Chapter Text
Autumn was a pretty time of year in Karakura.
With summer fading and all its humidity traded for a cooling chill in the air, the town slowly turned red and yellow as leaves shivered and quietly dropped one by one. Festivals were popular that time of year, and while Ichigo usually ended up dragged along to one event or another in the past, he saw a strangely free stretch of days ahead of him that year. Hell, a lot of his days were kinda free lately.
For Ichigo, autumn meant something other than festivals and impromptu get-togethers with his friends. It meant something else to Kon, too, though neither of them had ever really mentioned it again. There was too much uncertainty about what had really happened. But the green-tipped feather Ichigo had found on his shoulder that day said that whatever was out there was real, and that meant their whole mystical journey to another world had been too.
The Spirit Society.
Kon had figured it had to be some kind of mirror world, or parallel universe for spirits. But instead of shinigami and hollows, there had been youkai spirit tribes. Tengu. Kitsune. Oni. No Hueco Mundo. Just a deep dark cave at the base of a mountain, and a version of Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez who’d helped him save Rukia’s life. Who’d handed over one of his coveted magical gems simply because Kon was pissing him off. Who’d agreed to leave his self-imposed exile long before he’d sworn he would, just to help Ichigo get the gem back and fight at his side. Grimmjow, the scrappy brawler at heart, helped him end a conflict before it had even started. The more Ichigo thought about it afterwards the more impossible it seemed, feather or not.
It had been three years since that strange day, and for three years Ichigo hadn’t been able to get a grumpy blue hermit of a demon out of his head. So when the anniversary of their accidental trip rolled around again, Ichigo packed a small, inconspicuous bag of items and told Kon what he was about to do.
“I’m coming! I’m coming with you!” Kon screeched instantly, just like Ichigo knew he would. “I’ve missed my feathery Nee-san! Do you think she’ll be happy to see me after I heroically saved her life while you were running around flirting with that smelly loner in the cave? Do you? Ichigo!”
“Sorry, I was tuning you out completely.” Ichigo frowned a little. “Grimmjow didn’t smell bad. Then again you did shove your face in his armpit like a fetishist. Would you have really watched him use the bathroom for eternity? Maybe you should go visit Grimmjow, and I’ll see Rukia. Go get your fix.”
“My only fix is in the soft embrace of a beautiful tengu woman,” Kon said fervently. His vow was completely ruined by his little heart eyes and lion face. “Can I have your body?”
“Fuck no,” Ichigo exclaimed, rattled by the idea. “Last time I turned up to that cave as a shinigami, that demon Grimmjow threw a small boulder at my head. I spent five minutes running around in circuits screaming about how Ichimaru Gin tricked us and stole his gem before he’d even call off those massive spirit hands. He said with my hair and shihakushou I looked like a spooky blackbird.” When Kon stared at him, Ichigo added, “I think he might be scared of birds.”
“What a dick!” Kon cackled, already lifting the flap on Ichigo’s satchel and crawling inside. “Why is there lube in here? Ichigo, you devil!”
“That’s a sports rub, stupid. This is my old gym bag.”
“Uh-huh,” came the muffled reply. “And the hand lotion? And the liquid soap? Why do you have so many products in here?”
“Some of us bathe now and then. I swear every time you give my body back it’s turned into Bear Grylls. Now c’mon; this might not even work but if it does, we’ve only got about two hours to get into the forest and find that forbidden spirit bridge.”
“Don’t spirits open inside,” Kon recited seriously, like Ichigo had any idea what he was talking about. “Hit it, Ichigo. I want feathers in my mouth by sundown.”
With that horrible piece of wishful thinking ringing in Ichigo’s ears, he threw his old black coat with its fur trimmed hood on and patted down his black jeans, making sure he had his wallet and soul phone just in case. The small mirror on the back of his door caught his eye. He really looked almost the same as he had three years ago, except he’d grown a little taller and filled out. A little less rib, a bit more shoulder. No big deal. If that Grimmjow remembered him at all, he’d be recognisable, surely.
Yeah.
No way could freaky blue demon Grimmjow have forgotten him.
“Let’s go.”
By the time they reached the patch of forest where Keigo’s mystery hunt had been that year, an innocent concern about being remembered had ballooned out into a full-blown internal panic. Ichigo was sweating in the chilly afternoon shade of a dormant sakura as he looked around for the bridge. In his bag, Kon was snoring already.
What was he doing? Ichigo thought. Was he stupid? Trespassing into a spirit world with weird mythical doppelgängers of people he knew in this world—one of which was Ichimaru Gin, so there was probably a horrifying version of Kenpachi out there somewhere—just to see a friendlier incarnation of an arrancar who wanted to kill him? And that wasn’t even the dumbest part; it had been three whole years since then. Anything could happen in three years. The demon Grimmjow might not even be in his cave anymore. Even Ichigo was only still living with his family because he hadn’t saved enough to rent a place yet, and he’d been through countless battles since that first encounter. He’d fought in and helped win the war against the quincies in that time. And that Grimmjow had said he was going to wage a war once he had his power amassed and conquer all of the spirit tribes. Ichigo didn’t know if he was ready to step into another battle just yet.
“I’m getting way ahead of myself,” Ichigo murmured, trying to shut down his flurry of worst case scenario thoughts. “I might not even find the stupid bridge anyway. It could have been a one-off, or that kitsune Ichimaru was the one who opened it that time. Nothing is saying I can even get there.” The words did calm him down, in a disappointing sort of way. Trudging the pressed dirt track and veering off to the right like he remembered doing somewhere around there, Ichigo patted his gym bag for security and took a few random turns through the trees. There had been a few bushes, and almost a veil of red and copper and green leaves falling down around him…
DO NOT CROSS.
Ichigo’s heart lifted. There it was: a slightly warped wooden bridge built over a shallow brook, a sign hung between the posts with frayed string. The words were faded. Under it, in a fresher scrawl punctuated by a rabbit face was a new message that said ‘humans stay out! This means you, Ichigo!’
“Like hell I’m paying attention to a sign with a Chappy face on it,” Ichigo said cheerfully to nobody in particular, jumping over the barrier. He jogged over the arch like it might disappear any moment, a renewed excitement blooming inside. “Spirit Society, here I come.”
The tengu Rukia would probably forgive him for sending Kon to her clan’s estate unescorted and full of lecherous fantasies. Tengu Byakuya…well, they hadn’t officially met.
Kon would be a great introduction to make.
“Wake up Kon. You’ve got feathers to eat, and I have a date with a horny demon.”
The bag exploded with muffled laughter. “Don’t you mean horned?”
Ichigo shrugged unseen. “Potato, tomato. I’ll pick you up when I’m ready to leave. Don’t get murdered, okay?”
“Who would murder me? I look like an adorable servant, just like Rukia said last time.”
“Adorable?”
“March, slave.” Some more rustling from the bag until Kon stuck his face out. “Are you sure you don’t want to give me your body? I’ll make better use of it than you will!”
Thinking of a plush blue-black fur pelt, an array of gleaming jewellery and curved horns like two glossy blue handles, Ichigo scratched his cheek and swallowed a little.
“No, I think we’re good. You’ll fit in better if other spirits think you’re a familiar like Rukia did, anyway.”
Kon gave him a lingering, suspicious kind of look at that but mercifully didn’t say anything. Ichigo didn’t have any plans or ideas, after all. Just three years of wondering what would happen if he’d had more than two brief encounters with that demon Grimmjow, the one who’d complimented a human’s fighting ability and who’d lost all his aggression the moment Ichigo said he wasn’t there to start a war. The one who’d listened to him speak and left his gems unprotected while he followed Ichigo out into the light, furious that the gift he’d passed to him had been stolen.
Ichigo knew and accepted Grimmjow the arrancar. His goals and values were understandable and a product of his survival instinct as a predator in Hueco Mundo. But Grimmjow the demon—why was he different in almost every way? Nicer, easier, more honest, less angry? Was it Ichigo’s human element when they met? Or simply a lack of the centuries-old enmity between shinigami and hollows in a world that didn’t have any? All the questions were going to drive him nuts if he didn’t get to that cave and find him.
For the hundredth time, Ichigo hoped he was home.
Grimmjow wasn’t home.
“Fuck,” Ichigo said with heartfelt dismay, looking around the enormous cavern like there might be some blue fur hiding in the shadows somewhere. It was definitely the same creepy cave mouth as last time. High stone above, smooth stone and clay below, with a fissure running through the back quarter of the cavern where a fresh spring was emitting a faint crystalline gurgle. Unlike last time, there were no multicoloured gems in the water. No gems, probably no Grimmjow either. Maybe he’d gone to find another spring to soak them in. Hadn’t he said something about charging them up? Maybe each spring could run flat, or something.
Maybe Grimmjow had moved on long ago. He could be anywhere. Absolutely anywhere.
Disappointed, Ichigo slouched his bag to the stone and wandered deeper into the cave. At least he’d have shelter for the night, if nothing else. Maybe he left a note saying where he’d gone? Yeah right. Exhaling a sigh, he pulled a small travel flashlight out of his coat pocket and switched it on. The main interior of the cavern was gloomy but well-lit, but the vein-like passages that forked off from it were probably pitch black. Breathing in the scent of fresh water and damp earth, he moved further into the underground cave system.
It was a long, twisty labyrinth down there, and it reminded him of the underground forest of menos in Hueco Mundo. Long passages that forked and split and curved into an incomprehensible network of tunnels. It felt like the inverted root system of a massive, ancient tree. Ichigo spent an hour wandering down an arterial passageway before the shine of something deep at the end of a side tunnel caught his eye. A blue glow, so faint he wouldn’t have seen it with the flashlight pointed in its direction. Figuring the path was straight enough, Ichigo bit his lip and switched off the light. With his hands out to grip the smooth walls of the cave, he followed it all the way down.
Blue could mean Grimmjow, his giant spirit hands, or gems, or…well, anything. But in a dark cave light usually also meant life, and that was good enough for him. Moving with the short, clumsy steps of the inexperienced, Ichigo walked until the faint blue became brighter, and even brighter, until—
“Whoa,” Ichigo breathed as the passage opened into another cavern, this one with its own star-littered night sky of a thousand glow worms clinging to the stone ceiling, trailing crystalline strings that captured the light from their bodies. The entire place was lit blue and white from above, artificial constellations arcing between the stone stalactites. It was the prettiest thing Ichigo had ever seen. “What are you guys all doing down here? Looking for bugs?”
“The bugs come to them,” said a low voice from behind him.
Ichigo went rigid, his entire chest turning to stone. Something soft brushed his shoulder, and an arm that glowed with slashes of blue pointed up at the stone ceiling with a clawed finger. “See the strings coming off ‘em? It’s mucous. They catch things like a spider catches flies in its web. They never leave this cavern because it’s warm from the spring at the other end.” Hands grabbed his shoulders so tightly claws pricked through the sturdy fabric of his coat. “So what’s a human doing this deep in my caves? If it’s a meal you want to become, you’re outta luck. I don’t eat chicken.”
“I’m not a chic—hey!” Ichigo spun around and glared up at the face tipped down to his. “You don’t recognise me? It’s me! Ichigo! Kurosaki Ichigo!” Had he even introduced himself last time? Maybe not. Worse, he couldn’t even hold onto his annoyance, which was more for appearances than anything else. The demon Grimmjow was still there, still failing at being menacing with his furry shoulder pelt and mismatched arms, his long feather earrings dancing across the bare skin of his chest. The slanted feline eyes narrowed down at him reflected only the ghostly blue of the wormlight, making them look like stars were dancing inside. Ugh, god. He really had it bad.
Grimmjow’s mouth tucked down for an instant. “I don’t know that name, but I know this smell. I gave you one of my gems and you lost it.”
“That’s not what happened and you know it,” Ichigo protested, but Grimmjow was suddenly twitchy, looking around the cavern floor and walls. The light made his demonic face markings look black in the strange glow of the cave.
“Is that creepy little bear here too?”
“No, I left Kon at the Kuchi—uh, the tengu estate. He wanted to visit Rukia.”
“Rukia,” Grimmjow repeated, like the name left a bad taste in his mouth. “Red horn, green shoulder plumes, big scowl? She keeps leaving fruit baskets on the edge of the boundary. They’re probably poisoned so I keep tipping them in the maggot trench. I’m not falling for any bird bullshit.”
“Maggot trench?” Ichigo repeated, feeling a strange sense of collapsing dreams fall upon him. Even the blue glow of the cavern couldn’t really save that moment. “Rukia was probably just trying to show thanks after you saved her from Ichimaru.”
“Like I’d fall for that!” Grimmjow actually sounded offended. “Come on, human, I’ll kick you out the right way this time but if you come back, you’re goin’ in the maggot trench too. Wandering asshole.”
“I’m not a—” Any protest was stopped dead as two hands—not Grimmjow’s, but two massive glowing blue spirit hands—flew in and grabbed him up like a small bird, caging him in their fingers. Then he was whisked out of the worm cave and through the twisting passages, back to the main cavern and dropped hard on the rocks next to his bag. “Ow! Dicks.” Raising both hands from his crouch, Ichigo flipped off the jazz hands from hell. Amazingly, they flipped him off right back. “Oh hey, cool.”
He was miming the fuck signal with thumb and forefinger pinched in a circle, a sole finger pointing through it in a penetrating movement when the self-proclaimed demon king of Spirit Society swaggered in with arms crossed, accessories jangling with each step. In the harsher light of the cave mouth Ichigo waited to be disappointed by the lack of ethereal glow. It didn’t really come.
Demon Grimmjow still looked every bit as amazing and feral as he had the first time. Personality differences aside, this Grimmjow had some kind of tribal style that didn’t look faked or awkward despite layers of toothed necklaces and billowing trousers that bore dangling beaded braids and engraved plate armour. His armlet was pure metal made soft and shining with use, his feathered earrings clearly coming from something that had once been alive and probably powerful.
But it was Grimmjow’s face that really struck home for Ichigo. The same eyes, the same mouth and hair, hell, even the same green estigma winging out from the corners under his eyes. But it wasn’t the Grimmjow from his world. Under the vivid blue streaks of colour across his face, the gloss of his horns with their gold rings pressed down around their base, there was something strangely different in the set of his jaw and the expressions he made. Something new. It was the same thing that had pulled Ichigo in the first time, trying to explain that he needed a favour, not a fight. And this Grimmjow had listened.
But it had been three years, and a human was just a human to a demon like him.
Well, screw that. Ichigo wasn’t just any damn human, and he’d spent three years imagining the entire reunion. Reaching over to grab his bag, he lifted it and gave his best stern look. It had mostly worked on Yhwach, after all.
“I’m staying here for a few days,” he told Grimmjow firmly, and slung the entire bag at him with more force than was necessary. He caught it instinctively, whuffing out a surprised breath as it hit him in the midsection. “Hope you have a spare bed.”
“I don’t have any beds,” Grimmjow replied, looking down at the bag in his arms. “Why the hell do you want to stay here? Piss off the tengu? Fox got your tail? If it’s the dragon tribe, you can walk outside my territory and die for all I—”
“I just came to see you again.” Honesty and humiliation in all things, right? “I never got to say thanks for giving me that gem. Did you end up getting it back from Ichimaru?”
The worn vinyl of the gym bag popped a little as pinprick claws sank through it one by one. Above the demonstration of casual destruction, Grimmjow was staring at him with wide eyes. Behind him, the giant hands were mindlessly miming the finger in the hole signal. Ichigo tried not to look at it. Tried not to look at anything, really.
“That was three years ago in human time,” Grimmjow said slowly, practically hugging the bag at that point. “Why are you still thinking about it?”
“Because I didn’t get to thank you,” Ichigo repeated, nonplussed. “And I guess…I wanted to…spend more time with you?” Oh god, vinegar. Vinegar and glass in his mouth. Being honest was for chumps, and demon Grimmjow was going to make him pay, and pay—
“Oh,” Grimmjow said, and threw the bag back at him. “All right. If it’s just you and not any tribe stuff, you can stay.” When Ichigo’s jaw dropped, he added crossly, “But if you try to steal any of my gems, I’m going to—”
“Throw me in the maggot trench, I know. I don’t need any gems. After all our effort last time, all we really needed was Rukia to blow us back to our world with her fan. How did she not know that?”
“Bird brains are small. Real small.” Grimmjow spotted the hands behind him finally and waved his arms through them, where they dispersed like smoke. “One time, I beat down some silver real thin and crumpled it around a pine cone. Threw it into the tengu compound and the snotty one with the feather braids came out and batted it around for like half an hour before anyone saw.” Ichigo had a horrible, delighted instinct that he was talking about Byakuya. Grimmjow just shrugged a little. “They’re dumbasses. Pretty, but kinda stupid when there’s something shiny around. I leave them alone. The others are where the trouble lies. Avoid them if you want to keep your soul, human.”
“My name is Ichigo. I-chi-go. Or Kurosaki, if you’re feeling distant and weird.” Silently, he really hoped this Grimmjow didn’t take him up on it. Too many similarities as things already stood. “So the gem, did you get it?”
Instead of answering, Grimmjow just turned on his strapped heel and strode back toward the inner passageway again. Confused by the abrupt departure, Ichigo dropped his bag on the stone and hurried to follow him. He’d better not be heading for the maggot trench. It sounded squirmy and traumatising.
Too proud to turn his pocket flashlight on again, Ichigo staggered and tripped his way after Grimmjow for a full minute until he gave up and grabbed a handful of the fur pelt that hung over Grimmjow’s shoulder. It had the unintended side effect of sending his guide rigid with surprise. Ichigo’s face smashed into the warm skin of his nape before he could stop.
“What?” Ichigo said defensively. “I can’t see a thing. What’s this fur anyway? Do you just grow it out of your shoulder like this? Do all demons have one?”
“Fuck, you ask a lot of questions,” Grimmjow said irritably. In the near-blackness Ichigo felt him raise his arms up. In an instant the entire passage had lit a brilliant, flickering blue as the disembodied hands returned, ghostly fire burning at their wrists. They hovered just behind and above them like a moving umbrella of light. Ichigo gaped up at them before he could play it cool, but Grimmjow wasn’t even looking. Instead he plucked at the fur and lifted it slightly. Underneath, a leather belt-like buckle was stitched into the hide. “The fur’s strapped onto my shoulder. It’s a clan thing. Every demon clan leader has one. Now c’mon, pick your feet up before I carry you.”
“You can carry me,” Ichigo offered agreeably. Grimmjow cut him a confused glance over his shoulder, a single visible horn gleaming in the blue firelight. “If it’s faster. Hey, are these hands controlled by you? Are they your hands? What’s with the teeth on your necklaces? And how come you have razor teeth sometimes and just little fangy teeth now? Can you transform into a giant oni or—”
A clawed hand clapped over Ichigo’s mouth, its palm slightly calloused against his lips. Giving him no opportunity to get free, another hand grabbed the base of his skull. Grimmjow looked ready to kill him if he said another word.
“Are you some kind of human spy? The hell is with all the questions?”
“Moh,” Ichigo managed to muffle out. The hand over his mouth was jet black and had jagged stripes of glowing blue that travelled all the way up his arm and under the fur. Why was it black? Was the blue some kind of demon warning stripe, like how poisonous frogs were brightly coloured? Was Grimmjow poisonous? Reaching up, he pulled the hand away from his mouth a little and turned his head aside. “You’re just…the first demon I’ve met, I guess, and you’re all blinged out and there’s horns and stuff.” Inspired suddenly, Ichigo added, “I have a horn, sometimes.”
Grimmjow looked offended. “I don’t need to know about your horn. Are all humans perverts?”
“Perverts?” Ichigo repeated, right before his face flamed red. “No, not—I mean a real horn, not my dick! You’re the creep here for thinking about it. Stop touching my mouth with your fuzzy paw.” He swiped at it, but Grimmjow yanked away with a deep glower of displeasure. Instead of kicking him out like Ichigo halfway expected, he just stomped away, presumably to whatever destination he had in mind.
“S’not fuzzy,” Grimmjow muttered, rubbing at his hand. “It’s soft." Ichigo snorted a little, right up until a giant claw pricked him on the asscheek and sent him jogging to catch up.
They walked in silence for a while, this time heading past the passage with the glow worms and down to the right somewhere. Ichigo felt an oppressive kind of silent weight in the stone above him as they went further down into the earth. He wasn’t claustrophobic really, but the passage was getting narrower and it lifted the hair on the back of his neck. Just as Ichigo was starting to freak out at the sound of his own breathing and footsteps echoing off the cold stone walls, Grimmjow started to speak.
“Hands is a clan spirit. Legend’s supposed to go that the origin of our bloodline was a blue oni so powerful he could knock down castles with a single swing of his sword. He was a mean bastard, and pissed everyone off from what the cave paintings tell. The great tribes all banded together and tricked the oni into drinking barrels of drugged wine. While he slept, they tied him down and tried to cut him into joints.” Grimmjow let out a snort. “They only got his hands off before he woke up, but his blood poured out and soaked into the mud, making a new race of demons. That’s how they say my clan was born. Hands here, it’s either the real oni’s spirit or just something tied to my blood. It fights with me when I need it to. Most of the time it just floats around grabbing things it likes.”
“Ghost oni hands,” Ichigo said in fascination. “It sounds like one of those creation myths from ancient times. Blood and dirt growing into demons. So its name is just Hands?” Ahead of him, Grimmjow’s shoulders lifted in a shrug.
“What else you want me to call it? It’s a couple of hands. Don’t get so sentimental, human.”
“Never mind.” Thinking hard on the story, Ichigo was struck by a sudden thought. “So Hands just attached itself to whoever the king is now? How does it know?”
Silence.
“It just does.” There was an empty sound to those words. “Come on, we’re almost there. You’re properly lost now, right?”
“Definitely. Plus your oni hands keep touching my butt so I’m too scared to look back the way we came. Is it hitting on me?”
“Be flattered. Hands usually rips the limbs off things as annoying as you.”
“Hands didn’t hurt Kon.”
“That thing was cursed. Creepy little bears shouldn’t be touched.”
Ichigo smiled. “Birds, stuffed toys, skin contact; for a big tough demon you sure are scared of a lot.”
“You wanna die? Because this is how you express a death wish.”
And there it was. For all this Grimmjow’s grumpiness and hermit loner vibe, he wasn’t violent beyond the necessary motions to protect his territory. Hell, even Ichigo wanted to kill Kon sometimes, but Grimmjow hadn’t raised even a claw in his direction. Maybe Kon was just too small to be worthy. Maybe that’s what Grimmjow thought of Ichigo, too. Well. That wasn’t anything new—he was used to being underestimated.
Feeling a giant fingertip rub the top of his head lightly, Ichigo halfheartedly swatted it, then just grabbed onto one dark claw-tip and held on. At least someone liked him.
“In my world, there’s a guy named Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez. He looks just like you, but he’s not a demon. He’s something we call a hollow. An arrancar, actually. It’s how I knew your name when we first met.” When Grimmjow did nothing except shrug a little and straighten his pelt, Ichigo frowned. “Doesn’t that blow your mind? There’s another world out there with another you, another Rukia and Ichimaru and you’re all these totally different people living different lives.”
Grimmjow stopped, but it was only to feel the side of a new passageway. Nodding to himself, he started in, grabbing Ichigo’s wrist to drag him in too. Frustrated by his lack of response, Ichigo almost snatched his hand back. Did nothing interest him?
“In here, down the end. Feel the steam?”
“Steam? No,” Ichigo said in annoyance. He absolutely wasn’t sulking. “Just the same freezing mould dungeon we’ve been crawling through for the last lifetime. Why would I feel steam?”
“Dumbass.” Grabbing his shoulders in a mismatched grip, Grimmjow hauled him around and in front. “Now?” He pushed Ichigo forward into a trot, barely letting him keep his balance. Seeing strange lights up ahead, Ichigo followed the passage to the end and gaped at the sight that stretched before him.
It was another cavern, sure. Wide and high with stone stalactites stabbing downward like knives, it could be like any other pocket in the underground maze—except for the pool.
In the centre of the entire natural room, fed from a gushing crack in the stone wall was a hot spring the size of a small lake. Wisps of white steam curled from it, but that wasn’t the amazing part. It was the colours that poured out of it like someone had filled it with liquid rainbow, lit from beneath by something magical and strange. Ichigo didn’t think of himself as particularly poetic, but the only word he could think to use for that vision was breathtaking.
“What the hell,” Ichigo whispered, slipping away from Grimmjow, his eyes full of the brilliance in the pool. The whole cavern was gleaming in jewel hues of purple and blue and red and yellow—every colour, shifting and glimmering with the reflection of water shifting over the stone, picking out the metallic veins of ore in the walls. Ichigo felt like he was standing inside a geode. The place was simply amazing. “This is insane. Is it the fountain of youth or something?” He stepped forward, itching to have a look inside the water, but a pair of forearms swung down on his chest like safety bars, pinning him back to a naked torso that was half obscured by plush fur. Ooh. A jaw mask bumped his cheek for a moment, until Grimmjow switched to the other shoulder.
“This,” Grimmjow said proudly, “is what a fully charged clutch of gems looks like. Hot spring water’s the final stage before they’re all ready to use. Five hundred, easy, and each one strong enough to kill a spirit. Fire, ice, water, lightning, earth, air and death.” He rubbed his blue-marked cheek against Ichigo’s, utterly heedless of the dismay on his face. “See, it’s not about the claws, or Hands, or how good I can gut a stupid fox. Demons are feared because we’re the only race who can make these. I’m gonna remind ‘em all of just who’s predator and who’s prey in this place.”
Ichigo felt sick. All that beauty, all that glittering radiance soaking the air and painting the walls…and it was for war. An arsenal of magical gemstones that could level the Spirit Society, splintering the peaceful world and throwing all the tribes into disarray. Into a bloodbath. The same thing Ichimaru had been trying to cause when he stole the gem in the first place.
Unless this had been his real plan. Not to take one measly little gem away, but to incense Grimmjow into stepping up his plans a thousandfold. And anything Ichimaru Gin did, there was a darker plot overarching it all.
Swallowing, dreading the answer but knowing he had to ask, Ichigo reached up to grab one of the arms bracing him and said, “Is there someone named Aizen in this place?”
Claws sank into his coat, the world whirling into white as Ichigo was hauled around and slammed face-first into the cave wall so hard the breath was pushed out of his chest. Pain detonated in his forehead like a bomb. Gasping, heaving ineffectual gulps of air, Ichigo blinked off the glittering light of a possible concussion. The world reverberated as enormous blue hands crashed into the stone on either side of him, menacingly close.
Breath touched his ear, hot and feral. Ichigo could feel blood spill down his hairline.
“How,” Grimmjow seethed in a voice of deadly, almost gentle quiet, “do you know that name?”
Even dazed and knowing as much as he did, Ichigo was bordering on panic. He was in the wrong body to be making a demon angry.
“I told you, there’s another world where—”
“You really think I’m stupid enough to swallow that bullshit? You come in here, into my territory, and the first thing you ask about is the gems?” On either side, the blue hands were dragging trenches through the stone with their claws. Ichigo’s stomach turned to water. “Bet you thought you were real smart, coming back acting like a friend. You, Ichimaru, that bird bitch, you were all in on it, weren’t you? Aizen could never’ve done it alone.”
“Done what?” Ichigo gasped, tasting his own blood in his mouth. It was running over his face from where Grimmjow was grinding him into the stone. “I’m not working with anyone!”
“Not anymore you’re not.” Mercifully, Grimmjow yanked him around to face him. Ichigo touched his face and felt a gash on the edge of his hairline, just above his right eyebrow. Blinking up through his blood, Ichigo tried again to think of something that resembled proof.
“I promise you, I’m not a spy for Aizen! You already know I’m from another world. My name is Kurosaki Ichigo, and I’m a shinigami substitute.” He wracked his brains for any detail that might count but came up empty. Was he honestly going to die like this? “I’m just a human who came back to see you.”
“No, you’re dead.” His voice was indistinguishable from his other self; full of fury and crackling hate. “Spit out your last words, and be grateful I’m lettin’ you die on hallowed fuckin’ ground.”
There were no options that he could think of. Nothing he knew that could get through to this demon tribe nutcase, not without making him think he really was a—a spy. For Aizen. What the actual hell? Well, when out of options…
“Someday we’ll laugh about this,” Ichigo told him, and watched Grimmjow’s eyes narrow in confusion. Right up until he kicked him square in the nuts, anyway.
It had the intended effect; pain briefly eclipsed the rage on Grimmjow’s blue-marked face, reeling him backwards a couple of steps, his feather earrings swinging. Hands just straight-up vanished in a puff of smoke. But most importantly, Grimmjow’s clawed grip weakened. Staggering as the room tilted and split in two directions, Ichigo bolted for the passage mouth and prayed he remembered even vaguely which way he had to go. His shinigami badge was in his bag at the large cavern entrance. If he could get to that before Grimmjow gutted him, he might stand a chance. Might. He’d taken a massive knock to the head. But if he could get away from Grimmjow then Ichigo didn’t honestly care where the passages took him. That had been a killing rage, he was sure of it. So much for the lonely hermit demon who wouldn’t harm a human.
Passages split into tunnels into openings barely wide enough for him to comfortably walk through, branching and twisting and curving around. Ichigo lost his way on the fifth new fork and kept going, the shaking bob of the yellow flashlight glow the only thing lighting his way. Further down behind him, something roared like a hellhound denied its meal and Ichigo was horrified to imagine it was Grimmjow. Maybe he could turn into an oni after all. God, his head hurt. Even the adrenaline wasn’t enough to cloud the hot throb of what was turning into a huge bleeding lump on his head.
How had he gotten it so wrong? Demon or arrancar, Grimmjow was a psychopathic savage with no heart at all—
Skidding hard as the passage opened up into a huge arena-like void, Ichigo barely stopped himself from plunging off the edge of the rock and into a bowl-shaped nightmare of gleaming, odd-shaped pieces of white stone. Panting hard, wiping the sticky mess of his eye clean with the back of his hand, Ichigo stared down into the darkness, where the light travelled over the bottom of the drop. It took him almost a full moment of consideration to realise he wasn’t staring at stones or rocks at all.
It was bones.
Whole skeletons gleamed ivory and clean, scattered in vaguely humanoid shapes all across the cavern. They seemed to have just been dropped there and never touched or moved to be still so perfectly posed. An arm crooked, a leg bent, two smallish looking skeletons draped at waist and chest in rotting cloth were still clinging to each other. It looked like a cross between the photos of Pompeii that Ichigo had studied in his Ancient History classes and a mass grave. What had killed them all so neatly? Who were they all? Grimmjow couldn’t have done it. Even Hands would have crushed them to pieces. They couldn’t have caused this sleeping, untouched tableau of death.
Casting the light across each of the nearest bodies in sorrowful defeat, Ichigo was swinging his attention to a possible new exit when he saw it. A familiar shape of white with overlarge eye-sockets and two curling horns. Ram-like, with a crack through the centre of the skull. Except it wasn’t a skull, because it sat atop one.
“Nel,” Ichigo whispered, and his knees hit the stone. His eyes were stinging in a way that had nothing to do with blood. “Oh my god, it’s Nel. They’re demons. They’re all demons.” The idea of throwing up soured the back of his throat and sent saliva rushing into his mouth, but he didn’t have enough presence of self to even bother. He could see them now: the shapes giving way to people he’d known. Knew. Or strangers, really. A long, centipede-like creature the size of a train. The two small bodies, one with long pigtails like dust trailing behind her. An adult skeleton wearing a wolf’s jaw like a necklace, a tiny child’s bones buried inside arms that had been snapped in half.
The arrancar of this world were demons, and they were all dead.
But Nel. She’d been so strong, so brave and noble and goofy and always so happy to see him—
Dead. Dead like Bawabawa, like Starrk, like his little green-haired girl. Ichigo didn’t want to look any closer. He didn’t want to see who else was in there. Any of them. All of them. He was still staring into the darkness, dimming yellow light dancing over their bones when the passage he’d come from lit blue-white and blazing. He didn’t need to hear the footstep to know Grimmjow had found him.
“Who killed her,” Ichigo asked, so dully it barely sounded like a question to his own ears. “Who killed Nel?”
“Who do you think?” Grimmjow said coldly. “Nelliel, Shawlong, Starrk, Harribel, even the stupid dog, slaughtered when the clans refused to give over power. Big event here, some hundred years ago. All the demon clans called to order. All in one place. Didn’t Aizen tell you the big story of his triumph? How’d he sell it to you and still leave this out?”
“Who. Killed. Nel.” Ichigo barely recognised his own voice. One joint bending at a time, he pushed himself to his feet. “Was it Aizen himself? Tousen? Ichimaru? Or was it Nnoitra, finally getting what he wanted? Who killed my friend?!"
“Ichimaru? Tousen?” Grimmjow said, startled off guard so badly that Ichigo was able to get a fist in the leather strap of his pelt and yank their faces together. Blue eyes like brushed metal stared down at him in the spiritual fire. “Why are you crying? You…” Several emotions flickered across his face in tumbling succession, and none of them were anger. After a moment, his hackles slowly went down. “I don’t know who killed her. I wasn’t here.” There was something young in his voice. Carefully, he started tugging Ichigo’s hand out of the fist it was locked in. “It was supposed to be a demonic conclave. Hundred years ago. More. Everyone to meet and vote and talk it out. All the demon clan leaders, all their people. The ryuujin wanted to add us as an adjunct of the dragon tribe. Blood’s not that different, he said. Dragons make different gems, and only one in ten lifetimes, but they said it was something special. Then he said he needed all of ours to power his own, and in return we wouldn’t be shunned by the Spirit Society anymore.” Grimmjow stared down into the pit. “They said no thanks.”
“Aizen is the leader of the dragon tribe,” Ichigo said slowly, unsure. “The…ryuujin?” Grimmjow just nodded in the blue firelight. Snorting back his running nose, Ichigo wiped his eyes roughly. “He’s the leader of the dragon tribe and he wanted you all to join him, but he killed everyone when they said no. Where were you?”
“It’s not like I ran,” Grimmjow said instantly, his jaw jumping on a sudden clench of teeth. “I was gone long before everything went wrong. I don’t trust anything that’s not a demon. We’re honest, there’s no bullshit with us. It’s the nobility and the other tribes that talk about peace and then kill each other behind closed doors. I didn’t want us to be like them, so I told Shawlong to get fucked, he could represent the clan if he wanted to be included so badly.” Shoving Ichigo away, Grimmjow kicked a pebble into the pit. The clatter of its landing said it found someone’s bones. “Why are you asking, human? How do you know Nelliel? Gonna feed me more shit about this other world you’re from?”
“I’m twenty years old, and she died a hundred years ago,” Ichigo said fiercely. “I couldn’t possibly know she had green hair and hazel eyes, or that the sheep skull mask over there used to sit on her head. There’s definitely no way I could know that Nnoitra hated her strength, or that she had some—some really weird friends that followed her around and called themselves her brothers. Aizen wouldn’t have cared about any of this. About her. Not your Aizen, and not the one from my world. I’m not his spy, Grimmjow. I’m the one who helped take him down in my world.” When Grimmjow’s head jerked around, necklaces jangling, Ichigo swallowed. “I’m the one who’s going to help you take him down in the Spirit Society. Now, before he creates his jewel. We’re going to avenge your demon tribe and we’re going to do it without waging war on everything in sight. But I can’t do it unless you let me help. And that means trusting me.” Ichigo held out his hand.
Grimmjow stared at his face for a long, uncomprehending moment. “You want to help me.”
“Yeah.”
“But you don’t want me to take revenge on the other tribes for looking the other way.”
“That’s right.”
“No.”
“What?”
“No!” Grimmjow said with emphasis. “I don’t know you, I barely knew Nelliel, and everything I just told you came from Shawlong’s mouth before he drowned in his own blood and died. I sure as hell can’t let you live knowing you’ve seen the gems. I’ve got no fucking proof it was Aizen, dickhead. You can’t help me any more than I can help me. Demons aren’t listened to by the other tribes. To them we’re just dirty, savage, meat-eating, soul-stealing monsters. The territory protections? They’re just to keep me in as much as they’re to keep everything else out. Aizen doesn’t think I have a single fucking gem to my name—”
“Ichimaru knows,” Ichigo said in a rush, willing him to understand. “He knows you can make them because you gave one to me three years ago, and he works for Aizen.” He paused. “Sort of. It’s complicated. But I’d stake my life on Aizen knowing everything Ichimaru does at this point. There’s too many similarities between this world and mine to ignore.” All he needed next was some kind of spirit Inoue to turn up with the ability to reverse events and they’d be well and truly screwed. “Please, Grimmjow. I didn’t pick up on any of this last time I was here. I missed it, even though it was right in front of my stupid face. Let me help now, before any more lives are lost.”
Grimmjow’s lip curled. “You think I care at this point who dies? The other youkai tribes can rot. They didn’t lift a damn claw—”
“Not them,” Ichigo said fiercely. He blinked. “Well, them too. But mostly you, because you’re in the most danger. You’re still valuable while your gems are hidden away and nobody knows they’re one-hundred percent charged or whatever. Technically I don’t know where they are any more than Ichimaru or Aizen or anybody, because I seriously hate this shithole mountain you’re living under and I have no sense of direction here. How can I spy on you when I can’t find anything? I’m on your side. I swear it. I know you don’t really know me but I swear it to you, Grimmjow.”
There was no blood pact or spit-shake that could make him believe it and Ichigo knew it well. He was firmly in the category of Just a Human; just something small and loud when all this devastation had happened a century ago. He knew he was picking open not just a scab but an entire scar, peeling back the shining tissue of the surface and digging inside with a careless hand. But it had been Nel. This world’s Nel. She hadn’t been an arrancar made by Aizen, but part of a race alone. Slaughtered for being too proud to give into his stupid syrupy lies and talk about destiny and plans. The same thing that would have happened to them in Ichigo’s world, if they’d said no instead of yes. Screw that parallel universe shit. All that was left was Grimmjow, and if it meant Mugetsu had to be used twice to save the entire place then Ichigo was prepared to do his part.
Soul Society, Spirit Society, the arrancar and the demons, it didn’t matter what they called themselves. Aizen was still a guiding hand of events and he didn’t have his hougyoku yet. There was still time to stop everything before it began.
Grimmjow stared at Ichigo in a long, guarded silence. Behind him, Hands was flared open like bat wings in cold fire, probably ready to crush him like a doll if his judgement went badly. It occurred to Ichigo not for the first time that maybe he really should have given his body to Kon. Well, he’d done and said everything he could for someone with an open head wound and a demon with ghost hands threatening to kill him over a mass grave. If Grimmjow attacked, maybe he could dart for a new tunnel, or push him into the pit. It didn’t seem that likely but Ichigo wasn’t going to go down peacefully.
“Your head is pissing blood,” Grimmjow said finally, his eyes sliding away like he didn’t care one way or the other. “For all I know you’re just rambling because I knocked your brains loose. Hands, take him back to the hot spring. I’ll take care of this.”
Ichigo stiffened. “No, wait—” But there was no waiting as giant hands engulfed him and the rollercoaster from hell began once more, hauling him through tunnels and around corners like they were on badly-maintained rails, finally throwing him down on the edge of the rainbow spring he’d bolted from. So, he was going to die after all. What a shitty way to go. He hoped Kon was adopted by the tengu clan if he couldn’t make it back home.
Hands was guarding the passageway, so Ichigo just crawled over to the proper edge of the water and finally looked in. It looked like the inside of one of those fake treasure chests people like to put in elaborate fish tanks: hundreds of golf ball-sized jewels in different shades of vibrant colour, each one absolutely pouring light from the bottom of the spring. The mixture created that swimming pool radiance of shifting light and webbed lines across the ceiling and walls of the cave. It was beautiful, but it was probably going to kill him. A gem for every element and one for death itself, hadn’t Grimmjow said?
Ichigo was still staring morosely into it, watching occasional small drips of his own blood hit the water and filter away in tacky strings when Grimmjow strode in. He was taking off one of his necklaces as he approached, the one with the round black stone at the centre.
“Nothing to say?” Grimmjow asked, shoving the necklace over Ichigo’s head and pushing it under his coat and shirt. “Thought you’d have thirty new questions by now.” Unexpectedly nimble fingers started working the toggle fastenings on his coat, parting them all the way down until he could pull it back off Ichigo’s shoulders by the hood. He threw it at the wall, where a white t-shirt soon followed. Ichigo’s new main concern was the pain of his head when knuckles grazed his wound. When his boots were pulled off as well it suddenly occurred that Grimmjow was taking off all his clothes.
“I can dress myself,” Ichigo blurted out backwards, trying to shove clawed hands away from his fly. “Why are you killing me naked?”
“I’m not killing you,” Grimmjow replied, grabbing his waistband and eyeing the snap with some interest. “What is this button? Metal buttons?” Pulling it apart with care, he shoved his face right up close to the reinforced stitching of the buttonhole. His eyes lit up when he spotted the zipper. At that point Ichigo couldn’t stay alert for proceedings and flopped back on the side of the spring. Everything had gone sideways. Nel was dead. How could Nel be dead? She was an unkillable masochistic amazon with a lance. She was like…a knight, but in skimpy clothes. She was like a sister. A little one, but sometimes a big one too. God, his head was throbbing. And his ass was officially cold.
“Ow,” Ichigo said as his jeans were peeled off his legs, even though it didn’t really hurt. It was just the only protest he could think to make. “Stop dressing me. Un. Undressing me.”
“Fine,” said Grimmjow, who was waving black underwear at him like a flag. “You’re naked anyway. Do all humans look like this? Orange?” Fingers twirled in his pubic hair, tugging on it. There was something really wrong with that, but Ichigo wasn’t sure exactly what it was until two fingertips pressed his nipples like doorbells. “Haven’t seen a naked human in a long time. You seem cleaner than the last one.”
“Gross,” Ichigo said, squinting his blood-sticky eye. The rainbow stone ceiling was whirling. “I think you scrambled my brains, Grimmjow. I’m too human to take a hit like this and not come out backwards. Or inside out. Can you see my brains?”
Grimmjow wasn’t immediately available, instead making a lot of rustling noises and gesticulations in the corner of his vision. Rolling his head took some effort and pain, but by the time Ichigo was able to focus again he could see Grimmjow dropping his billowing blue patterned pants onto his unbuckled fur and leg straps, along with his metal plates and a teal…thing, and a thick rope-like belt that Ichigo had seen in a lot of historical illustrations. He left on the metal arm band and his other necklace, plus the earrings and golden horn rings. Wearing nothing but those, his markings and a lot of smooth pale skin, he returned to bundle Ichigo’s seemingly-seventy limbs into his arms and haul him up into the air.
“Okay when I had this in mind I wasn’t free-bleeding from the head,” Ichigo disclosed officially, trying to unstick his eyelashes from each other so he could get a better look. Grimmjow frowned down at him, trying to navigate something and glare at him at the same time.
“You said you didn’t know anything about the hot spring.”
“I fantasise on the go?”
“About what?”
“What?”
“What are you fantasising about?”
“Who is?”
Grimmjow glowered. The vivid blue that streaked down from his horns, through his eyelids and down his cheeks looked like it had been painted on with a calligraphy brush, curving around and out with two flecks below the base like accents. Or like a fisherman’s hook with two water ripples beneath it. Or like…like…
Hot water touched his ass, almost too hot to stand. Grimmjow was putting them into the magic rainbow spring. Together. With the demon gems. Ichigo barely had the presence of mind to reflexively suck in a breath and then they were plunging down, limbs caught up together as he swung around in the buoyant water. Yelping at the shock of being shoved into a boiling pool of death Ichigo tried to claw his way to freedom, which also involved jamming his thumb in Grimmjow’s metal cuffed ear and fighting his way free. Or maybe it would have, if he wasn’t as weak as a kitten by comparison. Grimmjow just looked at him in puzzlement.
“The spring isn’t that hot. Wait it out for a minute while the gem wakes up.”
“The death gem?” Ichigo said through clenched teeth, willing his dick not to boil and split in half like a sausage. Maybe the water wasn’t hot for a demon, but he had the soft skin of a stupid moron who thought he could just arrive for a sleepover with a horror movie dropout. Maybe this was exactly what he deserved. Against him, Grimmjow just shifted his arms and lowered him onto a rocky shelf that could act as a bench. Then he let go.
“It’s a healing gem. I never made any of ‘em myself, so this old one is all you get. Let me see your head. The spring water isn’t powerful but it should help things along.” Cupping a long-fingered hand under the water, Grimmjow raised it to trickle over the place on Ichigo’s head where the pain was worst. “I haven’t used this gem in a while. They get kinda slow if you just leave ‘em out in the dry.” Wet fingertips, careful to turn their claws away, slowly rubbed at the drying blood on his face until it turned wet again and dripped freely. Since it was Grimmjow’s fault he was hurt in the first place Ichigo didn’t even tell him to stop, just let his head be propped up with a cradling hand and shut his eyes, while the other pushed blood around on his cheek and washed it away. It felt kinda nice by then, not too hot at all.
“Ow,” Ichigo said again, almost placidly. The fingers on his cheek hesitated their path for a moment, a thumb brushing the curve of his cheekbone back and forth.
“Sorry. I should’ve remembered you were just a human. Never thought much about it at the time. I lost it when you said Aizen’s name. S’been…nobody’s even mentioned him in decades.” Another palmful of water ran down from Ichigo’s temple to his chin. Across his chest, the stone seemed to hum. “They all think he’s just another noble youkai lord. The ryuujin of the dragon tribe.” The musical song of water and the low rumble of Grimmjow’s voice was all Ichigo could hear. “Nobody asked how he got so high in the tribe. Youngest in eight hundred years. Probably ate his siblings in the nest.”
Exhaling a laugh through his nose, Ichigo opened his eyes to join him with an insult and stopped. All his thoughts flew out of his muddled mind the moment he realised Grimmjow’s face was very close to his. Breath touched the wet side of his face, cooling the skin there as fingers rubbed carefully around the edge of the cut on his forehead, washing it clean with the strange water of the spring. The gem felt more like a comforting coal against his chest by that point, but Ichigo didn’t look down to study it. Grimmjow’s intent concentration on his task was way more interesting.
“Hey, Grimmjow…I’m sorry about what happened to your clan and the other demons. I wish I could have stopped it.”
Sharp-clawed fingers stilled on his brow, and Grimmjow’s intent expression blanked. Slowly, blue eyes dropped down to look at him. There didn’t seem to be any anger in them, but Ichigo felt his stomach tense in anticipation anyway. This was still the same demon who had smashed his head into a rock wall. Maybe he shouldn’t still be talking about the massacre. Why had he started talking about the massacre again?
“What’s that sad face for? Stupid. You didn’t know them.” The thumb that stroked over Ichigo’s brow didn’t touch the worst of his wound. It was almost as gentle as his voice. “Doubt I’m the same as this other me from your world. Doubt Nelliel was either. It can’t all be the same, human. Don’t go mourning an idea just to have some shit to be sad about. We’re alive and that’s what counts.”
At that point the gem around Ichigo’s neck started to glow with a dark blue internal light, slowly filtering through the dead black exterior. His head wasn’t so sore anymore—in fact as the light grew brighter, his pain receded further. Healing magic in the Spirit Society didn’t feel like any old kidou spell. It felt like it was speaking words into his bones, into his blood and his skin, telling it to knit back together and be all right again. It felt warm, and primal. It…felt kind of like Grimmjow, if someone could wring him out and put him inside a jewel. The look in his eyes matched the gem in ways Ichigo couldn’t explain. And maybe he was still suffering a serious head injury. He tried to organise his feelings into a reply.
“I’m sorry that you’re alone,” Ichigo said simply. Grimmjow just tucked the corner of his mouth in like he was trying not to reply and scratched the blue marking on one pale cheek. His glossy horns were reflecting the shifting light. Ichigo looked away. “Then again, I guess you’ve got Hands to keep you company.”
“Not much of a conversationalist,” Grimmjow admitted, seeming finally satisfied with Ichigo’s wound and sitting beside him on the smooth rock shelf in the spring. Ichigo felt their bare thighs brush a little and wondered if it was just the gem making him hum from the inside out. “Plays a mean game of shadow puppets, but whatever it knows that I don’t, it’s not tellin’ anytime soon. Could be worse.”
“How?”
“Could be dead with the rest of them.” At Ichigo’s stricken look Grimmjow actually snorted; his nose scrunching slightly with his sudden grin. His incisors were exposed for a moment, knife sharp and gleaming, but nowhere near the mouthful of razors his teeth could be when he was properly angry. “C’mon, dip your head in the water a little. It should finish off the last of that wound.”
Ichigo complied, but it mostly involved letting Grimmjow’s clawed hand cup the back of his skull and press him down face-first into the hot water. Opening his eyes under there felt dangerous, but the sight was too amazing not to try. Rippling multicoloured lights blazed up at him, pouring from round gems resting on the spring’s bed. The mineral-rich water didn’t hurt his eyes. Around his neck, the now-dark blue gem was radiating a beautiful marine light. But if Grimmjow hadn’t made it, who had?
“I think I’m better now,” Ichigo said when he burst back out of the water, knocking aside the plunging hand. “You can stop trying to drown me.”
“Humans can’t hold their breath for very long,” Grimmjow said critically, but let him go. He even helped to smooth water off his cheeks and hair, even if it had the unfortunate side-effect of plastering his hair to his head. “You feel better now, right? The gem is old but it’s still got all its magic.”
“Yeah,” Ichigo replied, poking at his hairline. The skin was smooth again with no hint of tenderness. “That’s a pretty cool gem. Thanks.” He reached around his neck to take it off but Grimmjow just knocked his hand away, pushing off the edge of the spring to lazily glide through the water.
“Keep it on.”
“Why? Are you planning on smashing my head into rocks again? Because that’s pretty rude host behaviour, if you ask me.”
“Nah, it’s because you’re all soft.” On the other side of the spring, Grimmjow gave him a sudden toothy grin. “Besides, if it comes out that you really are a spy, Hands will just grab an arm each and pull. No rocks needed.”
“Try it, I’ll show you how soft I really am,” Ichigo replied threateningly, which made Grimmjow burst out laughing for some reason. Maybe it had something to do with being naked and easily manhandled—or was that demonhandled?—into a hot spring while concussed. It was on the tip of Ichigo’s tongue to tell him in great detail just how strong he could really be, but instinct told him that appearing as a squashy little human was half the reason Grimmjow immediately liked him. Post-murder attempt, at least. Unveiling himself as a threat probably wouldn’t do much to endear him.
They got out of the water soon after that, Ichigo plucked out by Hands like a kitten by the nape of his neck and then fanned dry while Grimmjow shook himself off like a dog somewhere out of sight behind the rocks. Privately, Ichigo could admit he’d been trying to catch a glimpse of him naked. For parallel universe research purposes, of course. The tattooed black of a styled number six was already posing big questions, because if Aizen hadn’t put it there, what did the six mean in this world? And the hollow hole, was it just a demon hole? Did they all have one? So much seemed similar to the people he knew in his world, but it was all shifted slightly left of what he’d assumed. Ichigo couldn’t take the Spirit Society lightly—not if there was another version of Aizen out there.
The question was, Ichigo thought as he pulled on his clothes and slapped Hands’ attempts to help away, would Grimmjow even let him help like he wanted to? Or was he just another amusing human, of no particular use except as a funny pet that posed no real threat? Worse, would he start thinking he was one of Aizen’s little minions, like Ichimaru and Tousen? The very idea of those two working for him again was just a theory. Who the hell knew.
“You need to eat, right?” Grimmjow asked as he rounded his rock corner, yanking at the layers of fabric, rope and metal that covered him from the waist down. His wet hair was roughly combed back by hand into an almost perfect replica of his hairstyle before. “You eat fish? I’m good at catching fish.”
“Fish sounds great,” Ichigo said, trying not to show his surprise. A thought occurred to him. “You mean just regular fish, right? Not…fish youkai or anything?”
“Yeah, regular fish. I’d harpoon that asshole Ukitake any day, but he’s too fast underwater. Cod’s all you get.”
“Ukitake?” Ichigo repeated, something strange and joyful slowly expanding in his chest. “Ukitake Jushirou? He’s alive in this place too?” When Grimmjow just shifted from foot to foot, giving him a narrow look, Ichigo darted over and gripped him by the arms, thumbs pressing in the soft bend of his elbows. “Hey, who else? Unohana-san? The old man? Komamura-san? Is Tousen still alive here? He was always kind of a sanctimonious jerk but some people really missed him after he died.” When Grimmjow just stared at him, Ichigo felt his excitement come down a few notches. Several hundred, in fact. Had he said more spy stuff? “Grimmjow?”
Looking down at the hands touching his mismatched arms, to the necklace hanging across Ichigo’s chest and up to his face, Grimmjow seemed to be puzzling something out. Whether to kill him? It was so hard to tell with this one. The other Grimmjow only had one mode: fight. This one had more facets than those gems in the water. Eventually Grimmjow reached up and clapped a palm to either side of Ichigo’s face and squeezed slightly, smushing his cheeks up a little. Despite having one black hand and one pale one, both palms felt the same. The faint prickle of claws brushing his hairline behind his ears sent crazy shivers into his scalp.
“So you lost a few too, huh.” Like his tone, Grimmjow’s eyes weren’t unkind. The commiseration of the left behind, maybe. Between the hands Ichigo shook his head a little.
“I wasn’t close to them. But there was this huge war a couple of years ago and it took some of the strongest shinigami with it. Maybe it’d be nice to see them again, even if they don’t know me.” He shrugged a little. “Whatever. Go find me some food. I’ll start a fire while you’re gone.”
Grimmjow’s eyebrows shot up. “You know how to? Without a gem?”
“What, you don’t?” Ichigo replied, thinking about Isshin’s old lighter sitting in the bottom of his gym bag. “I thought you were a master of living rough. That’s sad. You shouldn’t rely on gems for everything, you know.” It was a miracle he kept a straight face after the filthy look Grimmjow gave him.
“You’re a little asshole, anyone ever tell you that?” Grimmjow squished his cheeks extra hard like he was trying to crack a giant walnut. “Can’t believe I felt sorry for you. Fuck off and make a fire then. Hands!”
“Nonono—” Twin blue palms flew at him like birds of prey, barely dodged. Hitting the stone hard, Ichigo commando rolled under them and skidded up to his feet, hurtling down the tunnel and back in the opposite direction to the boneyard. “I can walk on my own, damn it!”
Ichigo took two wrong turns and came to a dead end before Hands found him and scooped him up. Absolute indignity, again. He wasn’t a pet cat! Worse, Grimmjow’s wicked laugh echoed through the tunnels back at him like he knew exactly what had happened. Arms and legs crossed as he sat on the worlds worst magic carpet, scowling hugely, Ichigo hoped he fell in the water and Ukitake bit him.
Ukitake. Alive. And a Rukia who hadn’t had to grieve the loss of him. Already the place felt like a utopia for that alone, except for the whole arrancar genocide. Demon. Whatever. Some things were backwards and happening out of order, but the big events still felt the same. Ichimaru had been the biggest hint that it was all about to go sour again. Was he still a double agent, acting only for himself and Rangiku-san? Was there a Rangiku-san? Images of her with a pair of kitsune ears and a bushy tail lit up his imagination—and heated his cheeks a little. God, maybe Kon was rubbing off on him. And that officially sounded even worse than intended.
Poking the ghost hand beneath him, feeling a texture a little like cold leather, Ichigo wondered exactly how sentient the severed parts were. How did they see and hear? Was Grimmjow the only one who could command them? And why the hell did they like him so much?
Being in the Spirit Society was just piling questions on top of questions the longer Ichigo thought about everything. When he’d planned to come, he’d thought maybe he’d just find the demon Grimmjow again, build an instant rapport somehow and spend a few days hanging out in the enormous creepy cave. Instead he’d immediately found violence, mucous-dripping glow worms, a boneyard he’d officially put a reflective cork in until he could process it and he’d been undressed and bathed against his will. At first, anyway. To say nothing of the Aizen threat—something he desperately needed to know more about.
Tread carefully, his common sense said sagely.
Put your face in Grimmjow’s fur, his hormones countered.
Ichigo sighed and flopped back on the giant palm whisking him through the tunnels. Maybe he just needed to calm down and wait for an opportunity for either to arise. It was supposed to be a vacation from his life, anyway.
Yeah, maybe he just needed to relax.