560 days ago
"Oh man, this place is a wreck." Grimmjow scrolled through screen after screen showing the different landscapes of Las Noches. Underground mazes and halls and labs were in shambles. The domed desert he already knew was in rough shape. Here and there walls were missing or great holes spotted ceilings. But then he saw what he was looking for lumbering down a hallway.
"So we're not alone."
"Who's the fat guy?" Nel's head bounced before him and he shoved her roughly to one side. "Hey! That's not very nice!"
"I told you to get away from me or you're going to get hurt."
"But you have to help Nel!"
"I never agreed to that."
"Well you never said no."
"No."
Her tiny face scrunched up in pure rage. "Meanie! Poopie head!"
He pointed his hand at her and she saw a build up of energy. "Get away from me kid or I'll kill you."
"But, but you have to help Nel find her friends! And Itsigo! What happened to Itsigo?"
Grimmjow dropped his hand at this and looked from the screen of Yammy limping to his quarters back to her. "Ichigo..." he still felt the soreness of his wounds but a feral grin spread over his face and Nel backed away more afraid of that look of blood lust than the cero he'd pointed at her moments ago.
"Okay, kid, deal! I guess I do owe you one and I hate to have debts. I'll take you to Ichigo."
"And my friends?"
Grimmjow glanced back at the screen. "Haven't seen them yet. Probably got killed by Soul Reapers."
"Wh..WHAT?" He winced at the cry that came out of her, first a scream, turning to hysterical sobs.
"Sorry kid, that's what shinigami do." He said unsympathetically and deciding to finish scrolling through the screens while she cried herself out. It took a long time, but so did searching all of Las Noches for survivors. It had been nearly two weeks since the battles in Hueco Mundo and in the Human World, he expected to find more survivors here. Maybe everyone had crossed over after Aizen's victory. Even more reason to go through the Garganta and find out what was going on. But then this thought gave him pause- would Aizen be aware of his actions during the battle- his blatant disregard for orders so he could face Ichigo? Maybe Ichigo was already dead, and he himself was a traitor and they'd never get to finish their fight. But he shook these concerns away- whatever the case, he had to find out what was going on.
"You done?" he looked over at the child who had finally exhausted herself crying.
"Does Grimmjow really think they're dead?"
"You know what, kid, this place is huge, they could be anywhere." He lied, knowing the chances were that two weaklings like them had probably been annihilated, but not wanting to suffer through any more of her hysterics.
"REALLY?" Her eyes sparkled with hope.
"Sure, besides, they could also be outside in the desert. We'll look for them when we get back from the world of the living." She shouted something happily to which he paid no attention and he opened the Garganta. He flinched when she hopped up onto his shoulder but they were already going through.
Grimmjow had many shocks on the other side. When he found the material world intact, humans going about their regular lives, he started to realize Aizen had lost, the espada had lost, and the reason they hadn't returned wasn't that they were here, it was because they were dead. He opened his pesquisa to try to locate them, anyone, but there was nothing.
"I can't believe it..." he started but then he clenched his fists and thought of how he'd lost his own battle with Ichigo, "Or maybe I can. Still..." he didn't know exactly what he felt. He didn't particularly like the other espada, but he also didn't really like the thought of being alone.
"Damn." He swore, feeling pathetic and he moved on through the human world, Nel in tow, searching for the one human that could give him a purpose again.
And then they had their next shock. He hadn't been able to sense out his spiritual pressure, but he'd recognized the others around him. His father, his sisters, they all had the same edge to their spiritual pressure, leading him straight to their home. "Why can't I feel him?" He asked, landing on Ichigo's window sill in the dead of night, staring at the sleeping boy. Nel had less reserve though, leaping from his shoulder onto the slumbering teen and screaming his name.
Ichigo came violently awake and Grimmjow stiffened, not intending to be found spying on him while he slept, but Ichigo just looked around the room startled. Grimmjow looked him over and felt a bitter disappointment spread over him.
"It's no good, kid." He shot at Nel who was screaming in Ichigo's face but having no effect. "He's lost his powers. He's just a regular human now."
"What?"
"Come on, let's go." He ended up having to forcibly drag her off of Ichigo and back through the Garganta. He hadn't been concentrating when forming it and ended up far out in the desert rather than back at Las Noches but he didn't care. Every reason he had to keep going was gone. Aizen. Ichigo. He hated them both, really, but they'd given him some sort of drive or direction. The other espada were gone, save Yammy, the most idiotic of their ranks. Before, he had thrived on trying to move up in power, to prove his strength, but what point was there to that now?
He slogged through the sand, forgetting the child who called out for her brothers between her new tears over Ichigo.
They wandered for days. Grimmjow was literally walking aimlessly and killing anything that dared to get in his way while Nel mistook this for helping her look for her brothers and protecting her from bad hollows. When he began to get tired and she was stumbling from exhaustion he finally decided to return to Las Noches.
He only noticed she was still following him when he was stomping up the white steps and heard her panting behind him. He stopped and stared down at her.
"What are you doing?"
"Following Grimmjow." She answered with an expression that read obviously.
"Stop it."
"But we still haven't found Nel's brothers."
He sighed, "I am not looking for them. I took you to Ichigo in return for you healing me. That's it, I'm done, now get out of my sight before I kill you."
"Grimmjow shouldn't say mean things like that when he's so lonely."
"What?" He balled his fist but she just nodded in agreement to her own statement.
"Grimmjow lost his friends too so he should be nicer to the ones he's got."
"You are not my friend, and neither were they. Go now, or I kill you." He raised his hand toward her again and there was no mistaking the threat but she just jumped forward and wrapped her arms and legs around his calf.
"Well then you'll just have to blow you're whole leg off!"
His eyes widened and he dropped his arm. He shook his leg as hard as he could but could not dislodge her.
"Okay, kid, now this is going to get messy." He reached and pulled out Pantera, though it still didn't seem to phase her. But his attention was drawn away by a sudden flare of spiritual pressure and amidst all his despair, he suddenly felt hope and began running up the stairs, forgetting the weight wrapped around one leg.
Even with sodino it still took him a long time to reach them, this place was so huge. But he found them on the far end of the domed desert near a golden roofed building.
"Grimmjow." The woman standing before Yammy greeted. "You seem to have something attached to your leg."
"Halibel," he breathed out, ignoring her comment. "You're alive."
"No thanks to Aizen." He glanced at Yammy, whom he hadn't even bothered to contact since all of this started, but he didn't seem to understand this statement either.
"I take it you two haven't heard anything since the battle?"
"No." Yammy admitted. Grimmjow didn't bother explaining he'd gone to the world of the living. Halibel nodded and wordlessly they moved into the shade of the palace-within-a-palace Grimmjow recognized as where Halibel once resided with her fraccion.
They sat down, Nel dislodged from Grimmjow's leg finally and sat beside him, no one bothered to question it, the story was too important. Yammy scoffed at the deaths of their comrades, Grimmjow was silent and Halibel recounted it all with little emotion save when Aizen betrayed her. She was the only one of them who did not fall at the enemy's hands, and Grimmjow said as much, not out of praise for her so much as shame for himself and the other espada.
"So this is really it then? We're all that's left of the espada?" Grimmjow said when she concluded.
"It seems so, though I did not witness each death, I felt no other spiritual pressures when I awoke in the human world. I thought maybe Stark would survive, but I found no traces of him."
"Could the Soul Society have captured him or any of the others?"
"There is no way to know, really." She answered. "I only just managed to get to cover before passing out."
"So is that where you've been this whole time?" Grimmjow asked.
"No, I needed energy to heal. I've been in the Menos forest, feeding. When I got back here, I, like you, had expected more survivors, but it seems those who remained here were also destroyed."
"Yeah." Grimmjow related Nnoitra's death. Yammy told what he knew about Ulquiorra and his own lost battle. They both admitted the only reason either of them were alive was because the Soul Reapers had assumed them dead or found finishing them off to be too much trouble.
"You are luck they didn't capture you." Halibel said dismissively. Finally she looked to Nel. "So what is she doing here?"
"Nel is staying with Grimmjow until we find her brothers!" The child declared.
Grimmjow sighed. "No, you are not!"
"Why is she with you?" Halibel questioned further, and Grimmjow guessed she must be sensitive to the fact that Nel formerly held her own position. Grimmjow hadn't been around back then, and had never known Nel as an espada so he looked to her only as helpless child- though he knew her history.
"She uh..."
"Nel saved Grimmjow!" the girl announced, Halibel had no reaction while Yammy burst out laughing.
"Wow, Grimmjow, you really are weak!"
"Shut up, Yammy!"
Halibel looked at him over her high collar and surveyed the mess of scars on him after the battle. "Did she really save you?"
"I didn't ask her to." Was all he could find to say.
"How...amusing."
"Shut it." He rose. "You can have her if you think she's so great."
"No, it's not me who owes her my life. You can't abandon her now, Grimmjow, unless you want to abandon your honour."
"What?" he looked between Halibel and Nel wondering why she was defending the slobbering brat and wondered if it was just some way to torture him, but he just straightened and shrugged. "Whatever, the hell I care what she wants to do." He started moving out of the palace. Nel scrambling to follow.
"Where are you going?" Halibel asked, not trying to stop him, but wondering just where any of them were supposed to go now.
"I don't know, Halibel. What are we supposed to do?" He turned back to face her. "Yammy, any clue?" The giant shrugged. "Exactly, so I'm going back to mine, and I'm going to sleep." He stalked off with this, there really wasn't much else for them to do anyway, but this way, there seemed to be an agreement that they were all going to remain in Las Noches.
Present
"Grimmjow, are you not well?" the blue haired soldier went stiff at the cold voice before dropping to his knees.
"My lord. No, I am fine."
"Grimmjow," Grimmjow felt the swell of his twisted power all around him, intensifying when his hands came to rest on each of his shoulders, guiding him back up to his feet. That black shadow of a cape swirled behind him even in the still air of the hallway just beyond Halibel's cell. "I am pleased to see you know your place but I asked you if you were well, please speak freely."
"Yes sir. I am fine, I just have a headache, is all." He hadn't known he was being watched when he came out of her cell, clutching his head.
"Grimmjow, these things are important. You are my first re-born soldier, after-all, I must know if anything seems wrong. Now what did she say that upset you?" his voice was low and dangerous but cut with a false kindness that kept his subordinates always guessing as to what he truly wanted from them.
"She asked me if I was still her ally."
"And?"
"Of course I told her no, my lord."
"Good, but that wasn't what bothered you, was it?"
"She asked me about Nel."
"The little arrancar child?"
"Yes."
"And that is when you became upset."
"No...well, I just, got a headache, I don't feel anything for her anymore."
"Don't worry, Grimmjow, I trust you. When you stepped down off that table and denounced all your former allegiances, I believed you, and I believe you feel absolutely nothing for any of those people now. But if that changes, you must tell me at once. You understand that they are the enemy, correct? You realize you are fortunate to be permitted into my army."
"Yes, my lord," he dropped back to his knee, and bowed his head, exposing the deep wound at the base of his neck, "I know how fortunate I am. I promise I will tell you of any changes."
"Excellent." The shadow swept past him, leaving him shaken in its wake. Blue eyes watched the figure march away and then shifted back to the prison door.
"Arrancar child...why do I remember her so clearly...?"
Hello again! So I am planning to update this one quickly both because I don't want readers to lose the flow and because it is working it's way down to the manga chapter 485ish, so I want to keep it relevant before the canon gets too far ahead! I just read chap 486 and I already can't wait for the next chapter!
Also I tried to do some research on Nel and who she would have know as an espada-anyway, I wrote it that Grimmjow hadn't become an espada yet when she was around and hence never knew her as an adult and only sees her as a child for now. I don't know if that is brutally against the canonic history, but that's what I went with for this!
Look for more soon!
Riza