every time he would close his eyes and slip into a dream, those strange visions would rise up and shock him awake. The Espada couldn't figure out what the hell they meant if his life depended on it, but they were as clear as the reality he lived in every day. The most recent vision was so intense that Grimmjow had gotten up out of bed, abandoning the idea of sleep completely. As he paced through the halls of Las Noches like a caged panther, the strange vision raced across his mind.

"Oy, whore bastard," the big, bulky meathead of a thug grunted out, "why haven't you fixed your hair yet?"

"Fixed?" the blue-haired adolescent shot back. "What the fuck're you blabbering about? There's nothin' wrong with it."

Once the comeback had sunk into the bigger boy's thick skull, he barked out a curse and swung a punch at the scrappy, blue-eyed boy. Dodging deftly, he counterattacked with a vicious uppercut that knocked the bulky thug flat on his ass. The blue-haired boy rubbed his knuckles ruefully as he felt the ache deep down in the joints, but he smiled anyway when he saw the dark bruise on the thug's jaw that signified it was probably broken.

"Grimmjow Jaegerjaques!" a loud, haggard voice called over to him, before a large hand grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. "How many times am I going to have to punish you before you stop antagonizing your peers?"

The boy chuckled bitterly at the notion that he had been the antagonist, but he was far from shocked; this was how it played out every time. As he looked over, the blue-eyed youth saw that the owner of the loud voice, the overlord known only as 'Mr. Shiya,' had released his grip and was currently helping the heavyset thug to his feet.

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Shiya," the boy was saying, the melodramatic emphasis in his voice forcing Grimmjow to repress the sudden desire to explosively eviscerate him. "Thank you! I was just minding my business, and then Grimmjow came up out of nowhere and almost bro—oww…" he broke off, clutching his jaw dramatically. As Mr. Shiya turned to give Jaegerjaques a dirty look, the thug shot the blue-haired boy a victorious grin and gave him the finger.

"Okay, Grimmjow," Mr. Shiya intoned gravely, "enough is enough. If you can't keep your fists to yourself, I'm going to throw you into solitary confinement for a week, again, until you finally learn some basic self-control. I will not have this orphanage ripped apart by animals like you, boy!"

Sparing the bully one last snarl and swearing terrible vengeance with every fiber of his being, Grimmjow allowed himself to be led away to 'The Cube', or the cell designated for particularly troublesome boys and girls who were dumb or brash enough to actually get caught breaking the rules.

A week passed in almost complete silence, apart from the occasional appearance of food through a slat in the door and the faint scratches on the wall as Jaegerjaques used a rock to continue an etching he had started a while back. The light that flooded The Cube when the door was opened at long last would have been just short of blinding for a normal person. The blue-haired boy knew what was coming, however, and closed his eyes briefly, taking a deep breath and focusing himself before opening them gradually.

"You're free to go, Grimmjow," the gentle voice of the man who ran The Cube called out. Mr. Oyama was a kind man, and he and Grimmjow had formed a sort of unspoken connection over time. "One of these days you're gonna find something you don't want to lose, kid," the man continued, "and I won't see your face around these parts anymore. When that happens, I'll be able to retire happy."

"Don't hold your breath, Old Man," Jaegerjaques said with a hint of a smile, tapping knuckles with Oyama in a gesture of farewell. "See ya when I se ya!"

"Suit yourself," the man mumbled wearily as he turned back to his newspaper with a sigh.

Grimmjow rounded the corner with a slight spring in his step and saw a sight that made the blood rush to his head in rage so quickly his hair almost changed color. The bastard bully from a week ago had apparently found himself a new target to fill the void Grimmjow had left, but that wasn't all.

This target was a girl. And she was new from the looks of it, carrying herself with an optimism that had not yet beaten down by the predator-prey existence of the orphanage. As she defended herself with a weak block while blows battered her from all directions, the blue-haired boy cracked his knuckles and realized that he might be seeing Old Man Oyama much sooner than he had previously thought.

"Back the fuck off of her!" he growled, and the lead thug turned around to face him with a malicious glint in his eye. Grimmjow noted with satisfaction that his jaw was still bruised, but now wasn't the time for gloating.

"Oh, I'm sorry, whore-brat," he crowed. "Is this bitch your girlfriend? If she is, I should at least show her what a good time really feels like before I beat her into a coma." To punctuate his point, the thug dragged the tip of his tongue across the dark-haired girl's cheek. To her credit, Grimmjow noticed, she didn't cower or moan. Instead, she shot the brute the iciest look of hatred the blue-eyed boy had ever seen.

"You bastard…" Jaegerjaques seethed, nothing in front of him but oversized punching bags. Charging forward, the boy let loose with every single ounce of fury that had been stagnating over the past week, breaking bones left and right with punches, kicks and almost-feral scratches. A few moments later the gang lay prone and groaning on the floor, but as Grimmjow moved forward to deal the final blow to the thug, a slender hand reached out and latched onto his wrist with surprising strength. Turning around, his blue eyes met with her smoky, lustrous onyx eyes for the first time.

"Allow me," she said in a voice that managed to send shivers of both fear and some other, foreign feeling down his spine at the same time. It was electrifying, and all Jaegerjaques could do was nod.

The girl stepped forward, looked down hatefully at the boy who had accosted her and delivered a series of kicks to his groin so vicious that Grimmjow winced out of empathy, despite his intense loathing of the boy. When she was done, the girl turned back around to face Grimmjow and brushed a sweaty strand of hair out of her eyes before extending her other hand in greeting.

"I'm Shaolin," she said in that voice, and Jaegerjaques' tongue all but stuck to the roof of his mouth, "Shaolin Fon. What's your name?"

Blinking his eyes a few times, Grimmjow hoped he wouldn't look like a stuttering idiot and spoke.

"Grimmjow Jaegerjaques," he said, and Shaolin raised a curious eyebrow.

"Really?" she said, and the enchantment on the blue-eyed boy was all-but broken as indignation rose up from the pit of his stomach.

"Yeah, it is," he said as fiercely as he could in his current state. "You got a problem with that?"

The dark-haired girl shook her head adamantly at the question.

"Oh, no, not at all," she replied. "It just… caught me by surprise, is all. I thought I was the only one around with an odd name. I guess that's what I get for having a dad who's obsessed with kung-fu movies, though," she finished with a chuckle, and Grimmjow couldn't keep a small smile from forming on his lips.

"What about you?" she asked. "Where does a name like 'Grimmjow' come from?"

The blue-eyed boy didn't know why, but there was something about this girl that told him he could trust her with the history of his name.

"My father was a soldier," he said. "'Grimjaw' was his callsign, but the stupid doctor wrote it down wrong on my birth certificate. Jeagerjaques was my mother's last name, a French one. She was a… a 'lady of negotiable affection,' as my dad used to put it."

"So that's why that asshole called you a 'whore-brat', huh?"

"Yeah," Grimmjow sighed, "that's me. Fifty percent army brat, fifty percent whore child and one hundred percent lost cause."

"I wouldn't say that," Shaolin said slyly in that voice of hers and with a glint in her eye, the combination causing Grimmjow's stomach to lurch. "After all, I think I just found a cause for you, Grimmjow Jaegerjaques."

"Oh?" the blue-eyed boy parried, a similar glint growing in his eye. "And what would that be, Shaolin Fon?"

The dark-eyed girl smiled wickedly and Grimmjow knew he was done for.

"You're going to teach me how to fight," she finished, and once again all Grimmjow could do was nod, a goofy grin on his face as the pair parted ways and went to their separate rooms.

Maybe this place wasn't so bad after all.

As the vivid vision finally left him in peace, Grimmjow found himself out on a balcony, staring across the vast plain of Hueco Mundo's blasted desert. He had no idea what he was looking for, but he knew that he had to sort out these visions and discover what they meant before he went insane. As he turned away from the moon, however, he couldn't help but wonder if Shaolin was having an equally restless night.

A/N: There was originally going to be an UlquiNel scene at the end of this chapter, but I thought the flashback was a good stopping point. It also lets me start off the next chapter on a lighter note, so there you go. I hope you enjoyed it, and as always, please review!

Also, if you guys are looking for an awesome story to read, check out 'Blood and Ashes' by MatsuMama; it's a Gin/Matsu/Hitsu fic that's ultimately Hitsu/Matsu and it's absolutely fantastic. It's a crime that a story this well-written has under 150 reviews... you guys should check it out and help rectify that.