Title: Till Morning When We Disappear
Author: Shadow Arashi
Fandom: Bleach
Pairing: Ulquiorra x Grimmjow, implied non-con, implied Ichigo/Grimmjow friendship
Rating: R
Word Count: 1766
Summary: They lost the war and now they are paying the price. But you can only keep a wild beast under lock and key for so long
Warnings: evil!shinigami, sort-of-good!arrancar, role reversal, torture, hint of non-con and angst enough to drown in it. Probably falls under AU warning and a bit of OOC I guess. Also, narration-cut and messy timeline like wow.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the idea behind this fic and my writing skills. Grimmjow and everybody else belong to Tite Kubo, to my greatest despair.
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Las Noches was burning.
Everything they had strived for was gone, crumbled to nothing in a matter of minutes.
Ulquiorra's hand tightened on his sword, and he was almost thankful when his vision blurred slightly with blood loss. He couldn't take the view of the destruction of his home - his home world - anymore.
Aizen was standing by his side, face white with barely contained rage at the mindless slaughter of the creatures he had sworn to protect.
They had been cocky, so sure the shinigami could never hurt them. So sure they would never represent any serious threat.
How wrong they had been.
Aizen had planned to strike first, to attack the shinigami right where it hurt before they gathered their forces to invade Hueco Mundo.
He never got the opportunity.
The seemingly harmless human girl they had captured had been the key to their defeat.
Unknowingly to even Aizen himself, the leaders in Soul Society had been one step ahead of him for once. They gave the girl a very special tool. And just when they least expected it the trap had opened up wide to swallow them, leaving their home vulnerable to the invasion of countless shinigami.
Ulquiorra had killed the girl himself then but he had been too late to stop the dimensional passage from opening and throwing up its fill of enemies onto their steps.
After that, chaos broke out in Las Noches.
They fought to the best of their abilities to protect their territories, led by Aizen and the other two ex-captains; the only shinigami who had ever seen them as more than beasts.
It still hadn't been enough.
The world they had finally managed to transform into something more than a copy of Hell, everything they had worked so hard for, was falling apart in blood and fire.
Now all they could do was fight tooth and nails to keep themselves alive as their world collapse.
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Nnoitra and Arronierro were the first to fell.
They fell to the swords of a small dark haired girl barely out of her teens and a shinigami with hair the color of blood in a burst of reiatsu that was felt through all of Las Noches.
The shinigami didn't give the rest of them the time to mourn.
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Zommari and Yami were next, both struck down by blood thirsty soul reapers hell bent on eradicating the beings they considered to be abominations.
Then it was Barragan's turn.
Their fraccions weren't spared from the bloodshed either.
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At least that's what Ulquiorra thought at first as fellow arrancars fell left and right around him, staining the white sand of their world a deep red.
Nothing seems to stop the shinigami, their thirst of carnage knowing no limits. There was no mercy, no prisoners taken.
That's what he had believed until he heard it, and by then it was too late.
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He had been fending off a captain with the help of Stark when it happened.
When the scream of a desperate, wounded animal calling for help echoed through Las Noches.
Ulquiorra's blood froze in his veins, for he knew who the scream belonged to.
For once, Ulquiorra, most level-headed espada in Aizen's army, lost his cool.
For this was no ordinary scream, but the scream of a distressed hollow calling for its mate. A sound he had hoped never to hear coming from his mate.
The shinigami facing him was cut down in an instant and the arrancar was off in a flash, desperate to reach the source of the scream in time. He took off without a second thought, ignoring Stark's panicked yell as his entire being focused on finding his other half.
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When he finally found him Ulquiorra was nearly out of control.
Hiding from view behind the remains of a building a dozen of shinigami were standing in a circle, two captain and three vice-captains among them, swords raised and the very air around them crackling and sparkling with reiatsu and kido spells.
In the centre of this chaos stood a familiar form with long blue hair, broken and bleeding and desperately trying to shake off the kido-based ropes around their neck, tail trashing fiercely and fangs bared in fear that was never meant to twist their features.
The young orange-haired shinigami he had fought before was there too, bleeding and down on his knees in front of the panther, but to his shock his arms were spread out as if to keep the others soul reapers from coming any closer. His eyes flashed black on gold and Ulquiorra felt a surge of hope.
It didn't last however, and Ulquiorra watched in growing horror as the boy was kicked away while Grimmjow attempted to twist around to fend off another kido spell. Both beings let out a howl in despair and pain, and then a bright bolt of energy sent Grimmjow crashing down onto the ground, leaving him bound and helpless even as he still tried to claw viciously at the shinigami who were closing in on him now that the panther was on the ground.
A helpless and wounded panther, but still very much alive.
It was then that Ulquiorra understood exactly what the shinigami were planning.
From the beginning they had been killing specific targets… and capturing others.
Ulquiorra let out a roar of absolute fury for the first time in his life; and thrown himself at the shinigami who had dared to touch what was his.
The arrancar fell upon them like the plague, cutting down two shinigami before they even noticed his presence. He quickly lost track of time and of the battle after that, only aware of the wounded feline lying at his feet who was desperately trying to free himself while throwing concerned looks in both his and the orange haired boy's direction.
Unfortunately there was only so much a single espada, no matter how strong, could do against two captains and three vice-captains, and that wasn't counting the ever increasing number of lower soul reapers.
The shinigami didn't miss the fact that their new opponent was protecting their first victim, and they made good use of it. They worked and pushed the arrancar, waiting for the precious moment where he would falter and make that fatal mistake which would give them the advantage. And they finally succeeded.
Ulquiorra stumbled in exhaustion and was too slow to block when the tall white-haired captain returned his own attack against him; leaving him frozen as the world around them explode into white light and burning pain.
His last conscious act was to wrap his arm around Grimmjow.
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He had lost count of the days by now. Not that he was trying anymore.
They had no way to keep track of time in their confinement anyway; the shinigami had made sure of that. The meals came at irregular interval and the cell was windowless, rendering any attempt at measuring time meaningless.
They had also learnt to keep him chained and collared after the first day.
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When Ulquiorra had first regained consciousness, his initial reaction had been to assure himself of his mate's well being. Thus, his mind promptly shut down when he woke up to find himself alone.
By the time he came back to his senses, he had been chained to the wall, his whole body ached and the cell's floor was stained red with blood. Not all of it was his own though, a fact he inwardly took no small satisfaction from.
That satisfaction only last until a few hours later when a battered Grimmjow was dragged into his cell and the unconscious panther's body was thrown carelessly at his feet; their jailors smirking and laughing all the while.
Ulquiorra would have pulverized them into dust had he still had access to his powers.
As it was he could only stood and watch with fear - something he had never felt before - as his precious mate shivered on the floor, covered in wounds and blood and other fluids Ulquiorra refused to think about. He would not have been able to bear it.
Everyday was the same after that.
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They would come in the morning and take Grimmjow away from him, dragging the panther kicking and screaming. Meanwhile he would be tortured for information and taunted for fun; the shinigami taking a perverse pleasure narrating every details of the fate of his fellow hollows. The feline arrancar would then finally be dragged back to their cell at the end of the day.
And through it all he was kept chained to that damned wall.
They were smart as well as sadistic, he would give them that.
They had taken his home, his lord - he could no longer feel Aizen-sama's reiatsu, no matter how much his mind rebelled at that notion - and he had even been denied the right to hold and comfort his mate.
Every time Grimmjow would look away from him with empty eyes after a torture session, every time he would curl up onto himself in a corner trembling because he couldn't get the safety that Ulquiorra was supposed to provide for him was a wound to his psyche deeper than any physical injury the soul reapers could ever do to him.
That bastard of a captain with the eye patch knew it and had made sure he was aware of his own helplessness when he once petted the tangled blue locks of a naked, unconscious Grimmjow with mocked tenderness before his eyes.
It was then that Ulquiorra truly learnt the meaning of hate and despair.
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Yet, in spite of everything, all Ulquiorra had to do was look at Grimmjow to remember and pull himself from the darkness of his mind.
He was a hollow, the elite of Aizen's army, a creature supposedly born out of despair.
Szayel, Stark and Hallibel were still alive somewhere in this hell. So was the orange haired hollow-like human - he refused to dirty the boy by calling him a shinigami anymore. He had caught glimpses of the boy being carted around too before, so did Grimmjow. The little contact they had had seemed to help the panther's mood immensely, for which Ulquiorra was grateful.
The former espada grinded his teeth, and glanced at the sleeping form of Grimmjow at his feet. So close and yet so far away.
One day, he would break them out of there. All of them.
And then he would be the one to teach their enemies the true meaning of despair.