Another Chappy. Sorry this one is kinda short but I've been really busy lately so here it is.
Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach
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" She's awake," the nurse said touching my forehead. I tried to sit up but a sharp pain my arm made me flinch. I glanced down, a needle was lodged in my arm, a IV attached too it. I glanced around the familiar white room. Panic set in, and I afraid that I was trapped again.
I opened my mouth to scream, when Joel's hand on my arm stopped me. " Molly." He said softly, your in the hospital."
" For what?" I barked.
Mom and Dad appeared in my vision then, Mom was crying which was nothing new, Dad's face was stoic. " The doctors said you collapsed from malnutrition, you told me you were eating."
" I have," I said trying to sit up again, this time carefully enough not to upset the IV. No one believed me of course. " Joel tell them I've been eating."
I set my gaze on him, urging him to at least tell half the truth. I may not have been eating real food, like the kind he cooks every night, but I have been eating. Pop tarts, Twinkles, dried Applejacks and Lays did count as food, even if it wasn't healthy food. I couldn't stomach anything else.
He nodded. " But not real food, mostly junk."
I sighed in relief, so he was halfway on my side.
The ER nurse left the room returning with a Doctor holding a clipboard. He was middle aged with a relaxed face and army haircut. He was tall, built and smelled slightly like coffee, cigs and cinnamon.
When he saw me staring he smiled. " Molly is it?"
I nodded. " Says here that you are suffering from malnutrition. Have you been eating." He hesitated. " Wait let me rephrase that. Have you been eating well." I opened my mouth answer but he beat me to the punch. "And Pop Tarts, Twinkies, Applejacks and Lays don't count."
I snapped my jaw shut with a loud click. He popped his pen against his clipboard exposing the ink tip to the air. " Tell me why haven't you been eating, it is important that a girl like you gets all seven basic food groups."
" I…don't know. I just don't feel a need too…" I stopped myself short. I didn't like being here again, being questioned by words, or by eyes. Everyone thought I was crazy, that was trying to kill myself. I didn't want to explain myself again.
" Are you her boyfriend?" He asked Joel. He didn't give him time to answer. " Tell me. Do you find malnutrition girls attractive?"
Joel didn't answer. I shrunk more into myself. I could hear him writing on his clipboard. My fingers twirled around my IV cord until I could feel my arm stinging but I didn't care. I wanted it to hurt.
" I'm going to have the hospital councilor come and talk with you. She's new so go easy on her. After that I'm going to give you some vitamins. They will supply you with vitamins, A, B, C, and D. He took my hand examining the nails, how they were chipped and flayed like wallpaper gone bad. " Maybe some Biotin too. You don't want to eat right, that's fine but at least take the vitamins, I would hate to see you back in here again."
" No for the last time I wasn't trying to kill myself." I said.
The councilor put down her pin, she was nothing like India. Who was stern and blunt. This lady was cheerful and polite, and smiled a lot more than she should. Her hair was long, blond and wavy, her eyes blue, right below the right side of her lips was a small mole. I let my eyes roamed down her body, she had India beat in that department. Where India was lithe and tone, this lady was curvy with bigger breast. She had everything where it counted.
She bit the end of her pen with full lips. " Are you sure?" She asked again.
I rolled my eyes. " What did you say your name was again?" I asked.
" Ashley," she said cheerfully.
" Right. Can I go home now."
" Well of course not, you have to stay here until you are all better," she said cheerfully. She reached over and grabbed both sides of my face with her hands, her breast pursed up against mine. The feeling felt so familiar that the impulse to scream sexual harassment never left my mouth.
All around her, whole existence felt familiar, like she was some friend gone away for years and years that changed over the coarse of time and I didn't recognize her anymore with my eyes, but my heart did.
I couldn't help smiling.
"See your getting better already," she replied. " You are far to pretty to be wasting away like this. I'm the one who shouldn't be eating, I'm totally fat."
I couldn't help smiling at that too. The door opened and the doctor came in holding the vitamins and a clipboard. Mom, Dad and Joel behind him. He looked Ashley up and down, grinned then handed me the vitamins.
" I am guessing everything is going well?" He asked.
" She is ok," Ashley said. " I think she's ready to go home now. That blue does not suit her at all."
" Yes," I sighed.
Except Mom and Dad's definition of home was back at the house with them. Not with Joel. I argued in the parking lot, lodged between their car and Joel's truck. I didn't want to go home with them where they would monitor me like some mental patient and treat me like a two year old with the flu.
I hadn't told them about Grimmjow or what he'd told me, and I wasn't going too. They wouldn't believe anyway.
" I'm 21," I reminded. " An adult. I can drink, have sex, party, carry a firearm and take care of myself without your permission."
" We are just so worried about you," Mom said. " Ever since that accident you haven't been the same."
Yes the accident no one wants to talk about. I felt bile in my throat, but I swallowed it down. Throwing up in front of them all wouldn't prove a point, it would just put me deeper in the hole and probably back in the hospital for another day.
" I'll eat, and go to class. I'll take care of myself just please let me go back with Joel without a fight." I said pleading over to him with my eyes. Hoping he would help me.
" He'll make sure I eat and drink and take my vitamins. Just please…"
" Molly," Dad said stepping forward. " So far you haven't proved to us you would do any of these things. It seems like every time we let you go, you do something else to provoke action."
I bit my lip, I had no response for that. I did have the tendency to stir up trouble without meaning too. Mostly for myself. But apparently hurting myself was hurting other people, so I had to stop doing that too.
" You can move her Grandmother in with us," Joel said. Everyone turned to look at him. " You guys are practically never home and she needs somewhere to stay. She can have my room, I'll sleep on the couch."
Dad thought about this, while I casually gave Joel my " what the hell are you thinking," face.
" I would suppose. If she agrees. My mother is the most stubborn person I've ever have the pleasure of knowing." Dad said.
" And Molly is the most stubborn person I know. Perhaps the two unmovable objects will come to favorable terms."
Ulquiorra
He wanted to kill Grimmjow. Tear a hole through his flesh and leave him on the ground to bleed to death. But it was not always about what he wanted.
Grimmjow had went to the human world, which wasn't Ulquiorra's concern. Forged a human body, which also wasn't his concern, then confronted Molly. That was where he'd crossed the boundary. Yet Ulquiorra made no move to stop him at the time, just watched though the eyeball on her shoulder her reaction to all of this.
She didn't remember Grimmjow. Like any other time she didn't show the appropriate fear she should have to situations where she was in imminent danger. She'd punched Grimmjow in the face to prove it. But then showed the depth of her kindness and forgiveness by helping him clean his wound.
She'd even went as far as to make a plan with him, saying she'd help him figure out what she'd done to him if he helped her find out who Ulquiorra really was.
What she's done…surely the girl did not understand Grimmjow's way of doing things. He unlike Ulquiorra who was rational and calculating, was animalistic, instinctive. If he wanted something for any reason he went after it, whether it was to kill, keep, mate or feed him. Nothing stopped Grimmjow once he was on the hunt, and Ulquiorra found himself wondering what he wanted Molly for.
It wasn't for love. The idea was ridiculous, Grimmjow understood the notion even less than Ulquiorra did. So it must have been something else.
Grimmjow didn't return so Ulquiorra could question him, and Ulquiorra didn't wonder after his ware bouts to long. He wasn't with Molly.
She was sitting at her kitchen table talking to the old lady from years before. The one she called Grandmother. Discussing the plans for Molly. She hadn't told them about Grimmjow, and Ulquiorra guessed she never would. She would let them go on believing she was starving herself for whatever reason. Really he did not understand the girl. Why not let go of the past and move on with her short pathetic life? To waddle in such pain is what would cause her to become a hollow were she to succeed in one day killing herself.
He watched her sleep like every other night, watched her cry and whine, whisper his name before she shot up and looked around the darkness. " Ulquiorra." She whispered. Her hands searched the covers in the darkness then ran over his arms up to her own shoulders.
Her fingers brushed the hardness of his eyeball before stopping. Her eyes widened and she took the eyeball in her hand.
She should not have been able to see it, nor feel it. The eyeball should have been invisible to both of those senses, yet here she was. She lifted it in the darkness rolling it around between her fingertips, slitting both eyes to get a better look before jumping up and turning on her light.
Ulquiorra watched in calculating fascination.
" A ball…" she whispered still rolling it in her palm. " No not a ball, a eye…" Shocked at her own revelation she let it go, it hit the ground rolling, obscuring Ulquiorra's vision until all he saw was the ceiling.
This should not been happening, yet here it was. Wasting no time Ulquiorra opened a portal and stepped through, appearing in the girl's room. She didn't look up, too distracted by the eyeball on the ground.
" Maybe I am crazy," she mumbled to herself bending to pick up the eyeball. " Or maybe I'm not."
He watched her examine it for a few more moments before she perched it back on her shoulder.
He stepped toward her, ready to erase that memory again, then suck out whatever spiritual pressure that had allowed her to see his eye. She didn't see him there, but she froze all the same, looking in every direction, her fingers shivering, knees buckling.
" Ulquiorra…" she whispered again.
He reached out. It would be better for her if he erased her memory again, she would suffer less. His fingertips brushed her forehead lightly, her eyes closed. His calculating mind was at work again. Weighing his odds, determining the best course of action based on formal results and proven conclusions.
Full lips slightly opened, she whispered his name again. His eyes widened. He hated it when she called his name, it made thinking harder, coming to a reasonable conclusion almost impossible. Hearing her say his name made him feel human, for humans relied to much on the power of names and the strength it gave them, and he was far from human.
" I can help save you…" she said.
There would be no saving him now. He was doomed. All hollows were doomed from the moment they were born.
" There is no saving me girl," he said, knowing full well she could not hear him. Yet he longed to argue with her, like before. To tell her she was wrong to feel those useless emotions, to worry about someone who was already damned.
Did she not realize that even now he was eating her despair, thriving on her loneliness, drinking her regret. For these were the things that made him, from the moment he allowed himself to fall into that void of nothingness he knew there would be no saving for him. What right did she have to offer saving when she couldn't even save herself.
He would do her his favor and erase her memory again.
He would.
He would.
But the power never left him, instead he let his fingertips move down her forehead, over the soft sockets of her eyes, to the curve of nose, then down past her sunken cheeks to the fullness of lips. He could suck her very soul from that mouth, past those lips to feed himself. Then he would be able to contain her for as long as he lived, then she wouldn't have to suffer.
And he wouldn't have to watch.
His fingertips moved down to where her heart supposedly was. From where he stood he could hear it beating heavy and strong, a polar opposite to her weak, frail body. That organ refused to give up no matter what she insisted on putting it though.
He was a hollow after all, and what other purpose did he have besides living off the negative feelings of the living?
He let his fingertips retrace their path back to her forehead.
" Ulqui-"
Silence.
He expelled his power then, and she crumbled. He grabbed both her arms and lifted her up, caring nothing at the moment for gentleness. He expelled her onto the bed and turned to his still opened portal.
He would chart what her next move would be when she awoke, see if she was as powerful as she claimed to be, powerful enough to save him. Through he knew it was an impossible task, he still wanted to see it. For what he couldn't see, did not exist, and claims meant nothing to him.
He gave the "Girl that would save him" one last stoic look before the portal closed and he was transferred back to his solitary quarters in Hueco Mundo.
Please tell me what you think.
Peace until later.
