That had been all Grimmjow had got of Orihime. As much as he wanted to ask her an hour's worth of questions, he knew he'd come perilously close to making a mistake he couldn't undo in the shower. He walked her back to her room that evening through the more common corridors of Las Noches – in hopes of proving he had nothing to hide – saw to her supper being delivered, and then set out in search of Aizen.
He didn't really want to find him; he'd gotten the answer out of Orihime that he wanted to hear. Yes, she'd spent time with Aizen Sousuke while he was absent, but it wasn't the sort of time Grimmjow dreaded most. The nuisances of Living human and shinigami relationships wasn't something he'd ever been too keen on understanding, but this was one he thought he saw coming.
If it had been any Espada from the War days threatening an interest he had, Grimmjow would have simply challenged it or him head on, rank be damned. But this was Aizen, and weak as he could be when his compartmentalized selves began warring within him, he was still too powerful for Grimmjow to take on.
He knew this, but he also had hope, knowing the shinigami and Hyogoku affects volleyed for control in Aizen.
Hope.
Grimmjow turned down the next hall, scowl increasing as he thought of the concept. Hope was what weaker beings had when they had nothing else to hinge their emotions on. Much as he hated it, hope was at least a starting place for other possibilities. Hope was what got his coveted rank of Sixth back.
He grinned despite his mood. Orihime had enabled him to do that, too.
Aizen wasn't in all of his usual spots, not even in the palace's underground arena watching the private spars he liked to occasionally hold among the better recruits. The arena was usually only used for exhibition practice and elimination sparring. The everyday practice that Grimmjow oversaw was held in the commons pavilion. It was close by, surfacing to the courtyard outside the still rubble-strewn exterior of Las Noches, looking more like the battle-torn fortress the place really was than an empire being rebuilt.
Aizen wanted it that way, the appearance of a building still wrecked, the kind of place a Hollow would feel at home as it investigated the Wailing that drew them in. It was a trap, as most of Aizen's surroundings were; once inside the courtyard there was no way out, the reiatsu-cutting Wailing sucking the life-force out of anything trying to get past it. Even when recruits like Lene and Santrous left, it was dismantled temporarily. It had been Szayel Four's invention, and one that Grimmjow knew Four didn't like. He lacked the deviant vein One had. Two lacked most of the qualities that had made Szayel Aporro himself, but Two never complained. He just followed One's orders.
Grimmjow leaned on the balcony rail running around the arena, surveying the chambered floor space below. He'd give up his rank as Sexta to get Aizen on the sparring floor and best him. What good was rank now anyway? What sense did it make to be Sixth when he was the last one left? Sixth among what? None of the Szayels recalled their previous rank of Eighth, and none of them cared about it anyway.
Grimmjow left the arena.
Actually, Szayel Four remembered. He didn't have all the memories of the original Szayel – none of them did – but he recalled that, and he still didn't care about rank.
Grimmjow gave up on finding Aizen that night and resorted to catching up with him the next morning when he brought Orihime from her room. He'd let her spend as leisure of a breakfast he dared, content to watch her eat with a better appetite since his return, all the while suppressing a grin at the sneaking glances she cast his way, a smile in her eyes.
"Everything you do is in your face," he said once before catching himself, mindful too late of the ears listening into the room. She looked to him quickly, and he scrambled for a way to backtrack over his words. Instead he leaned over his seat in the chair near the couch where she sat, elbows resting on his knees as he scowled. "Your friends know you're gone; you're still here."
It wasn't enough to wipe the smile from her eyes, something that surprised him, but she did sigh, her small shoulders letting her hair fall across her white top as she feigned an emotion she didn't quite feel.
"I suppose it would make you happy to know they miss you," he added, trying to voice a reason for her less than terrified attitude to him. "Don't act like you want me here," he growled in a low voice that barely reached her. "You're supposed to wish I was still gone."
She hid most of her smile behind a rice roll, nodding.
It was pointless to get more of a negative reaction out of her, and since there was little chance of getting her alone where he could enjoy her smile in private, he decided to move their day along.
"We're to meet with the Szayels before Aizen," he said. Now her expression did drop, her sigh genuine. He nodded. "He's been briefed about my visit to your little friends; he'll be glad to know no one suspects enough to find you."
Orihime lowered the last bite of roll to her plate, some of the pleasant taste suddenly eluding her. "That's what Aizen-sama wants."
He nodded. "That's what he wants this time."
It was all that was said before they left into the hall. She walked docilely at his side, smiling faintly whenever his arm rubbed against hers, wishing his hand would close over hers, even briefly as they turned a corner to where the laboratory was located. He didn't, and she knew it was too chancy.
They'd already taken enough chances.
"You said he just talked to you," he finally said as they neared the lab where the Szayels waited. She looked up at him, his face set into a scowl. "Did he touch you, Orihime? At all?"
Now the sick feeling manifested in her frown was real. "My elbow," she admitted, cringing as she thought back on the time alone in her room with Aizen. "And, and my cheek."
Instinctively he stopped her, making her face him, eyes taking on a deeper gleam. "Where?" His hand loosened on her shoulder as she glanced to the smoky dome behind him. "Tell me."
Her gaze fell to his chest, the long scar from his fight with Ichigo bringing mixed feelings to her.
He watched her hand go slowly to her cheek, fingertips pausing on the smooth skin he had other plans for. He nodded, steeling against the courses of action swarming his thoughts. "Anything else?"
She shook her head, eyes rising to his. "That's all, Jaegerjaquez-san."
The formal address stopped his fleeting response. "You'd tell me if there was more?"
She nodded, a different softness coming to her face.
He nodded back. "Come on."
He didn't have to stay with her at the lab, but Grimmjow wasn't ready to part Orihime's company. Szayel One wasn't happy about the Espada's looming presence, but kept most of his annoyance to himself.
"If I wasn't in such a hurry today," he said as they entered the Recovery room where four of the cots were filled with wounded recruits, "I'd wait you out; I know you've got to report to Aizen-sama soon, and then our sister will be all mine. You can stay and witness history." An odd twinkle came to his bright eyes. "We've been close, but today I think we're ready."
Szayels Two and Four both looked to the streamers hanging around the Recovery room walls. Most scarcely stirred, some even looking as if they were heavy, stretching under an unseen weight. Orihime looked to them, feeling a slight tingle in her hairpins as her power sprites listened in. None of them spoke to her, not even a whisper, but she could feel their attention pique, feel Tsubaki's ire flame.
She let her focus go to Grimmjow where he stood to the side at a nearby wall, watching Four narrowly. "You're getting another batch of raw material soon," he said. "Had a small herd of prospects come into the courtyard last night. Aizen-sama is handpicking them now."
One was a little disappointed he hadn't got more of a rise out of the Espada, but he turned to Orihime, smiling. "Let's start, sister. My pet project is waiting."
Four exchanged a look with Two, and then glanced to Grimmjow. "Lots of breakthroughs in the works now," he offered, then looked back to One as the lead researcher paused Orihime beside a cot covered with a sheet. "Our first stage will soon be complete and we'll begin work on the top experiments."
One's smile turned indulgent on Orihime. "That's when we'll see how well we really work together, sister."
His chuckle made her nearly shudder, enforcing the sinking notion that merely healing Aizen's wounded army-to-be was not all they wanted from her.
One nodded, pulling back the sheet to expose a flesh wound of the young recruit. His breathing was ragged, one arm crooked over his stomach where a deep gash ran diagonally from his shoulder. Orihime tried not to react to it. She knew it wasn't Grimmjow's work; she felt nothing from the recruit's wound, no reiatsu ebbing from it marking the Sexta's battle.
"Aizen-sama has had the new recruits sparring each other the last few days," Grimmjow offered, sensing Orihime's confusion.
She glanced to him, remaining neutral as she turned back to the cot.
"Go ahead, sister," One said, smiling.
She wasn't sure why he was so smug, so eager for an audience of both Szayels and Grimmjow. She put her hands over the young recruit's torso, not looking to his face as he turned to her. She focused on her work, lips barely moving as she repeated her kotodama. The figure on the cot stilled, stunned at the strange healing inside him as the girl's arms stretched over him.
His wounds healed, disappearing under reversal.
There was a cough, and then a half-shout of surprise from another cot down the line of cots. The Szayels looked to it. Another older, injured recruit grabbed at his sheet and pulled it away, a look of amazement on his face as he watched the long laceration lacing his chest heal.
Orihime's hands curled away from the wounded young recruit beneath them, the words frozen on her lips. She looked from the older recruit down the line to the streamers on the walls. Most of them were curled at the bottom, some swaying slightly, as if in a breeze that couldn't be felt.
Szayel One grinned, eyes taking on a rabid spark. "Continue, sister," he urged. "Don't stop."
Orihime looked to Grimmjow, but his attention was on the older recruit. An angry scowl claimed his face, fierce gaze on the injured Arrancar.
"Please," the young recruit said when Orihime remained immobile.
She looked down to him, his wound still half open.
"Continue," One said, smile livid.
Orihime's fingers extended, shaking slightly as she resumed her work. Below her the recruit's wounds closed up, the skin becoming unblemished.
Grimmjow now stood beside the older recruit's cot, watching in horror and some fascination as the injuries erased before his eyes. On the wall the streamers were still moving, shifting against each other as their potential eked out. He looked to Orihime, seeing the fear behind her eyes as she continued healing, her hands seeming heavier as she worked.
He shot a look to Szayel One and Two, both watching the young recruit. Szayel Four looked to Grimmjow, and then nodded almost imperceptibly.
"Ha!" Szayel One's head flung back and he laughed a chilling laugh that echoed through the room, breaking Orihime's concentration.
She retracted her hands, her working nearly finished. She backed a step away from the researcher as he turned a leering smile on her.
"I've done it!" He leaned closer to her, unmindful of Grimmjow stepping closer to them. "Ha! You know that this means, sister?" He glanced to Grimmjow and straightened from Orihime's cowering face. "You saw it, Sexta! That," he said, pointing to the older recruit, "proves it can be done. That's what I designed this room to do!"
Grimmjow looked from One to Orihime. "You can't duplicate her healing powers," he said more than asked, thinking past the repercussions of such a possibility. "You can't –"
"No, you Espada," One crowed, smile undimmed. "This," he spread his arms wide, "this room is just the first step. I've been collecting her signature, her healing powers, the very essence of what makes it work. I haven't figured out the trigger yet, but anything in here wounded is healed," he said jubilantly, "when she heals even one injury!"
"Anything?" Grimmjow asked, glancing back to the other two cots that showed no signs of movement.
Szayel One waved them away with an effeminate hand. "The possibility is in its infancy, yes, but it is possible. Aizen-sama will be immensely pleased. First this, and then we move on to healing without her even initiating a healing. And then, we build an Arrancar that can heal itself of any injury. Unstoppable."
One smiled to himself, nodding at the young recruit.
Grimmjow looked to Orihime's suddenly ashen face.
"This is just one of other such rooms," One said, nodding to no one now. "I can make my memories come true, realize that power out of simple fragments. It can be done. I've going to do it with all powers, not just healing." He smiled indulgently at her. "We're a team, sister. That shinigami scientist never did this!"
She shook her head slightly, to which One chuckled. Grimmjow wanted to break the smile off the researcher's face, but resisted.
"She's done for the day," he said.
"Not yet," One decided. "A bit more first."
She was ordered to finish healing the young recruit, but her concentration was on the older one on the other cot. He was now sitting up, watching his flesh stitch itself, fingering the skin as it repaired.
Szayel One was so enraptured with his accomplishment that he didn't even mind that Grimmjow demanded to leave with Orihime after the healing was finished.
"Go," he said, nodding almost eagerly. "She's done here. Very good, sister."
Orihime was nearly shaking by the time she got to the hall with Grimmjow. He took her elbow, pushing her into a walk when her steps hesitated in the hall.
"Don't say anything," he grumbled as they made their way below the smoky domes to the next corridor. "Say nothing to Aizen about it. Let that cheap clone tell him."
She nodded, sagging a little under his hand. His firm grip was shoring, bracing her when she felt like collapsing, not from physical or even mental exertion, but something else.
Realization. Maybe that was it.
"Don't heal any of Aizen's injuries if he asks you to, Orihime," he said, his voice barely audible. Her arm tensed in his hand, and she glanced up to him to make certain he'd said anything at all.
"You heard me," he said to her unvoiced query. They turned down another hall and he spoke a little louder. "I know what you can do; I saw what you did to Loly and Menoly. Don't heal Aizen."
She nodded, a surreal feeling pushing against her senses as they passed down another hall. "But he's immortal, and he has the Szayels to heal his injuries."
"He's not immortal." He didn't look at her this time when she turned an expression of sheer astonishment on him. "He may have been at one time, for a short time, after the War, but it was a short-lived luxury the Hyogoku left him. Residual perks, I guess." He chuckled, watching her blink a few times. "He'd like you to think he is now; I know he's not."
"But...but you're sure?" she asked, not believing her ears.
He nodded, feeling her arm relax more, her posture now stronger, but she didn't move away. "Szayel Four is in charge of formulating his kanzen saimen. He says it's been changed, unlike any pure strain of shinigami reiryoku," he said with a twinge of dislike, "but it has no immortal properties."
Orihime stopped walking. She didn't mean to, but his words halted all movement. "Szayel-san Four?"
He nodded, grinning again at her surprise.
She found her voice, and then took up their walk as he tugged on her arm. "He told you that?"
He nodded, hurrying her along. They walked for a few moments, her mind trying to sift through the new details of the day. A clearer picture of Aizen began to shift into focus.
"Don't speak to him about it, or knowing that you know," he warned, his tone stiffening. She looked up to see his features had sharpened into a somber profile, and then she felt it, too.
She nodded as they turned into another corridor to find Aizen standing at the intersection there. He looked to each of them, gaze pausing on Grimmjow's hand on her arm. He looked to the Espada.
"Your report was encouraging, Grimmjow," he said, a flicker of smile on his face as he looked to Orihime. "You've had a full morning already." He nodded at their collective surprise. "Szayel One is a patient scientist, but not a very modest one. You've made great progress, my sister. I'm pleased." He looked to Grimmjow, a less amiable expression slipping over his face. "We'll discuss your trip to the Living World at length later. Now I want you to test down to the top ten of the new recruits. I understand there are more coming soon. With Szayel's new development I want no lack of prospects."
"I'll take her back to her room," Grimmjow said, feeling Orihime's arm tense in her sleeve.
"No need; I'll take her now," Aizen said, a steady look in his face that dared the Espada to find another excuse.
Grimmjow let Orihime's arm slip from his hand. "I'll see to the recruits."
Orihime didn't turn as Grimmjow left down the opposite hall. She fingered her sleeve where his hand had been, smoothing the material for a long moment before looking to Aizen.
He hadn't moved, studying her closely, seeing something she was sure she wasn't allowing to show.
Then he nodded. "Come with me, Orihime. There's something I want you to see. I think you'll find it interesting."
She swallowed down the reluctance she had at accompanying him anywhere, but obeyed.
"I understand your confusion about returning to us," Aizen said as he took them down the hall, his gait more leisure than Grimmjow's had been. "Sometimes the best choices for our futures are ones not made by us, but by others."
She frowned slightly, not looking to him.
He chuckled, a sound that made her look to him now. "Sometimes a frown can be just as endearing as a smile, Orihime. Did you know that?"
She didn't know what to do with her face after that. She shook her head, looking to the hall before them.
"The last time you were here," he said, passing through another set of halls at a corner, "I put Ulquiorra Schiffer in charge of you."
Orihime looked to him quickly, a sense of treading on unstable footing making her hesitate to speak. He allowed a small smile to her.
"I thought that best because Ulquiorra was a very strong and competent Espada. Trustworthy, also. Not just to me, but with a delicate creature such as yourself," he said. "Grimmjow would certainly not be my first choice in the matter."
A nervous, rapid heartbeat began in her chest, more of a flutter than an actual beat, she decided.
"Ulquiorra was also intelligent." They paused at a double door of solid metal at the next hall. Aizen waved his hand over the keypad and it opened. Down it stretched another long, semi-lit hall of tall walls. He led her down it. "All the Espada were intelligent. Grimmjow is no exception."
"Yes, Aizen-sama," she said, agreeing and feeling the need to say something.
"But they lack," he said, his words bouncing off the walls in a bass tone. "What is taken out of them to make them strong also leaves them bare of emotions."
She nodded, looking to him as he spoke, his manner more of instruction than opinion. She took a deep breath, resolved to clear her thinking.
"Not all emotions," he countered as they took an eventual turn in the hall that put them before another set of double doors. He opened these and they passed through. "They keep those emotions necessary to do their assignments, enough to propel them to a desire to keep their ranks."
Orihime's throat felt dry, the still air that was now devoid of even the sound of the Wailing seeming to leach any moisture out of the hall.
"I suppose you thought you had some effect on Ulquiorra," he said.
She shook her head immediately.
Aizen smiled, not quite kindly, but less than his usual untouchable expression. "An Espada of Ulquiorra's rank has a natural curiosity. The frailties of a Living girl would make him curious. Those frailties are partly why I assigned him to you." He watched her eyes widen as they continued on, saw her attempt at bravery. "Emotions are not learned when there is no heart to support them, Orihime. Underneath it all, Espada are still that, no matter what their form or released state. Their reactions adapt, but they do not develop emotions," he said, leaning slightly toward her, "not the type of emotions important to fragile Living girls."
She nearly stopped walking, focusing on his face as he straightened. He was wrong about Ulquiorra, she knew it. When he'd reached for her hand before blowing away into dust, she knew he understood and welcomed her lack of fear of him. It had been enough for her, to know that. Maybe it was curiosity that got him there, but Ulquiorra did get to that understanding. She knew it.
But she didn't say that to Aizen.
"I suppose not, Aizen-sama," she said feebly as they paused before another double door.
He nodded, and then opened the door. "Espada are created out of the raw power that I train them to harness." He looked inside the smaller room. "But underneath they're still a base Arrancar."
Orihime stepped into the room when he nodded for her to. Inside it was sterile, the walls and color a chalky white, a faint smell of an animal making her wonder if her senses had departed her. A short wall divided the entry from the back portion, and it was around this that he led her.
She stepped past it, and then stopped short.
The room was sectioned off again by bars running vertically, like a jail cell, enclosing a third of the room in a cage. From behind the bars a large panther stared back at her, its back showing a Hollow hole in the torso. It was lying on a small elevated bunk, watching them steadily as Aizen approached.
Orihime didn't move, shocked by the animal, and what she knew it was. Her eyes stayed locked on it, following its movements as it slowly stepped off the perch, top lip flaring as it looked to Aizen, eyes narrowing.
"Not many in this form out in the desert," Aizen said, watching the animal study him before lowering its powerful neck to look at Orihime. "As much as this could be trained and its abilities directed, it is still a Hollow in the mind. You can never trust it, no matter how much it emulates a domestic cat."
Orihime felt him step closer to her, but her eyes stayed on the cat, hearing a low growling sound come from it, eyes glinting at the man beside her.
"You could teach it to obey certain commands, perhaps even pet it," Aizen said, moving a strand of her hair laying at her shoulder, a movement that barely registered with her as she watched the sleek gray-white animal's lithe form. It paced behind the bars, level stare watching them. It came to some conclusion and warily climbed back onto the bunk and settled, still studying them.
"It may even come when you called it," Aizen said, "if you gave it a name."
The cat's growl became louder, front paws hanging over the bunk pressing until the talons were visible. Orihime swallowed nervously as the animals shoulders bunched, tightened.
She looked to her shoulder as Aizen's hand left her hair.
"But you could never fully trust it," he said close to her ear. "And it could never return your affection, Orihime. Wild animals in the Living World and Hollows are like that."
She wanted to smile, to refute his reasoning. He was wrong. Aizen was wrong and she knew it. Her brother had proven that when he came back to her and yielded to her love for him.
She nodded, not smiling, but her gaze softened on the large cat in the cell.
"Good."
Aizen stepped away, watching her.
She turned, eyes moving slowly from the cat to him. "What will you do with it?"
He gestured to the door out. "It came here when I first began accepting recruits. I had hopes for it then, that it would evolve into something useful, but since you've joined my ranks, Orihime, I've decided on another route."
He hadn't answered her question, but she nodded. She gave the cat a final glimpse as they left.
There was something familiar about the eyes of the dangerous animal, but something welcome, too. Perhaps all Adjuchas held that steady, calculating look in their eyes.
She followed Aizen through the corridors again, but this time with less intimidation.
He was wrong about Hollows, some Hollows, and she knew it.
Authors' Note: Thank you to everyone reading, and for the reviews!