Chapter 15

The lab he led her to was dark, crowded with mysterious devices, and stuffy. She had no doubt that he intended it to have an oppressive feel. Fortunately for her, she could see perfectly in the dim light, and she wasn't prone to feeling intimidated.

"Have a seat, my dear." Despite his wording, his tone was perfunctory and cold. Szayel gestured to a chair, perched on something that looked like it might be an adjustable pedestal of some sort. Wordlessly, she sat. As she leaned back into the chair, bindings snapped around her chest, legs, arms, ankles and wrists.

"Is that necessary?" She demanded coldly. She could probably brute force her way out of these if she had to, but that wouldn't get her anywhere closer to home.

"It's automatic. Sometimes research subjects need to be restrained. An arrancar that flails about while I'm taking a blood sample or giving them an injection risks damage to themselves and my facilities, neither of which are acceptable." His tone was curt. He made no move to release her.

"I am capable of remaining perfectly still in the face of intense damage." She stated.

"Nevertheless, you can remain like that for now."

She wondered if he was attempting to punish her for using his forge without asking permission the other day. Or if, perhaps, he was attempting to get at Grimmjow somehow by using her. Or maybe he was just an asshole. Anything was possible, she supposed.

"I need to ask you to answer a few questions. Answer them truthfully, every piece of data may be necessary in returning you to your world." He said. She said nothing. He raised a clipboard (she'd seen something similar being used by gnomes before), and a writing implement, and continued speaking to her, gazing disinterestedly at the papers in his hands. His attitude towards his research subject was dispassionate, aloof.

"Subject Vellena Nightwind. Female, six feet, two inches, one hundred ninety-eight pounds. Hair, green. Skin… purple. Eyes…" he looked at her for a moment. "blue, glowing. Species?"

"Kaldorei – that is, night elf." Her reply brought a flurry of scratching noises and he penned down her response.

"Are you pregnant?" She raised her eyebrow at that.

"That would be impossible."

"Are you?" He repeated, more forcefully.

"No. I am undead."

"Current health status?"

"Undead. Superficial cuts and punctures to the skin, some bruises, currently healing. No significant wounds." That had him looking at her briefly in slight interest before going back to his clipboard.

"Age?"

That was a hard question. She was silent perhaps a little longer than he was willing to endure.

"Is this some kind of 'a lady never tells' bullshit?" He snapped.

"I'm trying to remember. Do you want how long I've been undead, or how long I lived before that?" she replied.

"How about both?"

She had to think about that. The first was easy, but the second… she couldn't remember much of her life. The last hint she'd had about her actual age was when she had visited Darnassus for the first time after rejoining the Alliance.

She had wandered by the Temple of the Moon, struck by the simultaneous sense of familiarity and strangeness. Ignoring the fearful gazes of the night elves and other members of the Alliance who wandered by, she stood, gazing up at the massive edifice.

A gasp from someone behind her, followed by a woman's voice calling her by her name gave her cause to turn. Another night elf woman, wearing the vestments of someone relatively highly positioned in Elune's priesthood stood, staring at her.

"I heard you were killed in action in the Eastern Plaguelands. But here you are… you're dead, aren't you? You're one of them, one of those Death Knights." The woman's voice was filled with emotions. Disgust, fear, sorrow… so many things carried in that woman's tone.

"You know—knew me." Vellena replied, facing the woman.

"Yes, I knew you," the woman's emphasis made it clear that this was not longer the case. "I knew you and Markuritan both. I tried to tell you both not to go to Light's Hope – that it was no place for us, but you insisted. You said the Argent Dawn needed all champions of the Light it could take. 'A priest and priestess who had served Elune faithfully for fifteen hundred years,' you said, 'would be an asset in the fight against the Scourge.' But here you are. You're undead, and Markuritan is gone." The other elf spat.

"Who… who is Markuritan?" Vellena asked. It felt like she should know who that is. She felt like she should know who this woman was, what this woman meant to her. There was so much emotion in the other, so much grief, pain, and rage. She must have been something to this person. But what?

"Who is Markuritan? Vellena, you've forgotten your own husband? My brother?" the other person gasped. Husband? Vellena could remember nothing. She was vaguely aware that she should feel distress at this, but she didn't.

"I do not remember him. I do not remember you." The Death Knight turned away from the distraught woman, whose face was now streaked with tears. Vellena walked away from the Temple of the Moon. She had been wrong; there was nothing for her here.

"Well?" Szayel's cold voice interrupted her thoughts.

"I have been undead for five years. Prior to that, I was alive for at least fifteen hundred years." Vellena said. "I do not know my exact age. That is how long I was a priestess of Elune, according to someone who knew me when I was alive."

The scratching stopped, and Szayel gazed at her. "One thousand, five hundred years? Is such a lifespan normal for your kind?"

"It was, before the demon lord Archimonde corrupted Nordrassil, the world tree, and took our immortality." She stated. He'd started writing again.

"Ah yes, I believe you mentioned something about this world tree in Aizen's throne room."

He put the clipboard down and turned towards her, bearing a tray that held a number of vials labeled in an unfamiliar writing, and objects that she didn't recognize. Grabbing her left arm, he rotated it in the cuff, exposing the inside of her elbow. He pressed one of the veins there, then swabbed the area with something that felt cool and wet. With a swift motion, he attached a vial to a needle-tipped device and slid the needle into her vein. She didn't so much as twitch. Her thick, black ichor flowed slowly into the tube.

"This shall take a while, I see." Szayel said. It did. Almost ten minutes had passed before he managed to fill the collection of vials with her blood. Then he tapped parts of her body with a little hammer (which apparently had no effect on her), attempted to take her pulse (apparently she had one, which she hadn't known – it was just very slow), took her temperature (cold), and her blood pressure (low). He shined a bright light in here eyes and attempted to look in them, and did the same to her ears. She sat there, motionless and without comment.

Finally he finished scribbling on his pad, and made a slightly annoyed sound. "I need a reiatsu sample from you. Has anyone spoken to you about rieatsu?"

"Yes." She said, not in a mood to elaborate. She had been quizzed, forced to recall unpleasant memories, poked with a needle, banged with a little tiny hammer, prodded and explored in more ways than she cared to consider. She was feeling slightly annoyed. She didn't understand how any of this would help her get home.

"Then I suppose you know how to emanate reiatsu?"

"Yes."

"Then do so." He produced a strange device and held it aloft. Vellena concentrated on her power as she had when Grimmjow had first explained reiatsu to her, letting it flow through all parts of her body, letting it fill the air around her. "Good." Szayel said, eyes never leaving the device he held. There was a glass tube in it, filling up with a dark red substance. Was that her reiatsu?

"You can stop." He said, when the tube filled totally. She stopped. "When you fought Nnoitra the other day, you used different kinds of power. Can you replicate those?"

He'd seen the fight? She didn't recall seeing him in the sparring room. No matter. "I would have to be in combat. I could activate the runes on my sword, but without intent, it would not do much. The longer I am fighting, the more that power builds up." She said. He humphed.

"Now tell me about everything you experienced when you came to this world." He said. Finally, this sounded like something that might actually be useful. Vellena related everything she remembered about the moments leading up to her ending up in Hueco Mundo, including the feeling of something wrong while being pulled through the Twisting Nether. She related the details of her first moments in this new world, including trying to summon Coldgaze, use her hearthstone, and use her Death Gate, all of which failed.

"Hearthstone, what is that? I don't suppose I could see it?" Szayel asked, an avid look on his face.

"If you release me, I will recover it from my bags." Apparently that was all it took. The arrancar flipped a switch and the restraining bands flipped away from her body and retracted into the chair. She stretched, joints cracking, and fished around in her bags. Producing the hearthstone, she handed it to Szayel, who took it and examined it, turning it over in his hands.

"May I keep this for a few days? I wish to run some tests on it." It was the first time he'd actually asked anything politely.

"It's useless to me right now. Keep it if you think it will help you return me to my world; just give it back when you actually do so." She said. He placed the small, cool stone in a clear bag of some sort, and scribbled a label in black ink on the container.

"Do you have any more of those scrolls?"

"No. The last one I had brought me here. I could make more, but I don't have the supplies."

"What do you need for supplies?"

She rattled off the inks, the herbs she would need to produce them, and parchments she would need to produce scrolls, and he looked at her with a blank expression.

"I think we'll consider that a non-possibility," he said, "I have never heard of any of those substances except for parchment, and I would be unable to replicate them without greater knowledge of what they are." She nodded, she'd expected as much.

"Very well, we're done here. Go." He said. That was it? Wordlessly, the night elf rose from the chair and exited the lab.

A slightly irritated Yylfordt was waiting outside. Seeing Vellena emerge from the lab, he gestured for her to follow. She did.

Preg fans, note the 'impossible' above. I mean it. She's dead, Jim. I'm a veritable tocophobe, living proof that not all women succumb to the baby rabies. I am not writing some icky-sweet they-all-have-children-and-live-so-happeeee fic. I'm not averse to happy endings, but they don't necessarily have to come with baby bumps.