Chapter Twenty Four

I froze, jaw hanging, blood oozing from my chewed up knuckles. I looked down to my hand, where I could see large chunks of skin missing, dark red blood running over my pale flesh. And then I looked back up to where Hideki had just been standing, flecks of my blood staining the white wall.

He really wasn't . . . real?

"Kaori, what the fuck."

I looked up from my hand mechanically, still confused. Grimmjow stood near the door. When had he entered the room? Had he heard me yelling at Hideki?

Worse, had he seen me punch the wall?

"That is not how you throw a fuckin' punch!"

Okay. Yeah. He had seen me punch the wall.

Mutely, I looked back to my hand, cautiously attempting to straighten my fingers out—it didn't work out too well, sending sharp stabs of pain up my arms. I found rather quickly that I couldn't straighten a couple of my fingers completely, even through the pain.

Not how I throw a punch? The question echoed in my head, reverberated around my skull as I stared at the blood rolling down the back of my hand, struggling to straighten out my fingers yet again. Elsewhere, I heard a whimper of pain—and then, detached, I realized the sharp noise had come from me.

"Here-" Something white obstructed my view, settling down on top of my bleeding knuckles, and then a warm hand was on my uninjured one, guiding it up, up, up, until the palm of it was over the white material that covered my opened appendage. Long fingers pushed down on my own, making my fingers grip tightly to my hand, clamping the material in place. "Just—just hold that right there."

Not like I have much of a choice about that one. I nodded mutely, still floored by the fact that not only had I busted my fist open on a wall, but the hallucination that had been telling me that I was not crazy and that he used to work for Aizen didn't even exist.

Because if he had existed in the first place, then I wouldn't have been able to punch straight through him and hit a goddamned wall, right?

"Sit on the couch." I was being turned around, led toward the couch, directed by a single hand to sit, sit sit-

I plopped onto the material, good hand still gripping my injured one, fingers still spasmodically trying to straighten themselves out.

"And just—stop trying to move your fingers, fucking-a. I will be right back, don't you fucking dare move."

I opened my mouth to say something, anything—my eyes were unfocused, my head fuzzy, thoughts a jumbled mess strewn left and right through my brain. Instead, my attention became focused on telling my fingers not to move, not to twitch—to simply stay in the loosely formed fist as they were, to not cause me any more pain than was absolutely necessary.

Why the hell did I punch a wall. That was so not a good idea. I'm an idiot. Somewhere in the far off recesses of my mind, I put 'punching walls' on my list of things I should not, under any circumstances, do. Ever. Said list also included jumping off of roofs, eating rat poison, and trying to make bacon.

I had managed to mostly stop them from moving by the time Grimmjow returned, setting a myriad of things on the coffee table, things I knew were there but couldn't quite make out what they were. My good hand had tightened a considerable amount on my injured knuckles, putting a damper on the blood flow and ensuring the white fabric sopped up more of the blood.

"All right," Grimmjow said, kneeling in front of me. He reached my chest from where he was sitting, and I realized again just how much taller he was than I."Let me see it."

I screwed up my face, eyebrows drawing down over my eyes, frown setting in on my features. "Huh?"

"Your hand, Kaori. Let me see your hand." He sounded almost exasperated, though I heard an edge of something else under his voice, something that sounded almost like worry.

But it was just my hand; it wasn't like I had headbutted the wall or anything.

"Oh." I was still scatter brained, thoughts coming in slow, syrup like drips, sticking to the sides of my brain and oozing down the walls, too slow to properly catch onto before they solidified too much for me to make sense of.

Hesitantly, I eased up on the pressure I was putting on my hand, slowly taking the white fabric—which, I realized belatedly, had been his jacket—off of the wound. Grimmjow gently took my hand and looked at the afflicted location; I could see the frown on his face as he studied it, almost like he didn't completely believe what he was looking at.

And then he twisted his torso for a moment, picking a damp cloth up off of the table before turning around and setting to work, gently dabbing at my knuckles. I gasped quietly before releasing a long, drawn out hiss of discomfort as he went for the blood on my hands.

He paused for a moment, and then set back to work, this time even softer than he had initially. I noticed then that the wound he had sustained across his torso had scarred at some since the last time I had gotten a good look at him—which seemed to have healed unnaturally fast. Then again, the cut I had left on his cheek when I had blacked out in the hall had been gone even faster, so I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me quite as much as it did.

"This is going to be hard to do with only one hand," he said thoughtfully, dragging me out of my thoughts. His words were stated almost as if the idea had only just struck him. "Uh . . ."

"Good thing I have another then, isn't it?" I joked, dropping his bloody jacket into my lap and holding up my good, non-dominant hand.

He glanced up at me for a moment, eyes darting from my face to my hand and then back to my face before he looked back down at my wound. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is."

We faded into silence for a moment, he continuing to dab at the quickly drying but still bleeding wounds on my hand, and me trying to make it as easy as possible for him, while also thinking.

I had punched straight through Hideki. That had to mean that he only existed in my head, which meant that I was, despite the urgings of both Hideki and Aizen, not well mentally. What was also going through my mind were some of Usagi's words—that Grimmjow had lost more than just an arm that night. Which, to me, actually explained his actions quite a bit more.

Grimmjow's ministrations let up for a moment, his hand moving slower with the cloth than it had before.

"You can move all of your fingers, right?"

I wiggled them slowly, only causing small needles of pain to shoot up my arm again; I bit down on my lip to stop myself from making a noise that told him it hurt.

"Looks like it," I said once I had stopped moving them, keeping them half curled toward my palm, easing the force they put on my knuckles when they were fully extended.

Grimmjow shook his head; I watched as his blue hair moved with the motion, half surprised to note that there was sand in it, almost like he had fallen at some point and hadn't yet had a change to get all of it out.

"I don't understand how you didn't manage to break your hand doing that," he said, more to himself than to me.

"Doing what?" I asked, rotating my hand just a little so he could get a better angle on some of the scrapes.

"Punching the wall—which was completely stupid. I mean, Gin had said you were freaking out about the walls but I hadn't actually believed him!"

Seeing is believing, I thought, watching as the blood came off of my skin, only to have fresh blood slowly trickle back into it's place. At least, it's supposed to be.

For me, seeing was far from believing; I could never be completely sure if what I was seeing was fact or fiction and trying to determine one from the other was incredibly difficult.

I laughed softly, trying not to jostle my hand. "Well. You know. Sometimes the walls simply ask to be punched."

"Yeah. Okay. Very funny," he said without laughing. He withdrew his hand, tossing the now bloody rag onto the coffee table and picking up a bit of gauze and a roll of bandages. Except then he realized that he wouldn't be able to handle both things with one hand—I saw a flash of pain go across his face at the realization, though it was gone just as quickly as it was there.

I held out my good hand, wiggled my fingers, and he handed me the bandages, keeping the gauze in his hand. Said object was laid over my wounds gingerly, like he wasn't trying to aggravate them any more than necessary.

It was pretty good progress in my mind, since the first time we had interacted when I had blood on my face was simply him throwing a damp cloth at me and staring pointedly.

Chewing on my lower lip, I set the bandages down in my lap and got the free end out, holding it between my fingers so it would be ready for when Grimmjow needed it. I proceeded to scoop up the rest of the roll and hold it in my palm, pushing my good hand closer to the bad one, so he could grab it.

He did so less than a second after I had finished the action, picking up the roll itself as I moved my hand to hold the end closer to my injury and the gauze. Gently, I held said end onto the gauze, careful not the aggravate my wounds any more—I could already see some blood trying to seep up to the top of the gauze, which was far from promising.

Grimmjow immediately started to wrap my hand in the bandages, tight enough so that they held, but not so tight that I couldn't feel my fingers—which was unexpected, but good.

"Why are your hands so fuckin' tiny?" I heard him mutter under his breath when he had passed over my hand three or four times, intent on his work.

"Genetics," I replied brightly, taking the roll of bandages from his hand and taking over the wrapping myself, trying to emulate the way he had done it—as we both knew, I was far from the best as bandaging things, but Grimmjow seemed halfway decent.

I got around my hand almost two times before he snatched the roll of bandages back, shaking his head slightly. I extended my arm a little more, bending it at the elbow, just so he would have a somewhat easier time at finishing the job—apparently, I did an even poorer job than I had imagined.

"You can still move your fingers, right?" he asked, pausing in his ministrations for a moment. I curled my fingers gently and then straightened them out most of the way again, bandages tightening against my knuckles with the movement. The actions still hurt, but not quite as bad as they had after I had first punched the wall.

"Looks like it," I answered, returning my fingers to the half curled state they had been in earlier.

We lapsed into silence again, his focus solely on my knuckles. After a few more minutes, he released a grunt of satisfaction. I had ceased paying attention and had taken instead to staring dazed at the wall, and looked down only when he made the noise. The bandages were snug on my knuckles, holding the gauze firmly in place. I couldn't see the roll anywhere.

"There." Grimmjow held onto my hand for another moment and then released it, leaning back a little. And then he looked at me, mouth opened like he was going to say something, but appeared to think better of it and closed his mouth.

Now that I was no longer freely bleeding, it looked like we didn't have anything to talk about.

Since the voice hadn't reared his head since I punched him in the face, I no longer had any sort of outside influence in cautioning me from making things awkward and talking about what had put the rift between Grimmjow and I in the first place.

"So," I stated, fumbling awkwardly for the next words I wanted to say. "Uh. The kiss."

Grimmjow jumped to his feet immediately, babbling, "Gottagobye. I'mout." He practically jumped over me in his hurry to get to the door.

"Wait!" I shouted, half rising off of the couch. He stopped walking for a moment, and I realized with a start that was already more than halfway to the door. "Just—just hear me out, okay? It's totally cool if you stay facing away from me, or standing where you are, or whatever."

I licked my lips, one hand held out toward him, waiting to see if he was going to leave or not. A handful of heartbeats passed by, and Grimmjow didn't move an inch. How the hell was I going to word any of this?

"So. I pushed you away. And, well, it's because neither of us were in the right state of mind to properly make decisions—and I'm still not. Because sometimes, it's hard for me to tell the difference between what's real and what isn't. And honestly, I don't feel completely prepared to make decisions at any point in time, and I definitely wasn't prepared to make one in a split second in that hall.

"But, you know, Usagi also explained some things to me. Like, I can see that you lost your arm. And then you lost your position, which I still don't understand whatever that was, but okay." I paused for a moment, taking a deep breath, trying to decide how to phase my next portion. "And I also understand that you lost your, erm, underlings on the same night. So you weren't in the right state to make decisions that involved others. So I still stand my ground in that respect, and I'm so totally not apologizing for flipping out, but I also understand if you, uh . . . if you need to talk about it. Or whatever."

I dug the toe of my sneaker in the floor I was standing on, twisting it around. At some point, I had decided to clasp my hands behind my bag, cautiously gripping the fresh bandages, waiting to see what he would do.

I could hear my heart beating in my ears as Grimmjow turned around, frown on his face. He stared at me for a moment, studying me; I pushed my chin up into the air a little, trying to defy the small amount of fear that had wormed it's way into my stomach—I'm surprised you didn't wind up all over the wall.

And then he started walking toward me and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I didn't like the look on his face, one I couldn't read properly, one I had seen before, when he had punched the wall just inches away from my head.

Grimmjow stopped walking when he was less than half a foot away from me, looking down at me. I could feel my heart in my throat, my stomach sinking; my knuckles were still throbbing.

He stood in front of me for a moment, staring at me before he set his hand on the top of my head. It was light at first and then grew heavier—and then he was pushing me down, though playfully. "You're a fucking dork."

"Yeah," I agreed with a laugh, relieved, grabbing his wrist with both of my hands and pushing up on it, off of my head, stepping out of his reach before I released his wrist. Though it wasn't a good thing that he had just brushed off my tirade, it was progress.

We stared at each other for a moment, gauging the situation we had placed ourselves in.

"So, uh. Why did you really punch the wall?" he asked, eyes flicking toward the blood splotches on the wall. They were small, hardly noticeable, but they were still there, another physical reminder of the fact that I had gone batshit.

"Well. You know about the whole voice in my head, 'No Kaori, you're not crazy at all' thing, right?" He nodded quickly, urging me to go on. "Well. Um. He sometimes takes a physical form that only I can see? And he pissed me off. So I thought I'd punch him, because to me he's, like, totally solid. In appearance, apparently, because imagine my surprise when my fist went straight through his face and into the wall."

Grimmjow stared at me for a moment, almost like he was trying to gauge whether or not I was joking. When he realized I wasn't, he shook his head.

"You've gotta learn how to throw a better punch, Kaori."

Here you are! This one was kind of fun to write-not quite as fun as the last one, but oh well. I have to work next week, but updating should continue as normal. You'll hopefully have one Monday?

Also, we broke 100 reviews! Hooray! You guys are the sweetest, greatest beings imaginable.