Sorry for the wait, and thank you all for the super-sweet reviews! Short chapter today, but more on the way soon!

Orihime didn't move for a while. Grimmjow watched her, completely unreadable for once, and they simply stood and let the sad, rolling wind howl between them. The dryly rattling leaves of the tree line seemed very far behind them now, and the silent dead stone of the barrier far too near.

"What did you say?" she heard herself ask.

"I said it's time for you to decide if you want to stay here or go back to the World of the Living," Grimmjow said evenly.

Orihime questioned everything. She questioned the very reality of the last few weeks. She questioned whether she'd even left the tower. She questioned whether this was really Grimmjow, whom she was realizing now that she'd come to trust totally and completely, or an illusion of Aizen's that was about to disentigrate and show her once and for all what a silly little fool she was.

"It's real," Grimmjow said abruptly. "I can see what you're thinking, by the way. I'm real. This is real."

"How can I be sure?" Orihime's chest was tight. It was hard to think of home and breath at the same time.

"You notice how I haven't tried to seduce you even once over the past few weeks?"

Orihime flinched. "What?"

"Aizen and Ulquiorra seriously thought I would try." He rolled his eyes in distaste. "That's what was on that stupid fucking list. All the stuff I wasn't allowed to do on this trip."

"Which means—" Orihime couldn't even blush. She felt like she should be able to, but she couldn't. The idea of being "seduced" by anyone was embarrassing enough, but hearing the obvious disgust in Grimmjow's voice was pretty mortifying, too.

"Which means," Grimmjow said, rolling one hand, "if I was an illusion set up by Aizen, he doesn't know me well enough to know I wouldn't do that in the first place. It follows that the illusion-me would have tried something on you."

"Well, you say it follows," Orihime said, frowning, "but—if he went to the trouble of giving you a list of what not to do, then he must not want it happening at all—"

"Whatever," Grimmjow cut her off, scowling again. "Like I said: not everyone likes games as much as Aizen. I tried. Just go with me on this: it's real."

"So he didn't put you up to this?"

"Fucking hell!" Grimmjow was losing his patience. "No, he didn't put me up to it. It's not a test, or an illusion, or a joke. Damn, woman."

"Then he'll kill you for it." The words were out of Orihime's mouth before she could even process them, but she knew that if the rest of this was real and true, then that was almost definitely the only outcome for Grimmjow if he let her go.

"I'm not that easy to kill," Grimmjow said dismissively, but Orihime knew the sound of bravado when she heard it. Grimmjow may not have been human, but he was still male, and males were almost always more transparent than they realized.

"You don't like me enough to just be doing this for me," Orihime said. "Tell me why you're doing this, and maybe then I'll believe you that I'm really free to go."

Grimmjow huffed out a breath. "You're kind of a pain in the ass. Has anyone ever told you that?"

Orihime smiled—because it hurt—but she didn't answer. She'd had people tell her that; she'd had people not tell her that. Either way, she'd always known when people thought it and felt it. She'd spent so much time trying not to be a pain, trying to be convenient and easy to love, and somehow it never really worked.

"Grimm," she said gently. "Please stop being such a crybaby and just answer me." Grimmjow blinked at her, head cocked.

"What?" Finally, it was Grimmjow's turn to be surprised.

"What, what?" Orihime asked. "Did you really think I would just cry and run for home as soon as you cut the leash, no questions asked, no explanation required?"

"Kinda, yeah," Grimmjow said, and scratched his jaw.

Orihime gave him a crooked smile. It was all she could manage. "No, you didn't. You knew I'd be conflicted for one reason or another. Come on, out with it."

Grimmjow's eyes cut away, and she knew she was right. They'd been traveling together, sleeping next to each other, fighting with and for each other, for weeks now. He may not think of her as a friend, but he knew her well enough by now to know she thought of him as one. And everyone knew her friends were her weak spot. It was why she was here at all.

"You won't think so," Grimmjow said suddenly, "but you've changed while you've been here."

Orihime's brow furrowed. "What do you mean?" She didn't feel that much different—she still missed home, and her friends, and she still doubted herself any time she used her power. The training had helped, but—

"I know I said before that people don't change with the scenery, but you kind of have." He shook his head. "I realized it just a few days in, starting with that first Menos. You're not who you were when you came here. The change has been—surprisingly fast."

"Okay," Orihime said warily. She suddenly didn't know what to do with her hands, and fidgeted. "I mean, I don't know if you're right, but what does that have to do with anything? Wasn't that the whole point of Aizen sending us on this—training mission?"

"It doesn't matter if you change if you can't realize how much," Grimmjow said, frowning. He was looking for words. He was a surprisingly thoughtful guy, but he couldn't always express those thoughts particularly well, it seemed. "You need a foil. Something to show you, or you'll just keep going back to old habits and instincts, and doubting yourself. You'll keep wanting the same things, even if they're not good for you. I figure, if you need to go home to see how much you've changed, so be it."

That, Orihime thought, made some sense. It sounded more or less like what she'd realized before—with that same Menos, actually. She'd been able to fight it and win only because she realized how much she'd learned since the first day she used her power back in Karakura. But something about it didn't line up.

"So you're sending me home now to—foil me?" Orihime asked hesitantly. She supposed it made sense if Grimmjow wanted her to see how much her power had grown, but... "But all the monsters are here."

Something like hurt flashed across Grimmjow's face, and she realized what she'd said. "I didn't mean—"

"I get it," Grimmjow said quickly, but she could hear the hurt in his voice. The guilt hit her hard—even if she tried to remind herself that having Grimmjow as a friend and Ichigo as a friend at the same time was impossible—she still didn't want to hurt him anymore than she wanted to hurt Ichigo. "But it's because you think that way that Aizen can't use you."

"He can't use me," Orihime said, flaring and forgetting some of her guilt, "because I don't want to be used."

"You might if you knew what he was really about," Grimmjow said. "But he also can't tell you—and I'm sure as hell not going to, because he really will kill me for that—until you're ready to accept it."

"That makes no sense," Orihime said. She sat down on the lip of a boulder in frustration and shook her head. "You can't tell me what it is you want me to agree to…until I agree to it?"

Grimmjow nodded. At least he was honest, she thought, but she scoffed. Her jaw clenched as she looked up at the velvet sky.

"I keep letting myself forget it, but—you guys literally kidnapped me!" She laughed, almost hysterically, and Grimmjow rolled his eyes.

"We did not kidnap you—"

"Coerced, then!" Orihime almost shouted, throwing her hands up. "Still not great! I like you, Grimm, and I'm grateful for all you've taught me, but we obviously don't have the same ideas about what is right and good, and nothing—" she shook her head as she looked up at him. Tears were welling up in her eyes, but she couldn't stop them. "Nothing is going to make me okay with a plan to wipe out my hometown. Or anyone's hometown, for that matter. I will never go along with it. I will never help."

"So you'd rather be Aizen's enemy?" Grimmjow asked. His voice was very even, and he stood very still. She wondered if he was thinking of killing her.

"If that's what it takes, yes," Orihime said, but her throat closed up. She kept thinking of Aizen as she'd seen him in the dream. She wanted to see him again—meet him again. She wanted to see what he looked like to her now that she'd changed. But her curiosity wasn't worth thousands of lives.

"Then go home and be his enemy," Grimmjow said. His voice was flat with hard, unrelenting anger, and he turned away from her. "Or try. Heal your friend, if he'll even let you do that much, and then sweetly ask permission—one last time—if he and the others will let you fight your war."

Orihime felt like she was being pulled in two. It should have been easy, she thought. She should have been able to just cut and run, before Grimmjow changed his mind, before Ulquiorra appeared and cut her down like—like—

"What did you say?" she asked. Grimmjow didn't turn back around. His shoulders and neck were tense, and his fists were clenched at his sides.

"I said you should go the hell home and ask—"

"I heard that part," Orihime said, holding up a hand. "Before that. Heal what friend?"

Now Grimmjow turned around, eyes narrowed. "Kurosaki," he answered. His voice was still hard with anger, but carried a note of confusion, too. "Tall, stupid, orange hair…chopped my arm off? Kind of a dick?"

Orihime's heart froze in her chest. "Did something happen to him?"

"Uh, yeah?" Grimmjow said. He looked like he couldn't decide whether to be irritated or confused. "We fought, we fucked each other up, then Ulquiorra showed up and really fucked him up—"

Orihime shook her head. "I healed him already. Before I came here. Ulquiorra gave me twelve hours, and I went to Ichigo's room and said goodbye and healed him—"

"No, you didn't," Grimmjow said blankly. "Ulquiorra has footage from that twelve hours. We've all seen it. Plus, Kurosaki's been recuperating all this time."

Orihime shook with an involuntary shudder. Her vision went fuzzy. "That's impossible—"

"It's really not," Grimmjow said wryly. "Ulquiorra packs a punch, trust me."

"No—I—I remember—" Orihime shook her head again, but this time because she couldn't clear it. She was seeing double, but not double-vision. Even when she closed her eyes she saw it: two memories of the same night. Not consecutive, but concurrent. Like a double-exposed photograph, with the ghost of the same image layered up twice.

Both memories showed her Ichigo's room: a little messy, but not too much. Just…dishevelled. Cozy, with a well-organized desk. He studied more than he liked to admit.

Both showed Ichigo lying in bed, bandaged, sweating, in pain. Both showed her standing over him. Both showed her thinking of kissing him.

In one, she couldn't do it. She'd cried, and her tears had splashed on his cheek as she held his hand. She'd felt and relived this memory a thousand times since she'd left home: the conflict, the agony. The guilt she felt for what she was doing, even as she healed him and told him that even across five separate lives, she would have loved him.

In the other memory—the one she couldn't stop seeing since Grimmjow had spoken—she had kissed him. His lips had been warm with fever, and chapped from his constant labored breathing. She could still feel how rough they'd been, and how perfect. She touched her mouth with sandy fingers, and felt how chapped her own were now. She'd been out here so long, she felt suddenly. It had been so long since then. She didn't actually know how long. She'd assumed weeks, but…

In this memory, she hadn't cried, and she hadn't held his hand. She'd felt the same agony, the same regret, the same five lifetimes worth of love. The same longing, almost undeniable, to stay beside him even as she said goodbye…and that she was sorry, but—

"But I can't let you come after me," Orihime whispered. The words tasted familiar. She'd said them before.

She hadn't healed him. She'd realized that if she did, he would run straight to Urahara or Yoruichi or whoever and beat down the door to Hueco Mundo—and die.

And even if he didn't die, he wouldn't succeed. The Hogyoku was still in Aizen's grasp. It was an undeniable force, a state of being, or of reality. Like a storm, or a wound. It wouldn't respond to repeated attacks with a zanpakuto, no matter how powerful or determined, no matter who wielded it. It was a thing that couldn't die, or break. It could only be—

Healed. Unmade.

And Orihime was the only one who possessed the power to unmake.

In this memory, she really hadn't been kidnapped. Or even coerced, she realized. She had come willingly, because she'd realized then that she had a job to do.

And she still did.

Orihime couldn't have said for sure which of her memories were real. In fact, she felt with startling, almost absolute, certainty that somehow they both were real…was one an illusion, then? Or something else…something was tugging at her. A familiar sensation. Not deja vu, exactly, but—the sense that this—this strange kind of double-exposure—had happened before.

But memory aside, if what Grimmjow had said was true and Ichigo was still healing from his wounds, she seemed to be living a totally different reality, totally different set of consequences than she'd thought. Either Aizen was messing with her, or she was going crazy.

Either way, she wasn't going home. Not yet.

"Take me back," she said quietly, and Grimmjow's eyes snapped to hers. She met his gaze. "We're going back to Las Noches."

"What?" Grimmjow started. He narrowed his eyes, suspicious. "You just said—after all that, why would you change your mind?"

"I didn't change my mind," Orihime said. "But you told me to choose, and I did. I'm staying. Take me back."

Take me back to Aizen, she almost said. There's something I need to know.