The last chapter! Sorry for the wait.

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Hypnopompic Sleep - emotional and credulous dreaming cognition trying to make sense of real world stolidity; waking up.

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The calm night silence was shattered by the loud thud of something heavy and the sharp crack of breaking glass. Grimmjow jolted where he sat hunched over his desk, trying desperately to get some overdue homework done since he'd missed yet another day. He was on his feet and halfway across the room before he even realized the previously closed door was cracked open.

Ichigo was gone.

He'd made it most of the way down the staircase when the horrible yowl of a pained cat cut through the house.

His foster father had yet to come back from work, pulling another late shift to avoid his broken home, but his foster mother was there. The sound of the shower running reached him through the closed door, loud in the hushed quiet that settled after the cat's fearful pronouncement. Grimmjow hoped she didn't hear it as he scrambled the rest of the way down the stairs, skipped the last three steps, and cut the corner into the sitting room so fast he skidded on the carpet.

The glass was from a picture frame, the contents of which Grimmjow couldn't place off the top of his head, though at the moment, it made no difference. The loud thud was the book that usually sat on the shelf next to the picture.

The cat, however, was his biggest concern; what was wrong with it, and why it and Ichigo were no longer locked in his room with him.

The animal growled a sound that could only ever come from a feline and then, as Grimmjow rounded on the sound, its paws touched down and it was dropped from where it'd been being held aloft by the scruff of its neck.

"What the hell–!" The cat tore through the house, fleeing as fast as it could from the room and away. The figure that had been holding the cat darted the other direction, lithe and fleet of foot. "Ichigo?! What are you doing?" Confused by the situation, Grimmjow glanced after the cat, then took off down the hallway after the apparition.

The door at the end of the hall, the one that led to his foster parents' room, swayed on its hinges. Angry, both because the boy wasn't listening and because he'd apparently decided keeping an eye on the cat meant chasing it and showing aggression towards it, Grimmjow stormed down the hall. His hand settled on the doorknob and he was just about to shove the door open, a glare on his features, when footsteps from behind caught his attention.

"…Grimmjow?" Ichigo peered at him from halfway down, a frown on his features. "You called for me? What's-"

But Grimmjow missed whatever else he'd said, as he stared at Ichigo in confusion, then spun on his heel and flung the door wide. Within, shadows crept from the corners, from under the bed, thickening the air. A low, barely there laugh, a manic little giggle almost, floated through the dark. A flash of white teeth and gold eyes. Then he saw the thing turn and it was simply gone, vanished as if never there.

The air frozen in his lungs, Grimmjow stared.

A hand settled on his shoulder, light and almost careful, and he jolted, spinning around to back up against the frame of the doorway.

Ichigo looked up at him, his concern obvious.

"Did you see that?!" The bigger boy finally pushed out a tight breath, jerking his head around to study the gloom of the empty room. He reached around the door frame to flip the light switch, his intent to search the room, but the light didn't come on.

"See what?" Ichigo asked, sidling up to him to peek around his larger form. Brown eyes scanned the empty room he'd skipped looking through earlier; a fairly large bed in the middle, a mirror and wardrobe on one side, an open door that led to a shallow walk-in closet. Though the space was unfamiliar, nothing seemed out of place.

"You didn't see it?" Grimmjow took a tentative step into the dark room, paused, and changed his mind. With one last, hurried look around, he backed out of it instead, pulling the door shut as he did. "It was you… but not. I don't know. I don't know what it was, I thought it was you. It had the cat."

"The cat?" Orange brows rose as the smaller turned to look over a shoulder, back toward the main part of the house.

Just then, a feminine voice gasped a surprised and shocked sound, before Mrs. Kurosaki called, "What happened?" She asked, directed at no one in particular as she saw the mess in the sitting room. "Grimmjow, do-"

A tentative meow reached the teen and Grimmjow cringed, looking at Ichigo, before he pushed passed him and hurried to the entry of the hallway, "It was raining," He automatically started, feeding the woman his excuse and half covering for Ichigo. "and she looked so pitiful. I was going to put her back outside in the morning."

The woman tisked an exasperated sound, "Oh, there's glass everywhere- My picture…" She looked at cat, where the animal hesitated to crawl from behind the couch, "Did she knock this stuff off?" Masaki asked as she knelt and started pulling the bigger pieces of glass from the carpet, shaking her head. "It's stopped raining. Make sure she didn't cut herself, then get her back outside before Isshin gets home."

Grimmjow nodded a slight motion, watching for a moment and thinking to clean up the mess himself, before he edged around the woman to grab the cat. He glanced back down the hall, to where Ichigo hovered out of sight, before he took the cat to the kitchen. After giving the animal a once over, searching for any harm done by the glass or by the fingers that had snagged against the back of her neck, he carried her out front, through the wet grass, and let her down by the sidewalk. She followed him clear back to the front door, meowing for attention.

By the time Grimmjow made it back to his room, Ichigo was waiting for him there, having somehow slipped past his foster mother where she knelt in the sitting room to clean broken glass and picture frame. He eyed the boy, then sighed, "I'm going to shower. Stay here this time."

Ichigo frowned, "I didn't-" But he shook his head. They'd gone over this before, either Grimmjow believed him or he didn't. He trailed behind the bigger teen, "What about the cat…?"

"She'll be fine. It's not raining anymore."

"But what if she's not fine? What if-"

Grimmjow turned on him, "She'll be fine!" He said again in a growl, his patience thin. "She was an outside cat before you found her and she did just fine. I told you before you convinced me to bring her in that we couldn't keep her. You can go outside when you want to see her."

A scowl tugged at orange brows as Ichigo watched the taller turn again and walk off. He didn't follow this time, backing back into the room to wait like his creator bid. Grimmjow showed him more about being real than the bigger teen realized. Sure, he'd taken Ichigo outside and showed him around the house and they even had breakfast together, but more importantly, Grimmjow showed the not-quite-there boy what emotion was, what frustration looked like, what anger felt like, what stress did to one's head.

After his shower, Grimmjow once more returned to his room to again find Ichigo seated at the foot of his bed. He glanced at the boy and sighed a short breath as he began climbing into bed. After a moment of shifting about to get comfortable and settling in, he closed his eyes to sleep, but rolled over again with another sigh. "You don't have to sit there all night. I have no idea if you need to sleep, but I'll grab you a blanket, you can lay down or make yourself comfortable." But as he shifted to get up and do just that, Ichigo seemed to light up a bit and, with part of the bed vacant enough to make room for him now, slipped into the bed beside his new friend.

Grimmjow blinked, then frowned at him, laying on his side as he faced the strange young man.

"Why are you making that face at me?" Ichigo asked, laying on his opposite side to face Grimmjow and stare right back.

The bigger boy frowned harder, "What face?"

But he wasn't answered with an explanation. Instead, Ichigo mimicked the frown, furrowing his brow to match Grimmjow's in a scowl that was both out of place and yet fitting on his handsome features. After a drawn out second, Grimmjow snorted in response and a smirk stole across Ichigo's face, interrupting the scowl he'd forced.

Grimmjow's frown broke a half second later and he scoffed to hide the smile trying to worm across his face, yanking the blanket over Ichigo's head as he again shifted to get comfortable.

That next morning, he woke up to warmth pressed against his back and the lingering feel of cold fingers dragging across his skin. It took him a groggy second to separate his dreaming world from the real one and remember Ichigo had climbed into bed with him the night before. "-hands 're cold…" He rolled over with a grumbling sound of protest towards being awake and when he opened his eyes, for an instant he thought he saw a manic grin spread wide across Ichigo's features. But as he blinked, it was gone and Ichigo blinked at him sleepily in return, no trace of derangement to be found.

The icy feeling of fingers closing around the back of his neck followed him the rest of the day. As he tried to sit through class, claws dug in against his spine and he flinched hard enough that his chair scraped against the floor and the teacher looked up at him.

After excusing himself, he fled to the bathroom, hand against the back of his neck and the warmth of blood seeping between his fingers. He got there and stood before the mirror above the sink to find nothing, not even a scratch. Blowing a harsh breath against his reflection, he started to turn, only to jerk back when he found a figure standing beside him, looking over at him.

"Fuck- Ichigo? What are you doing here? I told you to stay at the house."

Ichigo eyed him critically for a moment, like he was trying to see what Grimmjow was seeing -or thought he should have been seeing. Then he pulled his attention away to glance around the space. "I was bored. How am I supposed to entertain myself while you're gone?"

"I don't know, play pretend or something. Go find the cat to play with."

Ichigo rolled his eyes, "How old do you think I am? Five? Besides, I can't do that anymore, I tried the first night."

"Well I can't keep you entertained 24/7. I need to pass this class and I need to be here to do that."

"Why can't I just come with you? I wont bother anyone and it'll be good for me to see more of being real." Ichigo nodded his head a bit, like he was trying to sell the idea but Grimmjow looked at him like he was crazy instead.

"You can't just sit around in a class you're not enrolled in, it doesn't work that way. You have to be a part of that class to be in it during class hours."

"Why?"

"I don't know, that's just how it works. Now go back and wait until I get out of class." Grimmjow started to push passed his odd new friend, shouldering the bathroom door open and peeking both ways down the hall before taking a left, headed back toward the room he'd fled. He glanced up at a clock mounted in the hall. Class would be over in a few minutes, but he still had a couple more to go before the day was over.

Skipping the door to his room entirely, he went to his locker instead. The bell rang and people flooded the halls, parting like waves as they pushed passed him but didn't actually cross that border into his space.

After a few minutes of digging books and his half done homework from his locker, it slowly began to occur to him that not a single person had so much as glanced in Ichigo's direction. He turned, slamming the locker shut behind him so that it echoed in the hallway. A few kids closest to him jumped and looked over and he watched them carefully, before he ducked his head, nudging Ichigo on his way by. "They still can't even see you yet, can they? Push that kid."

Ichigo turned a sharp look on the bigger teen, "What? Why would I-"

But before he could question further, Grimmjow pushed against Ichigo's shoulder and pushed him right into a random boy walking past them. Ichigo half stumbled into the kid, turning a shocked look on Grimmjow, simultaneously trying to right himself and apologize to the person he'd collided with.

The kid didn't even look at Ichigo. He turned a confused, offended glare on Grimmjow, like he hadn't even felt an entire body falling against him and saw and felt only Grimmjow. Grimmjow sneered back, his features hard enough to raise brows and send the kid on his way.

After a moment, he reached out and snagged Ichigo's arm, tugging him up and along, "Come on. You can sit in class with me if you want, but stay quiet."

The odd creeping of cold fingers vanished.

When the day began winding down and school let out, Grimmjow skipped taking the bus in favor of walking home with Ichigo at his side. The weather from the previous day had blown through, leaving a tolerable temperature and the freshness that came after rain. They took their time, cutting through the park where they'd found the cat. She was no where to be seen and Ichigo cheerfully decided that she was probably hanging around the Kurosaki house waiting for them. Grimmjow grunted and hoped not, lest Isshin find out about having the animal inside.

They hit the last stretch of sidewalk that led to Grimmjow's house and Ichigo faltered in his steps. Grimmjow glanced over to see a frown on his brow. "What?"

"…I don't know. I just thought… It felt like there was something over there." He pointed toward the side of the house where the shadows were the deepest, near the stairs that led up to the small porch and front door.

At their right, the neighbor's dog cowered in its fenced in yard, growling at them like it was trying to ward off something dangerous. Grimmjow frowned at it, before looking back toward the house. Brilliant purple flowers bloomed in the flowerbed lining the front of the house. For an instant, the roots seemed to writhe across the top of the soil, painted red as they drank from half rotted gore.

Grimmjow pushed on, forcing himself into motion as he told himself that he was seeing things again.

Except that, as they neared, the blood and guts strewn across the ground didn't go anywhere. Flies were beginning to collect along the foul remnants. Grimmjow swallowed harshly, staring at the mess and waiting for it to disappear with each blink, but it didn't.

At his side, Ichigo breathed, "You're not seeing things this time."

Smeared across the front door, a bright red smile had been finger-painted, the mouth overly larger to make the normally benign expression look sick and crazed. The door was partially ajar and he was almost afraid to push it the rest of the way open and see what waited for him, but he heard movement within and flung it open to see both his foster parents standing in the kitchen, having turned to watch him when he entered. Something that might have bordered on relief flashed across Masaki's features. Isshin's were pulled into hard, unreadable lines. There was a phone in his hand, raised halfway to his ear, but he pushed disconnect and set it aside when it registered who it was in their doorway.

"What-"

But before Grimmjow could further his question, Isshin's commanding tone cut him off. "Grimmjow. Where the hell have you been?" His wife started to reach out, like she would lay a hand on her husband's arm and try to calm him, but her touch fell short.

"At school," Grimmjow answered, like it was obvious, shaking his head in confusion. "What's going on?"

"At school?" Isshin continued, looking furious, "Then why did I have to leave work because the principal called to tell us you didn't show up for attendance during your last two classes and no one knew where you were? One of the teachers said you excused yourself to the bathroom looking sick and no one's seen you since. And now there's a dead cat scattered in my yard! A cat that you apparently had last night. Are you sure you want to use that as your excuse? That you were at school?"

Blue eyes widened at the accusation, darting over to where Ichigo stood looking just as shocked, but of course Ichigo couldn't defend him. He wasn't real yet and no one could see him. "I didn't- That wasn't me! I was at school, I-"

"Then what were you doing after you left school? It's an hour and half after your school lets out and you didn't take the bus today or you would have been back an hour ago."

Leave it to Isshin, the doctor, to be clinical and precise. All Grimmjow could do was shake his head, "I walked, I wasn't feeling well, I-" But now it was starting to sound like excuses, even to him, "I stayed home sick yesterday and the bus wasn't agreeing with me."

At the older man's side, Masaki frowned at her foster son, but finally dropped that placating hand on her husband's arm, "Isshin… He brought the cat in to get her out of the rain, I doubt-"

"That doesn't explain where he was when he should have been at school." Isshin snapped, then turned back to Grimmjow, still furious, "If you were so sick, you should have come by the clinic, or you should have been here and maybe there wouldn't be a dead cat in my grass." He raised a hand, pointing for emphasis. Grimmjow flinched. "Clean it up before I call the cops."

"I didn't kill the cat!" But what was he supposed to do? So, with nothing left to say and nothing to argue and unwilling to push the man's temper further, he shrugged back through the front door, yanking it closed on his way out. He could hear arguing start up almost as soon as the door was shut and in the muffled words and angry tones, he thought he heard the echo of laughter.

Ichigo watched him and he glared back, "Tch. I didn't–!"

"I believe you." The imaginary boy said, quiet but sincere as he met the indignant, simmering fury in the blue eyes drilling into his. He watched some of it drain, watched that fire ice over, before Grimmjow nodded and turned away without a word to begin scrubbing drying gore from the front door.

It was only after he'd fetched a bucket and rag from the garage, as he started wiping away the grotesque smile that it dawned on him where it'd come from. "It was him…"

"Who? Your fake dad?"

"No," Grimmjow shook his head, staring at the darkening red of the smile smeared in front of him. "The other one, the thing that looks like you but isn't you. He was here yesterday, tormenting the cat before I put her back outside…" Absently reaching up, he rubbed at the back of his neck, where invisible claw marks burned against his skin like welts. "I know you keep saying I'm just seeing things, but I'm starting to think he's as real as you are."

It took him hours to scrub the mess clean and pick through what was mixed in with the flowers. When he was done, he itched like an accusation, like the drying bits of blood under his nails had been there all along or the soft tufts of fur had passed through his fingers first.

He skipped dinner entirely that evening, retreating straight to his room the moment he'd cleaned himself up. He left the bucket of bloodied, disgusting water sit in the garage next to Isshin's car.

That night, he fell asleep with Ichigo pressed against his back again and somewhere in his dreams, the warmth of body heat chilled until cold seeped through to his bones. He dreamt of the creature running around his house, dreamt that it turned away from his kneeling foster parents where they begged for it to spare them in the middle of the sitting room. Sickly golden eyes coasted up the staircase, to the closed door of the bedroom that wasn't really his. Laying in bed shivering, he listened to the creak of footsteps, slow and deliberate like they'd been pulled straight from a horror movie. The knob twisted and the air froze in Grimmjow's lungs as he watched, waiting for it to come through.

Ichigo didn't really know why he was standing in the hallway at the top of the stairs. He didn't even remember leaving the bedroom, or even climbing from the bed. But he turned and threw the door open again, scrambling into the room as he felt a shock wave of terror and pain rip through the air. The door banged against the wall as it was flung but it made not a sound. What stared back at him froze him in his tracks and sent ice through his veins.

There, hovering at the bedside, the creature Grimmjow had described from his nightmares stood staring back. A colorless mirror of Ichigo. Its features twisted with a wicked, ill boding grin. Eyes like twin pools of fire-melted gold shone in the darkness and black nails trailed almost fondly down the side of Grimmjow's terror contorted features. There was something lecherous, something dark and unclean in that touch. With each twitch of movement, Grimmjow seemed to flinch away, still locked deep in his dreams of shadows and red.

The ice in his veins was followed by heat and anger. For reasons he wasn't even sure of, Ichigo knew he needed to get rid of this thing. It was a monster, an abomination, a manifestation of all the things Grimmjow had been hallucinating. It was unhealthy and corrosive and it had already planted its roots deep in Grimmjow's mind and now it nurtured what grew and blossomed there.

Boyish features twisted with outrage, hardened into something threatening. As Ichigo glared death at the creature and made a lunge for it -anything to make it quit touching the disgruntled, sleeping teen- the monster laughed a sharp, amused sound.

The laughter echoed through the room and rang through Grimmjow's skull. In his dreams, that crazed laughter cut a white-hot swath through the horrible scene he found himself a part of. He jerked awake, bolted upright with a startled sound and scrambled backward in his bed until his back hit the wall.

Just before Ichigo's hands could close upon the creature, Grimmjow woke up and it was gone, leaving nothing behind but a ringing in his ears that sounded much too similar to that laugh. Having been attacking with the intent to harm the thing, when it was suddenly gone, Ichigo stumbled. Before he'd even fully caught his balance, he spun in a swift circle, brown eyes wide and searching. The room was dark around him.

Then his searching gaze landed on Grimmjow where the young man huddled upon his bed, breathing hard and terrified. The blue eyes trained in his direction didn't see him though. Grimmjow stared at where the monster had been crouching, like he could still see a white afterimage behind every blink.

"Grimmjow-!" Ichigo scrambled forward, onto the bed. "Grimmjow," He crawled across the mattress, grabbed Grimmjow's arm, then his chin, and forced the bigger teen to look at him. "I saw it, Grimmjow, I saw it too."

Wide, blue eyes darted to him. Big hands fisted in Ichigo's shirt, clenched tight enough to whiten the knuckles under golden skin. "You saw it this time too…" Grimmjow rasped out, his voice low and maybe a little shaky.

Ichigo nodded a single, grave motion.

"It's real…" Grimmjow swallowed, his eyes jerking away from Ichigo's to pan around the room again, no doubt searching out the creature he'd through had been from his dreams.

"I-I don't know…" Ichigo shook his head, mind racing. "I don't know, I think…it's like me. I think, if you don't kill it, it will be real."

For the rest of that night, Grimmjow didn't dare sleep, paranoid the thing that wasn't Ichigo would come back. Every little sound in dark, every little creak of the house or gust of wind from outside had him on edge. All this time he'd been assuring himself it wasn't real, it wasn't real, it wasn't real, but then suddenly it was. The gross things he'd been seeing were coming to true and so was the monster lurking the shadows of his mind. All of it was starting to be real, all of it except Ichigo.

Around dawn, as he leaned against the wall behind his bed with his knees pulled up, Grimmjow asked, "Ichigo? Why aren't you real yet?"

Ichigo didn't have an answer for him.

That next day was a blur, but not because it went by quickly. He'd already been sleeping poorly for the better part of the week; awakened regularly by nightmares that he suddenly wasn't so sure were completely in his head.

He refused to sleep that night, too, and wasted the dark hours away by walking circuits through the house after his foster parents went to bed. Ichigo trailed behind him, worried.

"What are you doing, Grimmjow…?"

"What if it comes back while everyone's asleep?"

But there was no way of avoiding anything for long. Eventually sleep was unavoidable too. In the night, just before dawn as the skyline lit up red and orange and gold, it came back.

His faster father was the first to meet a bloody end, where he'd passed out on the couch after pulling a long shift and drinking himself numb. He choked on the blood filling his mouth. Still more dribbled down the curve of his gut, staining the couch and filling the room with the smell of copper as he struggled to right himself. He ended up on his knees, bowed in front of the couch as his wife rushed to his side, confused.

There was no screaming. Finally, after all the years, there was no yelling or arguing. There was only pleading. They pleaded with the killer in their home, begged for their lives as they tried to reason with a thing beyond reason. In the dark of night, red sprayed across the walls, soaked into the carpet. Gold flashed behind it and under the labored breaths and weak words, laughter could be found.

Grimmjow bolted upright in his bed with a gasp, chest heaving. His hands itched and the room smelled like blood. "Ichigo?" As he climbed from red smeared sheets, he searched for the boy. The shadows were uninterrupted.

Terrified of what he'd find, he fled the room and tiptoed down the stairs. His hand was a white-knuckled vice on the railing and the carpet at the base of the staircase was sticky below his bare feet.

"It has to be a dream," He told himself, "It's not real." Over and over, whispered in a voice that he hardly recognized as his own, but with each word, he could taste the smell in the air and Ichigo wasn't there to tell him he was seeing things again.

Sirens filled the silence, cutting in and out, around and around in a wailing cacophony of unbearably loud and too quiet to hear. Flashing, colorful lights followed, playing off the buildings and the street, lighting up the windows of the quiet, little house at the end of the drive.

"It- It wasn't me…" There was blood on his hands, his arms. It pattered across his features, bright red against his bloodless face. Ichigo was gone. He couldn't find the boy, he'd been searching, but he couldn't find him. His foster parents lay scattered through the home, what was left of them, anyway; the wife on the bed in the master bedroom, the husband on the floor in front of the couch and everywhere between. Two bowls sat on the kitchen table. Grimmjow couldn't look at them, couldn't confirm the taste in his mouth.

"I didn't… This wasn't me, there's someone else in the house!" But he was having a hard time concentrating on what he was saying. The sirens echoed in his skull and in their lee, when they were at their quietest, he heard laughter. There was something in his hand. It cut like glass.

The blood itched up and down his arms.

He stared at the house as cops dragged him through the front yard, shouting at him and to each other and he had no idea what they were saying. More of them were flooding into the house, hesitating at the doorway when the smell reached them. He couldn't see through the window that faced the street. It was streaked red with grotesque things, like a child had gotten ahold of too much finger paint.

With more force than necessary, his arms were wrenched behind his back and the metal of the cuffs was cold against the hotness of the blood drying on his skin. He clenched his fist tighter and felt paper crinkle between his fingers.

"–like a picture." He heard someone say, as his knees hit the wet grass. "Evidence'll take it from him when we get him back."

Grimmjow was pushed into the backseat of a cop car, the door slammed shut behind him. The hard plastic of the seat was slick and it took him a moment to right himself, too busy trying to argue that there was still someone -or something- in the house. He could hear the growl of his voice, but for the life of him, he couldn't hear what he was actually saying, if there was words in it at all.

The car shifted into drive and pulled away from the curb. Grimmjow watched the house he'd lived in grow smaller, the darkness around it lit up by red and blue. A voice in the back of his mind whispered; 'Red and blue make purple. It's his favorite.' Then, as the sirens again fell away, he heard the snicker of hushed laughter and he looked over to see that white grin and white hair and gold eyes, all splashed in dark, purple-black shadows.

The creature smiled where it sat in the seat next him, not a drop of red staining its flawlessly pale skin. It pulled a hand up, where Grimmjow could see it and the boy automatically flinched back, eyes wide and breathing ragged- he was awake! He was awake and this wasn't a dream…why could he still see it? -as he stared.

His fisted hand, where it was trapped behind his back, was suddenly empty and Grimmjow looked down to see the picture that had been tossed into his lap, smeared in red that matched his fingerprints; an old photo of a little boy with bright orange hair, big brown eyes, and a happy smile.

The name on the back read Ichigo.

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Imaginary - unreal; existing only in the mind.

Well? The verdict? I would greatly appreciate your thoughts.