"If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?"

—William Shakespeare

Best Served Cold

A story of black, sweet revenge. IchigoxRukia AU Inspired by Goku's Daughter's "I love" series

Rated M

Disclaimer: all characters belong to Tite Kubo

Chapter 1: The Funeral

The shower rail broke from its hold, taking itself, the slightly mildewed and rubber duck-patterned shower curtain, and The Big Guy with it.

The Big Guy, the giant with the body of a killer, had finally fallen under his fists.

Mr. Hollow didn't count the naked male body sprawled in the bathtub as an advantage to be proud of. It was more because of the cramped space of the bathroom and The Big Guy's own vulnerability and exhaustion and even his nudity than the steady helpings of punches and kicks he'd been force-fed by the intruder in his home. The bathroom in that tiny apartment wasn't made to handle two people, let alone two grown men—least of all two grown men fighting one another. Every one or two out of ten hits he had swung landed against either the white drywall, the wooden side of the bathroom sink cabinet, the trashcan filled with used condoms and their wrappers, or once, the corner of the ornate, fake bronze mirror frame. If The Big Guy hadn't tripped and fallen over the side of his own bathtub, it would have been the violence that brought him down, the vehemence Mr. Hollow felt even now in his own throbbing hands and knuckles, in his sore shoulders and sorer ribs.

The Big Guy was on his last stand; his death was near, had been decided before the tiny bathroom had been intruded upon.

And Mr. Hollow wasted no time in getting him there.

He lifted his foot and dug the heel of his hard-sole, leather shoe into The Big Guy's neck. The Big Guy's jaw clenched and his neck muscles stiffened and bulged to fight the pressure. His huge hand slapped at his leg to throw off his center of balance, but Mr. Hollow readjusted, falling to his knees and pushing forward, his forearm pressed against the skin now. He searched for a weapon, any weapon, and found one in the broken shower rail. His hands gripped the bar and began to press the metal against the man's neck, pressing against The Big Guy's esophagus and closing the air into his lungs. There came the sounds of choking and the mouth's raspy gasp for air. There were the beads of sweat popping against his red clay-colored skin, the clenched jaw.

The soles of Mr. Hollow's loafers scraped against the bathroom floor and he put weight into the struggle, the bathroom mat sliding against the tiled floor. There was nothing humorous in what he was doing, in the glare that met the ever-widening black eye that looked at him through a mop of wavy, dark brown hair.

This was The Big Guy's end. Any move from here would just delay his meeting with Death…that black-robed, crowned king bastard.

The Big Guy's big hand swung at Mr. Hollow, a last burst of violence against his attacker that grew more frenzied and desperate and more useless as the shock became absorbed against Mr. Hollow's mask.

The mask of a killer. Bone white except for the red lines, like bloodied claw marks, on the left of the face. Molded teeth bared in a perpetual growl. The smile only a demon would wear when it was delivering death unto the weaker, helpless, and fearful.

The last smile a poor, dying bastard saw before the end.

The Big Guy gave in to Death's touch.

The last punch felt like a butterfly's tap, and the sounds of the shower curtain rings clanging musically against the metal rod. The Big Guy's hands moved against the plastic prints of rubber yellow, pink, and sour-apple colored ducks. His face went slack; his eye lost its focused and glazed over. And with an uncommitted jerk of the body, The Big Guy gave up the fight and met his end.

Mr. Hollow didn't move until he was aware of the smells that came with life leaving the world: piss and shit. And even then, Mr. Hollow moved slowly, almost skeptical if not mistrusting of the appearance of the dead body. He settled atop the toilet seat cover and stared down at him. In death, The Big Guy looked the part of a large man-child, no more than twenty-years-old in appearance, wisps of fine hairs for a goatee, and a tattoo on his left shoulder.

Underneath that mask, the killer Mr. Hollow's forehead furrowed. He found no satisfaction in collateral damage.

"…I'm sorry…"

The house was in relative silence once again. The rain that had been coming down off and on over the city of Texcoco de Mora, Mexico came down in torrents once more. Mr. Hollow became more aware of the sweat patched at his armpits, temples, neck, and the small of his back; the outfit he had put together, the formerly-starched white dress shirt and yellow slacks, was wrinkled and ruined. The fresh smell of outside rushed through the small bathroom window and into the enclosed space filled his nose, pushing out the smell of emptied bowels.

Mr. Hollow stood, grabbed a bathroom towel, and walked to the sink, letting the water seep into the soft cotton. Silently, he wiped down every surface in the tiny space twice and then threw the towel back in the sink bowl for the water to rush over it and further hide his presence.

He removed his mask, ignored the image of a man with honey-brown eyes, spikey orange-red hair, and all the other features that made up his face in the cracked mirror.

He looked down at the inside of his mask, at the names written in black Sharpie marker.

One name and one codename were already crossed out in red.

His hazel eyes passed over the name of the next dead man walking.

…And heard the muffled screams of that next person in the other room.

He had to get ready for the funeral.

He put his mask back on. He straightened up his clothes.

And opened the bathroom door and stepped into the bedroom with its worn, mismatched wooden furniture and yellow, sun-bleached walls. He could feel the cold air outside better in the room; it seeped through his mask's eye sockets. And he grabbed at the sheathed blade he had left resting on the floor. Zangetsu, his former butcher knife of a sword.

His footsteps sounded heavy against the hard wood floors, his gait a relaxed, steady staccato as he kicked away the clothing strewn about—the khakis, the bright red-and-yellow-flower printed shirt, the dress, light-blue lingerie, the pairs of Timberland brand boots and sandal heels—and the two women at the bed.

Nothing had begun yet.

There was the first woman that was still lying naked on her back. Arms and legs bound in two belts, and turquoise eyes as wide and round as dinner plates as she turned and watched him walk towards them, confused at his presence. The one subjected to the golf club being rubbed between her breasts. The gulps of air she took were whiny, desperate.

The Shark.

The Shark was a beautiful woman. She was somehow still a beautiful woman, in spite of the bruises and welts on her cheek and underneath her eye, the discolored marks forming on her ribs, and her split bottom lip. She had the type of beauty that seemed to belong to women like "Marilyn" and "The Goddess." Long-legged and hourglass shaped, with a four-pack for a stomach and those breasts. Her light-brown hair clung to caramel-colored skin; her legs were spread apart wide enough to show how pink she was between her legs; she still smelled of sweat and cheap cologne. Goosebumps rose on dark skin and light-brown nipples hardened with another breeze of cold air. Even through everything, all that pain that had to be coursing through her body, she was the embodiment of sensuality, the type he had once been attracted to before…

…Before the other woman that stood on the bed as still and patient as a monk. Petite. Her skin the color of pale milk tea and shorn black hair. The one dressed in a billowy and sheer crème-color shirt and black shorts. The one with her ballet flats on, tracking mud on the plain, faded bed covers. The one with a golf club in her small, white leather-gloved hands.

The Red Rabbit.

The Red Rabbit finally looked over at him, her wide, amethyst-colored eyes looking into his; a cocky smirk on her lips. It was amazing how the sight of her, her youthful face, always brought him to peace.

Her eyebrow rose, a silent question between them.

He nodded minutely. They could begin.

The Red Rabbit turned the handle of the golf club until its head was at a ninety-degree angle, raising it a few inches from the immobile woman's chest. The Shark breathed in sharply at the sight of the iron, knowing what was about to happen; those tits of hers, like twin mountains, shook. Her handcuffed wrists and ankles jerked and clanged against the gold painted metal bars of the head and footboard, trying to will her formerly flawless body to move, to free itself from the restraints. Her fingers clawed at the air fruitlessly. The bedspring creaked erratically and her breasts jiggled and the balls of her feet dug into the sheets. Her voice, her groan of anger and pain and pleading, muffled from the sock stuffed in her mouth, pierced through the relative quiet.

The Red Rabbit raised slammed the club flat against The Shark's chest.

His eyes watched unbothered at the bound and gagged woman's muffled coughs; the heaving sound of her trying to reclaim her breath through her nostrils were the only sound in the room.

A gust of wind blew into the room, swirling the pungent smells of sex and death in the air.

The Red Rabbit moved the golf iron against The Shark's temple, twisting it to make sure the nose faced her temple. "…I asked when we first walked in, but you didn't answer." The Red Rabbit's voice dripped sweeter than sugar. "...I don't mind asking you again: Do you remember me? ...Do you remember him?"

The nose of the golf club tapped rapidly against brown skin.

"Did you ever think you'd see us again?"

The Shark schooled her face to stone, to betray nothing. But in this situation, inexpression was the admittance of guilt.

"No?" The Red Rabbit's voice and the slightly cocked angle of her head were in mock confusion. "I hear you talk about us a lot; it's strange you don't recognize us…" She stared down the fiery glance of The Shark with a look of her own. "…Maybe it's because we look a lot different when we're not half-dead on our backs.

"…Well," and the petite woman's voice turned to venom and ice, "I remember you. Espada." She spat out the Spanish like it left a bad taste in her mouth. "Tia Harribel."

A flash of indignation and fear flashed in those turquoise eyes at the sound of The Shark's name, her real name. Her eyes shifted between the two of them over and over and over again. And then Tia Harribel's demeanor turned to one of wide-eyed fear.

With good reason.

He could smell blood. Blood that belonged to him and blood that didn't, crimson colored blood that ran under his nose, choking him, that made a body tremble and ache. His body was caught in nothing but a state of pain.

His mouth moved to say a name. Not his name.

He heard laughter, wild and gleeful. Like a hyena.

He heard footsteps coming near him. Talking, a voice that sounded like it was underwater in his ears, a voice that kept trying to pull him from unconsciousness.

He heard four gunshots. And then he felt them. Felt spasms of the worst pain he had ever felt in his life in his arm, his left leg, his left hand. The one in his hand—it hurt the most. His lungs filled with smells of metal buried and burning in his skin. And the smell of more blood.

His eyes opened, searching for a face. And found himself staring back at a skeleton, black-robed and crowned with its eye empty sockets focused on him.

Death.

He never really heard the fifth gunshot.

"I hear that you like to say that you were merciful and kind to us…You actually like to say that a lot." The flat side of the club smacked Tia Harribel bruised face playfully. "Well, we're not going to be so merciful… There's already been enough mercy given to The Espada. The Lion…The Snake…and The Buck—"

At the sound of her subordinates' handles on The Red Rabbit's lips, Tia Harribel began to squirm once more, this time bringing her torso up trying to levitate herself off the bedspread to claw at The Red Rabbit's face and slamming it on the bed again. The Red Rabbit's body reacted like a sprung coil, striking The Shark with the club across the chest once more, the force of the hit making a dull sound in the room.

The Shark exhaled. Her chest heaved with new pain, choking, trying to calm down and filter air into her blood-clogged nose.

The Red Rabbit took in a deep breath herself and turned her head to stare at Mr. Hollow's masked face once more. His hazel eyes stared back at her with shared malice towards their enemies…and then he watched those violet eyes of hers stare at the ban of gold around his left ring finger, its twin around her own.

And where the puckered skin of the bullet wound in his palm.

"Your subordinates have already been shown mercy: they've already been killed. They don't have to die failing to avenge you—but you. You're going to be an example of our fury and our unkindness." The Red Rabbit looked at Tia Harribel again with eyes colder than a winter's day. Her head tilted forward, and the black strands of her hair fell over her eye. "I want you to know that from wherever in Hell you'll end up in, when I smash your face in with this golf club, that will be our fury towards you. And when the police come in here and find your stinking, fucked up face and body, it will be the greatest unkindness we're capable of towards you."

Thunder and lightening crackled in the sky outside like a laughing demon and the downpour increased. The rainwater dripped unto the opened windowsill, more cold wind blowing in the room.

It could only be a sign that this was, again, right.

She lifted the golf club once more, the head and hosel hovering above her head, Tia Harribel's face the bull's eye. "…And you'll remind wherever the rest of the Espada are hiding that there's no escaping."

Mr. Hollow looked on as the golf club found new spots on Tia Harribel's face. Again and again and again and again, over the chin, the nose. The swinging motions became more like hacking in their execution. The bruises swelled and bloomed in black and purple colors; blood tinged the sole. Even if she was alive, that beauty of hers was gone forever. And as the golf club crashed down one final time, he swore he could hear the sound of her skull cracking.

And that was the end of Tia Harribel, The Espada woman known as The Shark.

The dead body shook like the possessed, her ankle cuff rattling against the worn rail and her bowels opened and streamed unto the sheets, the smell of her insides pungent in the cool, whipping air.

The Red Rabbit dropped the head of the golf club onto the floor where it landed with a thump. She stared at her work, the dead, misshapen body of their enemy, her breathing like that of a bull's, her mouth set in a straight line. Mr. Hollow stared at the petite woman in silence; she was in another place and time. "…I did this just because you wronged me…" Her voice was like frozen ice, traces of emotion hard to find. "…I did this because I am sadistic…and I did it because it's a means to your end.

"I did this because it's a means to your end," she repeated.

Mr. Hollow walked towards her. She looked up at him. Her glassy-eyed expression was a mix of several things: happiness and bad memories, her own personal Hell. But in them was no shaking or wavering. No hesitancy. No remorse.

He nodded, understanding, and took her hand in his grasp, fingers interlocking.

He guided them towards their way out, the bedroom door hanging on its hinges from when he had kicked it open. They walked through the frame and past the opened bathroom door and the collateral damage inside. Their footsteps echoed as they walked down the narrow hallway, leaving the bedroom and its broken door that led to the threshold of death behind. Their shared glance was focused forward, their steps quick and light and smooth, and their movements like shadows over the sparse living room furniture. They ignored the sound of a cockatrice singing mournfully in the room.

The sound of rain falling on the road greeted them like applause. The water itself felt like the fingers of praise and adoration as it dripped down and soaked through their clothes.

He squeezed her hand.

She squeezed his back.

Hand in hand, they walked towards their moped and got on. Her arms wrapped around his waist and her cheek pressed against his cold, wet back. Her body heat was like an ember burning through his clothes and unto his skin.

The tires left no clue to their departure as they peeled out the driveway and headed down the street.

In a hotel room far, far away from that bedroom in Texcoco de Mora, without his mask, he was a man again—a killer yes, through and through. But also what he truly wanted to be. A man…a husband.

And The Red Rabbit was herself again. His wife. The best thing to ever happen to him.

Their clothes, still wet from their travels and from their washing sat in a bag at the front of their hotel room door ready to be dumped into the gulf.

They were safe for now, naked and underneath the blanket that came with the soft bed and four walls of their hotel room.

With his wife at his side, he took his mask and a red Sharpie from out his bag. He turned his mask over, away from the red claws on the front to where the names laid. The first name

Pantera

(Jaegerjaques Grimmjow)

was already crossed out.

And with deft fingers, he opened the cap on the marker and crossed out

The Shark

(Harribel Tia)

as well.

His nose filled with the dizzying smell of the marker.

Her hands traced over the red marker and rubbed against the ink. When some stained her fingers, she rubbed them together until they came off, the killer that she was unafraid of the color of blood on her fingertips.

"…They have to know we're coming for them now… They might have thought Pantera was a mistake, but they'll know The Shark wasn't… No one's come for us. Yet."

He stared down into the mask. "It wouldn't matter if they did. We're not running away."

She watched as he placed the mask down on the nightstand and turned back to her.

He knew she knew what he wanted. She knew that he knew that she wanted it too.

He shifted positions under the puffy blanket, his legs on either sides of her body, pinning her to the bed. His right hand traced along her left side, the pad of his thumb passing over her nipple and over the curve of her hip. He let his fingers examine her like she was an artifact, smiled as her eyes closed and a smile stretched her lips. His left ran over the marks as always, the keloid scars that would never go away, reminders of the one time he had fucked up, slipped up, and failed to protect her. His hand ran over the worst gash of all, the deepest and largest mark.

He cut off the sound of his name leaving her lips with his own. His tongue tasted her mouth and pulled away. His tongue, his lips, his teeth trailed their way down her body. She shuddered when his tongue licked her nipples, tracing the pink circles of her aureoles; her back arched to bring him closer and her hands roamed over his back.

He kissed her stomach; he ran his left hand over that scar once more. His right traced her inner thigh, ready to be done with foreplay.

She gasped and drew in a sharp breath of pleasure when his fingers worked their way inside what was warm, pink, and beautiful.

He looked up at her. Her flushed cheeks and darkening irises that peeked out from her squinted eye. "…You don't want to stop this." It was a question. That familiar strand of black hair over her face bothered him and he itched to move it to stare at her fully.

Her tiny hand grabbed at his orange hair and yanked to make him face her eye to eye. "No. We're not stopping until it's finished…And I'll protect you and you'll protect me. Like you always have."

He smirked.

Her hands began to move over the mark of unnatural, puckered patches of skin on his arm. As always, his marks were smaller, but more undeniable to the touch. But he knew she loved them like she loved him.

"…Ichigo. Let's forget now."

"…Okay."

And soon he was doing his best to make them forget and her hands were gliding over him, and gripping his hair, making him hotter and harder. And he couldn't speak for her, but when he finally slid in and began to move and he watched her eyes close and felt her around him, he almost did forget.

Almost.

My writing this is inspired from Goku's Daughter on-going fanfic, "I love." If you are an IchiRuki fan but haven't read it, do so. It's awesome!

I'll definitely be playing Rolodex with the characters to make them fit the story—I'm only drawing from characters from the manga though—no anime characters or fillers. "The Big Guy" was Chad; The Snake, The Buck, and The Lioness are Sung-Sun, Appachi, and Mila Rose respectively.

I welcome constructive criticism and suggestions or corrections should I get something wrong. All I ask is that you don't flame me.

R&R.