The second and final chapter. As promised, it's a bit on the happier side than the first half.

Enjoy~

Seated upon the cool dirt and grass just on the other side of the tall fence where he would have been easily found had the owner of the property thought to check along the outside perimeter, Shiro leaned his back against the warm wood. Still worn out from his trying past several days, he'd climbed back over the fence, curled against it, and fallen asleep with a much less upset stomach than before. He slept through nearly the entire day, his body unaccustomed to so much exercise and wandering since he'd previously been cooped up in a small house and its basement.

When he was finally roused from his sleep, the sun was setting and the din of diurnal animals was only a low, whispered hush. He stretched his arms above his head, groaning a small sound as he woke up. Relaxing back against the fence, he rubbed the sleep from one eye as he looked around.

Now that he'd accomplished his original goal of finding something to eat so he didn't starve, he was left with wondering what he was supposed to do. The only other human he'd ever had contact with, his father and creator, was dead. The abused stray he'd inadvertently come to see as his only friend was dead. He was alone, in the middle of the woods, in land he'd lived in all his short life but had never been able to explore, and he was lost as to what he was supposed to do.

All around him, as light was snuffed out and the dark began to settle in, things began to stir once more. Nocturnal creatures hooted in the branches above and rustled through the grasses. A set of silver, glowing eyes turned his way, before flashing off with the quiet sound of little feet. As the very last rays of evening sun dipped below the horizon and the shadows engulfed all else, Shiro let out a tiny, unsure sound.

Suddenly, leaving the spot he'd curled up in seemed like a daunting task.

So instead, since he had no real destination in mind, he slowly stood, still peering about almost nervously, and turned back to the fence. With a quick hop, he caught the top edge and began pulling himself over. There were metal fixtures every few feet that he didn't remember before, but it wasn't something he dwelt on as he crested the edge and dropped to the other side in a crouch.

Being outside, in the open with no walls and no ceiling was a foreign thing to him. Once inside the fence's perimeter, the towering wooden barrier brought him the comfort of familiarity and helped to ease his wariness. Once there, the first thing he did was wander towards the middle of the yard, exploring the garden and the various plants and fixtures within.

Like earlier that day, something small flashed through the rows of plants, low to the ground and swift. Shiro's attention was instantly drawn to it, and he began searching for the cat. He followed it through the middle of the neatly planted garden, watched it slide from his view as it cut from one row to the next over. He weaved around the plants behind it, trying to call it to him the way he used to with his dog.

Of course the feline didn't listen and kept evading him. When Shiro finally did catch it, grabbing hold of its back half as it tried to slip through his grasp, it turned on him, hissing and spitting. Sharp claws found his hand as the cat's maw scrunched in aggression and warning, its ears falling back and tail poofing out.

When little, hooked claws tore through his skin with enough tenacity to draw little lines of bright red, Shiro gasped a sharp sound, ashen brows furrowing. He didn't let go though, and so the cat kept fighting too.

The more the animal struggled, the more it tore into him and drew blood, the more Shiro's instinctive, aggressive side began to resurface. Just like with the scientist and the puppy before him, as pain flared through the boy's spine, it lit a fire in his mind.

Soon enough, not only was the small animal hissing and growling, but it was yowling in an awful, wailing way as it twisted and writhed, trying to get away. The loud, obviously distressed sounds drew attention and a light that had previously been dark illuminated the room that the back porch of the house led into.

Shiro froze, eyes going wide as his head snapped up to look. As if only just realizing he'd been hurting the small animal, he dropped it and jerked his hands up, close to his chest. Limping and terrified, but alive, the cat quickly fled, jumping up onto the porch and hiding against the glass, sliding door that led inside.

From inside, the home owner jolted from his comfortable, lazy seat upon the couch as the first terrified screech pierced the air. It couldn't have been anything other than his cat, so he knew that whatever was the cause, was most likely in his backyard. Maybe it was the same thing that had been tearing up his garden earlier that day and frightened the cat before.

Grabbing his shotgun from where it sat in the corner behind the door, he shoved a couple shells into the chamber, and yanked the sliding door open. He stepped over the cat he normally kept outside as it ran inside, seeking a safe place to hide. Cocking the gun, the man slid the door shut behind him and stepped barefoot and shirtless, dressed in only a pair of sweatpants, onto his back patio.

Unsurprisingly, as soon as the door had opened, everything had fallen silent. With surprisingly graceful, quiet steps as he searched the dark, he crept out into his yard, toward the extensive patch of tall, thick growing plants that made up his large garden. A small sound from off to his right had him jerking the barrel of the gun in that direction, raised and level, ready to fire.

He just barely caught rustling through his plants and, unworried but cautious just in case, he adjusted his course again as he slipped between rows of healthy vegetables. All fell silent again as he crept towards the back edge of the garden. When he reached it, he found nothing, and scanned the mostly flat yard of green grass between the garden and back edge of his fence for a few moments.

Then, just as he was getting ready to turn back toward the garden to find whatever was hiding within, whatever creature had been eating his plants and tormenting his cat, he caught movement from his peripheral. He snapped around, gun swinging toward the wraith of something pale and swift, just in time to see it disappear over the top edge of his fence. He just barely caught the dull thump of feet landing in the dirt beyond, and the quick patter of hurried steps that proved whatever it was had fled the moment it had hit the ground.

Sneering, the man debated going around to the yard exit and going after the thing, but the exit was on the opposite side as the direction the trespassing creature had fled and by the time he could get through and make it around the fenced in section, no doubt it would be long gone. Growling a displeased sound, the big man flipped the safety of his shotgun back in place and let the barrel drop with a frustrated motion. With one last look to the top edge of his fence, where the creature had leapt over at, he frowned and headed back towards his porch entrance.

He couldn't think of an animal that could so easily leap an eight foot fence. A deer maybe, if it'd had a running start, but he would have seen that before it had made it over. Besides, a deer wouldn't have attacked his cat. A raccoon or opossum could get over it, obviously, but the blurred glimpse he'd caught had told him it was much too large to be one of the smaller animals that would be able to scale the fence. Used to living so far from civilization, surrounded by wooded land and little else, it never occurred to him that it could have been a person. Never mind that it would have been a nearly impossible feat for a normal person to get over such an obstacle so quickly.

Scowl deepening as he pondered over what it could have possibly been, the man's bright blue eyes flashed with the lighting that seeped out from through the glass doors as he turned his gaze back toward his home. Once inside, he went about finding his frightened little hunter to make sure she wasn't seriously injured or bleeding all over his home.

After finding the cat, he decided to let her sleep inside for the rest of the night, not quite admitting to himself he'd miss the little animal if whatever was stalking his property scared her off or killed her. "We'll finish that barbwire in the morning." He told the barn cat as he put out a bowl of water for her to drink out of for the night.

After a short, but decent night's worth of sleep, that's exactly what he did. Getting up with the rise of the sun, the big man went to work. In a pair of earth-stained but sturdy jeans and a cut-off shirt that had long been faded by the sun, he pulled on his thick leather work gloves and hauled the bundles of sharp wire from the bed of his truck where he'd left it the day before, out into the back yard.

After hours of hard work and plenty of frustration later, he had ringed the top edge of his fence with tight spirals of shining barbwire affixed to the metal facets he'd installed the day before. Stepping back, he looked over his handy work, then down at the cat that had limped out of the house to supervise his every move like cats tended to do. With a nod to the animal, he grinned, "Let's see 'em get over that."

The cat blinked up at him, meowed a long, low sound, and flicked its tail as it stood and walked away with classic feline apathy. The man snorted an amused sound and tugged his gloves off as he headed inside for something to drink.

He wouldn't hear from his pest for that entire day, nor the next, and he assumed the extra barbwire must have done its job in deterring the unwanted creature. It didn't last however, and his assumptions were proven false the night of the second peaceful day.

Being a relatively healthy, if not very strange, growing young man, Shiro couldn't really go all that long without food. Like normal people, every few hours his stomach started to protest over the lack of sustenance filling it. It made him feel sick, it made him tired and unwell and clasped his hands over his flat belly as he wandered aimlessly, hopelessly lost and with nowhere to go.

Had he been as mentally developed as most kids his apparent age, he would have simply walked up to the front door of the house he'd found and asked for help, but he wasn't. He may have looked to be in his mid teens, but he was only a handful of years old, with the developing mind of an age somewhere between the two numbers.

Aside from his father figure, he'd never interacted with another person before, had never actually even seen another person. Couple his inexperience with the home owner's obvious aggression and the fact that Shiro knew he wasn't supposed to be out of his own house, where his papa had always locked him in, the unnatural boy really had no idea what he was supposed to do.

But he could only go so long without food before he was driven to extremes again. After a couple days of his belly feeling hollow and ill, he returned to the only source of food he'd found out in the middle of nowhere. Standing at the base of the tall fence, he looked up at the way the new, metal coil of wire shone under the moon's light. It really didn't look all that imposing, just new.

Holding his sketchbook, the cover smeared with dirty handprints and the corners bent up, he stuck the edge between his teeth so that he could free up his hands and lowered himself closer to the ground. With a quick, easy snap of motion, he jumped up and caught the top edge of the fence. His fingers slid below where the barbwire rested, and he let go with one long enough to pull the notebook from between his teeth and carefully slide it below as well, letting it drop over the edge to land on the other side with a dull thump and a fluttering of paper.

Catching hold of the edge with his second hand again, he carefully began pulling himself higher up. His arms trembled slightly with the effort and control it took as he paused and held himself there, studying the wiring and the sharp little protrusions that decorated it's length.

It didn't take him long at all to figure out that he didn't want to get caught up in that, so rather than simply pulling himself over the fence and dropping to the other side in one quick motion like he had before, he pushed himself as high as he could, baring his teeth as the barbs brushed and scratched at the skin of his arms, and planted his feet along the top of the fence. His pants were thick enough that the barbs didn't push right through the material and even though they caught at his clothing, it was better than catching at his skin.

Once steady enough, essentially balancing on the top row of the fence in a way that very few people would have been able to do, he carefully hopped out and away from the wiring, so that his drop was clear. He landed in a low crouch several feet from the base of the fence, where he froze for a few moments, looking around and listening. When nothing changed and no lights were turned on, he moved to grab his notebook again, and straightened as he took his time in wandering the yard.

Hungry and tired, he of course made his way to the garden again, where he'd found something he could satisfy his painfully hollow belly before. He quickly found that peppers were not on his list of things he considered to be edible, and made a face as he moved to a different section of the garden to find something else.

On that second quiet night, Grimmjow was just contemplating turning in for the evening when his cat, still allowed to sleep indoors for now -not because he had a soft spot for the still limping little creature, oh no- jumped up into the window ledge of his back-facing kitchen. He didn't think much of it at first, until he'd realized the cat had been staring out into the backyard for at least fifteen minutes now, unmoving and in that telling way cats did as they stalked things. Curious, he stepped up behind the cat and parted the curtains a bit to take a look for himself.

At first, he found nothing, just the quiet, peaceful shadows of night. But as his eyes panned over the yard one last time, he caught movement as something startlingly pale in the dark moved between dense rows of vegetation. Recognizing the lack of color as being the same creature he'd scared from his property a few days ago, the big man's features twisted aggressively.

Without shedding light on his yard like he had previously, he quickly made his way to the backdoor, grabbing his gun on the way by, and quietly eased the door open. Sick of all his efforts being for naught, he planned to end the animal that had kept getting into his fresh produce.

Having little contact with people and only minimal experience, Shiro very much reacted in a very base way. He missed the quiet slide of the glass door opening as he curiously poked around and explored while he munched on something green but not leafy. He didn't miss the strange, almost metallic clang as something solid slid, caught, then released, all in calm, controlled intervals that showed they were being controlled and not natural.

He didn't have much life experience, but living in his papa's lab for all of his few years, he knew when something was mechanic, when something was being operated by human hands. And so, even though he didn't realize it was the loading of a gun he'd heard, he knew there must have been someone else around him.

Startled, a little panicky even, he dropped what he'd been munching on and ducked around the next row of thick plants. His eyes were wide and his motions were surprisingly quiet as he tried to keep from being caught, holding his breath as he waited for an opportunity to scurry from the yard. If somebody found him, papa would get angry at him...

Shotgun held at the ready, Grimmjow crept around the back edge of his garden, watching and listening for movement. He stepped on something flat and giving, yet solid and smooth, and looked down as he lifted his foot. Frowning all the deeper, he started to bend to pick up the notebook, when a sudden flash of colorless motion caught his attention from the corner of his eyes.

"Got ya." He muttered as he swung the barrel of his gun in that direction, only for his crystallin blue eyes to go wide and surprise to register across his features. It was certainly no animal that stared back at him as it backed away. "Hey! Hold it!"

The young man turned to flee as Grimmjow called for him to stop. When the punk didn't listen, the older man's features went back to angry as he followed. Astonished, Grimmjow watched as the kid jumped and managed to catch the top edge of the high fence. He again called a demand for the kid to freeze, but was again ignored.

So he fired. Barrel held vertically, the warning shot shattered the silence as the bullet sailed harmlessly through the air.

The unbearably loud, unexpected sound made Shiro yelp and jerk away. Having half pulled himself up onto the fence's top edge, the sudden startlement made his hands slip and tipped his balance. He yelped another startled sound as he lost his hold upon the fence's edged and tumbled forward. The eight foot drop was quickly the least of his worries as the tightly coiled barbwire at the top caught at his clothing as he went over and followed him down.

He hit the ground on the outside of the yard with a thud that pushed the air from his lungs and it took him a moment of stunned silence to catch up to what had happened. But after that moment, he made to scramble away only to find himself tangled in sharp, constricting wiring. He whimpered as the barbs tore at his already ragged clothing and bit into his flesh. When he finally managed to get to his feet, the stiff, cruel wire tripped him up and he crashed to the ground again, unforgiving barbs forced deeper. The more he struggled to free himself and flee, the more hopelessly he became tangled until he was bleeding and in pain and frightened tears were beginning to well in strange eyes.

Grimmjow was surprised, to say the least, when he watched the kid make it to the top of his fence, only to topple over. It took him half a second to really respond as he heard the harsh landing on the other side and saw that he'd have to redo the damned deterrent across the top, but the extra work was forgotten when he heard the rattle of stiff wiring and the distressed whimpers of a child, rather than the cursing or yelling of a young adult.

"Shit-!" He hissed, dropping the notebook he'd grabbed from the ground without second thought. In a rush, he scrambled around to the garden and closer to the house, where he threw the latch to the gate that lead out of his backyard and into the surrounding woods. The gate was left to swing gently on noiseless hinges as he sprinted the length of the fence and around toward the back.

He slid to a halt as he rounded the corner, taking in the sight presented to him. Acting on impulse and instinct, he practically dove to the kid's side, trying desperately to get the pale young man to hold still and quit struggling. For all his efforts, Grimmjow was ignored and the lad's cries only grew louder as blood dripped in thin, vibrant threads from torn flesh.

Realizing the boy wasn't going to listen to him, too frightened and panicking, Grimmjow did the first thing that came to mind. He took up his gun and, his motions quick and his strength careful, knocked the kid out cold. The boy fell still in a tangle of long limbs and cruel wiring and Grimmjow grimaced, a breath hissing between his teeth as he tried to figure out how to proceed. He couldn't just leave him tangled in the mess he'd brought upon himself, so he began carefully pulling at the barbed wire, trying to figure out how best to unwind it and pull the barbs free from pale flesh.

It quickly became evident that he wouldn't be able to just untangle the kid by hand, so he straightened and quickly sprinted back around his fence, through the gate, and to the garage he kept all his tools in. Returning with thick, leather gloves and heavy-duty wire cutters, he settled on his knees and began the painstaking task of cutting the teen free.

As he did, he took in the appearance of the person he'd thought was an animal, a pest, getting into his garden all this time. The kid couldn't have been any older then fourteen, fifteen at the most. He was just a teenager, a boy still. In the pale moonlight, his pallor looked sickly and sallow, as did his long, tangled hair. And he was covered in general filth and dirt, like he'd been wandering outside for days.

Grimmjow shook his head as he finally cut the last of the tangled wire away, freeing the unconscious teen. He stared down at him for a moment, debating what to do and wondering just what the hell he'd been dragged into. Kids this age didn't just get lost in the woods a half hour from the nearest town and other homes. Something very odd was happening.

With a sigh, he pulled the young man from the ground, grunting as he straightened, and carried him inside where he could begin looking over all the small cuts and scrapes from the wire.

It would take Shiro nearly an hour to come around, partially due to the unnatural nature of how he'd fallen unconscious and partially because he'd simply been exhausted for too many days in a row. His body had seen the opportunity for rest, so it had taken it. In that time, Grimmjow was given the chance to realize that it hadn't just been the whitewash effect of the mood's light that made the boy look so pale. Below the dirt and now blood, he really was as colorless as he looked. He did what he could to patch the kid up, then went about making something hot for him to eat whenever he finally woke up, leaving him to lay on the couch in the next room over.

A quiet, groggy sound was his warning as the teen in his house started to awaken. The microwave was a low, distant hum in the background as he moved into the sitting area, leaning against the doorframe with crossed arms as he watched for the boy's reactions.

The first thing to register to Shiro's senses was the smell of something cooking. His stomach gave a loud, painful rumble and he frowned as he groaned and started to roll over. He quickly found out he was absolutely not on the ground anymore and as he tried to roll over so he could push himself up, he rolled right over the side of the couch he'd been laid on. The short drop did nothing more then really wake him up though, and the moment he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, he jerked back and away from the big man coming at him.

Grimmjow grimaced and tried to call out a quick warning, but was already too late, watching as the boy fell off the couch. He quickly took the few steps between himself and the couch, bending to check on his unexpected intruder, but the teen jolted away from him, staring up with wide eyes and unease etched across pale features. They were the strangest eyes Grimmjow had ever seen and it took him a moment, as he restudied the boy, to find words.

"It's ok, I'm not gonna hurt you." He finally reassured, pushing back his surprise. Gently, he took hold of the younger man's arm and started helping him off the floor and back to the couch. "Just sit for a minute, ok?"

He watched the kid carefully, and hid a grimace as the teen reached up to gingerly feel the bruise blossoming across pale skin at his hairline from where Grimmjow had knocked him out. Luckily, he didn't seem too off balance or dizzy, and Grimmjow wasn't so worried that he'd accidently hurt him more seriously.

Not a moment later, the microwave went off with a sharp chime and Grimmjow was a little surprised when the sudden sound had almost no effect on the kid at all. He'd seemed rather skittish, but the small alarm didn't earn so much as a flinch out of him. The big man straightened away from his guest, eyeing him in an appraising way, as he backed up a step before turning and leaving the room.

Shiro watched him go with eyes that were a little wider than normal, seated on the edge of the couch. Despite not being able to remember entering the man's home, he knew that's where he was and he knew the blue haired male leaving the room was the very same that had chased him earlier. It made him worry and he fidgeted slightly as he looked around. His papa had always made sure he knew he wasn't to leave the lab...he wasn't supposed to see other people, or interact with anyone. The whole 'no talking to strangers' thing had been taken to the extreme, despite that Shiro didn't really understand that. He only knew he wasn't supposed to let other people find him.

It didn't take long for the blue haired man to return. Shiro watched him as he neared, something wonderful smelling in his hands.

"Here."

The big man thrust a steaming bowl toward him and Shiro gave it a curious look, before his odd eyes traveled back upward to meet blue. He accepted the bowl and peered at the contents, taking his time in picking up the spoon that rested at its edge.

"Just leftovers from earlier," Grimmjow explained as the boy looked down into the bowl. He stepped back to give the kid some space, crossing his arms over his chest again as he watched. If his words were heard, the strange boy didn't show it as he dug in, too busy scarfing down the reheated, day old meal like he hadn't eaten in days. "Didn't figure you'd mind..." He added in a mumble.

The only evidence he got that he'd been heard was a quick, subtle shake of the boy's head as he stuck the spoon in his mouth and those odd golden eyes panned upward again.

Grimmjow frowned a bit and started to push away from the wall, "If I go grab the phone, will you call your parents?"

The boy shook his head and for half a second, automatically assuming the strange lad would agree, Grimmjow started to turn to go fetch the phone. Then he realized it had been a negative answer and he frowned. "Why not? Give me the number and I'll call, then."

"C'n I have my notebook back?"

Grimmjow's frown deepened, a bit of skepticism crossing his features.

"I think it's probably still outside..." Shiro continued, finishing the food given to him. Used to doing things for himself, he got up and wandered into the kitchen, curiously peeked around, and deposited the bowl in the sink when he found it.

Grimmjow watched him, a single brow raised. When the kid didn't reenter the sitting room, but instead headed toward the back door, Grimmjow pushed away from the wall again. He quickly crossed the space and flattened his hand against the door before it could be pulled open. The boy looked up at him with pale brows furrowed and Grimmjow said, "Stay here, sit back down. I'll go get it for you."

Shiro huffed an unhappy, petulant little breath, but when a kitchen chair was pulled out for him, he slid into it. Turning to look over his shoulder, he watched as the big man disappeared through the door with a final look, and pulled it closed behind himself. Then he turned back to the interior of the home and continued looking around.

It was much nicer than his and his father's home. A little cluttered maybe, but it actually looked lived in. It didn't look empty and dead like the main floor of the house he left his papa at. There was a stack of unopened mail sitting on the table, dishes in the sink. A clock hung on one wall and there were curtains over the windows. He wondered if there was a lab here, too.

Then the door was pushed open again and he turned back to the big man that owned the home. His sketchbook was dropped to the table top, but when he reached for it, it was pushed further from his reach. Shiro scowled unhappily at it and the hand still settled on its top, before redirecting his glare upward to meet blue eyes.

"Now, will you call your parents?" The bigger man asked.

Shiro sighed and shook his head again, "No. I can't." When he only earned a confused gaze, he rolled his eyes and continued, "I don't have 'ny parents ta call."

"Everyone has parents."

"Not everyone." Shiro snorted, "I don't."

"Guardians then," Grimmjow countered, crossing his arms over his chest in a stance that said he was leaving no room for argument. "You have to have some sort of guardian."

Shiro again shook his head and reached for his sketchbook. Again, a big hand reached down and pushed it further from his grasp. Angered, Shiro growled a rather vicious sound under his breath. He jerked back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest, like the big man before him had been. Refusing to look at the man, he glared off to the side, lip curled slightly.

Grimmjow studied him for a moment more, then sighed and shook his head a bit. Obviously, he was getting nowhere, so he switched to a different line of thinking. "Feel like telling me why you kept breaking into my property?"

Shiro ducked his head slightly, in an almost sheepish way, "No..." he muttered honestly.

"Why not?" Grimmjow asked, "Don't you think you owe me some answers?"

The boy merely shrugged, golden eyes refusing to lift and meet blue again.

"Well I think you do." Grimmjow stated, his voice stern. "Why were you running around in the middle of the woods at night? That shit's dangerous, you could have gotten seriously hurt." He still only received a shrug as the strange boy refused to say anything more.

Grimmjow sighed again, growing frustrated. The kid was so strange. Everything about him was off, different. Not just his looks, but the way he acted too. The bigger man openly studied the younger, still standing in front of the chair he'd instructed the boy to sit down in. After untangling him from the barbed wire and cleaning him up some, Grimmjow had noticed a few things that made him wonder if something more sinister was at play.

The kid was thin, not sickly so, but enough to make Grimmjow think he hadn't been eating well. The fact that the boy had been raiding his garden only furthered that theory. And though the paleness of his skin hid it well, the boy's arms were scared up like he'd never before seen. At first, he'd only noticed a series of raised marks on one of the boy's forearms. They looked like old teeth marks, an animal. It was normal enough, an encounter with a mean dog or something, so Grimmjow hadn't really worried about it. But after noticing it, he began noticing other marks, more worrying ones.

"Hey, kid, look at me." The bigger man grunted, half demanding but not overly harsh in his tone. Bent over the younger, he grabbed a pale wrist and pulled it toward him. "Are you a junkie?"

Shiro screwed up his features, automatically flipped his arm so that his palm was up; a learned reaction. "My name's Shiro, not kid..." He said with a small sneer and narrowed eyes, finally looking back at the bigger man, "And I dunno what that is."

Blue eyes narrowed icily, and calloused fingers ran over the small but many scars that marked the inside of the boy's elbow. "Don't play that game with me. Be honest." He demanded again, "You've got some serious marks, kid, are you a druggie?"

Again, Shiro only made a face, "I told ya, I dunno what that means!" He huffed, exasperated.

Straightening again, pulling out of the boy's face, Grimmjow released his arm and crossed his own over his chest again. He thought for a moment, studying pale features and strange eyes, and found he believed the boy. There was something very genuine and straightforward about him. Innocent.

"Ok, good." He concluded, glad he wouldn't be dealing with a teenager going through withdraw in a few hours. "Do you feel like telling me where your parents are yet?"

Shiro sighed, reached up to press the heel of his hand against his eye and rub like he was growing tired of all this. "I told ya this too. I don't got parents. Papapa said I was made in the lab."

"...are you sure you're not a junkie?"

Shiro grumbled something between a growl and a groan, and made to reach for his notebook again. The bigger man pulled it away from his reach. Gold on black eyes went wide, like he couldn't believe he was still being denied his things, before narrowing dangerously as the pale teen bared teeth at the stranger.

"Gimme it back!" He demanded in a near yell, surging forward and grabbing for the dirty, old sketchpad. He snarled, showing outright aggression through his obvious anger, to the point of being almost animal about it.

Surprised by the outburst, Grimmjow took a physical step back before he handed over the notebook. "Fine, but you have to pay attention then, understand? I'm not getting in trouble for kidnapping a minor because you got lost and trespassed on my property."

"Hmph." Shiro snagged the notebook from the bigger man's hand, pulling it close to himself, but he nodded his agreement. Flipping it open, he found his last blank page and pulled out a blue pencil to begin doodling.

Grimmjow watched him for a moment, a thoughtful frown tugging at his features. Aside from his obvious appearance, there was something very off about the boy that had stumbled into his house. "Shiro?" He asked curiously, half expecting to be ignored. When he received a questioning hum in return, he continued, "How old are you?"

The kid shrugged a vague gesture as he drew, "Dunno. Four or five maybe."

There was a long silence, in which Grimmjow stared down at the teen and Shiro continued to draw. The bigger man cocked his head, features pulled into a look of serious skepticism. "Are you..." He grimaced, made a vague gesture with his hand toward his head, "you know, mentally...ok...?"

The sounds of pencil on paper stopped and Shiro looked up at him again, cocking a brow. "What's that mean?"

"You know..." Grimmjow repeated, having a hard time forcing it out without making himself sound like a jerk, "Are you...mentally handicapped?" He still got nothing but that small, confused little frown. He sighed, grimaced again. "Are you slow? You know, in the head?"

"I dun think so." Shiro shook his head, "There's nothin' wrong wit' me. Pappa just always said I was smarter than my age but not than my age." He paused, frowned again as he realized what he'd said didn't sound right. "I-I get words mixed up..." He admitted sheepishly, ducking his head slightly and remembering his creator's ire at his troubles, how many times he'd been snapped at for it. "I'm sorry..."

"No, it's fine..." The bigger man reassured, still puzzled by his surprise guest, but also intrigued. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"I meant size..." Shiro amended anyway, "I guess I look older than I am. I dunno. Tha's what papapa told me."

Now that he had the notebook, scratching his pencil against blank paper in simple but practiced motions, he seemed much more relaxed and willing to talk. The familiarity of drawing put him at ease in the new and rather overwhelming situation he found himself in.

"Your papa? Your dad?" Grimmjow knelt to put himself on the sitting boy's level. "Can you tell me where he is? He's probably worried about you..."

"No, he's not..." Shiro told him, going back to his drawing. The blue lead scratched a little bit harder, a little bit quicker than before. "I...he got hurt...and I couldn' wake him up..."

"Oh..." Grimmjow grimaced again, realizing the strange kid's dad must have passed away. "What about your mother? Do you know where she is? Maybe we could call her..."

"I don't have one. Papa said his wife died b'fore I was made."

"You mean born." Grimmjow corrected absently as he thought. Apparently both of the kid's parents were dead...or his real mother had abandoned him, if his father's wife was dead and wasn't his mother.

Shiro shook his head, but didn't look up. "No. Made."

Grimmjow's gaze very slowly refocused on the odd teen as he frowned all the harder.

A smile tugged across Shiro's pallid features and he turned the notebook around, showing off his handwork. In the picture, a surprisingly well drawn, blue haired man held another figure that had a recognizable lack of color. Impressed, blue brows rose slightly as Grimmjow looked at the drawing. He snorted a small laugh when he took note of the yellow halo above blue hair, but he realized that Shiro must have really appreciated his assistance. Coupled with the few strange things he'd said about his parents and the way he acted, Grimmjow wondered how well the boy had been treated in the past.

Shiro leaned forward a bit, grin still parting pale lips. "D'ya like it?"

"Yeah, it's great." Grimmjow nodded, one corner of his lips tilting up.

Shiro preened, and tapped the corner of the page with one finger, "I signed my name, means ya can keep it if ya wanna."

"Oh, well thank you." Grimmjow said, and watched how carefully the teenager began pulling the page from the notebook. When it was torn free and all the annoying, paper fringes were pulled away, he accepted the drawing. "I'll...hang it on my fridge, I guess."

The younger snorted and smirked up at the bigger man, "That's a weird place ta put it. And you think I'm strange."

At that, Grimmjow couldn't help but snort a laugh, a grin of his own stretching his features. He shook his head a bit and set the drawing aside where it wouldn't get bent up, then reached out to the boy. "C'mon, it's late. Let's get you situated on the couch so you can get some sleep."

Clearly he wasn't getting anywhere very quickly, maybe after a few more hours of rest, Shiro would be more willing to tell him who he should be trying to contact. The boy had just gone through a rather trying episode, after all. Grimmjow was a little surprised he didn't have a killer headache, after falling from the top of a fence and getting knocked out.

"I'm not sleepy." Shiro informed, but even as he did, he stood and reached up to rub at his eyes again.

Grimmjow grunted another laugh, "Well, then why don't you lay down and be quite so I can sleep, ok?"

"Ok." Shiro nodded again and let himself be led into the next room over. He stood by patiently, curiously studying the room again, as the bigger man went to find him a few spare blankets and a pillow. While Grimmjow readied the couch for him to sleep on, Shiro perked up at a sudden thought. His voice was eager when he asked, "Do you have a puppy?!"

"A puppy...?" Grimmjow turned a skeptical look over his shoulder, "No... I can't say that I do."

"Oh," Shiro deflated a bit, "ok."

Grimmjow patted the couch and stood by while his guest crawled onto it and began wiggling about to make himself comfortable. When Shiro seemed settled, he grabbed another blanket and unfolded it over the boy. "You like dogs?"

"Mhmm." Shiro mumbled as he pulled the edge of the blanket up under his chin. "I miss my puppy... Not the lil one, that one was mean ta me. It bit me when I was lil too. But I miss the big one. It was nice ta me and played wit' me..."

Grimmjow smirked as he listened. The more the kid talked the harder he got to understand as his words slurred tiredly and his strangely colored eyes fell closed. "Not tired. Right." He muttered, and grabbed a second blanket. He unfolded it halfway and laid it across the younger's feet, so he would be able to find it easily if he woke up cold. Then he turned out the light and left the room.

On his way by the table, he paused and debated for a moment, before grabbing the sketchbook the boy had left on the table after tearing the drawing out for him. He hesitated to open it, feeling like he was intruding with how protective over the thing the boy had been, but he flipped it open and skimmed through the first few pages. He found little drawings of all kinds of things; jars, computers, he smiled a bit as he found a dark brown dog with an off colored leg. But the further he flipped, the more confused he grew and an almost dark expression settled over his features. He found beakers and test tubes and forceps, all manner of expensive and complicated equipment and eventually a massive, almost fish tank looking thing that obviously wasn't meant to hold fish if all the buttons and gadgets on it were anything to go by.

Frowning, Grimmjow flipped through a few more pages, until he found a page that had been filled with nothing but angry, red, shapeless scribbles. The next page was of an older man in a lab coat. Then another of him laying on the floor, more red staining the entire bottom half of the page like it would drip from the notebook and spatter against the flooring.

Grimmjow quickly flipped to the next page, but the nature of the drawings completely changed. Now he found things from outside; trees, birds, a deer, other various plants, even an old, dilapidated house that looked to be abandoned, one of the windows broken.

Slowly shutting the sketchbook, he put it back where he'd picked it up from and headed toward his bedroom. He'd hoped to get this all taken care of and over with, no hassle, no messy reports, but maybe he'd have to call the police after all.

That next morning, Shiro still passed out on the couch, sprawled out upon his stomach, with his arm and a leg hanging off the edge, Grimmjow quietly peeked into the room, before pulling his phone from his pocket and leaving. He ran a hand through his hair as he dialed a quick number, then stared down at the screen for a few moments. Dropping heavily into one of the chairs that sat around his kitchen table, he looked over his shoulder towards the doorway that led into the sitting room. All was still quiet from within.

With a sigh, he pressed the button to connect the call and brought the phone to his ear. He didn't have many options, after all. There was a young teen in his house, a stranger with no ID, apparently no parents, and all he would give was his first name. Calling the police was the most logical option open to him. He could figure out where the boy belonged, get him the help he seemed to need, and it would keep Grimmjow himself out of trouble should it turn out the kid had run away or been taken and escaped or something equally as scary but possible.

And yet the idea of having someone take the kid away settled strangely in his gut. Shiro wasn't normal. There was something strange, something very different about him, something that needed protecting and Grimmjow had no idea why.

He was pulled from his thoughts when a woman answered the line, trying to greet him for the second or third time, "Hello? Is this an emergency? Can you give me your location?"

"What-no. No, sorry, uh-" Grimmjow mentally shook himself, "No, I didn't have the non-emergency number... I'm sorry, could you possibly give it to me?"

"Yes, of course."

The woman on the other end rattled off a number and Grimmjow quickly scribbled it down. After apologizing again, and thanking the woman, he hung up and began punching in the new number.

He pulled the phone to his ear again as the couch springs from the other room groaned quietly with the shifting of the weight settled upon them.

From the other end of the line, the ringing quickly stopped, "City police department, is this an emergency?"

Grimmjow half rolled his eyes, head bowing as he rubbed his fingers along his temple, "No, not really-"

"Alright then," the dispatcher said, "please hold while we transfer you to our next available operator."

The big man started to respond, but there was a quiet beep before equally quiet music played in the background and he sighed instead. Not half a second later, he jolted in surprise, eyes flying wide, as the phone was very unexpectedly yanked from his hand.

He turned in a rush to find Shiro pouting, brows furrowed, as he pushed buttons. After a few tries, he found the right one and the line went dead.

"Shiro!" Grimmjow stood, features dropping the stunned expression and gaining a stern one instead, "What are you-"

"You were gonna tell on me!" Shiro practically shouted back, looking angry and wronged, maybe even a little hurt. "Papapa said nobody can know 'bout me...you can't tell on me..."

The bridge of Grimmjow's nose crinkled, blue eyes narrowing slightly, but there was no anger in his features as he looked at the teen. "Shiro..." He said slowly, gently, "You had to come from somewhere, someone has to be missing you... I can't keep you here..."

"Fine, then I'll go." Shiro moved to grab his dirty, old notebook and headed toward the door, "Just...don' tell on me...papa would be mad..."

"Wait...wait." Grimmjow followed after the boy. He sighed, pushing the door closed again before the odd young man had a chance to walk through it. Scrubbing a hand over his features, he looked down at the kid, "You aren't some stray animal, Shiro, I can't just keep you. Things don't work that way."

Shiro frowned, eyes dragging away from startling blue to settle on the door again. He tugged at the doorknob, but the bigger man's hand was still planted in the middle, keeping it shut.

"But," Grimmjow continued, "I guess...you can stay until I figure out what's going on, ok?"

Golden eyes widened as Shiro turned back to the blue haired man, hand tentatively leaving the doorknob. "Ya wont tell on me...?"

The big man sighed a short, strained breath and closed his eyes, but nodded all the same, "I wont tell..."

A grin stretched across pale features. He had very little experience with other people, and even less with people that were so nice to him. So when Grimmjow had tended to his few wounds, fed him, gave him a place to sleep and talked to him, even if it had been questioning, to Shiro, that meant they were already friends. The blue haired stranger was already someone he liked.

"But," Grimmjow yet again started and Shiro's wide smile lessoned a touch, "since you messed up my fence and my garden, you have to help me fix it. Sounds fair?"

Shiro nodded almost eagerly, setting his notebook back down on the table. Not even twenty minutes later, Grimmjow was shirtless under the hot sun, leather gloves on as he started on his fence. Having assigned the task to the strange boy, he kept an eye on Shiro as the pale lad tended to the garden, pulling the things that Grimmjow had explained to him didn't belong and leaving the vegetables alone. He straightened a few tomato cages, picked up the mess he'd left behind the night before, and watered the plants.

By the time the two were done, Shiro was muddy and dirt smeared and both were in need of a shower. Grimmjow pulled his work gloves off, dropped them on the edge of his patio, and clapped a hand over Shiro's shoulder as he guided the boy back inside. Shiro was halfway through the doorway when he jerked to a sudden stop, making the bigger man nearly run him over, and leaned backward to peek outside again. Then he frowned up at Grimmjow, "You said you didn't have a pupu-" He frowned harder, grumbled a short, frustrated sound, "puppy..."

Grimmjow frowned right back down at him, "I don't..." but when golden eyes coasted away and back out toward the fence line, Grimmjow followed Shiro's gaze and found the cat slinking around. His frown deepened, gaining a thoughtful quality. "That's a cat, Shiro."

"Oh...not a puppy?" Shiro glanced back up at Grimmjow, before looking back towards the little animal again. "I thought maybe it just looked funny like I do and like my lil pup-ppy did..."

Unsure what to say, the bigger man hesitated for a moment before stepping back. "If you promise not to hurt her this time, I'll let you hold her."

The boy lit up happily, exclaiming excitedly, "I promise!"

Grimmjow grunted an amused sound and nodded toward the cat. Shiro eagerly followed behind him. The cat thought to scurry away and made to run, but the bigger man ignored her protests and bent to pull her from the ground. She wiggled for a moment, but after she'd settled down, Grimmjow passed her over to the strange lad that had fallen into his care.

Carefully, Shiro cradled the cat close with one arm and petted orange fur with the hand of his other as he followed the blue haired man into the house. Once inside, Grimmjow shut the door behind them to keep the hot air out, and left Shiro standing beside his small table as he disappeared further into the house. Shiro didn't seem to mind, nor really even notice, too enthralled with making friends with the cat he held.

When Grimmjow returned, holding a bundle of clean clothing, he gently took the cat from Shiro's hands, earning a pout, and set the animal down. It meowed up at the boy before turning to lazily wander into a different room. Shiro waved at it, smile back.

Shaking his head, Grimmjow handed the clean clothing over, "It'll be a little big on you, but it'll have to work until we get a load of laundry done. Bathroom is just down the hall, on the right. Just leave your dirty clothes by the door when you get in so I can grab 'em."

Shiro did just that, heading down the hallway to find the shower, not shy in the least. It took him a few minutes to navigate the hot and cold dials, since he'd only ever taken just one bath without Isshin's help before, but he figured it out quickly enough, stripped, and left his dirty, mud smeared clothing folded neatly by the door before he hopped in.

Grimmjow waited for the water to start running, giving the boy a few minutes to get in, before he cracked the door open and grabbed the dirty clothing so he could throw it in the washer with his own clothing.

While he loaded the washing machine, he heaved a sigh and contemplated his options. He couldn't just keep a lost child, and Shiro wasn't even a normal kid. As harsh as it may have seemed, there was something wrong with him and Grimmjow had no way of knowing if Shiro had special needs; medication, a certain routine, a specific diet. What if certain things triggered habits or fits or upset the teen? Grimmjow wouldn't know how to handle the kid.

But with the way Shiro had reacted to catching him, Grimmjow knew he couldn't just call the police, even if that's exactly what he should have been doing. Closing the machine, Grimmjow turned and leaned against it, crossing his arms over his chest as he absently listened to the sound of running water from the bathroom.

Ten minutes later, Shiro came down the hall, his hair wet and hanging around his shoulders, the short sleeves of Grimmjow's shirt hanging down to his elbows. One hand was fisted in the waist of the jeans he wore, holding them up as he tread on the pant-legs.

Grimmjow looked up at him, smirking at the picture he was faced with, and went to find a belt for the boy. A few seconds later, he returned to find that Shiro had planted himself at the kitchen table and was busy doodling in the margin of an already drawn on page in his sketchbook. He set the belt down on the table and disappeared down the hall again, digging through a cupboard until he found a notebook. Coming back to the kitchen, he dropped it next to the boy.

Shiro looked at it, then up at the bigger man as his scratching pencil fell still.

"It's lined, and half the pages are probably written on, but if you want, you can draw in it."

The pale teen eagerly enough closed his already full sketchbook and opened up the new one that had been presented to him, flipping pages until he found a blank one. He began drawing right away, hardly even thinking about what his subject matter would be or bothered by his spectator.

Grimmjow watched him for a moment, before disappearing again to take his own shower and get into clean clothing.

By the time he was done and came back to the kitchen, Shiro had quit drawing and was looking at some of the written on pages of the borrowed notebook. Curiosity lit his features as his golden eyes scanned the pages, drinking in the handwriting, despite that there couldn't have been anything written there of any interest.

After a moment, the boy's features lit up and his hand shot out as he pointed, "This one's a 'S'."

Grimmjow pushed a smile on through the furrowing of his brows, looking down at the notebook to see an S written in his messy scrawl. He nodded, agreeing, then looked back to the teen's features. "Do you know how to read, Shiro?"

The strange lad shrugged, "I know a few."

"A few..?"

"Mhmm." He nodded, still scanning the page curiously, "I know S, and I know H, and R and I and O."

"So you know how to spell your name?" Grimmjow cocked a brow slightly, blue eyes narrowing slightly.

"Mhmm." Shiro hummed again, "Papapa taught me, so I c'n sign my drawin's."

"He didn't teach you the other letters?" When he earned only a shake of the boy's head, Grimmjow's frown turned into something a little angrier, a little more outraged, perhaps. It only seemed further evidence towards his thoughts about how poorly the boy was being treated by whoever was supposed to be taking care of him. "Can you count?"

"Mhmm, course I can count." Shiro scoffed, like it was unthinkable. "I'm not dumb."

Grimmjow grunted, "I know, I didn't mean you were. But you can count? So you know numbers?"

Shiro nodded, "The same way I know words."

Frowning again, the bigger man reached further across the table and grabbed a pen. In his messy but legible handwriting, he jotted down a few random numbers in the margin of the written on page Shiro was scanning through. "Can you tell me what those are?"

The lad frowned at them for a moment, before he leaned back in the chair, away from the notebook, and crossed his arms unhappily. "Are you makin' fun a me b'coz I can't read...?"

"What? No-! Of course not-" He was cut off before he could say anything further.

"I don' b'lieve you." The teen muttered, propping an elbow on the table and almost angrily pulling the notebook from under Grimmjow's hand. He yanked it open to a blank sheet and stole the pen from Grimmjow's hand, instantly huddling over the page as the pen began scratching over the lines of the paper. "I don' care what ya think..." He muttered even more quietly, "I'm not dumb."

"Shiro, I didn't-" But again, he was cut off as Shiro turned on him fast enough that the bigger man actually flinched.

"It's not my fault!" Shiro hissed at him, angry and defensive. The lines of his body were pulled tight with sudden, explosive aggression. "I don' know why he didn't like me! It's not my fault he didn't teach me ta read!"

"Alright," Grimmjow said lowly, calmly as he slowly patted the air in a placating way. "Easy there, kid."

Shiro curled his lip, strange eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Shiro, sorry." Grimmjow quickly corrected, only just now realizing that the teen had climbed to his feet and stood facing him with a clenched jaw and bared teeth. Like the night before, when he'd tried taking the boy's sketchbook from him, Grimmjow was faced with sudden, volatile rage. "Hey, take it easy, ok? Sit back down..."

Instead of trying to force Shiro back into the chair, though, he reached over and dragged another closer, taking a seat himself. He looked up at the teen for a few moments, watched the lad's chest rise and fall under the too big shirt in controlled, heavy breaths. But after those few moments, Shiro slowly sank back into the chair he'd previously been occupying, holding the gaze of blue eyes for only a moment longer before he turned back to the notebook and began scribbling on the paper again. A moment later, it was like nothing had happened at all.

Grimmjow snorted a quiet sound as he observed the strange lad. After a moment, he relaxed a bit and leaned back in the chair he'd seated himself in. Well, if the boy couldn't read -numbers included- than he guessed he wasn't going to get an address out of the kid. And Shiro had already made clear that neither of them would be calling anyone, though he probably didn't know the phone number of whoever was supposed to be looking after him anyway.

"Shiro?" He waited for a very slightly inquisitive hum before he continued, "Do you think you could show me how to get to where you live?"

Shiro shrugged as he doodled, and pulled one had away from the paper to point, "That way."

With a frown, Grimmjow glanced in the indicated direction before thinking for a moment. In relation to the small road that stretched passed his home at the end of his driveway, 'that way' meant Shiro lived even further from town than he did. But that was impossible. The next city over was hours away by car, and next to nothing sat between there and where Grimmjow lived. "Are you sure it's that way?"

"Mhmm, that's the way I came from ta get here." The pen never stopped scratching and Shiro was quiet for a moment, before ashen brows furrowed. "Why?" Then he finally looked up and quit doodling, very quietly saying, "... I don't wanna go back..."

Everything about that pulled at something in Grimmjow and he merely stared back at the younger for a moment. Then his brows furrowed and he set his features to something more stern, more determined. "Maybe you wont have to go back, but you still need to show me where it is."

"But if I don't gotta go back, why d'ya need ta know where it is?"

"Because I don't think I like whoever is supposed to be taking care of you and I want to talk with them." Grimmjow told the boy, "And after that, depending on what happens, you might be coming back here with me so we can figure out what to do next. We can go from there."

"D'you think ya can wake papapa up?" Shiro asked, almost eagerly.

Grimmjow hesitated, remembering what the teen had said the night before. "I don't know about that..."

"Oh..." Looking back at his paper, Shiro continued drawing, confused on how the bigger man expected to talk to anyone at his house if he couldn't wake his father up.

Climbing to his feet, the blue haired man pushed his chair back where it belonged and marveled at the fact that only minutes ago, Shiro had been seething with anger. Now the teen seemed perfectly calm, all traces of his aggression gone as suddenly as it had come. He snorted and patted the kid on the shoulder, "Come on, you can bring the notebook if you want."

"I can?" He asked happily, features lighting up, only to fall not even a moment later. "We're goin' back now...?"

"Yep, might as well get it over with, right?"

Shiro snorted and closed his notebook, "Guess so."

Not long later, the two were climbing into Grimmjow's truck and it quickly became obvious that vehicles were a new thing for the teen. The bigger man had to show him how to buckle the seatbelt and when he finally backed from the driveway, a childlike wonder had filled strange eyes as Shiro watched the scenery go by. It left Grimmjow all the more confused about what exactly he was dealing with when it came to the odd teen.

"Have you never been in a car before...?" The bigger man asked, trying to mask the disbelieving skepticism in his voice. Headed in the direction Shiro had indicated while they'd been sitting in the kitchen, he glanced away from the road and towards the kid sitting shotgun.

Shiro shook his head, not pulling his attention away from inspecting everything. "Papapa had one, I think, but I was never 'llowed ta go outside, so I never been in it."

The rest of the drive was quiet, each lost in their respective thoughts. As he sat in silence, nothing but the truck's engine as white noise, and minutes stretched by into nearly a half hour, Grimmjow wondered if Shiro really knew where they were going. Wherever their destination was, he hoped he would at least find a few answers.

Not even ten minutes later, Shiro's watery voice shattered the silence. "Stop!" He ordered, spinning around in his seat and pointing. Grimmjow hit the breaks, taken off guard and unsure what the teen had seen. "There, we went passed it." The boy explained as the truck rocked to a stop.

Grimmjow turned a bit looking in the indicated direction, behind himself but towards his side of the vehicle. He found nothing but trees and shadowed woods. "I don't...think this is it, Shiro..."

"No, it's back there." Shiro insisted, still pointing. "See? Behind the trees." He turned back to face forward, grabbing the seatbelt as he fumbled with the latch.

Grimmjow frowned, searching the trees. It took him a moment to realize what the strange teen was talking about. There, maybe a half-mile from the road and very nearly lost in overgrowth and hidden behind unchecked trees, a dilapidated old house sat. Whatever color it used to be was faded away, the paint peeling with age and neglect. Clearly it had seen better days.

Reaching across, Grimmjow blindly settled his hand over Shiro's, halting the boy from unbuckling and climbing from the truck. "That's it?" He asked, voice low, "That's where you came from?"

"Mhmm." Shiro nodded, ceasing his efforts with the seatbelt and looking across the bigger man to peer out the driver side window.

The bigger man pulled his hand away and shifted the truck into reverse, backing down the road at a careful pace as he searched the side of the street for the overgrown, old driveway to the abandoned house. It didn't take long for them to come upon it and Grimmjow shifted back into first as he turned the truck down the drive. To his surprise, the narrow driveway wasn't as overgrown and impassable as he'd expected. Nothing large was left to lay in the way, fallen from the trees above, and no overly large potholes or ruts showed were it hadn't been taken care of and had been allowed to be reclaimed by nature. It actually looked somewhat used and twin tracks of nearly bare dirt showed were car tires went back and forth often enough to kill the less hardy, thicker growing plants that would have otherwise tried to take over the open space.

The ride was a little bumpy, a little slow, as Grimmjow eased his truck up the winding drive, avoiding the worst of the pits and hollows he found. A few minutes later, he was shutting the engine off, staring out the windshield as he studied the old house. For such an old, decaying building, the important parts looked surprisingly functional once up close. The roof wasn't sagging, solid below weathered shingles. The front door looked sturdy in its worn framework.

Grimmjow pushed his door open, exiting the vehicle, still eyeing the house and looking for signs of whoever Shiro was supposed to be living with. Fidgeting with the seatbelt a little, Shiro followed his lead. Unlike the bigger man, the teen didn't hesitate as he walked up the rest of the drive and toward the house.

Grimmjow quickly followed behind him, not willing to let the boy wander far, just in case. They trooped right up to the door and the bigger man settled his hand on the smaller's shoulder, keeping him close by. He couldn't help but notice that the doorknob, set into the weathered wood of the door, looked nearly brand new. Extra locks had been installed, shining, heavy deadbolts meant to keep intruders out.

Blue brows furrowed as Grimmjow hesitantly raised his fist and knocked on the door. The pounding echoed through the house before falling silent. He waited a moment, Shiro at his side and not nearly as uneasy as the bigger man was. In fact, the teen acted like all this was normal, like nothing was out of place in the least.

When no one answered the door, Grimmjow tried again, his scowl deepening. At his side, Shiro frowned as well. He looked up at the older male, then back to the door, before shrugging from under the hand on his shoulder.

Grimmjow made a half effort to reach for him as he pulled away, "Hey, Shi-"

"We'll have ta go in the same way I got out." The boy said, his tone making it seem that the answer should have been obvious.

"How's that..?" The blue haired man took one last look at the door, and followed as Shiro rounded the small house. He caught up in time to watch Shiro pick his way through glass littered grass towards a broken window. "Wow, careful there, kid."

Shiro turned a quick glare on him, but continued to the window. He braced his hands on a clear space of the frame before pulling himself up and through to land on the couch he'd pulled up next to the wall for the dog's sake. It seemed like forever ago and as he entered the gloom of what had been the only home he'd ever known and he was forced to face all the shadows he'd left behind, his glare turned into a frown. Then dropped into a pout as he stood in the middle of the sitting room, looking around. He'd never noticed before, having had nothing to compare it to, but his home suddenly seemed so cold, so empty.

Grimmjow ducked through the window behind him, his work boots landing with a dull thump and a creak on old flooring. He straightened, walking up behind the teen that had quite literally stumbled into his home as he looked around.

There were no personal touches, no pictures or random, nonessential items. There was no decoration or theme to give the space character, to hint at the owner's tastes and personality. It was bare, blank. Like Shiro was.

He glanced back to the boy, brows still furrowed and lips curved downward. Shiro looked back up at him with a slightly widened gaze, before grabbing his hand and heading toward the back of the house. "I stayed mostly downstairs," he muttered, leading Grimmjow to a narrow, encased staircase that led only downward, "b'coz that's where papa was most a the time."

The moment they hit that very first step, the smell assaulted them like running into a wall. Grimmjow gagged, eyes watering. He brought his hand up to cover his mouth and nose and looked at the boy leading him.

Not unaffected, Shiro seemed to hesitate. He looked almost scared, panicked even. Or very upset. It was then that Grimmjow remembered what the kid had told him, about how he hadn't been able to wake his father up and Grimmjow realized what he was smelling.

Blue eyes widened as he and Shiro continued down the stairs. Almost afraid of what he'd find, he stepped onto the hard, concrete flooring of an unfurnished basement, only to round a small divider wall to find that the large, open space was far from unfinished.

The lights overhead were still on, and an unnatural stillness had settled over the place. In the corner nearest him, a large mound of rumpled bedding and towels sat, the fabric showing old stains that Grimmjow could only guess to be blood. All around them, lab equipment gleamed under the harsh lighting; metal, glass, plastic, some of it in various colors, all of it pristine and precise. Near the far wall, a metal table had been knocked askew, sheets of paper scattered across the floor in a disarray that didn't match the rest of the basement. A dark, drying stain marred the floor below the table.

Tentatively stepping nearer, Grimmjow rounded the table, grimacing and nearly flinching away as he found what was left of a man in a lab coat. At his side, Shiro whimpered an almost animal sound. He frowned and gently pushed Shiro back again, away from the body of his father.

"Jesus," He muttered, taking one last look before backing away also. There was no need to check for a pulse. The man was clearly gone. "We're going to have to call the police, Shiro... we can't just leave him here..."

"No..." Shiro whimpered, truly sounding like a child, "Papapa said no one can know 'bout me...they'll take me away..."

Grimmjow ignored him and swung around, grabbing the boy by both shoulders so that Shiro was forced to look at him. "What happened here, Shiro?" He asked, very slowly, in a way that didn't leave room for any games.

"I dunno-"

"Shiro!" Big hands tightened their grip, but Grimmjow wasn't trying to hurt the kid. He only wanted answers, like he had when he'd decided they'd make the trip out here. This wasn't something he knew how to deal with and it made no sense. He'd been put into a very tough situation; an identity-less, unusual child, a dead body. What was he supposed to do? Supposed to think?

"I dunno!" Shiro repeated, reaching up with one hand to circle pale fingers around Grimmjow's wrist. With his other, he pointed toward the table. "He-he was gonna take more blood but there was already somethin' in it! It hurt and I was scared...!"

Blue brows furrowed as Grimmjow's grip loosened, "Take more..." but even as he started to repeat what he'd been told, he grabbed Shiro's arm and flipped it over, looking at all the track marks marring pale flesh. "Your dad did this to you?"

Shiro only shrugged, like it wasn't a big deal, but there was a slight tremble to his body. He pulled his arm away and fisted his hand to rub at his eyes. "I don't wanna be here 'nymore..." He practically whispered.

Grimmjow nodded slightly, both agreeing and understanding the sentiment. He straightened out of the boy's face and again tugged Shiro protectively close by the shoulder. But they couldn't leave yet, he still had to figure out what was going on. Why would a man lock his own child away from the world? Why would have Shiro been treated the way he had? There were too many unanswered questions for Grimmjow to leave things as they were.

Continuing his search of the basement turned laboratory, he wandered away from the body and toward another row of metal counters and drawers. One had been converted into a desk of sorts. On its top sat stack upon stack of number and letter filled papers, of diagrams and charts and statistics, none of which Grimmjow knew what were for. A glass jar had been used as a pencil holder, filled with highlighters, pens, a ruler. An old leather wallet sat nearby, opened like someone had been digging through it, or forgotten to return whatever had been pulled from it.

Grimmjow picked it up, searching for an ID. The license he found wasn't quite what he'd been searching for. Rather than a driver's license, he found a keycard with a photo of the dead man; Dr. Isshin Kurosaki of Karakura Inc. and Laboratories: leading Geneticist and head scientist.

The big man frowned, wondering why that name sounded familiar. The city the facility was named after was a long drive, several days away. It wasn't a distance that could be driven back and forth for work.

A thoughtful expression etched into his features, Grimmjow set the wallet back down, the keycard laid down next to it. He slowly wandered away from the desk area, looking around as he went. Clearly Shiro had been being honest with him. This was where he'd come from, but from what he'd seen, there was no evidence to even show Shiro's existence here. What kind of father didn't have a single photo of his child in his home? Hell, even in his wallet or his workspace or whatever this place was.

Then his eyes landed on a closed door in the back wall. Crossing the space, he tried the doorknob to find it locked. Turning to Shiro, who stood almost too quietly in the center of the laboratory area, he asked, "What's in here?"

The teen shook his head, eyes edging passed Grimmjow to peer at the door, "Dunno... papa never lemme see inside."

"Never?" Grimmjow turned back to the door, "Do you know where he keeps the key?"

Shiro nodded, even though the big man wasn't looking, and pointed toward the body of his creator. "Papa keeps 'em wit' him."

Grimmjow grimaced, but turned away from the door and back toward the body laying on the floor. He wasn't naturally a very queasy guy. Blood and gore had never bothered him, but this wasn't like a movie. The smell was the worst. It was nauseating, to say the least.

But answers were something he needed before he could determine what his best course of action was, so he tugged the collar of his shirt up over the lower half of his face and tried not to loose his lunch as he neared the body. He checked the pockets of the lab coat first, finding nothing more than the expected; a pencil, a glass stir stick of some sort. The body was cold, stiff and once dark colored eyes were still open, clouded over and foggy in death. Grimmjow moved on to the deceased's pant pockets, finally hearing the rattle of keys as he dug around.

Pulling them free, he quickly, gladly, jumped to his feet and moved away from the body. Back to the door. There were half a dozen keys on the ring, most likely several of which went to the ridiculous locks on the front door. They jingled as Grimmjow flipped through them, looking for one that might match the lock in the door hidden below the house.

He found the right one after his second try, and slipped the key into the lock. He pushed the door open to find a dark room. Nothing but blackness was visible, dark, smudged shapes of furniture or other objects in the room. Grimmjow wandered in, hand creeping along the wall in search of a light switch he couldn't seem to find. The room was locked for a reason, maybe this was where he'd find his answers.

He vaguely heard as Shiro crept in behind him, almost tentative to enter a room he'd previously been banned from.

Grimmjow edged around something large standing in the center of the room. In the dark, with only the light flooding in from the main room, he could only see a glint of reflection on glass as he passed it. He dismissed it and moved on, still searching for a light switch as he ran his hand over shelves. Accidently knocking over a picture frame, he jumped slightly, carefully steadying it before it could fall and break. He couldn't see the picture very well in the dark, only the smudge of what looked like two people, one clearly younger than the other. The frown alleviated from his features slightly, thinking it must have finally been something to show that this doctor had cared for his odd son.

A file cabinet was the next thing to catch his eye, the metal it was made of dully reflecting the small amount of light that reached inside the room. Kneeling before it, he squinted at the labels, trying to make out what was written in dark ink against white strips.

The doctor's handwriting was messy, barely legible, but even then, the simple, five letter word was easily recognizable. Shiro's name marked the first drawer, like he was some sort of specimen, something to be studied. But the man was a scientist, a doctor. Grimmjow supposed keeping important records and documents in a filing cabinet probably wasn't so strange.

Pulling the drawer open, he pulled out the first folder and flipped it open, not sure what he expected to be able to read in the dark. A moment later, as he grumbled, the lights came on and he heard Shiro moving toward the center of the room.

"Thanks, kid." He said absently, already absorbed in what sat in front of him. His features pulled tight as he looked through graphs and charts and records. What he read made no sense. Shiro's name was only brought up after he'd already scanned through the first several pages, and everything he saw spoke of the boy like he wasn't even human. Talk of cloning, of synthetic and artificial creation. He read about rapid growth and a stunted mind. "What...is this..." Flipping through more pages, he found the records of weekly blood work and handwritten notes about observations of Shiro's growing personality and development.

"Shiro?" Grimmjow almost frantically turned back to the very first page of the file he held, where it read of success in growing a human clone. "What was he doing to you..?" At the top of the page, he found a date. Blue eyes went wide. According to the scientist's private records, Shiro's birthday would be in a couple weeks.

And he would be five years old.

The childishness in his actions and his speaking wasn't some sort of disorder, then... Shiro really was... Grimmjow could hardly wrap his mind around what he was reading. The kid he'd thought had been a runaway teenager was actually some sort of twisted laboratory experiment. But the biggest surprise had yet to present itself.

It was then that Grimmjow realized how quiet Shiro had gone, how all movement had stopped behind him.

He turned around to find the boy staring up at the glass case he'd seen earlier upon entering and floating almost peacefully inside the tank, a young man. It took Grimmjow a few seconds to find his wits, as he stared at the figure within. He hardly even realized he was walking, rounding the tank so that he stood at Shiro's side and looked up at the figure.

Orange hair, grown out to nearly shoulder length, flowed around peaceful features. His eyes were closed, lashes long and a dusting of freckles just barely stood out against fair skin. His jaw and chin was strong, yet narrow and pointed, his cheekbones high but not sharp. Despite that he looked to be in his early to mid twenties, there was still a boyish handsomeness to his features.

His body was relaxed, long limbs held in an easy, weightless position that suggested he'd been floating in the tank for quite some time. Long enough that his body had settled into a natural pose. Had it not been for the tubes and wires leading from his body, it would have almost appeared that the young man slept submerged there. For all that was obviously wrong with him, he was beautiful.

After a moment, Grimmjow finally dragged his stunned gaze away from the man in the tank to look back at the boy that he'd found in his garden. Shiro still stared up at the tank, giving the bigger man a clear view of his profile, of pointed but not sharp features and full lips. Even the set to his brow and his hairline was the same. In all but color and apparent age, Shiro was the other's copy.

Grimmjow looked from Shiro, back to the more colorful male in the tank, and back, unsure what to say, what to even think. The moment broke as he watched pale brows slowly furrow and Shiro's bottom lip tremble slightly. Obviously, Shiro had come to the same conclusion.

"B-but..." Gold on black eyes searched the naturally flushed features before them, confusion and uncertainty in their depths, "Papapapa... I-but..."

The blue haired man dropped a gentle but firm hand on the smaller's shoulder, turning Shiro away from the tank. He tugged the boy close to his side and guided him from the small room. "It's ok, Shiro..." It was suddenly more than clear where the pale lad had come from, and now it made sense why Shiro always said no one could know about him. Dr. Kurosaki, a name Grimmjow had heard on every news channel and in every paper for months when the man and his son had first gone missing years ago, had created Shiro. The boy was meant to be nothing more than a donor, marked for death before he'd even started living. "It's ok... we can leave now, ok?"

As they left, Shiro stared over his shoulder at what he was supposed to have been, at what he was supposed to have become.

••• a few days later •••

"You sure about this?"

Shiro looked over at the bigger man and nodded.

"Alright. If you change your mind, you can stay in the truck, ok?" After they'd stumbled upon not only the body of Shiro's caretaker, but the unexpected young man the scientist had created Shiro in the image of, Grimmjow had taken the pale lad back to his house. The drive had been silent as Shiro stared out the window, his knees drawn up and a disgruntled frown on his features. Grimmjow had drawn his conclusion and by the time they'd made it back to his house, he'd known what he'd do.

Shiro would be staying with him. He wasn't willing to let the boy be taken away, not after realizing that should he call the proper authorities, the lad would be locked up again, probably experimented on. He was a work of science, something straight out of a twisted science-fiction book. The moment it was realized what he was, he'd have to go through all the things his creator had subjected him to before. Maybe more.

The kid had a mind of his own. He was young and his developing mind showed that, but he was smart and self aware. Grimmjow didn't know if he could technically be called a human, but he was still a person.

So when they had gotten back, Grimmjow had sat the younger down on the couch, knelt in front of him, and told him that it didn't matter what had happened or what they had found, that he would never have to go back. Shiro had nearly started crying, telling the bigger man that hadn't meant to hurt anyone, that he didn't want to be taken away.

After a few hours of talking -during which Shiro had done his best to explain some of the things Grimmjow had speculated about while in that lab- Grimmjow had moved to sit on the couch next to the boy. Eventually, Shiro had fallen asleep leaning against him. Unwilling to wake the poor kid up after such a stressful past several days, not to mention all the abuse and trauma he'd faced in his few years of life, Grimmjow had sat in silence, deep in thought while he let Shiro rest.

"Ok." Shiro nodded again, bending where he sat in the passenger seat of Grimmjow's truck. He hefted the large, flat topped stone they'd found and selected, tugging it into his lap. Pale fingertips traced over the engraved words, carefully cut into the stone by Grimmjow. "Are ya sure this is how ta spell his name?"

Grimmjow glanced over at him as he drove. A small smile tugged at handsome features, "I'm sure. Do you want to see the paper again?"

After the boy had chosen which stone they'd be using, he'd lugged it all the way back to Grimmjow's house, insisting upon carrying it himself. They'd cleaned and polished it until all the dirt and moss from sitting out in the woods for who knew how long was gone and nothing but shining grey rock was left, shot through with veins of pinks and purples. A little research was all it took for Grimmjow to come up with a name. He'd showed the pictures to Shiro, and Shiro had agreed that it was the same young man they'd found in his creator's lab. That orange hair was unmistakable.

They'd taken hours to carefully mark out and carve the name into the stone. Then, after making Grimmjow show him the old newspaper articles they'd dug up again, Shiro had very carefully compared the shapes of all the letters on the paper to the shapes of those Grimmjow had carved into the stone, making sure that they were right even though he couldn't really read them.

When the boy was satisfied, Grimmjow had re-cleaned the stone, polished it until it was nearly as smooth as marble, and painted it in a sealant so that it wouldn't weather as fast.

Shiro shook his head, looking down at the headstone they'd made.

Grimmjow turned back to the road, "Remember what I told you?"

"Mhmm." Shiro went back to carefully tracing his fingertip over the first letter, quietly repeating what Grimmjow had explained to him, "I" he moved to the next one, "C" and continued until he'd spelled out the entire name; Ichigo Kurosaki.

Grimmjow was impressed with how quickly the boy had understood what each of the letters looked like and what part of the word, what sound, they made. He wasn't hard to teach at all. It was a shame that the man Shiro had thought of as a father hadn't bothered to teach the boy anything. It was sad, really, but Shiro didn't really understand how much he'd been denied -not just in the education department, but in the quality of his life and his experiences in general- and Grimmjow wouldn't take that ignorance from him. He wouldn't point out just how horribly he'd been treated and muddy the image Shiro had of his father.

When they turned down the overgrown driveway, Shiro looked up from the stone and watched the house he'd been created in draw near.

Made, not born.

The words echoed in Grimmjow's mind. He smiled and glanced at the boy sitting shotgun. Dr. Kurosaki had had no idea what he'd created. He'd been too blinded, too desperate and too far gone to realize and appreciate his handy work.

They parked the truck and Shiro climbed from the passenger seat, heavy stone in hand. Grimmjow rounded the truck and pulled a couple shovels from the bed, as well as a few tarps and white sheets.

Walking around back, Grimmjow let Shiro lead the way as he picked the perfect spot. Even as they wandered further from the building, he stayed quiet. The strange young man picked a quiet little clearing between two large, old trees. He paused, looked around, and finally turned back to Grimmjow. "Here."

"Here it is, then." Grimmjow agreed, dropping the things he'd brought along. He handed Shiro a shovel as the boy carefully put the stone down.

Together they dug a single grave. They cut through roots and moved rocks out of the way. They dug until they were filthy and sweating, but they ended up with a grave deep enough that it was unlikely anything would dig the body up.

Then they headed back to the house, leaving behind their shovels and the makeshift headstone, bringing only the sheets and a tarp. Because he hadn't really been thinking straight when they'd rushed from the house the first time, Grimmjow had accidently kept the set of keys. It worked in their favor though, and he pulled the ring from his pocket so that he could unlock each of the deadbolts on the front door and they wouldn't be forced to carry Ichigo through the window.

This time, Grimmjow lead the way as they navigated through the dilapidated house. Shiro stayed close behind him and they neared Isshin's rotting body. There wasn't much that could be done for the deceased man after what was going on several weeks of his body being left to the elements. Grimmjow had first thought to torch the building, getting rid of all the evidence of what had happened, of how Shiro had been created, as well as bringing that little bit of rest and peace to the scientist's body, but such an act wouldn't go unnoticed. A fire large enough to burn down a house would draw unwanted attention. The body couldn't really be buried either, not at this point. That would have required Grimmjow and Shiro to carry it from the house. The bigger man wasn't fond of the idea of being covered in old blood and fluids and the smell of decay and he couldn't imagine putting the boy through that either. Even if the scientist had been insane, he had still been Shiro's father.

So Grimmjow did his best to ignore the smell as he neared and draped one of the white sheets over the body and the fluids that had dried upon the concrete around it. It was a small gesture, but it was the best he could think to do and it was better than nothing. Shiro watched quietly, a very small frown marring his brow.

After the few moments that took, they headed into the back room of the basement and looked upon Ichigo where the young man floated in his glass purgatory. His chest rose and fell in a mechanical way but no bubbles floated through the liquid bedding, his only source of air a tube that had been fed directly into his lungs. Set up on a shelf beside the odd tank, a heart monitor beeped a slow, steady cadence, too perfect, too regular. Next to it, photos of a younger Dr. Kurosaki and an orange haired little boy. Of a beautiful woman with kind features, of the three of them together, a happy little family. There was a photo of the woman, her belly swollen and her features rounded and pleasant. There were even copies of the ultra sounds. But there were no photos of the two babies. Nor of Shiro.

Grimmjow's features pulled downward. A tale of tragedy, a lifetime of suffering, sat in that small room.

The orange haired young man had been suspended just this side of death for longer than Shiro had even been alive. Years had passed since the news had flooded with the disappearance of Dr. Kurosaki and his comatose son.

A little torn on what was right, the bigger man pushed the cot located nearer the wall of the small room closer to the tank and climbed atop it. The lid wasn't sealed, but it was heavy. Carefully, he lifted it free and handed it over, making sure not to tug at any of the wires or tubes that snaked down into the tank from the monitors on the shelf.

Shiro took the lid from him, walking it over to a different shelf where it would be out of the way. Returning, he stood nearby and watched Grimmjow roll up his sleeves, immersing his hands into the fluid of the tank.

Brows furrowed, the big man tentatively reached into the imprisoning glass case. The liquid, clear like water but with more of a chemical smell to it, was surprisingly warm. It wasn't hot, but a tepid, just above room temp warmth. Grimmjow assumed that should he find a thermometer, it would read right around 98ºf, the temperature a healthy person's body typically held.

Carefully, gently, he hooked his hands under the still young man's arms. Pale, peach colored skin was soft below his hands, a softness that suggested lack of motion, lack of contact with air and anything abrasive. It wasn't exactly a healthy kind of smooth.

As Ichigo was drawn upward and freed of the weightlessness of submersion, his head lolled forward and Grimmjow grunted as he maneuvered to take the young man's weight better. He shifted motionless shoulders to his left, wrapping a thick arm carefully around Ichigo's upper half, while he reached further into the tank with his right to hook his arm under knees that were a little stiff from lack of motion and use.

By the time Grimmjow managed to maneuver Ichigo free of his suspended purgatory, he was soaked in the same fluid the young man had been. It soaked into his shirt, dripped from his hands and arms, but Grimmjow didn't really notice as he carefully climbed down from the cot, cradling the comatose man.

Shiro edged closer and reached out, pushing lanky, wet orange hair from features that very nearly matched his own. Grimmjow looked up at him, but there were no reassurances, no nerve-easing smiles or words of comfort between them as both looked back down at the man in Grimmjow's arms. In all the time it took Grimmjow to pull him free of the tank, in all the awkward, careful jostling, Ichigo hadn't moved, hadn't reacted. The monitors showing his heartbeat hadn't jumped or skipped. The too steady rise and fall of his chest hadn't fluttered. He was already gone, dead in all but technicalities. Had been for a long time now.

Turning back toward the cot, Grimmjow eased the young man down, careful with the way he let his weight rest upon the small bed. Taking a deep, steadying breath, he turned towards the monitors still keeping track of Ichigo's vitals. Blue eyes slid toward Shiro for a moment, watching as the boy almost timidly looked over the body he'd been cloned from, who he'd been created to die for. There was a tragic irony in that, and no justice could be found, nothing right about Ichigo's fate, or Isshin's. Or what Shiro's had nearly been.

Looking back to the monitors, Grimmjow tried to figure out exactly what it was that he was doing. It wasn't like in the movies, like it was always made out to be. There wasn't just one big switch that would shut everything down. There wasn't a plug to pull.

So he stepped back to Ichigo's side, kneeling beside the cot. Shiro moved to his side, watching. Always watching, observing.

The first thing Grimmjow did was remove the waterproof tape that had covered the needles that had been slid under sallow skin at the crook of Ichigo's elbow. It left behind a sticky residue from how long it'd been left to sit. Next, he carefully pulled free the IVs that had been feeding Ichigo's body with liquid nutrients and intravenous fluids.

Ichigo didn't move, didn't react as the needles were pulled from his flesh. With careful hands, Shiro reached over again and framed his copy's face with pale fingers. There was a disgruntled furrowing to ashen brows as he studied sleep-like features, but unlike a sleeping person, there was no sign of life, no movement of dreaming eyes below closed lids, no subtle pull of closed lips or signs of irritation.

Shiro sighed a small sound, "I'm sorry papapa an' I couldn't save you..." He whispered.

There was a tightening in Grimmjow's chest as he turned back to the monitors again. The next thing to go were the tubes that fed oxygen to the comatose young man. Grimmjow left the EKG hooked up, but found the switch for the sound, letting the low, steady beep stop.

Whatever hope there had been that he'd awaken when cut off from the life support keeping his body going quickly sank. As a few minutes ticked by, he waited with held breath for something to happen. Anything. But there still no reaction from Ichigo. He didn't cough or gasp for air. He didn't struggle. His chest just quit rising as the forced air was taken away.

The screen that showed brainwaves and brain activity had long since gone flat. In his madness and desperation, Isshin hadn't even noticed. Or perhaps he'd refused to notice. As they waited for something to happen, the heartbeat pulsing on a different screen steadily declined, weak even before Ichigo had been pulled from the tank.

Then it was over, and Ichigo was finally allowed to slip away quietly, gently.

Still they waited, letting silence settle over the small area. It was several more minutes before Grimmjow crouched next to Shiro. He rested a solid hand on the teen's shoulder and tugged him close to his side, before using his other hand to ease colorless hands away from sallow, still features.

Shiro didn't look at the bigger man, but he nodded and stood. Grimmjow took his place and began gently working his arms back under Ichigo's body as Shiro stepped up next to him, carrying the second white sheet they'd brought. Together, with careful maneuvering, they swaddled the body in clean, white fabric and left the basement.

After years of misguided care, years of wasting away, Ichigo deserved a proper burial. He deserved rest, an ending. They could do that much for him, at least.

He was given the closest thing to that Grimmjow and Shiro could give him without involving the authorities and outing Shiro's secret. The tarps were wrapped around Ichigo's sheet-swaddled body as a makeshift casket. Grimmjow passed his weight to Shiro just long enough to drop down into the grave they'd dug, then he took Ichigo back and carefully laid him out in the bottom.

It took them more than an hour to fill the grave, covering Ichigo's body and leaving him to his eternal sleep. The hand carved headstone was positioned at the very top of the grave, a simple marker that showed more kindness than Ichigo had been granted in years.

The walk back to the truck was silent and heavy. So was the drive back to Grimmjow's house.

••• a few months later •••

The sun was warm overhead, but not harsh. The air was clean and fresh from the coolness that came with night and the windows were down as they drove. Shiro, like usual, sat in the passenger seat, watching out the window. This time, it was buildings he watched go by, though.

Grimmjow chuckled as he looked over at him, an easy, pleased grin on his handsome features. His left arm stretched out, wrist settling over the steering wheel while his right hand sat on the gearshift.

The truck coasted through the small town, a half hour's drive from where they lived in Grimmjow's small house. The bigger man didn't need to ask to know that Shiro had never seen a city before, and he recognized the wonder in those strange, inverted eyes as Shiro looked around.

He'd been wary at first, to bring Shiro with him on his visits into town, but he couldn't keep the kid locked up forever. He deserved more than that. So when Shiro started moping around, eventually confessing that the new sketchbook Grimmjow had picked up for him was out of blank paper again, the bigger man decided it would be as good as any time to bring Shiro along. The boy was eager to pick out his own notebook.

Pulling into the parking lot of a decently sized connivance store, Grimmjow parked his truck and climbed out. Shiro tugged his seatbelt free and hopped from the passenger seat as well.

"Stick close, got it?" The bigger man issued, looking over as Shiro stepped up to his side. The last thing they needed was Shiro wandering off and drawing too much attention to himself by accident, or nosey people asking too many questions that the boy would ultimately answer too truthfully. "No wandering off like you do while we're at home."

"Ok!" Shiro nodded and grinned, all teeth and sparkling, strange eyes.

Grimmjow shook his head slightly, chuckling. Sometimes it was too easy to forget the boy was barely a handful of years old. While he weighed quite a bit less, Shiro was only a few inches shorter than Grimmjow and he packed a hell of punch in that littler body. He certainly wasn't a push over when his temper got the better of him, or when his strength was required for something Grimmjow needed help with around the yard. But he was still just a kid, and a sheltered one at that. He was smart though, Grimmjow was confident he'd pick up on how the real world worked quickly enough.

As they headed toward the entrance, Shiro's unique gaze drank in every new thing around him. Not only was the amount of concrete and buildings different from what he'd been introduced to previously, the larger scale of everything was new, and so too was the number of people around them.

A lopsided, half grin tugged at Grimmjow's handsome features as he watched. Reaching out, he ruffled white locks playfully, pulling the kid's attention away from their surroundings for a moment.

Shiro ducked from under his hand, turning a glare on the bigger man.

"Maybe we should get your hair cut while we're in town." Grimmjow chuckled, unscathed by the almost threatening look. In this case, he knew Shiro didn't actually mean anything more than displeasure by it. It didn't hold the same fire as when the boy's temper was rising.

In any case, the glare melted away into a wide-eyed look, pale brows arching, as Shiro shook his head and reached up to slide his black-nailed fingers through his shoulder length hair. "But I like it like this..."

"You like it long?" Grimmjow arched a blue brow as they walked through the parking lot.

"Mhmm!" Shiro nodded, "Papa always cut it short...but now I think he only did b'coz Ichigo's was short in all the pictures..." The pale boy shrugged a bit, still petting his hair, a repetitive motion over and over, "I like it like this better."

Understanding, Grimmjow nodded, "We'll leave it long, then." Shiro liked his hair long because it helped him stand out from the young man he'd been created in the image of. It helped him keep his own identity as his own person.

They fell quiet again as they stepped through the sliding doors and into the air conditioned building. For a few minutes, as Grimmjow guided them away from the grocery section and back towards the home and office supplies, the big man wondered if maybe he was going to have to rush the kid right back out again. It was a lot of new to take in. But Shiro wasn't easily overwhelmed and he merely looked around as they walked.

A moment later, a familiar voice called Grimmjow's name. The big man grinned as he started to turn toward an old acquaintance. He paused though, and looked back at Shiro, before pointing him in the right direction, "The notebooks are over in that aisle, why don't you go pick out one you like?"

"Ok!" Shiro smirked and nodded, heading off towards where Grimmjow had pointed, eager to have a new sketchbook without lines that he could draw in.

The blue haired man watched him disappear behind a shelf, before turning to a tall, thin man with dark hair and frameless glasses. He was only a couple years younger than Grimmjow himself, and had moved to the area a little over a year ago, claiming he needed a change of scenery after his home town had ceased feeling like home.

After meeting the man by happenstance one evening at the local bar and getting to know a bit about him, Grimmjow hadn't asked for details, but it sounded enough like old wounds were involved, the kind of hurt or tragedy that changed a person.

"Been a while, Ishida." Grimmjow grinned in friendly enough greeting.

The other let out a small, dignified, "Hmph," and adjusted his glasses, "Perhaps if you weren't such a hermit all the time."

Grimmjow laughed, "I'm a busy man, what can I say."

"Yes, I see that," Ishida said, his intelligent gaze sliding passed Grimmjow and in the direction a teenage boy had gone. He'd seen Grimmjow directing the lad before he'd walked up to the big loner. "I didn't know you had a kid."

"I don't..." Grimmjow looked taken aback for half a second before it clicked and he looked over his shoulder. Shiro was still mostly hidden from view, no doubt picking out just the right sketchbook. "He's-uh... my cousin's kid."

"Ah, so you got roped into babysitting?" Ishida smiled a bit at that, "It's a hard thing to imagine."

Grunting a laugh of his own, Grimmjow nodded, "Yeah, well. It's a rough situation. He's got no where else to go and he can't stay on his own."

Ishida arched a brow ever so slightly, and leaned a bit to look down the aisle the teen had wandered down. Shiro stood at the very end, looking around at the small stock of sketchbooks and pencils. Turned to look at the shelves, only his profile was visible, not his full features. Ishida looked back to Grimmjow, "He doesn't really look that young..." He stated, not really understanding why the kid needed someone to look after him constantly, the way Grimmjow seemed to be implying.

"Yeah, well," Even Grimmjow could hear how full of it he sounded, internally scrambling to make something up on the spot. He should have had all this figured out before he'd decided it would be ok to bring the strange boy along with him. "he's fourteen-?" Turning a bit to look over his should again, he too leaned around the corner of the shelving to glance at Shiro, "Shi? How old are you? Fourteen, right?"

Shiro looked up at the sound of his voice, a notebook in hand as he flipped through pages, despite that his attention had been drawn away from it. He frowned, holding up one hand with his fingers spread, "I'm five-"

"Fifteen! That's right," Grimmjow forced a grin back on his features and turned back to Ishida, "he just had a birthday not too long ago."

The thin man hummed a short sound and looked away from the pale teen with slightly furrowed brows, to look back at his acquaintance. He nodded a bit and adjusted his glasses again, pushing them further up his thin nose. "I'm starting to understand why he can't be left on his own..."

"Yeah..." Grimmjow grimaced a bit, knowing exactly what Ishida was thinking. It was the same he'd thought upon first finding the strange lad, "So he's staying with me for a while."

At that moment, Shiro returned, holding a new sketchbook out to show the man that had become his new guardian. "Grimmmm! C'n I have this one?"

Grimmjow chuckled at the excited way Shiro accidently dragged out his shortened name. The boy was a quick learner, but the repeating sounds still got him sometimes. Accepting the notebook, he made a show of looking it over as Shiro eagerly awaited his approval. "This is the one you like?"

"Yep." Shiro nodded, smirk slashing across his startling features. "What d'ya think? Is it ok?"

"If this is the one you want, you can have it." Grimmjow handed it back to waiting, colorless hands. "But I think you draw too much, we better pick out a second one too."

Pale features lit up excitedly at that, and Shiro started to turn, ready to go pick out another notebook as he cradled the first close. Before he could get away though, a big arm draped across his shoulders and turned him back to face forward again.

"This is a friend of mine, Shiro." Grimmjow started to introduce.

Shiro glanced at the indicated man with his customary smirk, only to find the dark haired stranger staring at him like he'd seen a ghost. A little unsure of what was going on, the boy looked from Ishida, to Grimmjow, and back again, his smile slowly dissolving into a light scowl.

Grimmjow looked equally confused as to what was going on.

It took Ishida a long moment to pull himself from his stunned stupor, and when he did, he cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses, dark eyes flashing to Grimmjow and back to the boy he'd called Shiro. "I-I'm horribly sorry," He excused himself, "you just...have an uncanny resemblance to a friend I grew up with back in Karakura..."

If Grimmjow paled a bit, blue eyes widening slightly, it went unnoticed.

"Oh," Shiro's smile returned, "Wha's his name? Maybe I could know 'im, Grimmjow promised ta introduce me ta friends."

A strained little chuckle escaped the dark haired man, "Oh no, you couldn't possibly know him. He passed away quite some time ago, when we were still in high school."

"Mmm..." Pale brows raised a bit, indicating that he understood. He didn't know what he was supposed to say to that, though, so he looked up to Grimmjow for clues.

Luckily, he was spared the effort, as Ishida spoke again. "It was nice seeing you Grimmjow, and wonderful meeting you, Shiro." He bowed very slightly, "But I should let you two return to your duties and continue mine."

"Uh-yeah, you too, Ishida." Grimmjow replied, his hold around Shiro's shoulders tightening just a bit, "We'll see ya around."

"Indeed." The dark haired male took his leave with the promise of talking later.

"Well shit..." Grimmjow muttered, steering Shiro back towards the sketchbooks and supplies, "C'mon, let's get that second book so we can head home and you can start drawing. Sound good?"

Shiro eagerly agreed and happily followed at the big man's side, none the wiser to what had transpired and protected by the man that had found him and taken him in.

He'd never again have to worry about going hungry, or being lonely. He'd never have to worry that his father's use for him had run out or that his creator would grow tired of him. He'd never be locked away again, hidden from the world and made into a lab rat, a ghost. Grimmjow treated him like a person and Shiro would be allowed to grow up and learn and be curious like any normal child.

The old house Dr. Kurosaki had turned into his prison was left to finish rotting, standing alone in the middle of an abandoned woods where it wouldn't draw attention. It sat as an unassuming statue, a monument to the horrors it had seen. Ichigo and Isshin were left as they were, never spoken of by those that had found and laid them to rest. The rest of the world could continue assuming that they had died long ago, continue believing that a grieving father had committed the kindest, hardest act he could for his suffering son.

Thank you for reading~

I would love to hear what you thought of the story!