Author's note: For everyone still with me, a huge thank you and also apologies for taking so long between updates. Right after chapter 12, my life took one of those turns-the kind that wasn't necessarily bad but that was still major and that no one saw coming. It's taken a long time to adjust. I wasn't sure I'd be able to come back to this fic after so long, but I got a lil drunk last night and cranked out the following, which of course now I'm self-conscious about now that I'm sober, but I'm posting anyway lmaoooo. Love y'all 3

I was a tree once.

I became a tree.

A smooth, white tree.

Not even bark to keep me company.

So alone I barely existed.

Then the only one that was came to me and offered me—

He offered me—

What did he offer me?

What could have enticed me to leave such peace?

My roots were not deep, but there was never wind, in that place.

When he came, it was like a wind.

That wind offered me the thing that I had never had.

He offered me—

He offered: me.

It was only after the bargain was struck that I realized I cannot abide my own company.

Ulquiorra went to the forest.

It felt like he was always going to the forest these days, but that may have just been because he'd sent his eye floating through it for so many weeks, trailing along after Orihime and Grimmjow, that oaf, that fool, that blundering lout—

Ulquiorra went to the forest. He sat on a wide, high branch. After a full hour of trying not to, he ran one finger over his lips. He did it again. He could still smell Grimmjow on his skin. He took one deep breath, then another. Another. Each time he breathed in that scent, he shuddered. The wind shook his tree.

That smell. It made him close his eyes to remember. To live it again. He might never be able to wash it away, like a scar of its own kind. A scar like the one he'd apparently left on Grimmjow's hand, but which he had no memory of, no footage of.

He had so much footage. He knew it all by heart. It was part of him now. He'd shared some with Orihime when he'd run out of options, but now…it felt like the only thing that made sense, that he could trust, and he couldn't bear to share it again.

But it didn't make sense. It was the only thing he trusted. Even Lord Aizen, who he worshipped, he didn't trust. Just his own wandering eye. The failsafe he'd built in before he left his tree-form and willingly bent to Aizen's will, because what is a tree if it's branches never rustle or sway? Just a hollow, lifeless statue.

His eye was perfect. Better than that, it was True. It might not tell him what things meant, but it could tell him what they were.

For what felt like the thousandth time, he scanned the footage he'd taken that day that Grimmjow left with Orihime to travel to the Forest of Menos.

The sands of Hueco Mundo, shifting underfoot. The streets of the city winding, empty, echoing. Sand stinging unblinking eyes.

They'd walked together as far as the gate, the three of them.

How strange it was now, that "the three of them" seemed such a natural notion. So firm to the touch, so certain, so reliable. How simple it felt, how safe. Now, but not then. Not before the forest.

They'd gone to the gate together, the three of them. Grimmjow had spared him hardly a glance, no matter how intently Ulquiorra had watched. No one had spoken. No list had traded hands. Ulquiorra had watched him leave, again.

Grimmjow was always leaving, always roaming. Prowling. Changing. Ulquiorra felt so still. Immutable. Sunk into the earth, into himself. Everyone he met was on the opposite side of a chasm that even his wings—should he abandon sense, abandon hope, abandon his oaths, and summon them—couldn't carry him across.

That was why he'd sent his eye after them. He wanted to know. He knew they'd be safe enough. He wanted to know other things. How did they carry on? These two, the most human of the Arrancar. Because Orihime—Ori, as he'd heard Lord Aizen call her so many times now—was Arrancar now. Soon she'd be more. She was always changing, too. He'd had no doubt she'd be different by the time she returned.

What he had not expected, however, was that Grimmjow would be too.

Ulquiorra's power was one of permanence. One of stone, of the intractable, invisible growth of tree rings that no human eye could follow. He could destroy, dismiss, dissolve a thing, with barely a thought or gesture, but Grimmjow's power was one of brute force. He swung his fists and his sword and roared into the emptiness of his own Hollow as if he wanted to fill it himself, but even as mercurial as he might be, it was the one thing he couldn't change. He'd howled and lusted for a millenia with no change. And so Ulquiorra had not expected him to come back—so altered. So full.

That kiss had lasted and lasted. He'd felt Grimmjow's lips against his and had frozen solid, until his hands moved on their own. They'd slipped over the warm skin of Grimmjow's hips and up to his ribs. His palms felt full of him still. So much of the moment felt undone, unfinished. There was a pulse in him that felt both foreign and like he'd been waiting for it all his life.

It was Ulquiorra who'd clasped Grimmjow's face, curled his fingers around the edges of the mask and into that wild, wiry blue hair, and tugged. When Grimmjow had grabbed him—Ulquiorra clasped, Grimmjow grabbed—around the waist and moaned his name—not his name, but that damn irreverent shortname—Uli—against his lips like a prayer, his nose pressing against Ulquiorra's—

He'd run. He'd run because Grimmjow—the Grimmjow he'd known, the one he'd longed for in secret, the Grimmjow who had walked into the desert that day—had never wanted him back. But this Grimmjow had kissed him like he'd never wanted anything else, like the relief the kiss had given him was a physical, material thing. Strong medicine too long neglected by a body in sore and urgent need.

He had never burned Grimmjow. And yet Grimmjow had been burned, and by someone he claimed to be Ulquiorra. Grimmjow, who simply didn't possess the imagination or the need to lie, had been burned by Ulquiorra—or at least an Ulquiorra. And judging by the desperation of his kiss, he'd been burned by an Ulquiorra who hadn't wanted him back, just like Uli's Grimmjow had never wanted him back.

Orihime—the first Orihime, anyway—had spent months in the arms of Aizen. Sharing his meals, holding him at night, laughing with him in the early hours of the morning when they woke tangled in sheets and each other, lighting his eyes even when she left the room. Yet she'd returned in such a state of unknowing that his kiss had sent her into a spiral that had almost destroyed them all.

But it had been the pat that first tipped him off. That idle gesture, the touch of a friend too long afield, against his shoulder. When Orihime—this Orihime—had returned to the city, with this Grimmjow to Ulquiorra's tower. She'd passed him at the door with such a wry and weary smile—pleased to see him—and clasped his arm above the elbow. He'd tried to dismiss it at the time. But she'd never spared him a glance before, much less a touch, same as Grimmjow.

"I know what I'm here to do," she'd said, eyes hard, the first day she arrived in Hueco Mundo, when he'd come to visit her in her rooms. "I don't need a butler and I don't need a fucking spirit guide. And if you want this to work, if you want mercy from me when this is all over, you'll stay out of my way."

Yes. That touch had been all he needed to know that this was not the same Ori that had walked into the desert.

What had happened to her, he wondered. And to the Grimmjow he'd loved for so long before this new one loved him back?