Torn

Chapter 28: Forsaken

As much as he loved the increased power his resurrecion state gave him, right now Grimmjow would have given his left arm for a sword. His natural body armor gave him protection, of course, but going hand-to-hand with someone as powerful as Halibel, especially when she was wielding such a huge blade of her own, was not what Jaegerjaques considered 'fun' by any stretch of his imagination.

"I'm curious, Grimmjow," the Sexta mused with infuriating casualness as her opponent dodged yet another string of her strikes, reducing what should have been mortal wounds to grazing blows. "You seem to be more cautious than normal. What's holding you back? Fear?"

"You wish," Jaegerjaques snarled, more pissed at the fact that he couldn't land a blow on this broad than he was that Halibel had picked up on his lack of a berserker's edge, the characteristic that had defined him so totally in his days as an Espada under Aizen. He had his reason for not fighting with as much heedless abandon as he'd used to, but he would die before saying what that reason was.

Leaping out of the way of a blast of water for what felt like the fortieth time, Grimmjow began to get really angry. Halibel was a rock: even if he forced her to move by using a particularly tenacious string of attacks, the woman barely had a scratch on her. He really hadn't wanted to have to break out his most powerful strike so soon into the contest, but Grimmjow knew he had to put Halibel on the defensive somehow or there was no way he was going to survive this fight.

And dying here was most definitely not an option. Concentrating, Jaegerjaques began to divert a considerable amount of reiatsu down his arms and into his hands, preparing to use Desgarrón.

"Reap, Kazeshini."

The harsh sound of a blade screaming through the air broke Grimmjow's concentration, and the Sexta Espada was forced to dodge in order to avoid the spinning, scythe-shaped weapon that shot past her, only to turn around and boomerang back to where it had come from. Both Arrancar stopped fighting long enough to look over and see a revived Shuhei Hisagi wielding his released zanpakuto, Kazeshini.

"You looked like you could use some backup, Jaegerjaques."

"Fuck you, Hisagi," Grimmjow spat back, and Shuhei just smirked. Years and years of fighting alongside each other in a daily struggle to stay alive had forged strong bonds between the survivors that had evaded capture by the Espada and their Fraccion, but Hisagi knew that Grimmjow would sooner put out his own eyes than thank someone for backup, especially if he'd needed it. Halibel paused her relentless onslaught at the reappearance of the pest she thought she'd squashed several minutes ago, irritated that this fight was going to take longer than she'd originally anticipated.

Still, the Sexta thought as she focused herself to take on a two-pronged assault, the outcome of the duel would be the same, regardless of the number of opponents she faced. These two were nuisances, nothing more. Using a burst of sonido, Halibel decided to go after the weaker of her two opponents and appeared again behind Shuuhei. The Shinigami's eyes widened in shock as pain shot through his body, accompanied by an arc of blood erupting out of a slash that had been cut across his abdomen, leaving a line of red spread across the dirt as the upper half of Hisagi's body fell away from the lower.

"How sad," Halibel mused, "to meet such a pathetic end. And to think, my Fraccion holds you in such high esteem—"

"Hado number 73: Soren Soukatsui!"

The double-plume of blue flame lanced towards Halibel with terrifying speed and power, nearly blindsiding her and forcing the Espada to employ sonido once again. Looking over in surprise, she saw a bare-chested Shuhei Hisagi standing there, holding his shikai and still very much alive. A quick glance revealed that the 'body' she had carved in two had been nothing more than the Lieutenant's shirt, an illusion created by a very skilled usage of shunpo.

"Clever, boy," she said acerbically, "but this changes nothing. La Gota."

A cone of cutting, highly pressurized water shot out from Halibel's massive sword, and Hisagi flashed out of the attack's way mere seconds before he would have been reduced to a mass of gibbets. But his retreat was beside the point; the Lieutenant had done his job:

Creating an opening for his ally.

"Desgarrón."

The five razor-sharp bands of energy slammed into Halibel's sword, forcing her backwards. Grimmjow's attack ground hungrily against the giant blade, currently the only thing keeping Desgarrón from its prey.

"Hado number 63: Raikoho!"

Halibel said nothing as the kido spell slammed into her side; as the smoke from the impact cleared, the only signs that she'd been harmed at all by Hisagi's Hado were some burn marks on the right side of her body and face. Her aquamarine eyes hardening with hatred, the Sexta Espada decided to stop screwing around and end this fight, before she actually got injured. Pushing hard against the Desgarrón, Halibel forced the attack away and continued the arc of her sword, speaking as she did so.

"Cero."

The blast of pure energy sent Grimmjow off of his feet, the concussive force combining with the raw power to send him careening into unconsciousness, heavily burned and bleeding as his resurrecion faded away around him. Hisagi managed to avoid the brunt of the Cero, but Halibel was watching him like a hawk and had an attack ready for the Lieutenant as soon as he landed from his jump.

"Hirviendo."

The burning torrent overwhelmed Shuhei and laid him out on the ground, the scent of sizzling flesh rising into the air. The Sexta Espada walked slowly towards her prone prey, killing intent radiating from every pore.

"Getsuga Tensho!"

A gigantic wave of black and red energy roared through the ground in front of Halibel, creating a sizable fissure between her and her would-be victims.

But they weren't whom she was focusing on; not anymore.

Ichigo Kurosaki appeared with the faintest of whispers a moment later, his haori flapping slightly in the wind as he sealed his bankai and sheathed his blade, turning his steely gaze to rest on Halibel. Heartbeats passed like small eternities, until the Shinigami broke the silence with a word.

"Leave."

His voice was much more tempered, and much harder than the Espada had remembered it being, back when she had been Seguenda. If anything, it reminded her more of one of Aizen-sama's commands than the voice of an insecure, 15-year-old Shinigami. Still, mere bravado and blind confidence wouldn't be enough to make Halibel back down.

"I'm afraid that's an impossible request, Kurosaki," the Sexta parried. "I don't know how you came back from that deathblow Aizen-sama gave you, nor do I particularly care. What I do know, however," she finished, brandishing her sword once more, "is that you will not leave here alive."

Ichigo just smiled, squaring up his stance and letting his reiatsu loose.

The resulting spiritual pressure was so immense, the spike so sudden, that Halibel felt herself suffocating in seconds. Gasping for air and wondering how the hell this kid had become so insanely powerful, the Arrancar fell to her knees under the crushing weight of the reiatsu before crumbling even further, to her hands and knees. But then, as soon as it had come, the torrent of reiatsu receded.

"If you fight me here, Halibel," Kurosaki's words floated over to her coldly, "you're going to be the one that won't walk away." he continued, mimicking her earlier words. Halibel knew they carried real weight, but she rose to her feet anyway, unable to remain on her knees for a moment longer without losing her pride forever and irrevocably. Once she was on her feet again, the Sexta Espada gave the warrior who had so utterly overpowered her a harsh glare.

"Are you going to kill me," she said venomously, "or suffer me to live with the burden of this indignation?"

"I have no intention of killing you, Arrancar," Ichigo replied calmly. "If I do that, who's going to carry the message back to the rest of the army?"

"I am not your messenger, boy," she answered. "Even though I may be of low rank, I still count myself a member of the Espada."

Ichigo disappeared in a flash of shunpo with speed that Halibel's eyes couldn't follow, reappearing beside her.

"Do you still make that claim now, Halibel?" he asked, and she realized with belated horror that her sword-arm was lying on the ground, severed from her body.

"Have fun trying to retain your rank with one arm, and no weapon to give your resurrecion any real force."

Numb and dumb with shock, the warrior said nothing for several heartbeats.

"You will pay for what you have done here," she said at last, her defeated voice taking on the tone of a grim prophecy. "Aizen-sama had crushed you once, and shall do so again."

"He will try," Ichigo replied matter-of-factly, before turning his attention to the two prone bodies that Halibel had been ready to finish off a few minutes earlier. Motioning to Shiro to take Hisagi, Kurosaki slung Grimmjow over his shoulder and vanished in a whisper of shunpo. Left alone in the desolated Rukongai alley, wounded, bleeding and permanently disfigured, Halibel released her resurrecion and disappeared with a harsh buzz of sonido, swearing vengeance upon the man who had crippled her.

She would gaze upon the corpse of Ichigo Kurosaki before she passed from this world, even if it was the last thing she did.

Ichigo and Shiro stopped moving when they reached an alley that they were sure was deserted, and Ichigo set to work on healing Grimmjow and Shuhei's wounds. Channeling raw kido energy into the damaged areas, the Shinigami didn't even worry about converting the energy into the kind used specifically for healing. He needed to work fast, or these two might still risk dying from their wounds. While he worked, Shiro spoke up with a question that had been nagging at him ever since he'd seen his brother chop off Halibel's arm like nothing.

"What's gotten into you, Ichigo? That was pretty harsh, what you did back there."

Kurosaki chuckled darkly.

"The one who was telling me to just chop off her head calls me leaving Halibel alive 'harsh'? Give me a break."

"Leaving her alive with no arm, no honor, and no pride?" the Hollow pressed harshly. "I might be a Hollow, brother, but even I say that was a cruel move to pull. You should have at least killed her, put her out of her misery; there's a reason old wolves leave the pack and wander off into the wilderness to die in peace."

Ichigo said nothing, and Shiro just grunted disdainfully and turned away. Sometimes, he really couldn't stand that kid. A few more minutes and Kurosaki's job was finished, the two warriors rising shakily to their feet to look upon their saviors with confusion. Grimmjow locked eyes with Ichigo first, his expression unreadable as he struggled to reconcile the image in front of him with the knowledge that his friend was supposedly a corpse.

"What?" Ichigo asked with a smirk, puzzled by the Arrancar's silence. "I swoop in to save your ass again and you can't even say 'thank you'?"

No sooner had the words left Ichigo's mouth than Grimmjow's fist collided hard with his face, sending the orange-haired Shinigami staggering backwards.

"What the hell was that for, Grimmjow?" he spat out, but Jaegerjaques' back was already to him as the blue-haired warrior stalked away before vanishing in a buzz of sonido. Hisagi fixed Kurosaki with a hard glare, his normally calm voice seething with barely-contained rage.

"Do you still think this is a game, kid?" he demanded. "Do you have any idea what all of us have had to suffer through because you went off and died like a dog twenty years ago? And now you think you can just waltz back in here and everything will be fine again? Go fuck yourself."

Shuuhei was gone before Ichigo could so much as begin to reply, no doubt to follow where Grimmjow had led. Kurosaki stood silent for several moments, reeling from the unexpectedly harsh rebuke, until Shiro broke the awkward silence.

"You all right, brother?" he asked, and Ichigo shook his head a few times, closing his eyes tightly for a few seconds and opening them again before replying.

"I'll be fine," he answered plainly. "That wasn't what I was expecting at all, though. Come on," he finished, turning around and walking out of the alley.

"I want to go see the one person I know won't tear my head off."

Shiro could only watch Kurosaki go and shake his head in disbelief. Like he seriously thought she wouldn't give him the same kind of treatment?

As Aizen rounded the corner and began walking down the hallway where the prisoner's cell was located, he was met by a figure coming the other way. It was Eris, pushing a small cart of food before her.

"Aizen-sama," she said deferentially upon seeing him, nodding her head briefly in greeting. "I was about to give the prisoner her dinner, but if you would like to speak to her…"

"Oh, is it her meal-time already?" Sosuke asked easily, "I had forgotten. Please, feel free to deliver the food; I shall simply return later."

Before the Espada could ask if her master was sure, Aizen had already turned his back on her and begun walking away. Brushing it off, Eris walked a few more paces before turning into the large room that functioned as a cell of sorts for Las Noches' only Shinigami prisoner.

"I have brought your dinner, Unohana," the Espada announced calmly, and the woman looking out the window turned around at the sound of the voice, her blue eyes kind even in her current situation.

"Thank you, Eris," she said civilly, walking over to the cart and picking up the tray bearing her meal. She then sat down on a couch to eat, while the Espada remained where she was, waiting patiently. Her sharp green eyes observed the prisoner stoically, framed by bangs of jet-black hair. Her mask fragment, shaped like a crown of thorns, rested upon the top of her head and glinted bright in the pale moonlight, a stark contrast to the long hair flowing beneath it.

"Are you hungry?" Retsu asked a few minutes later, after she had sated her hunger and food still remained untouched on the plate. Eris simply shook her head, and Unohana's expression settled back into a calm façade that was capable of making all but the most intense thoughts imperceptible.

"May I ask you a question, Espada?" the Shinigami spoke after a few moments of silence, and Eris tacitly gave her consent.

"Why is it that you serve Aizen?"

The Arrancar was silent for several heartbeats, but when she spoke, her voice was as close to bitter as Retsu had ever heard it.

"Because I have no choice." Narrowing her eyes as she regarded the Shinigami, Eris continued a few heartbeats later. "You don't believe me, do you? You believe I serve him because I desire to do so."

"If you have no love for him, why did you accept the title of Espada?" Retsu pressed gently but insistently, not expecting the venomous reply she was about to receive in return. In all their years of conversation, the Arrancar had never been anything but calm. It seemed, however, that in finally asking the question she had wanted to know the answer to for so long, Unohana had struck a nerve.

"Is it really that simple for you Shinigami, to see us all as mindless drones?" Eris spat. "Aizen forced us into those breeding pens, and our only choice then was to fight or die. And once the chosen few of us stood victorious, there was nowhere to go but the Espada. Do not assume that we all follow Aizen out of a shared vision, Unohana."

Before Retsu could reply in her defense, a pulse of reiatsu emanated from the main room and both of the women stood still, trying to make sense of it.

"It looks like Halibel's arrived," the Arrancar said, "and she's wounded. Come, I believe it's time for you to earn your keep once more."

Retsu nodded but said nothing, and they hurried from the room.

"Where the fuck have you two been?"

Grimmjow brushed off Soi Fon's terse greeting and collapsed into a chair nestled in the corner of the room, the floorboards creaking as he walked over them. Hisagi walked wordlessly over to Matsumoto and took the jug of sake from beside her, taking a straight gulp of it before walking out of the room altogether.

"Shuu?" Matsumoto asked, looking at his tattered uniform with concern as she followed him out of the main room and towards their shared bedroom.

"Ran into Halibel," Jaegerjaques said after a few moments, and Soi Fon's eyes darkened further in anger.

"I thought you promised me you weren't going after anyone higher than the Septima, Grimmjow. Are you out of your mind?"

"Look, Hisagi's ass needed bailing out, and so I bailed him out. Simple as that."

"You stood up to Halibel and forced her to back off?" Soi Fon asked, skeptical, but Grimmjow just shook his head.

"It wasn't me," he said lowly. "It was Kurosaki."

"Shiro?" the Shinigami prompted, her voice cooling somewhat. "I knew he was strong, but—"

"No, not Shiro," Jaegerjaques corrected her. "It was Kurosaki. Ichigo Kurosaki."

"What!?" Soi Fon half-shouted, incredulous, but Grimmjow's expression didn't falter like it might have if he'd been lying. "Where is he, then? Why isn't he with you?"

"Hell if I know where that asshole went; I basically told him to go fuck himself."

"Why the hell would you do that?!" she shouted. "Assuming you're not just going insane and Ichigo is somehow alive, why would you turn around and tell him to get lost? Do you want us all to die, Grimmjow?!"

"Whatever," Jaegerjaques grunted back, before rising from his chair and sighing. "Where's Héctor?"

"Out back," Soi Fon answered, her expression shifting from angry to worried. "He had another outburst today, Grimmjow. They've been getting stronger, too; I don't know if I'll be able to hold him back again next time on my own."

"I'll go talk to him," the Arrancar said seriously, disappearing with a buzz. Soi Fon collapsed into the chair her lover had just vacated, putting both hands to her temples in a vain attempt to calm down. Everything was just so chaotic; was it too much to ask for one day in a week when they weren't either fighting or running for their lives?

Grimmjow walked out into the medium-sized patch of dirt that served as a practice ground for their group of renegades, unable to keep from smiling as the sight of Héctor practicing his sword drills relentlessly played out in front of him.

"Hey, kid," he called out, "take a break for a minute."

The teenaged figure stopped his current swing instantly and sheathed his sword before turning to face Grimmjow, brilliant blue eyes simmering with tightly controlled energy while unruly black hair crowned his head. Giving a small smile, he jogged to within arms-length of Jaegerjaques and spoke.

"Hey, dad," he greeted. "What is it?" upon more careful study of his father's expression, Héctor's own face darkened. Before he could say anything, though, Grimmjow cut him off with a hand on his shoulder.

"Listen, Héctor," he began as reassuringly as he could, "you know I'm sorry you have to deal with this. And you know I would give anything so that you wouldn't have to. But there's nothing I can do to help you on this one; you have to learn how to control it yourself."

Héctor chuckled ruefully, shaking his head.

"Believe me when I say I've been trying, dad. It's just… I can't deal with something like this rationally! Maybe if you would let me go out and fight, for once, I could learn—" he began, only to have his father give him a look that told him to be quiet and brooked no arguing.

"There's a very good reason why we can't let you do that and you know it, kid."

"Why can't you and Mom just come out and say you think I'm weak?" Héctor half-snarled, frustration making itself known in his voice as the well of stoic patience he kept in reserve began to run dry.

"Because we don't," Jaegerjaques retorted. "Are you honestly saying you think we're keeping you here because we think you can't handle yourself in a fight? Don't be an idiot, Héctor; you could wipe the floor with Matsumoto on an off day, and we all know it. The reason we need to keep you a secret is because if the Espada knew you existed, they would use you to make us fold. They would find you, capture you and torture you until we agreed to give in, and then they'd probably kill you anyway."

The young warrior took a moment to reflect on what his father had just told him, before shutting his eyes tightly and groaning, his hands reflexively clutching his forehead.

"Shut up… shut up… shut up!" Héctor growled fiercely, and after a few more heartbeats he slowly relaxed, his eyes clouded as he gradually came back to reality. Grimmjow looked down at his son with a rare expression of sympathy, feeling beyond awful that his son had been born with this affliction, and had to suffer through it every day of his life. It was also due to his and Soi's carelessness that he'd been born into this war, and forced to mature at such a rapid pace just to survive.

"I know it must feel good to give in, to let it take the reins," Jaegerjaques said, "but the more you do that, the weaker you'll become."

"But if I don't let it out, it pushes me until I snap, and then Mom has to come in and calm me down! And if I ever did something to her, I—I don't know what I would do."

"Don't worry, kid," Grimmjow reassured him, "you won't. Now, enough of this shrink crap," he continued, shifting from a paternal tone back to his normal mode of speech. "You want to fight, huh? Let's go a round, then; show me what you got."

Héctor smiled broadly and flashed over to a few paces away, drawing his zanpakuto and squaring up a stance. Grimmjow did the same, and father and son were soon sparring energetically, their laughter at the rush of the mock duel mingling with the clashing of their swords.

Back inside the run-down house, Soi Fon's grim, exhausted frown slowly shifted into a relieved smile.

Stark stood at Aizen's right hand, filling in Gin's vacant spot and wondering why he had to come to every one of these meetings. All Ajax ever did was try to provoke him into a fight, Barragan hardly ever said anything, Eris usually timed her meal runs to coincide with the meetings so that she had an alibi and Saika pined quietly after Eris. Talk about a total waste of time.

He became a bit more optimistic when he felt Halibel's reiatsu appear nearby, but that emotion soon shifted into concern when he saw what kind of shape she was in. Her mask was a wreck, and she was missing an arm– her sword arm.

Hopefully, tonight Unohana would eat faster than she usually did.

"What the hell happened to you, Sexta?" Ajax jeered from his seat. "Don't tell me the Lieutenants are stronger than you now, too?"

"Aizen-sama," Halibel said stoically, completely ignoring the Quinta's taunts, "I encountered Ichigo Kurosaki in Soul Society, and was unable to defeat him. I am willing to accept whatever punishment you deem necessary to give me, but I must request permission to by seen by Unoha—"

"Are you serious?" Ajax taunted again, rising from his seat as he spoke and moved towards Halibel. "You think she can fix that? Face it, woman; you're just fucked."

"Aizen-sama—" the Sexta began again, only for her address to again be broken off, this time by the zing of steel being drawn from its sheath.

Ajax's zanpakuto had been brought out into the light.

Stark knew exactly how unhinged the Quinta was, and that once his sword had been drawn he wasn't going to sheathe it again until it had drawn enough blood to satisfy its insane master. He began to move instinctively to assist Halibel, but felt a jolt of reiatsu lance down his back, shocking him. Looking over, he saw Aizen giving him a look that was a clear, absolute warning: Do not interfere.

They both knew what was coming, and Aizen wanted to make sure that Stark would do nothing more than watch it.

And so Stark stayed still, striving to ignore the aching feeling in his chest and failing.

"See this, Halibel?" Ajax jeered, the claymore that was his zanpakuto gleaming in the light. "This is my zanpakuto. Why don't you show me yours? Go ahead," the Quinta pressed maliciously, looking pointedly at the stump of her recently amputated limb, "draw it. Oh, that's right," he finished in a mock-epiphany, "you can't, because you lost your sword-arm! Face it, bitch," the Arrancar spoke, circling around behind her, "you're a wounded animal in the wild now, all alone. And do you know what happens to wounded animals, Halibel?" he said in a harsh whisper, close enough that the Sexta could feel his rancid breath on her ear.

A second later pain blazed along every nerve in her body with blinding intensity. Halibel looked down, horrified, to see that the claymore had been run through her chest all the way up to the hilt, which pressed coldly against her exposed lower back.

"They get eaten."

The blade was withdrawn from her chest as quickly as it had been thrust in, and Halibel fell to her knees with a thud, still in shock. Her mouth was slightly open, her bright eyes growing dimmer by the second. She looked up at Stark with a mixture of confusion, pain, betrayal and vain pleading. Stark could only answer her with pained regret at his own weakness and inability to help her, their last moment of eye contact before Halibel crumpled to the ground, dead.

In that moment, Stark felt rage compel him to move so strongly it burned. He shifted his hand to his zanpakuto's hilt, but Aizen's voice stilled any further action.

"Do not thin our ranks any further through rash actions, Stark," his leader ordered. "We cannot afford to lose a healthy member of the Espada in an act of violence to avenge a crippled, useless Arrancar that had fallen far from grace."

Stark unclenched his hand from the hilt of his sword and sighed, doing his best to hide just how deeply Aizen's disrespectful words towards Halibel had stung him. Turning around, he walked out of the room without even looking back. As he turned the corner past the big double-doors that marked the entrance to the Throne Room, Stark saw Eris and Unohana hurrying towards him. They stopped when they saw the look on his face, but the Arrancar kept walking. As he brushed his shoulder against his fellow Espada's, he spoke in a detached, bitter tone.

"Too late."

He walked on, leaving the women to discover the cost of their tardiness themselves. And while he passed through the halls towards his quarters, Stark found himself drifting further and further into his memories of the dearly departed. Of the original Espada, only Ulquiorra and Halibel had been willing to approach Stark at all after he had finally decided to join Aizen's ranks, the others giving him a wide berth either because of his strength, aloofness or both.

But Ulquiorra would only approach him when official business was involved, which had left Halibel as the only Espada Stark had interacted with on any regular basis. Calm and taciturn, she had only spoken when she deemed it pertinent to do so, and her observations had always been worth the long stretches of quiet that had passed between them. And this had been just fine with Stark: after an afternoon of Lilinette jabbering away at him, having an intellectual conversation with one of the few beings he considered his equal had been most enjoyable.

He wondered, as he walked silently towards his room, whom he would talk to now. But really, when he thought about it with ruthless objectivity, he had let her die. He could have done something to at least try to protect Halibel, but he had been too concerned with his own wellbeing to go to her. Each of them had always had the other's back before, but in the one instance it had really, truly mattered, he had failed her.

"Hey, Stark!" Lilinette greeted with her customary zeal as Stark walked wearily into his room at last. "Where've you been all day, you lazy…" Watching him trudge across the room even more detached than normal, she knew something was up. "Stark?" she asked solicitously, her tone shifting from aggravated to concerned when her Espada didn't even react to her jibes. "What's wrong?"

Stark laid down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, wrestling with the finality of his words before gathering up enough willpower to make the admission.

"Halibel is dead, Lilinette."

The room was dead silent for several moments as the Fraccion was struck dumb.

"I'm sorry, Stark," she said sincerely, but the Espada was already sound asleep.

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A/N: I hope you enjoyed this chapter, as the story marches ever closer to its conclusion. Also, GARGANTUAN ups go out to JasoTheArtisan for not only beta'ing this for me like a BOSS, but also taking the shit draft of this chapter I had beforehand and brainstorming it with me into something much, much more awesome. Also, props to him for being a generally awesome dude. Check out his stories; they're all legit. Especially So and Anonymous, which are both excellent. (Read So first, though)

R.I.P Halibel... you will be missed.