Can it be true? More than one chapter per year? lol sorry for the long break guys, but I had reasons mmkay? (see my profile for details)

ALSO: looking for someone to help me edit, it's been a while since I've written anything substantial and I need someone to check stuff over for me. Interested?


The phone rang. It echoed loudly in the empty space of his small, bare room, jerking him out of an uneasy sleep. His hand reached towards the cell phone on the bedside table and he drew himself up wearily, back pressed against the cold wall, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Hello?"

Some static. A crackle. "It's me. You checked the news?"

He sat up, immediately alert. "No. Why? What happened?"

"Barragan Luisenbarn is dead."

Blood ran cold. Impossible, he thought, I just saw him yesterday. This means...

"They're getting closer," the voice said, between hisses and crackles. "the attacks on the others prove that much."

His stomach was churning. He knew – he was next. "So you got a plan or what?"

"Workin' on it. Got some people on the inside. Figuring stuff out."

"You better figure it out fast."

"Tch. So yer still as ungrateful as ever, I see."

"And you're still as fucking annoying," he snapped. "Tell me, with this psychopath on my tail what exactly am I gonna do? Sit here and wait to die?"

Silence. A heavy sigh. Then, "Lay low for a while. Go to work, like normal, but keep an eye out. I'll get back to you soon."

"Soon? When the fuck is soon- son of a bitch!" He glared at the phone, squeezing it in his tight grip. "I told you not to hang up on me, motherfucker!"

The urge to hurl the device at the wall was a hard one to crush. Despite the many years, the constant subterfuge and the attempts to mold himself into a person he knew he was not, his base desires and primal instincts stubbornly refused to be tamed. They could change the hair, the eyes, the name, they could put all manner of prosthetic noses on his face and it still wouldn't change him. He knew that now, after all these years, these useless years running like a dog with its tail between its legs. The thought made him sick.

It was an early summer morning and the sun had already emerged, shrouded by a thick layer of cloud. Weak grey light filtered through his thin curtains. He pulled them to the side and looked out at the rain-slicked sidewalks, the grey buildings, the grey sky, people scurrying like ants, mindless. Unbidden, a sneer crawled across his face.

I would crush them all.

His hatred and anger never dulled. He kept them close to him like cherished memories, sharpening them like knives against a grindstone; he knew that in the past, they had been his undoing, his weakness, but in the future he would make sure he used them as weapons. Running away hadn't helped him, he was realizing that now. The only thing it had done was concentrate his rage into a more potent venom, now that he had the time and means to do so. He did not have relationships; he did not make friends. There was no sex, no physical intimacy with men or women. He forced himself to be celibate, to rein in sexual urges in an attempt to control himself and he meditated every day. It had been plain torture at first, his limps cramping and turning numb, his short attention span flickering between the stiffness of his arms and legs to the sweat gathering on his upper lip or at his hairline, and more than once he had almost given up.

But if there was one thing Grimmjow Jaegerjaques did not do, it was give up.

He wrenched both curtains back and rose from his bed. There was next to nothing in this room – a single bed, a small table beside it, a desk and chair, a dresser holding the minimum of clothes in case he had to leave fast and discreetly. No colour, no posters, no mess, no personality. The theme extended throughout the rest of his apartment, which felt no more his home than his local bus stop, monotony broken only by the presence of a large punching bag and weights in the living room where he trained himself into a frothy sweat almost every day. He couldn't afford to be seen at the gym; he couldn't afford to fall into a mindless routine, ever aware of the danger that stalked his footsteps.

Aizen Sousuke had been many things, but careless he was not, and Grimmjow knew that it was not enough to be one step ahead of him: you had to be so far ahead he couldn't even see you. This, however, also presented its own challenges, and while he knew (or hoped) that Aizen thought he was dead, he didn't know how long the illusion would last. His former employer, after all, had been a master of illusion.

Grimmjow looked around at his bare, barren little kingdom and felt the festering bitterness rise like bile in the back of his throat. He had given up so much, and for what? This flat, empty existence. Constantly on the run, constantly dying his hair or shaving it, constantly getting eye infections from forgetting to take out his contact lenses before going to bed. He had escaped his prison in Japan for another one here, but at least in Japan there had been-

An angry huff escaped him and he ran a hand through tangled, greasy hair. No, he couldn't think about that. He forced himself to calm as he headed to the bathroom for his morning routine, counting slowly backwards from ten in German. Then French. But he couldn't bring himself to do it in Japanese, not when two out of those ten words made up the name of the person he had done all of this for.

Ichi – one.

Go – five.

He stood in front of the mirror above the sink, fingers tightening on white porcelain. He had filled out since those teenage years, gained muscle and bulk and power as he kept himself fit. His hair, now dyed a jet black, was longer and showing baby blue at the roots. In this character as Leon Muller, everything from the color of his eyes down to the brand of his shoes was dull and ordinary and the identity chafed him, like he was constantly wearing shoes the wrong size. He hated being ordinary, had never known how much he had liked his own name, how much it fit him more than any other – spiky, difficult to pronounce, annoying to spell in any language. Although it had been a source of discontent from an early age the moment he'd heard his own name, for the first time, slip through Kurosaki Ichigo's sleepy mumblings that night long ago he had never hated it.

The thought of Ichigo made his chest tighten. He wondered how the idiot was doing, if he had forgotten Grimmjow and moved on, gotten a cute girlfriend or a job he wanted, living out his life in safe, stable normality like Grimmjow had wished him to.

He hoped not.

It was selfish of him, he knew that. He pondered over it while he showered, lathering away the dripping black dye from his hair and the cold sweat from his back. He had wanted Ichigo to be safe but more than that, more than anything, he had wanted Ichigo to be his and only his. He still did. Though four, almost five years had passed, whenever he caught sight of orange hair his heart jumped and he felt weak at the knees. Stupidly, he still had a picture of them in his wallet, buried beneath old receipts and bus tickets. He never looked at it, ever, but it was a comfort to know it was there, even though it could have served as his death sentence should it fall into the wrong hands.

Hot water blasted the soapy suds from his face, and he frowned as he thought about the photo. He hadn't checked to see if it was still there in – well, years. It must still be there. It had to be.

Doubt prickled him. He had never checked – what if it wasn't there? In fact, what if it had never been there? What if Kurosaki Ichigo had never existed, if they had never had what they had, if Grimmjow had made it all up? It was ridiculous but his paranoid mind was buzzing as he rinsed himself quickly and slung a towel around his waist, striding quickly to his bedroom and rifling through drawers until he found his ancient leather wallet. It was full to bursting, and as he upended it over his bed dozens of scraps of paper tumbled out. Receipts, bus tickets, a few coins, some bills in various denominations. He checked inside the wallet. Nothing.

Heart beating hard against his ribs he spread the papers out with wet hands, scrabbling madly, looking for a flash of orange. There was no photograph.

Fuck.

He looked under his bed, squinting in the dark. Something dusty, flat, slightly lighter than the pale wood of the floor. Was that-?

Yes!

Grimmjow reached out an arm and slid the mysterious object towards him, carefully trying to avoid scratches or rips. It seemed to have lain there in the dark for a while and he wondered when he could have so carelessly dropped it. He wiped his hands on the towel round his waist and pushed back his wet hair, carefully smoothing away dust and grime. The sound of his drumming heartbeat throbbed in his ears and time seemed to slow down and freeze as he looked down at him, his Ichigo, five years in the past with warm brown eyes and messy orange hair that had never been under control no matter how much Ichigo struggled with it.

He felt like a spear had pierced him through the chest. His hands were shaking. As if on autopilot he stood and walked to his dresser, searching through the drawers until he found an old, tattered shoebox that was almost falling apart. He hadn't dared open this for so long, just as he hadn't dared look at that photograph.

The glass ornament he had gotten for his birthday, a panther tucked into a small circle. A flat stone from the time Ichigo had tried to teach him how to skip rocks. A dried orange maple leaf. Ticket stubs from movies together. A receipt from the time they had gone to an all-you-can-eat hotpot restaurant and eaten so much the servers had actually written 'STOP' on their bill. He couldn't help the tiny smile that pricked at his lips; they had been so full, close to bloated, and had happily floated back home and cuddled on the sofa, barely getting past the opening credits of the film they'd picked before falling asleep.

Happy memories like that were the worst thing. Almost as bad were the memories of their childhood, of tears and crying and relentless anger, but all of that had been forgiven and forgotten. He couldn't imagine how Ichigo had done it, taken those years of hatred and enmity and simply waved them away with smile. But he had. Grimmjow knew he never could have, had their roles been reversed.

I want to see him.

The desire, always present, had been twisting tighter and tighter in his gut for months now. Ever since the first attack, when Coyote Stark had come so close to death that Grimmjow hadn't been able to sleep for days. Not that he particularly cared about the man, though they'd met on numerous occasions: no, Stark acted as a barrier against what was sure to come, against Aizen's ungodly wrath towards those who had betrayed him. Starrk and the others were merely shields, and their deaths mattered to him only in one sense.

It was a deeply selfish thought and Grimmjow found he couldn't care less. He had been running all these years now, and it was still no use. He would be found. They all would.

He would be found, and then he would die, most likely in the most horrific painful way he could imagine. And for what?

If he'd had the power to reverse time, he would have. He would go back and undo everything, the drugs, Aizen, the fights, his mother, hurting Ichigo when they were younger. He would go back and he would have stopped himself from becoming this pitiful, cowardly mess, the exact opposite of everything he wanted to be.

The regret overwhelmed him like a tidal wave, almost taking his breath away. Then, crystal clear, it occurred to him.

What if, instead of the prey, he became the hunter?

Like a stone sinking into a clear, deep pond, the idea resonated deeply within him. It fit him. It felt right. Grimmjow did not sit well being pursued – he was the pursuer. He was the hunter. He always had been, and it had been delusional to pretend otherwise. He knew he had the capacity to kill, just like any other human being, and he also knew that there were few people in the world he would regret killing. Aizen Sousuke was not one of them.

Muscles tensed. He went back to the bathroom, wiped the steam off the mirror. Shocking blue eyes, hair that still clung to the remains of inky black dye. A chin that always jutted out stubbornly in defiance. A mouth that still twisted in a sneer no matter how hard he tried to stamp the habit out. He put his hands on the sink and leaned closer, closer, until his nose was only inches away from the surface. He looked into his own eyes, searching deeply, questing to find depths as yet undiscovered. Now that he knew what he had to do, there could be no more uncertainty.

No more running. No hiding. No changing. No more. He had reached the end of his tether; there was no other way out that he could see. He had tried for so long to chain the animal inside of him, to take away its fangs and claws, but now he saw that he needed it. He knew what he needed to do.