Not-so-Silent Night IV
Stupid holiday hours!
He had been to four different stores now, and they were all "closed for the holidays," leaving a bubbling white-hot rage inside Grimmjow that easily cancelled out the chilly winter air and the freezing snow. It was starting to look like he really would be forced to break into a store, or at the very least go ask one of the others if they had any milk to spare.
Fuck that; he'd sooner try breaking and entering than ever asking for help, especially from that bastard Ulquiorra.
Maybe he could go to Kurosaki's…that would make this whole rotten night better, beating the snot out of Ichigo and his crazy old man and stealing their milk; now that sounded like a Merry fuckin' Christmas!
He was just making his way past the high school as he debated the merits of mugging the Kurosaki family versus stealing a few of the small milk cartons from Burger World when he noticed the night sky begin to twist and distort itself in a very familiar fashion that he hadn't seen in nearly a year.
"What the hell?" he muttered as the garganta tore itself open.
Grimmjow squinted his eyes as he looked up, noticing for the first time three figures on the roof and a series of small, human-sized figures appearing in the garganta itself. The individuals he saw were pretty unmistakable; the white uniforms of the Espada were a stark contrast to the empty black void of the portal, and Grimmjow felt himself get even angrier.
What the fuck were they doing stomping around outside of their gigais without him, damn it?
Infinite darkness.
It was perhaps the best way to describe a trip through a garganta, Ulquiorra mused; save for the crystalline, icy-looking path beneath their feet formed by concentrated reiatsu, there was nothing inside this black void but infinite darkness. For the Espada, creatures who had essentially been reborn in darkness upon their mortal deaths, it was nothing new or exciting, and certainly nothing frightening about it.
For the human in their midst, however, it was clearly a source of terror as he kept nervously looking over the edge and into the spiraling, eternal nothingness below.
"Be careful," Ulquiorra warned, "Should you fall, you will be lost forever."
There was an audible gulp from Hiroki and a dark chuckle from Tyn at the very idea of Hiroki falling into the infinite abyss, screaming.
The chuckle faded and the procession continued in silence, allowing Ulquiorra time to reflect on all that had happened in Hueco Mundo and wonder if perhaps he had been too zealous in his efforts to stop Tyn; he had been fully prepared to kill the quinto after concluding that appealing to Tyn's sense of logic and reason was a lost cause, but Ulquiorra had not considered the consequences for such an act.
He doubted the others would have taken the news well; Starrk seemed very comfortable with the current group composition and losing a member, particularly a member he seemed to consider a friend, would likely not sit well with him. Grimmjow was likely to use it as an excuse for violence, whether or not he actually cared about the death of the quinto. And Orihime…
Orihime had tried so hard to help him become more human, to adjust to life in Karakura, and if Ulquiorra had allowed himself to regress back into being a heartless killer after all that she'd done for him…
She would have been crushed by his actions and would likely feel betrayed.
That was unacceptable.
Halibel would have been likely to handle the news in stride; she was generally pretty reasonable and had certainly had more than her fair share of problems with Tyn. Surely she would have understood the decision to end him as being tragic but necessary…
Ulquiorra looked beyond Hiroki and Tyn, noting for the first time the decidedly out-of-place crimson feather tied into one of Halibel's long, blonde braids and decided to re-evaluate the possibilities of exactly what Halibel would have done if Tyn had not survived the battle.
Perhaps she would not have been as reasonable and understanding as I first thought…
Even back in Hueco Mundo, when the raptor and the shark had been relatively close friends, she had never before openly displayed one of his feathers on her person. The reason for this change was not known yet, but Ulquiorra had no trouble coming up with a handful of possible answers relatively quick. If true, then Tyn's death likely would have thrown the woman into a berserk rage the likes of which would make the very heavens tremble.
In the end he decided that everything had turned out for the best; Tyn was alive, Hiroki was alive and terrified out of his mind, and Orihime would never need to know about what had almost transpired. The only lingering concern was how Tyn planned to explain things to Urahara without the ex-captain finding out the truth.
"We're here," announced Halibel from the front of the line as the blackness began to split apart, revealing the sprawling cityscape of Karakura Town and the roof of the high school just a dozen meters below.
"Ah…how are we going to get down there?" asked Hiroki, nervously looking down at the three gigai who were waving up at their masters. "That looks like a really long way to just jump…"
"Quit sniveling," snarled Halibel, seizing him by the arm roughly. "On three."
"I can't survive that!" he cried, frantically trying to free himself from her iron grasp.
"One," counted Tia, ignoring his pleas.
"Be reasonable!"
"Two," said Ulquiorra, moving to stand beside the others and orienting himself towards his gigai.
"You're all crazy!"
"Three!" declared Tyn as all three arrancar went straight into sonido as they exited the garganta and entered the scanning radius of the Seireitei's monitors, Tia dragging the screaming Hiroki along behind her at breakneck speed.
The tercera slowed down and released her hold on the human at the last second before she slammed into her gigai, violently entering her false body and letting the human impact the roof of the school with a force that was nearly equal to that of jumping from a moving car. Hiroki landed on his shoulder with an audible 'pop' as he went rolling across the roof roughly. He groaned as he sat up, cradling his arm in tears as the three Espada flexed the joints of their artificial bodies, reacquainting themselves with the limitations.
"What the fuck is this? You bastards decided to ditch this town and go home, and you didn't invite me?" demanded a voice, and the four turned to see Grimmjow climbing up the fire escape ladder onto the roof.
"This was not a scheduled trip, Grimmjow," said Ulquiorra calmly as the sexta turned his attention to the still-bleeding Hiroki, who was clutching his wounded chest with his left hand while his right hung at his side limply.
"And what the fuck is he doing here?" he asked, jerking a thumb towards the human.
"We had a falling out," answered Tia coldly, glaring hatefully at Hiroki and watching him tremble under her gaze.
"Get up and get out of here," Tyn commanded the human, kicking him across the roof for good measure. "You've got a week to get out of town."
"Wait, wait, wait…" said Grimmjow, interposing himself between Tyn and Hiroki as the human got to his feet slowly. "You can't make him leave town just yet."
"Why the hell not?" demanded Tyn. "He's lucky I didn't tear his goddamned spine out!"
Grimmjow abruptly spun around and lashed out with a thunderous right, catching Hiroki across the jaw and dropping him back to the ground roughly as a tooth went flying from his mouth and skidded its way across the rooftop before coming to a stop only inches away from Tia's feet.
Of course; Grimmjow just had to involve himself in the violence somehow.
"Now he can leave," smirked Grimmjow as Tyn walked over and yanked the human to his feet, shoving him towards the fire escape.
"My tooth…" Hiroki pleaded, holding his bleeding jaw as he pointed towards the dislodged molar.
"What tooth?" asked Halibel as she stomped her right foot down on the offending tooth and ground it to dust beneath her heel. He opened his bleeding mouth to protest, only to have Ulquiorra and Tyn step in front of him and begin ushering him towards the ladder.
"How am I supposed to climb down the ladder with only one good arm?" asked Hiroki as he looked over the edge at the three-story fall to the ground.
"Very carefully, obviously…" said Ulquiorra impassively as Hiroki began his very slow and meticulous climb down the icy ladder.
"So…what are we going to do when the Soul Society gets here?" asked Grimmjow, looking around at the night sky for the first sign of a shinigami. "You know they detected your return. Are we ditching this whole masquerade bullshit and going out in a blaze of glory?"
"Hardly…" said Ulquiorra, giving a disapproving look at Tyn as the redhead spit over the edge at Hiroki. "If their monitor stations detected our return at all, it was for but a split-second. Since it should be impossible for such high levels of reiatsu to vanish without a trace so suddenly, the logical thing for them to do would be to consider it a momentary glitch; nothing more than a ghost in the machine."
"God damn it," hissed the sexta.
"Don't worry, Grimmjow…" said Tyn, motioning for the others to come over to the now-vacant ladder. "There's still a part for you in all of this…and actually, having you here will make this work out better than me doing it alone."
"What the fuck are you talking about, Five? Make sense!"
"Shut up and climb down the ladder and I'll explain."
The four arrancar descended the ladder and gathered in a circle to hear the redhead's plan, and Ulquiorra could only hope he had given it some measure of intelligent thought lest he jeopardize them all with his impulsive behavior.
"First, I need something sharp. A knife or something," said Tyn, and Grimmjow responded by picking up a snow-covered rock and using it to shatter one of the school windows before picking up a large, dagger-shaped shard of glass.
"Damn it, Grimmjow…" sighed Halibel, and the sexta looked both angered and offended by her reaction.
"What? He said he needed something sharp, and now we have something sharp."
"It'll do…" said Tyn, shaking his head to indicate that it wasn't what he had originally had planned. "I thought we could go to Burger World, but this will do… Tia, you're going to drive me and Grimmjow to Urahara's shop, and then you're going to go pick up Orihime and bring her to us."
"Why? What's she got to do with anything?" asked Tia, arching an eyebrow.
"Just do it, okay? While you're picking her up, Grimmjow and I will handle the rest," said Tyn, rolling up the sleeve on his right arm.
"So what do we need the glass for?" asked a confused Grimmjow as Tyn held out his bare arm.
"Go deep."
A sick, sadistic grin spread itself across Grimmjow's face as he grabbed Tyn's arm roughly and hefted the blade of glass with his other hand.
"Best Christmas ever!"
It had been a long time since he'd attended a Christmas party, least of all in the Seireitei, and despite all of his past troubles and misunderstandings with the Gotei 13, Kisuke Urahara felt like he'd finally come home.
It wasn't the fact of being back in the Seireitei itself that made him feel comfortable, but rather the atmosphere created by being surrounded by the people who knew him best (not that he allowed anyone to know too much), the people he felt comfortable calling his friends.
It was the Mess Hall for Division 13, but there were more people in attendance than just the members of Squad 13; Captain Kyōraku of Squad 8 seemed to be having a spirited drinking match with Renji, himself now Captain of Squad 5, and Lieutenant Matsumoto. If he were to guess on a winner, Kisuke thought he'd have put his money on Rangiku; the woman's tolerance for alcohol was legendary, even when compared to Shunsui.
An obviously-uncomfortable Sui-Feng was present, standing off to the side of the large room after having only shown up because of Yoruichi's insistence while the mischievous ex-captain herself was dancing about the room with a Santa hat perched on top of her purple hair and a piece of gold tinsel dangling around her shoulders, drinking milk from a champagne glass. Neliel, the former Espada-turned-Lieutenant, was singing Christmas carols and while Kisuke had heard the horror stories about her musical abilities while drunk, her performance while sober was admittedly quite impressive and angelic.
Even the notoriously-antisocial Hitsugaya was there, sitting beside the Christmas tree in the far corner of the room with a sketchpad as he worked vigorously on a drawing of the party. Beside him sat an empty plate containing nothing but watermelon seeds, which answered the question Kisuke had as to how the small captain had been bribed into attendance.
Meanwhile, Jinta and Ururu (mostly Jinta) seemed content to incite a bickering match between Kiyone and Sentarō over who was more favored by their captain.
"And that right there is exactly why I'm not anxious to have any kids of my own," sighed Captain Ushii from behind Kisuke.
"Nel can't be happy to hear that; I get the impression she would love to have kids, and Yoruichi has made no secret about the fact that she wants a niece or a nephew to spoil," said Kisuke, turning to face the other shinigami as he stepped up beside him, a cup of sake in his hand.
"Didn't say that I don't want any kids eventually…" Anrak defended himself, taking a swig of sake, "I just think it should wait until a few years after the wedding. Like fifty years, maybe."
The two watched as Jinta began to tug on Ururu's hair violently after the younger girl attempted to get him to stop instigating arguments, mocking her as she cried and only ceasing his actions when Tessai broke the two of them up.
"Scratch that," Anrak said, shaking his head, "make it a hundred years."
"Dealing with Kiyone and Sentarō doesn't seem to be that different…" observed Urahara with a grin. "I'd say you already have a couple of kids."
"If you want to look at it that way, yeah, I have about three hundred," agreed Anrak, watching as Satsu from Squad 5 sauntered over to Soifon and pointed out that she was standing underneath the mistletoe with a lecherous grin.
*POW!*
"And then there's Renji's misfit 'children…'" said Kisuke slowly as the wounded Satsu slowly crawled his way across the floor to the relative safety of his older brother, Takk.
"Sui-Feng must actually be in the holiday spirit; she didn't break his arm this time," quipped Anrak as the dancing Yoruichi made her way back over to the petite Captain to tease her about being a little Grinch.
The chirping of Kisuke's Soul Pager interrupted the duo's conversation about Sui-Feng's questionable holiday cheer and the shopkeeper apologized as he pulled the small, cellphone-like device from his pocket and looked at the caller ID.
"Well, that's a surprise…" he mumbled upon seeing that the call was coming from his own shop back in the world of the living.
"Something wrong?" asked Anrak, an eyebrow raised in curiosity, and Kisuke quickly gave him a broad, fake smile to allay suspicion.
"No, nothing's wrong; I just wasn't expecting this call until after Christmas… Excuse me for a moment, won't you?" he said, ducking out the door and into the night air.
The weather in the Soul Society was generally nicer than it was in the world of the living, and while last year had been the rare exception to that rule, this year was different and Kisuke felt grateful for that; it was chilly, sure, and there was a light dusting of snow less than a half inch thick on the ground, but it was already beginning to melt. Meanwhile, the forecast for Karakura had been predicting up to six inches of snow and sub-zero temperatures.
Kisuke snapped his phone open, "Hello?"
"Hey, old man!" said the obnoxious voice on the other end, and Kisuke sighed.
"Grimmjow… First off, I'm not old; secondly, what the hell are you doing in my shop?"
"You're what, almost two hundred? That makes you old, so deal with it!" snapped the arrancar bitterly.
"Grimmjow, why are you in my shop?" repeated an irritated Kisuke, ignoring the insults about his age.
"We have a small problem…" Grimmjow began, "See, me and stupid got called in to work second shift tonight at Burger World, and there was a little…accident."
"Accident?" asked Kisuke, images of burning buildings, smoldering craters, and bodies lying strewn about instantly springing to mind. "What kind of accident?"
"Bird-brain kind of cut himself and—"
"Bullshit!" yelled Tyn from the background. "You did this, you ass!"
"I warned you to lay off the fucking cat jokes, didn't I?" bellowed Grimmjow back at him.
"Your gigais will heal themselves…" Kisuke sighed, relieved that it wasn't anything major. "Slap a band-aid over it and—"
"It's pretty fucking deep…" interrupted Grimmjow. "And since these things are supposed to seal off our spiritual pressure from the outside world, we're wondering if he might be…leaking or something. I figure as long as we're in here, your barrier will hide him until he's fixed."
"How deep is 'pretty deep?'"
"Well, I can see bone and…" began Grimmjow, and then there was the sound of screaming with Tyn yelling for Grimmjow to "Get your goddamned finger out of there!"
"I can touch bone," finished the sexta, and Kisuke could easily imagine the twisted grin on his face. "I think I nicked it. Can you come fix him or am I going to have to lock his stupid ass underground until you get back?"
"If it's that deep, then yes, the integrity of the gigai has been compromised…" Kisuke was saying, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Enough to be detectable by anyone in Karakura, but not enough to register on the Seireitei's monitor stations. Call Orihime; she can heal him."
"We already tried that, dumbass!" snapped Grimmjow. "She ain't answering the stupid phone!"
"What do you mean she's not answering?"
"I thought you were supposed to be some kind of fucking genius?" snorted Grimmjow. "What part of 'not answering her phone' confuses you? Maybe she's gone out for the night or maybe she's too busy getting plowed by Ulquiorra—"
"That's an image I didn't need, Grimmjow…" shuddered Kisuke. "Call her again, and if she still doesn't answer, look through my address book beside the phone and call her friend Tatsuki, see if she's there. If she's not there, then you'll have to personally go by her house and check on her."
"And if she's not there?"
"Then Tyn gets to camp out in my shop until she returns. Orihime can't have gone far, not with it being Christmas," explained Urahara, shuddering again as he heard the sound of glass breaking in the background.
"That wasn't my fault!" called Tyn's voice. "Where's the goddamned bandages in this place?"
"How much of a mess have you two made?" asked Kisuke, rubbing his face and suddenly feeling so very tired.
"It's not that bad…" said Grimmjow. "You've got a mop, right? Those brats of yours can probably clean it up in a few hours. See, if you had carpet, those bloodstains would probably never come out, but since it's all wood—"
"Forget I asked…" said Kisuke, dreading the mess he'd find when he returned home. He heard another sound over the phone that sounded vaguely like a refrigerator door being pulled open.
"Hey, since you're gone…" Grimmjow was saying, "it would be a shame to let some of this stuff go to waste. Like this milk here; it'll expire way before you get home. Don't worry, I can put it to good use, though. Later, old man!"
The line went dead and Kisuke could only stare at the phone in his hands, a headache now pounding away inside his skull as Yoruichi finally wandered outside to check on him.
"Everything okay?" she asked, and Urahara just looked up at her, blinking in confusion.
"Grimmjow just stole my milk…"
"Think he bought it?"
"Not completely, but there's not going to be any evidence that it's anything other than what we told him…" replied Tyn, wrapping another bandage around his arm as he waited for Tia to return with Orihime. "I'm sure he knows all about what goes on at Burger World, so that makes the story believable."
"What about the mess?" Grimmjow asked, gesturing to the blood on the floor and the pile of used bandages Tyn had left lying about.
"Leave it; first thing Urahara will do when he gets back is test the blood for evidence of wrongdoing—"
"You mean human blood?"
"Yeah, and all he'll find is my blood. Ulquiorra tinkers with the shift records at Burger World so it looks like you and I had to work together tonight, unsupervised, which makes the story of us fighting and you cutting my arm open believable. If he finds out Tia's pet human left town abruptly, he may get suspicious but a human deciding to move isn't really proof of anything."
"All right, so maybe you're only half as stupid as I first thought…" admitted Grimmjow as he filled a sack with goods from Urahara's refrigerator and cabinets.
"Did he say you could have that crap?"
"He didn't say I couldn't…" said Grimmjow evasively, finally closing the refrigerator door and hefting his sack of ill-gotten goods over his shoulder. "I'm getting out of here before Orihime arrives; I don't want to hear any of her crap about me 'borrowing' this stuff, or about how I should come to dinner at her house and choke to death on that bean paste shit."
Tyn watched through the window as the other Espada left, slowly making his way up the street through a half-foot of snow, stubbornly going against the biting wind… Idiot; if he'd have waited, Tia could have driven him back to his apartment.
Sighing, Tyn settled back into a chair to wait for the others to get back and fix his arm so he could go home and go to bed, and put this entire miserable evening behind him.
It was well after midnight when Ulquiorra and Orihime finally made it home. Tyn's arm had been healed, and Orihime had been able to use her Sōten Kisshun to fix the shattered lock on Urahara's door, though fixing an inanimate object had proven more somewhat difficult than healing wounds. Still, all was well and now they could enjoy Christmas dinner.
Their cold Christmas dinner.
And Ulquiorra still wasn't sure that he was hungry enough to actually stomach the red bean paste.
"We could microwave everything…" Orihime suggested as Ulquiorra sat down at the table and tried to steel himself for the coming horrors.
"I am sure it will be fine," he lied, slowly preparing his own plate of doom as Orihime took her seat at the opposite end of the table.
"I'd really planned on making your first Christmas dinner special…" Orihime said sadly, "but everything else sort of got in the way tonight, didn't it?"
"It was my mistake…" said Ulquiorra, lying again as he picked up a fork and attempted to decide which poisonous concoction to try first. "Tyn and Grimmjow are simply too immature to work together without adult supervision."
He looked across the table at Orihime, deciding it was probably best that he didn't look at his plate as he scooped up a helping of seasoned stuffing and shoveled it into his mouth.
"How is it?" asked Orihime nervously.
"Good…" said Ulquiorra honestly, trying hard to mask his surprise, "Very good."
"I left out the bean paste…" said Orihime slowly, "I know you don't really like it, so I left it out of everything this time… That's why I didn't want you helping me in the kitchen earlier; I wanted it to be a surprise."
Food, real, edible food for the first time since he'd been in Karakura…and he'd been avoiding it all night out of paranoia.
God damn it.
"I really wanted this to be a nice dinner for us…" Orihime was saying as Ulquiorra shoveled some macaroni in his mouth, savoring the bean paste-free nature of it all.
"It is perfect," he said, giving her a faint but genuine smile for once as her expression brightened.
"Merry Christmas, Ulquiorra."
"All of those stupid holiday specials lied to us," said Halibel, flopping down on the couch in exhaustion as Tyn finished cleaning the dried blood off of himself in the bathroom. "Peace on Earth and good will towards men? Love and togetherness? What a joke; Christmas is all about being greedy and selfish. It brings out the worst in humans, not the best."
"How very cynical of you…" said Tyn as he emerged from the bathroom, flipping the light switch on the living room wall that turned on the Christmas Palm tree in the corner of the apartment.
"Turn that thing off," Tia sighed as her roommate headed over to the tree. "I'm not in the mood to be reminded of just how awful this stupid holiday is."
"Too bad," replied the raptor, taking a box from under the tree and tossing it to her. "Open it."
"What the hell is this?" she asked, turning it over and noticing the red ribbon and the tag that read 'To Tia' on it.
"What the hell does it look like, dingbat?" asked Tyn sarcastically as he walked over to the couch, dropping the red Santa hat on top of her head as he sat down on his end of the couch. "If you don't like it, I guess we can take it back and exchange it, assuming I'm not banned from the store now."
Tia ignored his insult for the moment, tore off the colorful wrapping paper and opened the box, pausing a moment to run her fingertips over the image of the shark that she found facing her. Carefully, she pulled out the mostly-white jersey and unfolded it, a soft smile gracing her lips as she looked at the shark image once more before turning it around and seeing her name across the back of the teal green shoulders, complete with large number three on the back.
There was a long moment of silence as Tia simply looked the jersey over before she stood up and disappeared into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her and leaving Tyn feeling dejected. He sat alone in the living room for several long seconds, feeling foolish, as if he had completely and utterly failed her; she didn't like it…damn it, he should have looked harder and found something else that-
"How does it look?" she asked, and Tyn looked up to see her standing in the now-open doorway, wearing the slightly-oversized jersey with the Santa hat still sitting atop her blonde locks.
"It looks great, Tia," Tyn said with a relieved smile, glad to see that she was wearing it and actually seemed to like it. She returned his smile and gave him a slight, thankful nod of her head for the gift, and that was when Tyn noticed something else about her appearance.
"You're wearing your necklace again…" he said, noting the shark's tooth dangling from around her neck. "I haven't seen you wear that in a couple of weeks."
"Hiroki thought it was stupid, so I stopped wearing it…I shouldn't have listened to him. I never should have taken it off," she said softly. "I won't make that mistake again."
"Stupid is the fool who would even look at another woman when he has you…" muttered Tyn under his breath as Halibel, oblivious to his words, ducked back into her room for a second to retrieve something else.
"I actually got you something for Christmas, too…" she said as she came back into the living room and offered an overly-elongated box to him. "I meant to wrap it earlier today, but…"
Tyn opened the box and was surprised to see the sword he'd been wanting for so long, waiting for him. He pulled it from the box, letting the cardboard fall to the floor as he examined his prize closely, realizing by the shine that she must have polished it recently. It was an unnecessary extra step and while he wondered exactly why she would have done such a thing for him, he certainly appreciated the added thought.
"It's some color for your room, I guess," Tia said, sitting back down on the couch…right beside him, in No Man's Land.
"I think it would look better in here…" he said, trying to ignore her unusually close proximity and the way her intoxicating vanilla-like scent was flooding his nostrils. "Maybe above the TV, for decoration."
"That could work; the wall is kind of bare, isn't it?" she agreed softly, leaning her head over against his shoulder.
"Tia…" he said nervously, unsure of what to make of her uncharacteristically strange behavior.
"Thank you…" she said quietly, "for everything. For trying to protect me."
"Don't get all soft on me…" he said gruffly, looking away from her to hide his reddening cheeks. "I was just looking out for my pack; I'd have done the same for any of the others."
"Of course…" she said, her voice hardening as she stood up. "How silly of me."
"I didn't mean it like—" said Tyn defensively, getting to his feet and trying to intercept Tia before she made it to her bedroom.
*SLAM!*
"Damn it, Tia…" sighed Tyn, leaning his head against the door. "You're taking it the wrong way!"
"Good night, Tyn," called Halibel from the other side, ignoring his protests.
Cursing the entire time, Tyn retreated from her door and went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and prepare for bed, wondering how he'd managed to screw up yet again. What was he supposed to say, damn it? What did she expect from him? It wasn't like he'd done anything wrong! Why was everything so damned complicated when it came to her?
Tyn spit out a mouthful of toothpaste into the sink and glared at himself in the mirror, growling angrily. He couldn't let the night end like this, not after everything that had happened. He had to do something, had to make her understand…
Except he wasn't entirely sure that he understood it, either.
"Not like that's ever stopped me before…" he muttered, rinsing his mouth out and heading back to Tia's still-shut door.
The smart thing to do would have been to knock first, but the Tyn-thing to do was to barge in, courtesy be damned; the door wasn't locked and he took a deep breath as he flung it open, preparing to defend himself against a verbal and possible physical onslaught, but he was greeted with silence as Tia stood staring out her bedroom window.
Tyn moved to stand behind her and take in the view; the relentless snow had finally stopped, leaving the city to slumber peacefully underneath a blanket of pure white that covered everything as far as the eye could see. The glow of the moon shone down brightly on the fresh snow, momentarily giving the eerie illusion of being back in Hueco Mundo once more.
"Tia, I…" he began, trailing off as he became unsure of what to say.
"I didn't, you know…" she said instead, never once looking away from the window. "I know you think I did, but I didn't. I was going to, but…I don't know; I just couldn't. I slept in his bed, but I never—"
"Why tell me? It's not my business," he asked.
"I just wanted you to know… I'm sure you could smell his scent when I came home, and you probably thought…"
"Doesn't matter what I thought; not my business. I'm glad you didn't, though; this would be probably be a lot harder on you if you had screwed him."
"Thank you so much for putting it so crudely…" she said sarcastically before taking on a softer, more serious tone again. "You and Ulquiorra would have been the ones holding me back."
"I wouldn't stop you…" said Tyn softly, "I'd help you. You know that."
"Just like you'd do for any of the others…"
"Not like I'd do for the others…" Tyn corrected her, carefully placing his hands on her shoulders and squeezing gently. "I'm always going to be more protective of my mate— roommate, I mean— than I am the others."
Tia didn't answer immediately or seem to notice his momentary slip of the tongue, although Tyn could have sworn that for a brief second he saw a very faint, ghost of a smile in her reflection.
"It's been a long day; we should both get some rest," she said finally and Tyn nodded, recognizing that as a dismissal. He went to pull his hands away from her shoulders and retreat to his own room, but Halibel reached up and grabbed his left hand firmly, stopping him.
"Tia, what are you doing?" he asked warily as she headed for her bed and climbed in, pulling him along with her.
"Just shut up and hold me; I don't want to be alone tonight, okay?" she said as he cautiously slipped beneath the covers and settled down beside her.
"If you breathe a word of this to anyone, I'll kill you," she warned, pulling his arm around her waist and intertwining her fingers with his. "And don't get any ideas; if you move your hand up, I'll kill you. If you move your hand down—"
"Yeah, yeah; you'll kill me. I get it," said Tyn, pulling her close and holding her tightly as he inhaled slowly, savoring her vanilla-like scent. "Am I supposed to say something here or what?"
"Hiroki would whisper sweet things to me…" prompted Halibel.
A long, awkward silence filled the room.
"…I got nothing," admitted Tyn finally.
"You suck at romance," sighed Tia.
"I don't do romance; I kill things. Less complicated that way."
"Our old life was; it's not that simple here in the human world."
"Don't remind me," growled the redhead.
"Good night, Tyn."
"Good night, Tia…" he whispered, squeezing her tightly. "Merry Christmas."
"Christmas sucks."