Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach, or any of its characters. Tite Kubo does. This story, however, is mine.

Torn

Chapter 23: Rapunzel

Shiro, Ichigo's recently liberated Hollow counterpart, was not amused. In fact, his mood was inching from simply perturbed to closer and closer to murderous as attempt after attempt to steal Orihime's drawing notebook was foiled. From Tatsuki blindsiding him with a brutal left hook for "looking at Orihime funny" to the auburn-haired girl's annoying habit of never letting the damn sketch pad out of her sight, it was like the fates were actively conspiring against him. Finally seeing his chance to strike as Inoue split off from her tomboyish friend and began to walk home, the Hollow began to tail the girl whose bizarrely two-faced nature had crawled under his skin and begun to fester.

After a few blocks of steadily increasing his pace, Shiro was almost walking abreast of Inoue and had managed to avoid detection. Fed up with all of the pussyfooting around, the Hollow slid over next to Orihime and, using the moment she recognized him to his advantage, hooked his leg around hers and tripped the auburn-haired girl up completely. Her backpack was open far enough for him to see the prized spiral-bound book and he reached out to grab it, realizing too late that as Inoue fell towards the ground, the backpack moved with her. Barely biting back a curse, Shiro snaked his other arm quickly around Orihime's abdomen and used his weight to stop her fall.

Which had the unforeseen consequence of giving the Hollow a rapid spike in his heart rate as he felt Inoue press back against him hard: suddenly her jugular was so close to his face that Shiro could see her pulse racing beneath her skin as it flushed from the unexpected contact. It was the sort of primal contact that spoke to every instinct a Hollow embodied, and it took all of his willpower to keep from doing unspeakable things to her in the alley ten feet away from them.

"Sorry," he grit out as they broke away, before pausing to register the fact that he had just fucking apologized. To Orihime.

Fortunately, the human girl got over her shock quickly enough for her spastic reflexes to kick in before it got any more awkward.

"Oh, don't worry about it, Shiro-kun!" she effused, and the Hollow's yellow and black eyes narrowed as he clenched one of his hands into a fist hard enough to draw dark blood out from underneath the skin. It seemed as though karma finally felt like paying Shiro back, because Orihime was oblivious to all of this.

"It was my fault," she began, using the hectic, pitter-patter tone she was so well known for and the one that made the Hollow want to butcher a puppy. "I wasn't looking where I was going, and I must have tripped by accident… that was foolish of me, heh heh… thank you for helping me up, Shiro-kun!" she finished with what she obviously thought would be a placating smile, but wound up doing the exact opposite as Shiro's temper flared up at being addressed so patronizingly. A bala formed instinctively in his hand, but he kept it reined in as he regarded Inoue with a gaze focused enough to cut through diamond.

"Two things, woman," the albino doppelganger of Ichigo said gutturally. His voice seemed to reach out and grab her by the throat while his actual hand raised the bala up in a very pointed threat. "One. I don't care who you are; if you call me that nickname ever again I'm going to rip your vocal chords out. Two. Drop the fucking act already; it's giving me a goddamn migraine."

"I'm sorry?" Orihime parried, and Shiro was glad to her some spine in her voice. Apparently the princess was less than pleased about her cover being blown. Deciding to milk his dominant position for all it was worth, the Hollow diffused the bala and began to walk towards Inoue with a predatory confidence in his steps. To her credit, the girl didn't budge.

"I said, drop the act," he repeated, coming to within arm's length of Orihime and placing a pair of white fingertips over her heart with no concern for what his fingers happened to be resting on.

"You and I both know you're full of shit, woman, and the stink pisses me off. There's only one thing I despise more than someone like Ichigo, who won't acknowledge what they are," Shiro hissed venomously, his voice low but raw, "and that's someone who knows full well what they are and hides anyway because they're a fucking coward!"

For once, the gaze in Orihime's eyes did credit to their steely, gray color.

"If you don't want to lose those fingers," she shot back in a tone that almost impressed the Hollow, "I suggest you move them, and do it now."

"Now give me one reason why I should do that," Shiro all but purred with arrogance as his fingers slid up from her chest to rest lightly against Orihime's cheek, "when I finally got a glimpse of your true face, Orihime Inoue?"

The Hollow saw the move coming as plain as day, but he let it play out anyway. It would no doubt force Inoue to show a little more of her true colors, after all, and that was the whole point. Orihime's hand shot up and grabbed Shiro's wrist in a basic hold, twisting it and using her own body along with the leverage to flip the Hollow over and put him on the pavement.

But rather than be upset, Shiro's yellow eyes shined with mirth and he laughed.

"That's what I'm talking about!"

When the half-jeering voice sunk into the auburn-haired girl's head, her demeanor changed completely as she realized that she'd just waltzed right into the Hollow's trap. Releasing the hold limply, she backed away and brushed some imaginary dirt off of her skirt before smoothing it again and giving the prone Shiro a searching look.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked, and the pair of piercing yellow eyes stayed focused lazily on the clouds as the Holllow replied.

"I already told you that, woman. You need to stop pretending to be someone you're not."

"Why do you even fucking care!?"

The outburst caught both of them by surprise, especially as it was coming from Orihime, but she had opened the floodgates and now there was no going back.

"Before you go criticizing me, Hollow, why don't you take a good look in a mirror? You think you're your own person, but you aren't! You're just Kurosaki's rejected emotions put inside a body! You're nothing," she finished in a low, sinister voice that seemed to come from somewhere else entirely.

This time Shiro was more than a little unnerved, and it took him a moment to wonder what the hell he had just unleashed before he realized that he was alone. Orihime did her best to keep in the tears of frustration as she hastened away down the street: she was sickened not only by how grossly she'd just been manipulated, but also by the fact that some traitorous part of her body had responded to Shiro's ministrations, and gladly so. As her pulse continued to race and her head felt alarmingly light, Inoue focused intently on the simple task of getting home as quickly as possible and broke into a run.

The Hollow felt something lurch deep in the pit of his stomach as he lay face-up on the pavement, wanting to deny the impact that Orihime's words had had on him but unable to delude himself for long. Hollows were coldly rational beings, a mindset born from a lifetime of predation, and something as sickeningly human as denial had no place in their psyche. To Shiro's immense consternation, he forced himself to accept something he had been hoping he wouldn't have to grapple with since after his defeat at the hands of Zaraki Kenpachi:

The bitch was right.

Orihime collapsed onto her bed with a weary sigh after tossing her backpack onto the floor, incredibly grateful that neither Soi Fon nor Renji were in her house at the moment. She pressed her hands to her forehead and closed her eyes tightly in a vain attempt to calm her turbulent thoughts; when that didn't work, Inoue got sharply to her feet and began to pace back and forth.

What was wrong with her? Usually, when Tatsuki tried to get her to 'break out of her shell', as her friend had put it, she could just say that she had too much work to do to go out. Tatsuki would always respect her refusal, and that was perfect because she was the only person who had ever really bothered to look beneath the surface and see who Inoue really was.

Until ten minutes ago, that is. And of all the people to rip away her armor, it had been the last one she ever could have anticipated. Even worse, she couldn't get the pale, yellow-and-black eyed Hollow out of her head. The memory of Shiro's surprisingly light touch against her cheek made her shudder, and not in revulsion. It was a reaction she couldn't make sense of at all, and that scared her. Was it because he reminded her of Ichigo?

No, the ruthlessly honest part of her personality broke in, it was exactly because he didn't remind her of Ichigo. Where Ichigo was shy, or reserved around her, Shiro had been bold and assertive. He had seen something he'd wanted and he'd struck, simple as that. And something nestled deep inside of her had reared its head after years of lying dormant, bringing with it a torrent of confusing emotions. She wanted people to treat her like more than a fragile piece of glass, but all they ever saw her as was weak.

"And whose fault is that, woman?"

Inoue's head snapped up sharply at the unexpected retort, finding herself eye-to-eye with the black-and-red clad sprite known as Tsubaki.

"Who decided to curl up into a ball and cower once her brother died?" he pressed, not giving his mistress a chance to weasel her way out of this. "Who let herself be seen as weak, someone that needed protection more than anything? Someone who couldn't act for herself? That was all you, woman, and no one else. You want to blame someone, maybe you should take your own damn advice and look in a mirror!"

"Shut up," Orihime spat back in a weak growl, the hesitancy of which made her want to vomit.

"Deny all you want, woman," Tsubaki said in a parting shot as he began to fade away, "but you know I'm right, and the sooner you realize where the blame really lies here, the happier you'll be. You want things to change, then do something about them."

Now even more confused than she had been before, Inoue began to do the only thing her instincts ever told her to do anymore.

She cowered. She sat on the edge of her bed and hugged her arms to her chest, feeling hopeless and pathetic. Ever since the disaster in Soul Society when Kurosaki had abandoned her, nothing had been the same. Casting a glance around her room in desperation, gray eyes wide, Inoue's gaze came to rest on her backpack. More specifically, on the sketchbook that was poking invitingly out at her.

Getting up with a slight tremble, the auburn-haired girl walked over to her backpack and withdrew the book, gently flipping through the leaves of paper until she came to the illustration she had drawn first that day in class, before thinking better of it. It was a drawing of her when she had been younger, playing a game of shogi with her brother. She would always claim that she'd win the next time after he routinely beat her, but Orihime hadn't had the chance to prove him wrong. Sora had always known what to tell her in those moments where she hadn't know what to do: what would he tell her now?

"Nee-chan," Inoue could hear his light, almost teasing voice say, "don't be ridiculous. What you need to do is go give this punk a taste of his own medicine."

Smiling sadly, she closed the notebook and put it down slowly before rising, her melancholy expression shifting into a victorious, almost devious grin as a plan took shape in her mind.

It had been a few minutes before he'd gotten up off of the pavement and had begun to trudge back towards the apartment he called home here in the Human World. Contrary to Shiro's expectations, however, this walk had done nothing to help clear his head after that woman… after Orihime's surprising tongue-lashing. Rather, it was doing the exact opposite: the more he felt her words bouncing around in his head, the more he wanted to eviscerate something. The boundless rage and rancor that were his birthright surged through Shiro's blood, and he didn't care if he was proving that bitch right after all… the next person who crossed his path was going to get their shit ruined.

As if on some perverse cue, the Hollow felt something cold and metallic press into the back of his head not a second later.

"Give me your cash," a stone-cold voice hissed out while a hammer clicked back sharply into position, "or your brains hit the pavement."

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy than this one, Shiro thought with a wicked smirk. Pausing only long enough to take in a breath, the Hollow reached up with blinding speed and grabbed the would-be mugger's wrist hard enough to shatter the bones instantly. Shiro barely heard the gun clatter to the pavement as he executed a half-turn, the torque causing the mugger to lose his footing and fall hard to the ground. His fist clenched without a second thought, and he completed the turn before bringing a punch down with enough force behind it to crack the punk's head in two.

But then he froze, yellow eyes wide as he came face-to-face with a kid only a year or two younger than Ichigo.

"Please, man, don't do it," he pleaded, extending his free hand in a gesture of supplication. "I'm sorry, all right? I just need some money to pay for my mom's meds…"

The kid's excuse was the furthest thing from Shiro's mind in that moment. The only voices he was hearing as he held the brat's life in his hand were those of Zaraki and Orihime.

Strip away that anger, and what are you?

You're nothing.

Nothing, huh?

Fuck that. He'd show all of those bastards.

"If you need to make some money, kid," the Hollow growled as he let the mugger's wrist go with a shove and rose to his feet, "sell that fucking pea-shooter of yours. It's not like you know how to use the damn thing, anyway."

Not even waiting around for the profuse thanks that the kid was probably giving him at the moment, Shiro unclenched his fist and decided to speed up his journey home by disappearing with a buzz of sonido.

As the Hollow was lounging on the couch in the main room of the apartment and drinking yet another beer, Shiro tried unsuccessfully to sort exactly how he felt in the wake of being merciful. It went against everything his instincts had screamed at him, as if he'd decided that black was white and that up was, in fact, down. But the longer he thought about it, the clearer and clearer it became to Shiro that none of that mattered, for one simple reason:

He had made a conscious choice that had run counter to his primal, Hollow way of thinking. He had proven to himself that he was more than just anger and rage and bloodlust, and even if Orihime hadn't been there to see it he would still rub it in her face that next time they met.

The doorbell rang just as Shiro finished the bottle and set it down on the floor, causing the Hollow to raise a white eyebrow in surprise. His fellow exiles all had keys of their own, so who could that be? If it was the weird lady from down the hall with the cat who was always getting lost, he was going to be pissed. Why Grimmjow hadn't just knifed her the last time she'd come around whining, Shiro would never know. Too distracted to look through the eyehole and see who it was the Hollow just pulled the door open, using so much strength he almost yanked it off of its hinges.

"Yeah…?" he began, but his voice trailed off and his eyes widened slowly but surely as the Hollow took in the sight in front of him.

And what a sight it was. Orihime had ditched her school uniform, choosing instead to wear form-fitting blue jeans and a magenta tank top. This outfit, coupled with the sinuous pose she had assumed by leaning against the doorframe, was enough to make Shiro's mouth go bone-dry. He immediately regretted his decision to drink so many beers, because the alcohol had chipped away at his self-control and the Hollow was pretty sure he was staring at her like a complete idiot. The smile that spread across the girl's face just then was decidedly predatory, and Shiro had to fight to repress a shiver as she stepped closer to him, oozing serpentine grace.

"Neliel gave me the address, so I thought I'd drop by," Inoue said in a voice that was far too sultry to actually be hers. "You don't mind, do you, Shiro?" she finished, moving in close enough that the Hollow could pick up something he hazily identified as vanilla on her breath. This time Shiro didn't ignore his instincts, moving to close the gap…

Only to have Orihime slide away at the last possible moment, leaving the Hollow to bite back a snarl of frustration as he met with nothing but air.

"Nice place you have here," Inoue commented blithely, as if she had no idea what a tease she'd just been. Shiro turned around slowly, trying to give himself as much time as possible to figure out what the fuck was going on before facing down Orihime again.

"What are you even doing here?" the Hollow demanded sharply, and Inoue's expression managed to contain both feigned innocence and playful mischief.

"I'm just taking your advice, Shiro-kun," she parried, deliberately putting emphasis on the nickname to rile him up even more. "Why, what's wrong? Are you afraid?"

Shiro felt his instincts flare up again at the challenge, but as he saw the smile on Inoue's face become decidedly victorious he stopped himself. Realization dawned on the Hollow and he smirked to himself, now understanding what her gambit was.

She wanted to play this game? That was fine by him.

"Are you?" he asked back, taking the initiative this time and moving towards Orihime with calculated steps and a blatantly hungry look in his black and yellow eyes. To his delight, not only did Inoue not flinch, but she closed the distance herself in three steps before snaking an arm around Shiro's waist and moving her head forward until her lips were almost brushing his ear.

"Not at all," she whispered, allowing herself a pleased smirk as she felt the Hollow shiver at the proximity. She had him wound around her finger, and it felt ridiculously empowering. There was no way she was going back to acting timid for no damn reason, and especially not if the results of being assertive were this rewarding.

Shiro was wearing a wide smile of his own: the Hollow was more shocked than ever that Ichigo had never made a move on Inoue, especially if this was what happened when she let her hair down. Clearly that whole thing he had going with Rukia was a front; if he hadn't found Orihime attractive, he was obviously smoking the pole. Which meant that Grimmjow now owed him twenty bucks for losing their long-standing bet.

The Hollow moved one hand from around her waist and slid it gently under Inoue's chin, tilting her head up slightly. Shiro drank in the open, expressive features of her face for a heartbeat before moving in and kissing her, his conscious self and Hollow instincts finding rare common ground as they both rejoiced in the victory.

Gin Ichimaru looked out over the balcony of Las Noches' throne room and down onto the sands below, which were no longer desolate and empty. Huge open-air enclosures dominated the landscape, visible from above as giant white squares housing scores and scores of Adjuchas-class Hollow.

They were breeding pens.

"Beautiful, are they not?" Aizen's voice floated over smoothly as he approached the balcony and stood by his Lieutenant. "With these running at full capacity, the Vasto Lorde should start appearing in a few weeks' time as the feeding becomes more and more ravenous. After all, it makes no sense to go hunting for the most powerful of Hollows," the overlord finished as a smile crept across his face,

"When we can just make them ourselves."

Turning away from the balcony, Aizen sighed as he began to walk back towards his throne.

"I believe it is almost time to begin putting the first phase of our offense into motion, Gin," he said calmly. "Inform Barragan that he has until two days from now to prepare for combat and select his fraccion, and..."

Here Sosuke paused. Ichimaru could tell that his long-time superior was, surprisingly, sincerely troubled by something.

"And I have a reunion to prepare for," Aizen finished pensively, "with an old, dear friend."

A/N: Man, that took a LOT longer than it had any right to. Sorry for the heinously long delay, but this is major crunch-time for colleges and work is crushing my soul right now.

Major props to the brilliant JasoTheArtisan for helping me brainstorm my way out of this funk and being an awesome beta. You guys should all go check out his story "So"; if you like 'Torn', 'So' is even better. Seriously. Read it, Review it; you'll love it.