Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach, or any of its characters. Tite Kubo does. This story, however, is mine.
Torn
Chapter 20: Settling In
"Wait, you actually found an apartment for us to live in, Shiro?"
The Hollow scoffed as he climbed to the top of the staircase.
"Of course I did, Grimmjow; where did you think I was taking you guys? And stop calling me 'Shiro', damn it! That's not my name!"
"It is according to your official ID," Ulquiorra volunteered with the slightest of smirks, and Hichigo snarled.
"I'm going to track down that hat-and-sandal wearing bastard, and I am going to make him feel pain…"
"Let's worry about getting dinner before we go off on any vendettas," Grimmjow said. "I'm starving."
Dinner was procured and devoured in short order, and the group of exiles began adjusting to what life would be like here in the Human World.
"I'm glad we still have two weeks before school starts up again," Jaegerjaques spoke with a sigh as he sprawled out on the couch. "My arm's still mending in two places after my fight back in Soul Society."
"At least you have both arms," Schiffer groused from his armchair while he wrestled with a Rubik's Cube. "A chunk of my shoulder still needs to finish growing back from where that bastard Mayuri melted it off."
"Bah, you guys're a bunch of whiners," Hichigo broke in as he collapsed onto a beanbag chair.
"Easy for you to say, jackass," Grimmjow shot back. "Someone had already healed your wounds when I saw you before we escaped."
The Hollow and the Arrancar got into a fierce staring contest, and the silence in the room was only broken by a sudden knock on the door.
"Yo," Ichigo's voice called out, "can I come in?"
"No," Jaegerjaques called back, and a chuckle floated from the other side of the door.
"I brought groceries with me…"
Three seconds later, a smiling Grimmjow was opening the door.
"Well, why didn'tcha say so?" he asked, in a tone that managed to be cheerful and creepy at the same time. As soon as Ichigo had taken a step forward, Hichigo appeared in front of him with a flash, snatched the bags of groceries and Grimmjow promptly slammed the door in Kurosaki's face.
"Nicely done," the blue-eyed Espada said to the pale Hollow with a smirk, their previous argument forgotten as if it had never happened. Neliel rolled her eyes and disappeared with a buzz of sonido, reappearing right by the door as soon as the two hyenas had backed away and opening it up again.
"Thank you, Nel," Ichigo said pleasantly, before fixing Hichigo and Grimmjow with a withering glare that was promptly laughed off. "It's nice to know someone here is at least civilized. I also brought you guys these," Kurosaki finished, holding up four letters. "Your schedules for the upcoming term."
"Please excuse me while I overflow with joy and eagerness," Ulquiorra quipped dryly, and everyone stopped to look at him. Noticing the shift in attention, Schiffer raised an eyebrow.
"What?"
Everyone was still slightly shocked from the fact that Ulquiorra had just made a joke, but they shrugged it off and continued as if Ichigo had never been interrupted.
"Doesn't look too bad, actually," Hichigo commented as he looked over his classes. "This could be—wait a minute…" he qualified, as his yellow eyes scanned over the name of his homeroom teacher. "Oh, you've gotta be kidding…"
"What's up?" Grimmjow asked with a growl, pissed that he was in an Art class. If this was Ichigo's idea of a joke, he was going to break the carrot top's jaw in ten places.
"My homeroom teacher is Kaien Shiba. What the fuck is he doing here?"
A quick check by the rest of the crew revealed that they were all in the same homeroom, and that homeroom was under the watchful eye of Kaien Shiba while the regular teacher, Misato Ochi, was on sabbatical.
"Well, that's awesome," Grimmjow said as his frown deepened and darkened. "The last thing I want is to have to worry about being purified by a zanpakuto during a math test. This is bullshit."
"I'm sure it'll be fine," Ichigo insisted, before having to sidestep a bala that had been shot at his head. "Something tells me the Soul Reapers here will see us more as allies than as enemies, when push comes to shove. After all, we aren't allied with Aizen anymore, and they're gonna need all the help they can get."
Before anyone could argue the point any further, there was another knock on the door and a voice called out from the other side of the barrier that the pizza had arrived.
Ichigo bowed out of the meal early, claiming that he had to go continue his argument with Rukia over her moving out of his bed and back into his closet. Hichigo made a snide comment about the real reason Kurosaki wanted to stay separated from Kuchiki, which was cheered by Grimmjow and fervently denied by Ichigo as he walked out the door, face red. Conversation was sparse throughout the rest of the meal, and soon enough it was time to call it a night.
"Grimmjow'n I call that room," Hichigo announced as he pointed of to one of the two bedrooms, nursing the end of a beer. "You two can have that other one," the Hollow finished, addressing Ulquiorra and Nel with a slightly sly edge to his voice. Schiffer shot him a sidelong glance and the pale Hollow just smirked, vanishing with a flash.
Late that night, the former Fourth Espada woke up and felt that something was off. Looking over he saw that Neliel's bed was empty, and the soft noise of the television could be heard floating over from the main room. Sighing, Ulquiorra got out of bed and shuffled out of the room, grabbing his Rubik's Cube on the way. Sure enough, the soft light of the TV illuminated an otherwise dark room, and a head of green hair was just visible over the back of the couch. Walking over, Schiffer sat down next to Neliel, who seemed to make a point of ignoring everything outside of what she was watching.
"Couldn't sleep?"
She shook her head shortly, but made no other gestures and wrote nothing down in her notebook. Sighing in barely-controlled frustration, Ulquiorra began to struggle once again with the diabolic Cube that just refused to be solved. After a few moments of silence between the two, broken only by the grinding of the puzzle and the occasional burst of noise from the TV, Ulquiorra felt pressure on his shoulder. Looking over, he saw that Nel was tapping insistently on his shoulder and pointing at the Cube.
"You think you can solve it?" he asked, his tone clipped with frustration. "It's impossible; don't waste your time."
Neliel rolled her eyes, exasperated, and beckoned with her free hand for the puzzle. Schiffer realized he had an opening, and locked eyes with his companion.
"I'll let you have this," he said, "but in exchange I want to know what's bothering you."
The green-haired Arrancar seemed to be weighing her options for a moment, torn between not wanting to talk about whatever was eating at her and wanting to stop Ulquiorra from struggling with the Cube and making so much noise. After a few heartbeats, Neliel sighed and snatched the puzzle from Schiffer's hands, looking at it in the dim light of the television and planning out how to solve it in her head. After a few moments she began to twist and turn its sections decisively, finishing in a minute what Ulquiorra had been struggling with for hours. She handed the completed puzzle back to him and smiled at the look of astonishment on his face, before the look faded as his green eyes locked on her pale golden ones.
"So?" he asked expectantly, and Nel sighed as she pulled out her notebook and scratched out something almost angrily before handing it to Ulquiorra.
Nightmares.
Schiffer read the word a few times before looking up and regarding Neliel with a raised eyebrow.
"And you are ashamed of these nightmares?"
Nel took the notebook back and scribbled out a sentence, before half-shoving it back into Ulquiorra's hands.
Who wouldn't be? This fear is a sign of weakness.
The green-eyed Espada sighed, trying to form words to express something that resided in the core of his being.
"This has nothing to do with weakness, Neliel," he began. "I should know; nightmares are as much a part of me as breathing in and out. Do you know why the ability of my resurrecion is so lethal?"
The female Arrancar shook her head, and Ulquiorra continued.
"Because when those who I have struck are confronted with their worst nightmare, they are presented with a choice. On one hand, they can crumble and give in, letting their fear swallow them whole and drive their mind and soul into madness and destruction.
"On the other hand, they can try to fight it, to overcome their fear and break out of my Pesadilla's hold. There is only one person I have ever seen who had the strength to potentially break that hold, Nel. Do you know who that was?"
She gave Ulquiorra a questioning glance, and he just raised a single, elegant forefinger to point at her.
"You, Neliel. And don't scoff at me like that, it's unbecoming."
The green-haired Arrancar scribbled down a sentence in her notebook and passed it to him.
That strength broke with my zanpakuto.
"No, it didn't," Ulquiorra parried. "You told me in that letter you wrote me right before Nnoitra attacked you that I had the strength necessary to carve out my own path, remember? To choose a fate different from the one that Aizen would have handed down to me like a dog begging for scraps at the table?
"You have that same strength within you, Neliel," he finished, putting one hand over her heart. "I can feel it. So why are you letting this phantom memory of someone I killed destroy you? Promise me you'll move on, and I'll help you in whatever way I can."
The female Arrancar was silent for several moments, her eyes unreadable as she seemed to struggle with herself over what to do. Ulquiorra didn't so much as twitch, waiting with perfect stillness and feeling the increasingly rapid beating of Nel's heart as the moments passed. Suddenly it was like a stone rolled off of her heart and the Espada's mouth curled up into a small, but radiant smile as she leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss against Ulquiorra's lips, breaking apart before he had the chance to reciprocate.
Schiffer did not give a smile of his own, but his eyes softened in a way they hadn't since he'd become an Arrancar. Turning off the television, he took Neliel into his arms and laid down on the couch, holding her against him protectively and resting his chin on her shoulder as his eyes closed. The green-haired Arrancar sighed contentedly as she let herself drift off to a sleep she knew would be free of nightmares, opening her mouth one last time before consciousness was lost to her completely and speaking a single phrase.
"Thank you."
Ulquiorra said nothing, but the corners of his mouth twitched up the tiniest bit.
A/N: Yeah, so the High School bits didn't start exactly with this chapter, but they will next chapter, for sure; I'm going to crunch the rest of the two-week gap down with the help of some handy exposition. Hope you enjoyed this installment nonetheless, however, and as always, please review!