THIS IS NOT A TWOSHOT!!! IT WILL BE CONTINUED! CHECK THE STATUS OF THE STORY, PEOPLE!
Zaera was a quiet infant. He didn't do much. I mean, when you're that little thing, like a little burrito all wrapped up in blankets and a hat and gloves and booties, it's pretty hard for you to do anything. Of course, exceptions include sleeping, crying, eating, and shitting. But Zaera hardly ever cried. Except for when he was hurting. But then again, all babies cry when they're in pain, so I assume he wasn't that different.
I would watch him every day, from the time we woke up to the time he drifted off to sleep about twelve hours later. When he wasn't doing anything, I would do something else, like train so that I could be a stronger Arrancar. I would bring him with me to the training grounds, place him in his little cradle off to the side where he wouldn't get hurt, and I would train. And every single moment I was doing that, I could feel his citrine eyes burning into my back. Watching me. Always watching.
When Zaera was six months old, he learned how to roll. When he was around eight months, he started to crawl. Then, when he was a bit older than one, he began to walk. Little baby steps, at first. And then more. And more. Until pretty soon he was mobile enough to get around from place to place.
He was advanced for his age. Even I knew that much. I knew he was going to be smarter and stronger than me, and I didn't resent that. As long as he grew up happily.
He talked only when he had to, but his grammar and pronunciation was perfect. Well, as perfect as you can get in Baby Speak. But it wasn't until Zaera was three or four years old that things started to get interesting.
I had taken him out to see the real world. At that point, I was one of Grimmjow Jeagerjacques Fraccions, and I could go and depart to and from the real world as I pleased, since my reiatsu wasn't yet big enough to alarm anybody.
I brought him with me one day when he was three and a half. We watched the people walking in the park. There were several people in the park that day. There was a young couple, holding hands and kissing underneath a cherry tree whose pale pink blossoms drifted down around them. There was an older couple, cracking watermelon seeds with golden teeth and scattering the husks to chattering pigeons. And a family.
The family was made of a mother, a short, slender woman with strawberry blonde hair and fair skin, who was sitting on a white and red checkered blanket, tending to two babies, smiling down at them indulgently and ruffling their hair. A father, tall, dark-haired, and semi-muscular, was playing with a little boy of around six or seven, and roaring with laughter. The little boy, with orange hair ruffled up into little, soft spikes, with fair skin and laughing brown eyes, playing catch with his father on the grass. And the two babies, both fair-skinned, one with dark hair, one with blonde hair, gurgling away in their little cradles.
Zaera and I looked at the happy family in silence, and presently, he asked me, "Are we a family, Brother?"
"Of course we are, Zaera. We've always been a family."
"Why isn't our family like theirs, then?" His short index finger pointed to the happy family in the park.
"Because, Zaera, we're not like them."
"Why not?"
"It's only you and me. That's all."
"Did we ever used to have a family like theirs?"
I decided to tell him the truth. There was no point in lying to him. Besides, I was worth shit at lying. Especially to Zaera.
"Yes, we did. We used to have a mommy. That strawberry blonde lady is a mommy. And we used to have a daddy too. That tall man is a daddy. We just don't know who our daddy is. It doesn't matter, though."
"What happened to Mommy, then?"
"She went to sleep and she never woke up."
Zaera wasn't old enough to understand what death was. But I think he got the gist of it.
"Did Mommy love you?"
"She did."
"Did Mommy love me?"
I hesitated. And I knew that he knew that the answer would have been no. Our mother had wanted to abort Zaera. It hadn't worked, he'd been born anyway, and she'd died after she gave birth to him.
There were tears welling up in his amber eyes. I hated it when he cried.
"Zaera, don't cry. Okay? Don't cry. It's alright now. I'll be your mommy if you want."
"B-but...y-you're not a girl."
"That's okay. Mommies don't always have to be girls. They just have to be people who love you and watch out for you. That's all mommies are, really. And you've got me, don't you?"
He sniffled a little bit, but didn't let the tears fall. "O-okay..."
And we returned to Las Noches. Needless to say, Zaera was content for a while after that. Of course, I was stupid. There were still feelings under his skin. Feelings that he didn't show, or tell, me. Or anyone else.
Those feelings, feelings of unwant, of despair, of anguish, began to fester inside him. They grew bigger and bigger and bigger as he got older. Of course, I was not aware of these feelings. He was good at hiding those feelings.
Well, alright. I began to suspect something when he was around six or seven. He had these "habits". If there was a chair pushed out at a table, he would push it in. If the place settings were wrong, he'd change them so they were right. I guess you could call it perfectionism. And I didn't think it was normal. Because when I was six or seven, I didn't give a crap whether the soup spoon was next to the salad fork or whatever. Zaera did.
It wasn't until Zaera was a teenager that I learned why he was like that. And by that point, it may have already been too late to convince him otherwise.