EVERYBODY PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS STORY MAY, NO, WILL TAKE ON A DISTURBING TWIST. IF YOU DON'T LIKE THAT, PLEASE STOP READING!
When he was four or five, Zaera assigned the Hollow Grand Fisher a task: To kill that little boy's mother. I don't know exactly why he did it, but I believe that Zaera hated the fact that he didn't have a mother, particularly a mother that didn't care for him, and so he didn't think that that little boy, whose name I now know is Ichigo Kurosaki, should have had a mother either. Like it was a crime to be happy.
Grand Fisher killed Masaki Kurosaki while she and Ichigo were walking home from Ichigo's karate lesson, using the hallucination of a little girl jumping into the river to trick her into jumping in as well. She never came back up.
Even though Masaki was dead, it still wasn't enough for Zaera. He was still "imperfect."
Truth was, Zaera was perfect. At least, that's what I thought. But he didn't think so. He didn't think he was the least bit perfect.
It had started when he was six or seven. With that OCD-ness, about making sure everything was in its proper place. It got worse as he got older. He was a complete and total perfectionist, even at thirteen, when you're SUPPOSED to be sloppy because you're going through puberty and everything else and don't have time to worry about stuff like that. Apparently, his perfectionism only grew with him. And it got to the point where it was scary. He'd have to have the soup spoon by the salad fork. He'd have to have all the chairs pushed in. He'd have to have all his clothes and books in order, alphabetized or sorted by color. He always put his shoes by the door and never walked inside with them. He never tracked water out of the bathroom after taking a shower because his hair was wet. Everything HAD to be perfect for him.
One day I asked him, "Why are you like this?"
"Why am I like what?" he asked, not looking up from his book.
"Why are you perfect?"
"I'm not."
"...Well, why are you so OCD about little things like if the doorknob's polished or not, then? Or if a chair is pushed out at the table? Why?"
He stopped reading, but his eyes never left the page. Then he said, "Remember, you told me Mom didn't love me?"
"I didn't say -"
"Well, you implied it. Remember that?"
"...Yes...so what?"
"Maybe I wasn't perfect. I'm NOT perfect now. But maybe I was so imperfect THEN, when I was a baby, that she didn't want or love me. Maybe that's why she tried to kill me." The whole story had come out one night when he had been nagging at me and when I had been dead tired. So I'd decided to appease him. And...maybe that wasn't exactly the best thing to do.
"No, that's not true. How could you have been imperfect, Zaera?"
"I don't know. Maybe I kicked too much, hiccuped too much, moved too much, something like that!" He was frustrated, and I knew it was because he knew that I had no answers to give him. And that hurt.
So I comforted him the only way I knew how.
"Zaera, nobody's perfect, okay? Besides," I said, "you were, and are, perfect enough for me to care about you." And with that, I left him sitting in the chair, his book dangling from his hands.
I don't know if that helped him or harmed him. But it got worse.
I noticed that he wasn't eating at meal times, or, in fact, any time of the day at all. I thought, Alright, it's just a phase he's going through. He'll get out of it soon enough, and everything will be back to normal. It wasn't like that. He became anorexic. Finally, one day, I confronted him about it. Normally, I didn't do that. I let him have his space, his privacy. But this was too big of an issue for me to ignore.
"Zaera," I said to him as he came out of the shower one night. "Why haven't you been eating?"
He shrugged. "I'm not hungry."
"Zaera, don't lie. Everybody has to eat. Why are you starving yourself?"
He shrugged. And I knew then what it was: that godawful perfectionism he'd developed.
"Zaera." It was really hard not to shout at him then. "I know why. You think you're overweight. You think that's why she tried to kill you. Because you ate too much or some other shit you made up."
"That's not -"
I couldn't help it. I snapped then. And, looking back now, maybe I shouldn't have. Maybe I should have just let himself starve himself to death. Because when I snapped, I set off something that was so wrong and twisted that there was nothing that could ever feel right again. For either of us.
"Don't lie to me, Zaera! I'm sick and tired of you trying to lie to me!" I grabbed his wrist, and he winced. He winced. Now, I wasn't even gripping hard or anything. But I knew there was something else he was hiding. I pulled up the sleeve of his nightshirt, and I found scars. And God...I was so freaking angry, there's no words to describe it.
"You've been CUTTING YOURSELF?!" I snarled at him, glaring, so that his reddish-orange eyes clashed with my dark brown ones.
"So what?" he snapped back. "Not like you'd care!"
"What do you mean, 'not like you'd care'?! I'm the only person who CARES ABOUT YOU, in case you hadn't noticed!"
"So what? It's not hurting me. I'm not dead."
"You may not be dead, Zaera, but that doesn't make it right!" I hissed.
"It makes me feel good," he challenged. And God...maybe it was that, the 'It makes me feel good' that helped drive our sibling relationship with each other down the drain, only to be replaced by a newer, twisted, sicker one.
"Goddamnit, Zaera, you can't cut yourself because it makes you feel good."
"Why not?"
"Because that's not normal, okay? You're not supposed to do that! You're supposed to feel good like, when you're in LOVE or some other sappy thing like that!"
"...Love?"
"Yes, love."
"What is that?"
I didn't really know how to explain it to him, so I just borrowed a few books from Ulquiorra (seriously. That guy is NOT the type of guy you'd think would have several books on love.) and lent them to Zaera to read. And a few weeks later was when everything started going downhill.
"That's good, Zaera," I commented one night after dinner.
"What is?" he asked, looking over at me.
"You're eating again. And you've stopped cutting yourself."
"So what?"
"That's good."
The next few minutes were spent in silence, and I could see he was struggling to put words together.
"What is it, Zaera?"
"IknowthissoundsreallyweirdandeverythingbutIloveyou."
"Er...repeat?"
He sighed and rubbed his temples.
"I love you."
"Are you feeling alright, Zaera?"
"Yes...why?"
"Why did you say that just now?"
"Because," he said, his voice almost a whisper, "it makes me feel good."
He stood up at that point and kissed me. On the lips. I had no freaking idea what to do. Because, in all honesty, I really was shocked that Zaera was actually opening up.
Then he pulled away. And that was it. He left me standing there in shocked silence, but before he closed his bedroom door, he turned and said, with a little smile, "I love you, Brother."
I said the only thing I could think of, "I love you too, Zaera."
I didn't tell him that love was supposed to be between a guy and a girl. Heck, here in Las Noches, it didn't matter. Because, frankly, it was pretty damn obvious that Ulquiorra and Grimmjow had deep attractions for each other. Unless all those nights with weird noises coming from one or the other's bedrooms was anything to judge by...
I didn't tell him that love between siblings was different than love between lovers.
I didn't tell him that brothers weren't supposed to kiss like that. That brothers weren't supposed to be in a relationship.
I hid a lot of things about love from him.
Because, frankly, even though it was sick and twisted and wrong, if it made Zaera stop cutting, stop starving himself, if it made Zaera just feel good, then that was a good enough reason for me.