Chapter Text
The first time Grimmjow runs into the orange-haired motherfucker that turns into the bane of his existence, he’s too preoccupied with not dying to notice most of the details. Later, once he’s put a healthy distance between himself and those specific sand dunes, he’ll recall impressions of bright hair and black estigma and a hole in the center of the fucking vasto lorde’s chest.
-
The other hollow doesn’t sneak up on him so much as appear between one blink and the next; it’s not the reiatsu that saves Grimmjow’s hide but well-honed instincts born from years—or decades, or centuries, time meaningless in these endless sands—of clawing his way up the food chain with teeth and claws.
And then he sees the monster, distinctly humanoid and with a maw like a nightmare, and Grimmjow does something he hasn’t had to resort to in eons; he turns tail and runs.
He doesn’t get far, the hollow blurring into existence in his path, and only his considerable dexterity stops Grimmjow from crashing headfirst into the thing’s legs and getting himself killed pathetically. He backs away with teeth bared, and he knows with bone-deep certainty he’s going to die. Grimmjow, for all his gnawing hunger and burning need to grow stronger, become the fucking strongest, didn’t survive this long by being a fool. He’s killed and eaten hollows stronger than himself, but this thing, with its pale flesh and undetectable reiatsu—because it’s not a lack of it, a fact as clear as the full moon glowing above—is levels beyond what Grimmjow is, beyond anything he’s encountered. It’s a fucking vasto lorde, the pinnacle of hollow evolution.
The thought tastes bitter on his tongue. He chokes on it and pushes it right back out in a growl, all rage and hunger.
He’s going to die, all this effort wasted, but he tried running, and the thing caught him in a blink and is now just standing there, poison-yellow eyes fixed on Grimmjow. Its posture is relaxed, head titled slightly to the side; there’s not an iota of tension in the sculpted muscles, and Grimmjow’s pride roars at the affront.
He’s going to die, but damn if he’ll roll over and wait to be eaten.
The vasto lorde takes a step forward, and Grimmjow pounces.
The bastard doesn’t even stumble under his full weight, and when Grimmjow closes his jaws around its shoulder in one, powerful snap, the impact rattles his brains. He bites harder, channeling reiatsu to his teeth, but the vasto lorde’s hierro doesn’t even crack. His lower legs kicking the thing’s belly, claws out in a move that’s gutted more adjuchas than he can count, meet the same impenetrable defense.
And the vasto lorde just stands there, unmoved and unmoving, for several long seconds while Grimmjow tries with increasing fervor to at least take a bite out of it before his own gruesome end.
Then its hand closes around his nape, and Grimmjow’s only coherent thought, past the primal surge of terror, is, I hope you choke on me, asshole.
Next thing he knows, he’s careening through half a dozen dunes and crashing into cold sand, body digging a trench until the vicious momentum sputters and dies. He leaps to all fours, braced for claws or a cero—as if that thing will need a cero to tear him apart—but nothing flies at him from the vasto lorde’s direction. Grimmjow whirls around, certain he’ll find the thing poised behind him, playing with its prey—and fuck, that chafes—but there’s no one there either.
Hueco Mundo’s endless sand and devouring darkness surround him on all sides. The half-moon doesn’t illuminate flashes of bright hair or pale skin. Gleaming eyes don’t slit open in the dark.
Grimmjow takes a wary step back. Still nothing.
He runs.
Nothing chases him.
And later, once he’s licked his metaphorical wounds and assuaged his pride with a few adjuchas that leave him with actual wounds and a full belly, he admits how strange that whole affair was.
The vasto lorde didn’t kill him. Maybe it didn’t need to. Vasto lorde are damn near myths with how rare they are. Grimmjow doesn’t know shit about them, except that he’s going to be one or die trying. But maybe regression isn’t a factor for vasto lorde. Lucky bitches. But it’s Hueco Mundo. When has anything ever needed a reason to kill? And it was playing with Grimmjow, dancing around him and letting him catch it in his teeth.
Fucking weird asshole.
He’s blissfully unaware, then, that it’s only going to get progressively stranger.
-
The second time, Grimmjow is fresh off of a kill, lifeblood dripping from his maw and vital reiryoku integrating into his own reserves. There’s no sound, no heavy pressure along his shoulders and spine, but he feels it anyway, like an ache in the hole in his abdomen, pressing sickly along the edges of the void.
Predator, screams every one of his instincts.
Grimmjow twists around, leaping back at the same time, and there it is, that fucking nightmare with the too-bright hair.
Orange, his mind helpfully labels the color, the information drawn from the collective residual memories of the thousands of souls he’s devoured. He’s sure never come across that eyesore shade in this life.
“You,” Grimmjow growls. “Come to finish the job? I won’t make it easy for you, asshole.”
The gleaming yellow of its eyes flickers. A blink? But it doesn’t move, letting Grimmjow look his fill.
His initial impression of a humanoid form is confirmed with extreme prejudice. If it weren’t for that horrifying maw, the hollow hole, and the vicious, forward-curving horns, the hollow would look disgustingly human. The eyes, the hair, and the weird red tufts on its neck, wrists, and ankles are the only bits of color on its body. The rest is as monochrome as the world they’re in, all pale flesh and tattered black clothing. The latter’s odd too. Hollows don’t do that shit; if you’re lucky, like Grimmjow, hard bone armor will grow to cover the vitals. But who knows what the fuck vasto lorde are like. This one sure as hell doesn’t need bone armor with that hierro.
Grimmjow just hopes he won’t evolve a sense of modesty when it’s his turn.
And fuck, look at him, woolgathering about hollow fashion sense while within lunging distance of sure death.
But sure death doesn’t lunge at him, just stands there watching, head tilted to the side and with the same lethal nonchalance as last time. Grimmjow bristles helplessly, but he doesn’t act on it. He’s eaten enough since their last encounter to stave off regression and grow his own power, but there’s no noticeable difference. Lately, it’s as if he’s hit a plateau, growing stronger with every kill but stagnating at the same time. He remembers the wild change from gillian and adjuchas, as well as the way his power thrummed and twisted as a prelude to it. He can tell he’s nowhere close to that, not yet.
And he still can’t sense the vasto lorde’s reiatsu, but there’s a crawling under his skin that says that’s a warning all on its own.
Grimmjow takes a step back.
The vasto lorde matches him, one clawed foot sliding forward.
Well, fuck.
Grimmjow does it again anyway, out of spite more than anything, and the vasto lorde moves in tandem with him, like it’s some fucked up game—a dance. Grimmjow’s torn between fight and flight, except last time proved that neither will work. And he fucking refuses to lie down and beg; survival aside, he’s got his pride.
By the time they complete a full circle, almost swapping their initial positions, Grimmjow’s thin thread of patience snaps.
“What the hell do you want?”
It blinks.
There’s a rush of displaced air.
Grimmjow stills, trapped in the gleaming eyes that peer down at him from less than a foot away. The message is clear, intentional or not—not that he can tell. The vasto lorde doesn’t have much in the way of an expression; its face seems set in that toothy rictus permanently. It doesn’t feel angry or hungry, but this whole affair would make a lot more sense if it were any of those things.
“Grimmjow.”
“What?” he snaps automatically—and freezes.
He leaps clear of the vasto lorde’s reach in a single, terror-fueled bound, useless though it is. But it called his name, and the implications flit through his mind in the millisecond it takes for the vasto lorde to cover the distance between them, one bone-white hand reaching for Grimmjow.
He roars and clamps his teeth down on it, and his fangs don’t pierce the hierro, but the damn vasto lorde will have to rip his jaw out before touching him.
It doesn’t seem bothered. The eerie yellow glow in its eyes flickers again. Its other hand reaches out, and Grimmjow unlocks his jaw only to turn his head and snap at that, earning himself a mouthful of steel-like fingers.
It leaves the vasto lorde’s other hand free, and Grimmjow bites harder, bracing furiously for death, as it reaches out and—
What the fuck.
A sharp fingernail prods the tapered tip of his ear. Grimmjow, frozen from a mixture of instinctual terror and sheer incredulity, can only watch out of the corner of his eyes as that finger trails down the side of his face, scraping over bone and coming to a rest beside where Grimmjow’s maw is open around the thing’s other hand.
“Grimmjow,” it says, low and two-toned. “You’re Grimmjow.”
Grimmjow’s ice-thin tolerance for this whole bullshit fucking evaporates. He lets go of the vasto lorde’s hand and rears back from its weird fucking touch, pumping reiatsu to his legs to clear the sands in giant leaps.
For the second time, it lets him go.
Much, much later, once Grimmjow’s holed up with his back to a wall in one of the cramped, cave-like structures he likes to frequent, after letting out some steam by ripping up the weak, barely-a-meal hollows that had the misfortune of being there when he arrived, he thinks about his name in that vasto lorde’s mouth—the horrifying movements of its serrated maw, the flickering yellow gleam of its eyes.
Twice now, it didn’t kill him when it could have.
It knows his name.
Grimmjow doesn’t like the picture forming in his mind. No hollow alive knows his name. He’s screamed it into the desert plenty of times, especially in the first flush of triumph at having a name, but only ever to those he was about to devour. An honor, of sorts, to know the name of their killer and soon-to-be host.
It’s been…a long time since he’s done that.
How long has that vasto lorde been hunting him?
-
Grimmjow spends nearly an entire lunar cycle in a feeding frenzy, his hunger driven by something almost as primal as the fear of regression. He devours anything he can get his teeth into, but even as nights bleed into darker nights, he can tell the swell of power isn’t anywhere near enough. The next time it comes, Grimmjow will be as outclassed and weak as he was last time.
And it will come. A hollow like that won’t give up a hunt so easily, not after however long it’s been stalking Grimmjow. Why would it?
Third time, his mind offers, slips of a phrase gathered from lives long lost. Third time’s the charm.
Or the curse, Grimmjow thinks, the corners of his mouth lifting in a snarl. He welcomes the anger and vents it on the barely writhing hollow at his feet, ripping out chunks of its hide. Anger is good. It’s safe.
Fear isn’t.
Against an enemy he can’t outrun and sure as fuck can’t kill, fear is especially useless. Not that Grimmjow’s instincts seem to care, quivering much like the hollow currently dissolving into reishi. The mere thought of that yellow-eyed fucker and its undetectable reiatsu turns his blood into ice.
The sands seem to have eyes. His paranoia becomes a live, lashing thing.
When it finally comes, he’s almost prepared for it—the prickling along his flesh, icy claws sinking deep into the animal parts of him. He doesn’t blink, but he might as well have because one moment, the space in front of him is empty, just an endless stretch of sand, and then it’s there, bright hair streaming like a banner. Static crackles in the air.
Grimmjow blinks. The image in front of him doesn’t waver.
The vasto lorde tilts its head to the side and casually throws its load at Grimmjow’s feet.
The half-dead adjuchas twitches, its blood a sickly green as it gushes out of the four holes in its throat where clawed fingers dug deep.
“What,” Grimmjow says flatly.
“Eat.”
“What.”
“Eat,” the vasto lorde helpfully repeats. “Eat. E…volve.”
Anger sputters out, drowned in stupefied shock, but the fear persists, a low, insistent thrum at the back of his mind. Grimmjow ignores it with the ease of long practice, muscles coiled to pounce. Sure, he’d have as much luck leaping aboard the thin crescent moon overhead as he would attacking the vasto lorde, but it’s the principle of the matter.
“The fuck are you playing at? I’m not some pet—”
The adjuchas chooses that moment to seize its chance, pouncing at the weaker prey—as if Grimmjow’s weak, as if he’s been prey since before he became a fucking gillian. He ducks its clumsy swipe, blurs out of the path of a leathery wing, and tackles it in a burst of speed, jaw wide open.
His teeth sink into the deep gouges the vasto lorde left, and he can taste the reiatsu that he can’t sense, lingering at the edges of the wound. The sheer power of it lashes at him, even this mere residue heady against his tongue. He absorbs it greedily, a rumbling purr shuddering up his ribcage. The hollow’s meat tastes almost rancid in the aftermath, its reiatsu just as rank. He gulps it down anyway, one wary eye on the towering form of the vasto lorde.
It doesn’t so much as twitch the whole time, head still tilted as it watches Grimmjow make quick work of the adjuchas.
It was stronger than him, Grimmjow muses as he licks his chops clean. Not by much, but enough that if he’d hunted it down, he’d have had to earn his meal. Grimmjow’s fine with that, prefers it even, the wave of power crashing into his bones, but now, it’s more of an irritation than anything—a distraction he can’t afford.
The vasto lorde continues watching him, a yellow gleam in its eyes.
Once again, Grimmjow’s the first to run out of patience.
“The fuck you staring at?” he snaps. And then, remembering its words—ridiculous as they are—he adds, “What, you think I’m gonna evolve from one measly adjuchas?”
It straightens its head. Its face isn’t built to convey emotion—that serrated maw is only good for tearing flesh and those horns could probably pierce Grimmjow through—but somehow, Grimmjow gets the sense that it’s…confused, almost.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” He snorts, incredulity ratcheting up a notch, threaded with something like angry amusement. “Is it empty air inside that bone head of yours?”
A low growl reverberates in the air. Grimmjow stills, all traces of humor evaporating from inside him.
But the vasto lorde once again fails to make any sense; it doesn’t attack, and the flash of aggression doesn’t extent past that growl. It just stands there, staring.
And then, just as Grimmjow’s about to lose his temper and do something extremely unwise again, it speaks.
“Eat…more.”
Grimmjow loses precious brain cells trying to process that.
Moments later, his claws tear through the space the vasto lorde occupied a second ago.
-
It’s the same the next time—and the next and the next and the next, until Grimmjow stops bothering to count. Amidst the surreal horror of a vasto lorde hunting him down to fucking feed him, Grimmjow dully notes that the intervals between its visits have grown progressively shorter. For a period, he takes to keeping close track of the moon, interested in time in a way he’s never been before. It’s not easy, time in Hueco Mundo a hell of a lot more nebulous than the human world with its convenient sun, but Grimmjow’s got sharp eyes and this world in his very bones, and he learns to spot the minute shifts in the moon’s curvature and taste the change in the air.
Since that third visit, the longest the vasto lorde has stayed away is seventeen days. The shortest gap between visits was four days, when the thing blurred into his path with a writhing mass of some fish-type hollow that had Grimmjow damn near purring in the aftermath.
His interest in time doesn’t last long, but the knowledge remains.
He has become exponentially stronger since the vasto lorde began its strange mission. His armor is harder, his claws and teeth sharper, his cero stronger. The shifts in his head are not nearly as easy to qualify, but Grimmjow can feel it, the new power changing him from the inside out.
And yet, the gulf between him and the vasto lorde remains insurmountable. Grimmjow still can’t feel its reiatsu, not unless he gets close enough to feel the energy thrumming under its bone-white skin.
He gets close a lot. Usually, it’s with a half-hearted swipe or cero that won’t leave a mark on the bastard’s skin, but sometimes, it’s the vasto lorde than creeps closer, clawed feet taking bold steps as if daring Grimmjow to fight or flee. He does, usually, and the vasto lorde doesn’t chase him, doesn’t retaliate with blows Grimmjow knows would split him from head to tail. The adjuchas he’s being fed are all as strong as him or stronger, the vasto lorde easily matching his growing power with more powerful prey. They’re all half dead by the time they’re tossed at Grimmjow’s feet, but a half-dead hollow is still dangerous, and Grimmjow usually ends up dealing the killing blow after a brief scuffle.
The vasto lorde watches and waits, and sometimes, when Grimmjow’s endless hunger is temporarily sated and his limbs are heavy with the weight of thousands of new souls, it touches him.
It tugs at the tip of his ears, like the first time, and rubs at the specks of blood staining his jaw. It traces the dark lines on his face, clawed fingers dangerously close to Grimmjow’s eyes. Once, just once, its knuckles brush the exposed fur at the side of his throat, and Grimmjow leaps away, cero charging. It doesn’t try it again, but Grimmjow catches its eyes lingering there, gleaming yellow with predatory interest.
Thinking, probably, what Grimmjow would taste like when the bastard finally sinks its teeth into him.
“Not gonna happen,” Grimmjow snaps one day, irked by the weight of its gaze. “Fatten me up, fine, but I’m gonna tear you to shreds, asshole.”
The vasto lorde’s eyes flicker. It hums—a low, rumbling sound that Grimmjow has tentatively pegged as amusement. It doesn’t punish the threat with a hand through Grimmjow’s gut, but that, too, has become familiar.
Grimmjow understands the whole thing better now.
Hollows can’t afford to be picky eaters. Gillians and adjuchas certainly can’t. Doesn’t stop many of them, and he’s assimilated a few that had particular tastes. A newborn hollow with a taste for hearts—fucking poetic. A feline adjuchas, like himself, whose taste for similar hollows led him right into Grimmjow’s maw. Grimmjow himself has a predilection for hunting bigger prey and a bad habit of not always running when he should. But such hollows are few and far in between.
Vasto lorde aren’t just any hollow though, are they? Fuckers can be as picky as they like.
And one that’s been stalking Grimmjow for months, maybe years, and finally showing itself only to feed him on the regular—it’s not hard to guess what it wants.
Grimmjow sees no point hiding the knowledge, in playing I know you know I know you know. It wasn’t ever gonna be anything else; menos-level hollows don’t feed fellow predators out of the goodness of their lost hearts. When they gather, it’s with the full knowledge that only the strongest will emerge the victor. And maybe it’s not quite the same, what the vasto lorde is doing, but the moment it had offered that first adjuchas to Grimmjow, it’d declared its intention, one Grimmjow accepted with the first, reiatsu-rich bite.
The vasto lorde wants him to evolve? Fine. He’ll fucking evolve.
Then he’ll rip into the motherfucker and swallow it whole.
-
The vasto lorde’s lastest offering is more quarter dead than half dead. It’s also strong enough—an adjuchas that might just be on the verge of evolution—that, if Grimmjow had come across it during his pre–orange motherfucker days, he’d have used every last ounce of his energy to run in the opposite direction. Speed’s always been his greatest strength, and Grimmjow’s a survivor.
Though he doesn’t feel like he’s showing much of a survival instinct these days, indulging a vasto lorde’s obsession.
The adjuchas dies with a whimper under his teeth, and Grimmjow gulps down mouthfuls of meat before the body starts dissolving into reishi. He opens his maw wide and breathes it in, damn near staggering at the influx of energy. He shivers a little helplessly, knees weak and the beginnings of a purr vibrating in his chest. He chokes it down and shakes his body, trying to regain some semblance of control.
He wants to leap at something, claws out and teeth bared, not to kill, not even to hunt, just…
“Grimmjow.”
The deep rumble of his name effectively kills his perplexingly playful mood. Grimmjow slants his eyes toward the vasto lorde; it’s sitting on the sands a few feet away, long legs folded under it and arms splayed behind. It’s an insultingly relaxed posture, every vulnerability bared, like Grimmjow is so beneath its notice that it won’t even bother with a mimicry of caution. He’s tempted to shoot a cero at it even if that will get him nothing other than a high-speed trip through a few dunes. Past experience has proved, many times over, that neither his claws nor his ceros will leave so much as a scuff mark. But it will make the vasto lorde leave, sometimes after flinging Grimmjow away from itself.
Grimmjow releases the build-up of reiatsu with a sigh, blaming his meal-induced good mood for this odd desire for company, for something to play with.
“Well, what?” he asks when the vasto lorde fails to follow up his name with anything else.
Predictably, it doesn’t reply.
Grimmjow turns around, fully facing the vasto lorde. He lowers himself to the sand, all four legs folding under his bulk, ready to pounce at a millisecond’s notice. It’s a deceptive posture, unlike the vasto lorde’s very real lack of concern. It can afford that. Grimmjow can’t.
Yet.
Grimmjow stares at the vasto lorde; it meets his gaze placidly, poison-yellow eyes not even flickering when Grimmjow’s tail whips behind him in irritation. It sure as hell doesn’t seem inclined to get up and leave either. That’s not new, Grimmjow always the one to take off or pester the vasto lorde into fucking off; he doesn’t quite feel like doing that today, but this silent staredown isn’t much better. Wild energy thrums through him, agitated at the lack of an outlet.
“The hell are you even doing?” Grimmjow asks irritably, tail lashing again. The vasto lorde’s eyes flit to it and then back to Grimmjow’s face. “Admiring the fuckin’ view?”
“Remembering,” comes the answer, unexpected.
Grimmjow waits, but the vasto lorde stays silent, like that one word hasn’t raised more questions than it answered.
“Remembering what?”
It tilts its head, that long curtain of miraculously untangled hair drifting with the motion. Grimmjow entertains himself with the idea of it performing an extensive hair-care routine. He doesn’t think too hard on why he knows what that even is.
It’s several minutes past Grimmjow giving up on an answer that it actually responds.
“You,” it says.
For a long moment, Grimmjow doesn’t get it. And then he does, promptly regretting ever asking. He could have lived without the knowledge that each of the vasto lorde’s creepy staring sessions, which are numerous and frequent, involves fond and murderous recollections of all the times it stalked Grimmjow.
“Remembering you,” it clarifies helpfully, and then, as if Grimmjow’s a particularly dumb animal, it adds, “Grimmjow.”
“Oh, that’s it.”
He stalks toward the singularly unconcerned hollow, stopping only just out of biting range. It’s a pointless bit of caution, but for all his studied insolence, there are some instincts even Grimmjow can’t shake off at will.
“Alright, fuckface, since you’re so damn obsessed with my name—what’s yours?”
That hard-bone face that could be even a hollow’s nightmare isn’t quite equipped to show emotions, but the vasto lorde manages to convey shock all the same; it’s there in the stillness of its body and the quicksilver flickering of its gleaming eyes.
“My name…”
“What, you don’t have one?” Grimmjow taunts, taking a wise step backward. “Knew it was all air in that big head of yours.”
It doesn’t react with even a half-hearted growl. If anything, it grows even more still, and Grimmjow takes that as his cue to put a few more feet between them. It tracks him, head turning to keep him in sight, but it’s an absent, instinctive things. The weight of its gaze, a heavy heat Grimmjow didn’t realize he’d become used to, is missing.
A long-fingered hand rises, palm pressing flat to the vasto lorde’s forehead. Tapered fingernails dig ineffectually into the unforgiving bone.
“My name,” it echoes softly, the effect eerie in that low, reverberating voice. “I don’t r—”
Mid-word, it’s gone.
Grimmjow watches the dust settle with wide eyes, body still taut with tension.
-
The thin crescent moon turns fat and full and then wanes again, and still, the vasto lorde doesn’t return.
Grimmjow doesn’t notice the absence at first. For all that he’s devoured each and every one of the vasto lorde’s pseudo-gifts, he’s hardly dependent on the bastard for food. Regression is an ever-present fear, driving his teeth and claws. Adjuchas after adjuchas die writhing in his jaws, and while none of them are as strong as the hollows the vasto lorde hunted down for his sick little game, they give him semi-decent fights and a rush of power that, while not satisfying, keeps regression at bay.
And then he runs into a pack of idiots, fights them, eats a bit of one, and is somehow declared their king.
Afterward, Grimmjow quietly wonders why he keeps attracting crazy assholes.
Hunting is easier and harder with the other five; harder in that it’s a rough shift from hunting and eating alone to corralling prey and sharing the spoils, but easier in that the six of them together can get their hands on bigger, stronger hollows. The day Grimmjow sinks his teeth into an adjuchas as strong as the last one the vasto lorde hunted for him is a damn good one.
The moon completes seven full cycles, with no sign of the vasto lorde.
Grimmjow returns, not quite consciously, to keeping close track of the time, and by the time he realizes what he’s doing, the vasto lorde has been absent long enough that he can’t stop. He doesn’t return to the burning paranoia of before, when he realized it had been hunting him for a long, long time, but he grows warier, unease a constant thrum under his skin. Shawlong and the others notice, but Grimmjow evades their questions with low growls or cold silence, and they know better than to push. He doesn’t tell them about the vasto lorde; either it’ll scare them off, which would be irritating and might force Grimmjow to eat them on pure principle, or they’ll get some wild ideas and then the vasto lorde, when it eventually shows up, will kill them.
It might be six against one, but Grimmjow has no illusions that they will stand a chance against that orange bastard. Shawlong is sensible, and while Nakeem and Edrad are content enough to follow his or Grimmjow’s lead, Di Roy and Yylfordt have a tendency to bite off more than they can chew. Grimmjow isn’t too keen on seeing the vasto lorde pick them off its impressive teeth.
So he keeps silent and keeps a close track of the endless sands around them, and when—close to the end of the eighth lunar cycle without a glimpse of the vasto lorde—a thick, heady reiatsu that he’s only ever tasted in stolen gulps flares at the edge of his territory, Grimmjow commands the others to stay the fuck in place and runs full tilt toward death.
A breathless eternity later, he finds sand and more fucking sand.
He sees nothing, smells nothing, hears nothing, and even the sixth sense that tastes the energy of the world around him can’t pick up jackshit. The wild energy he felt earlier is just…gone, and he can’t even pinpoint when it vanished. He can sense his fracción where he left them, though Shawlong is slowly creeping closer. Grimmjow flares his reiatsu in warning, mollified when Shawlong seems to freeze in place.
Grimmjow surveys the sands again, checking behind a few tall tunes as if the vasto lorde might be hiding there like some kind of imbecile. He finds nothing.
“Motherfucker,” he growls. “I know it’s you. Where the fuck are you?”
“Missed me, kitty cat?”
Grimmjow whips around, cero charging in his jaws, and has just enough time to go cold with shock at the sight that greets him before the red sphere is bolting toward the hooded creature who spoke.
It’s caught in a bare, human hand and smothered.
“Hey! Is that any way to greet an old friend?”
Grimmjow hears the words, sounds in an unfamiliar voice made meaningless by a glimpse of the speaker’s clothes—black robes with white accents. Shinigami. He’s leaping before the man finishes speaking, claws out and jaw wide—
“Wh—wait, Grimmjow, don’t—”
That same human hand reaches for him, except it’s not, it’s not human, bony fingers twisting into vicious claws, halfway familiar, crimson-edged black energy swirling—
-
Grimmjow wakes to his whole body thrumming around a deep, throaty purr. It’s confusing for the duration of the second it takes for him to register the odd pressure on his unprotected neck as fingers raking through the fur, and then it’s just mortifying, made worse by the mind-melting pleasure of nails scratching at skin through several inches of thick fur.
He locks his jaw and chokes the purr in his throat, forgoing an attempt at growling in favor of getting the fuck away.
He catches blurry glimpses of black and orange, his vision oddly unfocused, as he stumbles to his feet—and promptly collapses, all four limbs giving away. His top half falls on something soft, but the lower half is unlovingly cushioned on Hueco Mundo’s ever-present sand. He’s still in his world, then, and not wherever shinigami take the unsuspecting idiots they catch. Not that he’s ever heard of shinigami catching hollows, menos or not. They just kill them, a favor heartily returned.
But he needs some reason for why he’s still alive and…being fucking petted.
This time, he does growl, and the fingers pause for all of a second before continuing on their merry mission of killing what’s left of his pride. It reminds him of the vasto lorde, reaching for his throat but backing away. A lot of this reminds him of that fucker—the colors, the easy touch, the fucking reiatsu.
Guess it wasn’t a shinigami that caught him after all.
But that hand, those clothes—
Grimmjow tries, again, to focus on the figure above him, but his eyes are still fucked. The hood is gone, and he sees the familiar bright hair and enough of the person’s clothes to tell he wasn’t hallucinating the black robes earlier. But the horns are there too—or one horn? He squints, but that just makes the colors and shapes bleed together.
But he’s seen enough to be sure, if also terribly confused.
“You orange motherfucker,” he says. “I’m going to fucking skin you.”
“Orange motherfucker,” repeats a voice that doesn’t have that two-toned echo Grimmjow became used to. “That what you’ve been calling me? Come on. I know I couldn’t give you a name, but that’s just rude.”
“Die.”
The motherfucker laughs. That’s not familiar at all.
“Been there, done that. It’s Ichigo, by the way.”
“The fuck?”
“My name. It’s Ichigo. I kn—remember now.” He laughs again, low and quiet, not nearly as pleasant as the last time. Grimmjow casually flexes his limbs, testing whether they’ll hold him. “Went and found it, just for you.”
Grimmjow leaps out of the (former?) vasto lorde’s lap, and his body still buckles, but this time, at least, he has made it safely out of petting range. He stumbles back to a crouch, blinking furiously in an attempt to focus, and for once, his fucking body obeys, the world growing less blurry.
“Easy,” Ichigo warns. “I did a number on you earlier. Sorry about that. I’m still not used to my strength in this form.”
“Fuck you,” Grimmjow bites out automatically, before the words really register. “The hell does that mean? You’ve been a vasto lorde for—”
The rest of the sentence dies in his throat as his vision fully clears and he gets his first good look at Ichigo. The hooded garment that hid his face and hair from Grimmjow earlier is bundled in his lap, and Grimmjow does not think about what it’s doing there. The rest of Ichigo is more compelling—and confusing—anyway. The hair’s the same, long and so fucking bright, but that’s about it. Instead of that nightmare maw, there’s a pale, sharp-featured face that would be disgustingly human if not for the very familiar bone mask covering the right side of his face. A lone horn juts out from the top of the mask, strands of unruly orange falling across its deathly ivory.
His clothes do look eerily similar to shinigami robes, but now, Grimmjow notices the red tufts at the neck and wrists. He can’t see Ichigo’s ankles, those crossed legs covered by a swathe of fabric, but he’d bet Shawlong’s life that there’s red fur sprouting there too.
Ichigo’s right eye is dark and blank behind the mask, but the left is now a dull gold instead of poisonous yellow.
“What the actual fuck are you?”
A blink and a tilt of the head.
“Good question…” Ichigo says, trailing off. Something in Grimmjow’s head helpfully labels his expression as thoughtful. And then, just when Grimmjow’s about to lose his temper and pounce, shaky legs be damned, the asshole says, “Hollow, of course.”
One hand, wholly human again, rises to prod the sharp tip of his horn, while the other wanders down, loosely curling around the red-and-black hilt of a sword that Grimmjow failed to notice because what kind of hollow carries a fucking sword; that shit’s for the—
“And shinigami,” Ichigo says. “That’s it. I’m dead for good now. And the Old Man’s gone. He’ll be back, eventually. It’ll be a long time. But”—a lopsided quirk of the lips, flashing the tip of a blunt-looking canine—“I’ve got nothing but time these days.”
Before Grimmjow can quite wrap his head around any of that nonsense, Ichigo is moving, little unthreatening motions of his arms that still force Grimmjow into a low crouch. His growl is ignored, Ichigo too preoccupied by staring at his own palms like they hold the meaning of the universe.
“Guess that makes me an arrancar, for now. Refreshingly simple, isn’t it? You should be happy.”
“The hell you talking about, asshole?”
Ichigo blinks at his palms and raises his head, expression blank for a long moment before his mouth quirks again; it’s a different expression, softer, quieter, and the fractured bits of memories, souls, making up Grimmjow’s consciousness churn restlessly at the expression.
He takes a wary step back. His vision is fine, and he’s not as shaky. That doesn’t mean much when faced with this monster, whatever the fuck he is, but it still eases the itch under his skin.
Ichigo continues to stare at him, and it’s nothing and everything like the weight of the vasto lorde’s eyes.
“You wouldn’t know, I guess. Not anymore. Or not yet? Oh, shut up, Zangetsu. You’re no better.”
Grimmjow spreads out his senses and then physically looks around to make sure some other motherfucker hasn’t joined the party while he was playing dead pet in this asshole’s lap. But no, it’s just them. Ichigo’s just crazy then. That’s fine. Ain’t like Grimmjow ever thought the vasto lorde was sane. Ain’t like Grimmjow’s sane. Hollows aren’t, by design.
All too soon, Ichigo remembers Grimmjow’s existence, the blankness draining out of his gaze. The twist of his mouth changes, becomes more crooked, but his visible eye crinkles too. Grimmjow’s been dead for a long time and a menos-class hollow for most of it; he’s got no practice reading human expressions, and the wisps of memories he retains are of horror and terror and the rare, delicious rage. But his mind still recognizes the gleam in Ichigo’s eye as amusement.
“Easy there. I won’t hurt you, Grimmjow.”
“I’m not scared of you, bastard.”
Ichigo laughs. “No, no, you wouldn’t be. My bad. Run along then. I’ll bring you a snack later, when your little friends aren’t lurking around.”
Grimmjow stiffens, trying to sense his fracción’s reiatsu signatures somewhere in the vicinity—and there they are, almost past the edge of his limits, five flickering beacons of power. He growls, and paradoxically, Ichigo’s face softens even further.
“I won’t hurt them either,” he says.
“Try and die. They’re mine.” To lead, to kill, to eat, to keep. His.
“And you’re mine,” comes the quick, easy answer, rooting Grimmjow to the spot for a precious second. “Why would I want them when I have you?”
“The fuck you do!” Grimmjow roars, leaping, and his claws rake through the air, the tips sputtering with bright blue energy—that’s new—but Ichigo’s long gone, echoes of wild laughter making the air around Grimmjow tremble.
-
“Arrancar,” Shawlong echoes thoughtfully. “It’s…familiar.”
He falls silent, his towering form hunched over, either in thought or a semi-successful attempt to speak privately to Grimmjow. The other oversized assholes are lumbering about out of eyesight, but likely within earshot, most of them sporting wounds from a very unsuccessful attempt to pester Grimmjow into talking about what the fuck happened earlier.
Shawlong is the most unscathed of the lot, mostly because Grimmjow used his mouthful—careful not to swallow even a drop of blood—to drag him away from the others. Shawlong is the oldest of them, and for some reason, he’s a fount of esoteric knowledge. He’s forgotten more about Hueco Mundo than Grimmjow’s ever cared to know, and sometimes, when Di Roy or Yylfordt has the luxury of being vocally bored, Shawlong will break out the most random facts about it or even the human world.
Right now, though, he looks like he’s trying to drag knowledge out of his head by force, the long thread of bone dangling from his head twitching now and then.
Grimmjow’s tail lashes behind him, all suppressed impatience, but he keeps his mouth shut.
“A rumor,” Shawlong says eventually. “A ridiculous one. A state beyond vasto lorde. An…evolution of some sort, but different. No information on how it’s achieved, and if such a hollow exists, surely, we would know. All of Hueco Mundo knows of Las Noches and its king, and Barragan is a vasto lorde. A power beyond that…”
Shawlong trails off, but Grimmjow ignores the clear question in the silence.
If such a hollow exists… Shawlong said.
But Ichigo didn’t call himself only a hollow.
-
He resolves to get some goddamn answers, but the next time he sees Ichigo, it’s after a fully alive and barely injured bear adjuchas is dropped almost on top of him, and Grimmjow’s too busy fighting for his life to grill the bastard.
And after, when he’s alive and bloody and full of power, he’s also missing half a paw—torn off, not eaten, thank fuck—and his armor’s more blood than bone, and he makes the executive decision to postpone the questions to when he can speak without coughing up blood.
Ichigo hovers around him, bright hair and dark robes all a flutter, reaching for Grimmjow without ever quite touching. If Grimmjow didn’t know better, he’d think the asshole is concerned.
“I’m sorry,” Ichigo says when Grimmjow snaps at a finger that strayed too close, regretting it the next second when his jaw and throat remind him of the abuse they took. “I thought you’d have more fun with a healthy opponent—didn’t really, uh, remember that before, but I didn’t think…”
He trails off, blinking at Grimmjow’s death glare, so maybe he isn’t as vapid as that rambling suggested.
“I’m not calling you weak,” Ichigo says, and the defensive way he says it almost distracts Grimmjow with the fact that this motherfucker damn near read his mind.
Almost.
“Sure sounds like it,” Grimmjow says, deeming the pain worth it as he pushes his mangled body into a leap, claws first.
Ichigo sidesteps him with a sigh and catches Grimmjow around the middle, and he manages, somehow, to touch only parts that aren’t torn up, but a fresh spike of agony spears Grimmjow at his arrested momentum. He doesn’t make a goddamn sound, but Ichigo does, a low groan that’s pained even though there’s not a mark on him.
“Fuck,” he says softly. “Okay, let’s just…”
Grimmjow snarls as he’s lowered to the sand, both of Ichigo’s arms now around him, sadly not within biting distance. He expects the bastard to let go once he’s made his point—of course Grimmjow can’t touch him, of course Ichigo can afford to be gentle, flaunting the difference between their power—but Ichigo doesn’t, one palm remaining on Grimmjow’s flank, fingers carefully angled away from the nasty gash cutting across it.
Behind him, there’s the rustle of cloth, and sands shift under him. Grimmjow turns his head, slow and incredulous, and finds Ichigo curled up behind him, head propped on his free arm, close enough that Grimmjow can feel his warmth. His mismatched eyes are intent on Grimmjow; they meet his stare and narrow.
“Stay down,” Ichigo orders.
“Don’t tell me what to do, asshole.”
Ichigo screws his eye shut, and despite ample evidence showing he could gnaw on that weird mug for ages and not so much as dent the skin, Grimmjow’s offended at the bastard letting his guard down with Grimmjow’s sharp teeth inches from his face.
“Fine, I won’t,” Ichigo grits out, left eye opening a fraction. “But I sure as shit can keep you down till you grow a sense of self-preservation. And fuck, you don’t understand the irony of me saying that.”
He’s right, Grimmjow doesn’t, and he doesn’t give a fuck—only to spontaneously develop quite a few of those when his attempt to wriggle out from under Ichigo’s hand is unceremoniously stomped out by the asshole’s reiatsu dropping like a physical weight.
The sheer power drenching his skin, his blood, his bones rouses his instincts the way no amount of bodily harm could manage, and Grimmjow stills, breath stuttering in his lungs.
He’s felt this power before, that day when his missing vasto lorde returned as this strange man-monster. He’s even tasted it, wisps of power lingering in the wounds his vasto lorde dealt on the adjuchas he hunted for Grimmjow. But it’s one thing to taste the edges of that power and another to have it sink into his very being, threading through his own reiatsu like spiderwebs.
Grimmjow’s breath leaves him in a shuddering rush.
“Ssh,” Ichigo croons, stroking an uninjured patch at Grimmjow’s side. “Just like that. Sleep. Heal. Nothing will touch you, Grimmjow. I’ll protect you.”
“F-fuck you.”
“Pisses you off, doesn’t it? S’fine. Get stronger. Evolve. I’ll wait, as long as it takes.”
Grimmjow is vaguely aware of Ichigo’s cadence changing, patronizing amusement shifting to something oddly wistful, but darkness is creeping into the edges of his vision, his body and mind buckling under the suffocating weight of all that power, and his questions die with the last, trailing echo of his growl.
-
He wakes up, whole and strong—stronger—and when he throws himself at Ichigo with a roar, the bastard doesn’t flicker out of existence like the vasto lorde used to, instead standing his ground and countering Grimmjow’s outstretched claws with a swipe of his own.
They fight—claws and teeth and cero.
Ichigo doesn’t draw his blade, doesn’t weaponize the immense reiatsu that Grimmjow is again unable to sense, doesn’t deal wounds that do more than crack Grimmjow’s armor. It’s a fight to Grimmjow, but it’s all play to this asshole, not unlike Grimmjow’s fracción tumbling over each other like deadly kittens.
It pisses him the fuck off, but no amount of anger can bridge the gulf between an adjuchas and a being beyond vasto lorde, and it’s Grimmjow who ends up splayed on the sand, body heaving and armor cracked but without so much as a scratch on him.
“I hate you,” he snarls.
“I know,” Ichigo says, crouching next to Grimmjow. “Don’t be offended. I’ll make you bleed all you want…after you evolve.”
Grimmjow bares his teeth and says, “We’ll see who bleeds, motherfucker.”
Ichigo smiles, and it’s weird, how expressive his face is now. The vasto lorde had a maw like a nightmare and eyes colder than this world’s moon, and they were so much more familiar than this weird, soft face—soft eyes, soft mouth. The mask fragment and solitary horn seem out of place sometimes.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Ichigo says, even his voice too soft.
-
Grimmjow was half afraid Ichigo would return to bringing him mostly dead prey, but he keeps letting Grimmjow have “fun,” offering him healthy, strong adjuchas that fight for their lives. Grimmjow doesn’t feel any less like a well-fed stray, and keeping his fracción off his back and away from suicide by Ichigo is a task in of itself, but when he thinks of how it used to be—the terror and the hunger of mindless survival—he finds himself almost…fond of this life.
It’s an alien emotion, and Grimmjow spends a grand five seconds prodding at it before pushing it into a deep, dark corner of his mind, where it belongs with the echoes of the souls he’s devoured.
Ichigo adds his own fat stash of feelings to that corner. The vasto lorde was a nightmare given flesh, but looking at Ichigo, his appearance revoltingly human—no, revoltingly shinigami—save for the mask fragment and his reiatsu seemingly non-existent, it would be easy to grow complacent, to fool yourself that he’s not a threat.
Grimmjow is no one’s fool. And even if he were, Ichigo is not remiss in reminding him he’s a greater monster than the form he left behind.
The one time an adjuchas Ichigo snagged chooses to attack Ichigo instead of Grimmjow, it doesn’t last a full second before it’s outright incinerated.
Ichigo doesn’t use a cero. He doesn’t even draw his odd blade.
It’s just a hand, clamped over the hollow’s snarling face—and then, no hollow, just reishi particles that are sucked into Ichigo, sinking into his skin, while Grimmjow watches with primal terror licking at his spine.
“Huh,” Ichigo says, clenching and unclenching the hand that held the adjuchas. “Guess he’ll be back sooner than I thought.”
He sounds…happy, but underneath, there’s a strange cadence that Grimmjow can’t place.
Dull eyes, one gold and one a void, snap to his.
“Sorry, Grimmjow.” A vacant smile, more inhuman than a baring of teeth. Grimmjow takes a wise, wary step back, but Ichigo doesn’t approach. “I forgot myself again. I’ll get you another one.”
“Don’t bother,” Grimmjow says. “I ain’t your fucking pet, asshole.”
In a blink, Ichigo is there, broken mask and blunt, human teeth centimeters away from Grimmjow, and the visuals may be deceptive, but every instinct Grimmjow has is screaming at him that there’s a predator with its teeth in him.
Ichigo grips the fur at his neck and says, very soft, “Aren’t you?”
Grimmjow bares his teeth, a silent snarl, but doesn’t twitch so much as a muscle otherwise, his fury kept at bay by the same instinct that’s kept him alive, let him evolve.
“Hurry up and evolve, Grimmjow,” Ichigo murmurs, fingers shifting to the bone armoring his skull. “I miss you.”
Grimmjow swallows his confusion. The look in those dull eyes isn’t one that promises answers. All he says is, “Then stop bringing me these weaklings. Or leave me alone to hunt, if you can’t do it right.”
Ichigo smiles, slow and wide, and for the first time since he appeared with a broken mask, he looks every bit a hollow.
-
After it’s over, once some semblance of sense emerges from the thorny tangle of instinct and bloodlust, Grimmjow will appreciate the sheer irony of it being triggered by a weak adjuchas he only deigned to hunt because Yylfordt had been on the verge of regression.
A bite, and Grimmjow backs off to let the others feast, focused more on the foreign reiryoku integrating with his reserves and the souls absorbed into the collective howling at the back of his mind than on the wet sounds of tearing flesh; it still isn’t enough of a warning.
The howls spiral into a fever pitch, more desperate than a hollow’s dying screech, and Grimmjow’s reiatsu bursts out of his skin.
His fracción have the sense to flee.
Prey, screams decades of instinct, and he takes a staggering step forward before the explosion becomes an implosion, reiatsu burning, eating through flesh and bone.
The world twists into mind-rending pain.