Three weeks later.

Ichigo sat bolt upright in bed. His sheets were soaked through with sweat. His heart pounded and nightmares continued to race through his head.

"Brother?"

Everything stilled. His heartbeat returned to normal and his gaze shifted across the room to the pair asleep on the other bed. Karin rubbed sleep from her eyes. She still slept next to Yuzu despite having the option of another bed. It's how they'd kept each other safe for four years and she wasn't able to break the habit even here.

"Sorry," he whispered. "Go back to sleep."

It took little prompting. Her head hit the pillow and she was out again just as deep asleep as when she'd been a little girl.

It was hard. It was the hardest part about the whole thing: accepting they were grown up. They were young women now. Grimmjow referred to them as kids but Ichigo saw what they'd become. He saw the warrior Karin had learned to be. She'd always been the protector. But Yuzu was just as strong in her own way. Those eyes full of wisdom beyond her years, that had cared for her whole family in her mother's stead since she was just six years old.

He watched them for a long time before drifting again. He always did, he had to prove to himself they were really there, really with him again. That's why he couldn't have a separate room, not yet anyway. He needed the reassurance every night when he came awake.

At sunrise he left them to keep sleeping and joined the busy hub of activity in the main room of the Soul Reaper's base of operations. Rukia passed him a coffee. He savoured the smell as he had every day since his arrival. She smiled, watching him indulge. The cuts on her face from their fight in the woods were all gone now. Her side had closed over nicely, just like his leg. Despite it seeming the universe wanted to throw every possible hurtle at them, they had been lucky after the fire and the shootout. If there hadn't been so much chaos in the city due to the fire and the lightning storm, they might not have been able to limp toward the mountain until Soifon's men found them. If anyone had tried attacking them while they could barely stand, it would have been over.

"Was there new information last night?" he asked, seeing lines under Rukia's eyes, as if she'd been up all night.

"Yes."

"You should have gotten me."

"We're just sifting through the information. It's nothing you can help with yet."

"Well what is it?"

"We don't know for sure. Something down south, just outside Tokyo. Captain Shinji reported some activity on the monitor there."

"Like what?"

"Don't know. A storm maybe. And we got reports a few hours ago about more attacks down there recently."

"By the Vandenreich?"

"Yes, but by the time news like that reaches us up here, it's old. About a week ago."

The soul reapers had done their best to establish a network through long distance radios and spreading themselves out but it was extremely difficult to maintain and very dangerous for those who had to station themselves alone in this dangerous world. It still took significant time for news to travel in one direction or the other.

"Why don't you come back in a few hours? We may have more information put together by then."

"Yeah, okay." He didn't bother arguing because he knew he'd be more of a hindrance as the soul reapers were trained with analysis. He headed up a flight of stairs to get to the balconies. It was the best way to get some fresh air as any other way meant going out past security and then back in again.

He was met with a waft of smoke. Kenpachi was leaned against the rail puffing smoke, Yachiru perched on the dangerous edge, swinging her legs without a care and Toshiro with his arms draped over, staring out on the cold morning.

"Mornin' Kurosaki."

"Hey Kenpachi. Yachiru. Toshiro."

"Ichigo," Toshiro greeted without looking. The little captain had been somber since his return and Soifon's refusal to put him back on active duty. Apparently when he'd gone through his medical exam they'd said his reflexes had been extremely poor and his vision was off. They'd also implied something about his mental state not being fit for a commanding officer. Ichigo hadn't seen evidence of it himself, but Yuzu had told him about the lightning strike and he wondered what sorts of effects that might have had on him. That, or the torture inflicted on him four years ago—torture that had be so severe both he and Yachiru had been mistakenly presumed dead after the last time Kenpachi had seen them.

Now Toshiro was as inseparable from the last of the eleventh division as the lieutenant was to her captain. No one had witnessed the reunion of Kenpachi and Yachiru: she'd gone off alone to find him in his room. But when she'd presented Toshiro to him, everyone had been stunned to watch Zaraki drop to his knees and hug the boy.

None of them had any idea what it must have been like for the three of them in the long days the Vandenreich held them. Toshiro had been the only one to come after them after all, and it had cost him dearly. And now he'd returned with Yachiru alive.

"Have you seen Grimmjow?" he asked when he joined them on the rail.

"Not for a day or so."

"Yeah, that's what I figured."

Grimmjow had taken to disappearing for a day or two at a time. He knew this pillar better than the soul reapers even after four years. There was no denying the size of this pillar. It drove down deep into the earth too, so there were many levels both above and below to explore. It was impossible to find Grimmjow unless they started looking on the sensors for body heat, but they didn't bother as he always came back of his own accord. Ichigo knew Grimmjow still wasn't very comfortable around the Soul reapers.

"I can't believe that bastard found them when we couldn't." Kenpachi commented.

"I don't think he could believe it either, at first. And I know how that feels."

"Yeah I bet you do. How are your sisters doing?"

"Good. Karin's leg is healing well. Yuzu only had minor injuries but..."

"She's traumatized from the Glads," Toshiro finished for him.

"Yeah. She won't even really talk to me about it. Karin says she didn't say much after she got back to you guys."

Toshiro nodded. "Whatever happened is still between her and Grimmjow."

That was almost true. Ichigo had picked up stories the soul reapers had overheard in the city about the final match in the ring. He had a vague picture of what his sister had endured.

He shook himself, unable to dwell on the thoughts too long.

"I'm going to go check on them. See you later."

"Yeah." Kenpachi waved him off. He hurried back to his room, opening the door gently but finding the room empty.

He caught up to Karin was in the medical ward. Hanataro was checking that everything was healing properly in her leg. She said she didn't know where Yuzu was, which meant she knew exactly where she was and there was no point looking for her.

Ichigo gave another long sigh and pretended it didn't bother him that she'd turn to the espada for comfort over him.

"Wow this place is really cool." Yuzu climbed up the last ladder on her long trek through the twisting network of corridors, stairs and ladders to the two open stories before her. She'd come to a large rounded landing that must be right against one wall of the pillar and above it was a half landing, all of it open, sort of like a loft. The ceiling was covered in a strange material that let in light from the outdoors but still looked solid and she could barely see through it. In the upper part of the loft were windows and a she thought she saw an exit to a balcony.

"What are you doing here, Yuzu?" Grimmjow was on the upper level, a bottle in hand. His other hand was in a thick cast the Soul Reapers had made for him.

"I came to see you."

"Okay, let me rephrase, how did you find me?"

"Yachiru followed you yesterday and told me how to get here. Why? Were you hiding?"

He made noise of annoyance and stepped back from the edge and out of her sight.

"No." She caught his grunt from above.

She took another look around the bottom level. There was food in one corner, a table and many old machines that probably didn't function without spiritual pressure. When she ventured up the stairs to the next level, she saw a bed and furnishings.

"Are you going to live here?" she asked when she noted how he seemed set up for a permanent stay.

"Well let's see," he took another swig. "I'm laid up with a dozen half healed injuries, I couldn't fight if I wanted to after Cino slaved me out, I lost all my cash to that bastard and the Vandenreich are thick on the ground. Yeah, looks like I'm sticking around kid, since I ain't got a chance of making it out there now."

He slammed his bottle down on a table rather hard. She stood rooted, not unaccustomed to his bouts of anger, but it had been a while since she'd seen him like this.

"I know..." she tried again. "I meant, are you going to live up here, in this part of the pillar?"

"Oh." He let out a long breath.

"Grimmjow? What is it?"

"Nothing."

"So are you staying here?"

"Yeah."

"Why though? The Soul Reapers gave you a place."

"This is my fucking turf in the first place. Did you know that this came from my world?"

"Yes, Ichigo said."

"So I don't want to live with them. I don't do that sort of thing."

"You mean friends?"

He rolled his eyes and sat heavily on the chair, swinging a leg up onto the table top.

"If I'm stuck in this place, then I'll be stuck on my own terms."

"Okay. I just thought it's kind of lonely."

"I like lonely."

"Oh. Okay then."

She moved back over to the stairs. He let out a long sigh.

"Yuzu."

"Yeah?"

"Can you bring me up another beer?"

She smiled. "Yeah."

She sat down on the other chair after retrieving a can from a cold storage unit on the first level and cracking it open for him.

He drank it back in silence and scratched at his cast. She watched the brightening sky outside. It wasn't even ten am. He'd either started early or he'd been up all night.

"Do you dream about the boy you killed?"

He choked on the beer in his mouth and swallowed it back painfully.

"What kind of question is that?"

"Or do you just have nightmares about all of it? What Cino did to you. What he made you do to others."

"Seriously Yuzu, don't fucking project your issues onto me."

She faltered, but then clenched her jaw and stared him straight on. "If you don't, then everyone who's warned me you're dangerous and heartless is right."

"You know what, fuck you, Yuzu. Is that why you came all the way up here?"

"I came up here because I spent the whole night seeing your face when you decapitated that man—the one who tried to kill me. And then the fact that I have to specify which man you decapitated hits me and I start to wonder who you really are that you can do that to people, not just once, but over and over."

"After everything that happened you're just figuring out that I'm a killer? So what, you're afraid of me now, so you decided to come all the way out here by yourself to confront me alone?"

"No. I'm not afraid of you. I think that's what bothered me all night. I saw what you do to people and it's awful and what I saw that day haunts me all the time. But all I wanted was for you to be okay, for you to come back to the room every day. For you to get us out of that last fight alive. So what's that make me? What's that make you? Are you good? Are you just someone bad who decided to save me? And why? And—"

"Kid!" He'd sat up straight and grabbed her shoulder before she realized her words had gotten all jumbled together, her face flush and her eyes wet. "You wanted to survive. That's basic human instinct, and there's nothing wrong with that. You didn't kill anyone, I did."

"But I wanted you to."

"Of course you did. It was us or them. There is nothing wrong with wanting to live." He sat back from her again. "And you're right. I am a killer. I used to enjoy it, Yuzu. You should be afraid of me."

"Used to?"

"Don't. Don't try to make me into something I'm not Yuzu. Don't try to fucking 'redeem' me." He took another swig that finished the bottle and sat back.

"Who said that?" It didn't seem like a choice of words he'd come up with on his own.

"Doesn't matter. The point is, you're having a hard time and I'm probably the last person you should be around."

"But you aren't. Because you know what happened."

"So that's why you're here."
She shook her head. "No. Because I also know what happened, and most of it happened to you."

She picked up his empty bottle and set it down on the floor with the sizeable collection already there. He watched her deliberate movements.

"Oh," he said finally. "Well I'll be fine."

"I know. I will be too, eventually."

He lifted his eyes to her again then he shoved back his chair. "I'm getting another drink."

He got to the top of the stairs before he heard her breath catch. It had become a familiar sound.

Her hands were over her face, trying to stifle it, but just like always, it had caught her unawares and it was beyond her control: the instant of terror that would wash over her, the ensuing panic, as her nerves and emotions flashed back to the ring even if her mind remained in the present. He returned to her and wrapped his good arm around her back.

"Yuzu, you've got to stop thinking about it."

She couldn't speak. The pain that wracked her was violent and deep and he felt it pouring out of her in every shaking muscles, every hysterical intake of breath.

She just clung back to him all the harder.

He sighed and bent his head into hers, prepared to wait out the storm.

A little bit of recovery time in the next couple chapters, I think they need it!

Thanks for the reviews,

Riza