Angina/Symphony

Chapter 108

Songbird

Tell me what has happened to us both

And why you are not here

Do you believe that something lives deep inside of us?

And brings us forward?

…

Do you believe that it's not easy for us?

Not everything has been accomplished yet

Tell me it's not too late for you

To make your own path.

-Noch zu retten, Eisbrecher (English translation)

He was back in hell again, after so long away.

When Nnoitra had appeared in front of him in his office, Grimmjow hadn't felt the rage and despair he'd thought he would feel. Instead, he'd realised he'd been kidding himself. What a joke it had been, to think this life would forget about him.

He had gone with Nnoitra quietly. His Pesquisa was long gone, but that didn't mean he couldn't sense the futility of resisting. For his part, Nnoitra had at least been merciful enough not to rub it in. Their journey through the Garganta had been accompanied by a silence as thick and consuming as the darkness around him.

Now, finally in the throne room of Las Noches, Grimmjow met the eyes of his doom.

Aizen's face was carefully expressionless. Grimmjow couldn't say he was surprised. He had never been able to read the Shinigami. Next to him, Amane rose out of her chair.

Grimmjow hated to admit it, but she looked well, better than she ever had in the human world. Her hair draped her shoulders in shining curls, and he could see the colour in her face and the life in her eyes. He remembered how she had been years ago, the thin pallid child-woman who had hated her looks. This Amane was almost beautiful.

She walked towards him, the long white gown she wore brushing against the floor. 'Grimmjow,' she said, her voice soft. 'I haven't exactly been fair to you, have I?'

Grimmjow took a breath. He felt even more out of place in his ill-fitting grey suit. 'It wasn't right for us to lie to you,' he hazarded, despite not feeling anything of the sort. 'We - I - thought we were doing it for your own good.'

He saw Aizen's eyes narrow at that.

Amane smiled, taking a step closer. 'I can understand why you thought that was necessary,' she said. 'You didn't have all the facts.' She met his eyes. 'There's a lot you don't know about me, Grimmjow. And there's a lot I do know about you.' She smiled again. 'I know we're in front of Aizen-sama, but I don't think he'll mind if we speak plainly.' She looked up at the Shinigami on his throne. 'Do I have your leave to speak plainly, my love?'

Grimmjow's throat closed up at the casual endearment, and he coughed in a fruitless attempt to clear it.

Aizen inclined his head wordlessly, that strange expression still in his eyes.

Amane turned back to Grimmjow. 'You see,' she said in that same soft voice, 'I've always known about your love for me, Grimmjow.'

Grimmjow knew then that his heart would have sunk, if he'd had one. 'When?' he asked, hearing how hoarse his voice was. 'When did you know?'

'I don't think that really matters.' Her eyes were bright and clear and intelligent. 'What matters is that I could never have returned your feelings.' She saw his involuntary glance upward at Aizen. 'And it's not for the reason you think.'

She reached out and touched his face. Grimmjow almost flinched, but caught himself just in time. Her fingers were small and warm and soft. 'I can't blame you for not knowing this, since I didn't even know it myself until recently,' she said. 'I'm part Quincy. Do you understand what that means?'

'Yeah,' Grimmjow grated. He was trying not to notice the touch of her hand against his cheek.

'It means you're poison to me,' she said in that same soft voice. 'It means we could never be together, even if I chose you over Aizen-sama.'

But he's poison to you too, Grimmjow thought, and wanted to laugh.

'I know what you're thinking. You still want to protect me from him, don't you?' Amane cupped his jaw in her hand. 'You still don't understand me, and that's hardly a surprise.' Her smile came back. 'Admiration is the furthest state from understanding.'

Grimmjow could feel his eyes fixed on hers. He was unable to look away.

'The Amane you thought you loved was never real.' Cold steel and bright, bright pain slid under his ribs.

Grimmjow gasped. He could taste the familiar salty, metallic taste of his own blood at the back of his throat. He looked down, away from Amane's pale, terrible smile, and saw the blade coming out of her. The steel of a Zanpakutou emerged clean and bloodless from her midsection. He could see Aizen, his enemy, standing behind her. He recognised the naked hate in the Shinigami's eyes and suddenly knew, even before the two of them shattered into fragments.

Aizen's fingers were the ones cradling his jaw, and he was faced with the Shinigami's mocking smile. 'You look so disappointed, Grimmjow.' He laughed, and let go.

Grimmjow spat, hating himself for lacking the courage to aim at his former master's face. 'Fuck you.'

'Please don't treat Aizen-sama with such disrespect.' Amane - the real one - stood at Aizen's side. The smile was gone, but the cold hateful expression he'd seen in the false Aizen's face was still there. 'He only told you what I would have said. You should thank him for being so merciful. You're still alive, after all.'

There were so many things he wanted to say, but Grimmjow managed only one. 'W-why?'

Amane's eyes narrowed. The illusion had been accurate, for the most part. Amane had grown into the sharply pretty young woman he'd known she would someday become. It was a shame she'd turned into something else along the way as well.

'You lied to me.' Her hand moved, and struck his face in a slap. Grimmjow didn't move. That seemed to only make her angrier. 'The others all did too, but at least they owned up to it! You always treated me like I was too stupid to know my own mind.'

Grimmjow met her eyes. He said the words, even as he knew he'd regret them. 'Seems like I was right to call you dumbass after all.' He coughed, feeling his mouth awash with metal. 'I told you to run away from him but you didn't fuckin' listen, did you? I did it for your own good. Now look at you.'

Amane glared at him. Two spots of colour had appeared high in her cheeks. 'For my own good!' She laughed, bitterly. 'You sound like my mother.'

'Met her,' Grimmjow rasped. 'Threw her out of the building. She was a real peach.'

Her brow briefly creased at that, but the anger swiftly returned. 'I thought you were my friend, Grimmjow. But you had to go and fall in love with me, didn't you?'

'Doesn't that make you a liar as well?' More words he knew he'd regret. 'Look at you, look what he's turned you into.'

'You give me far too much credit, Grimmjow,' Aizen said.

'Shut up!' Grimmjow snarled. 'I don't know how long it took him, but if what you – he – said before was true, you lied to me too. You pretended to be something you're not, and you fuckin' know it.'

Amane's eyes flashed, bright now with rage instead of intelligence. 'It's very amusing that you think I'm the stupid one.' Her lip curled. 'Do you think Aizen-sama would have chosen me if I was some meek little girl? I murdered Ilforte Granz in front of you. You knew who I was, you were just so fixated on the poor little human who needed saving from big bad Lord Aizen to see it.' Her teeth flashed in a brittle smile. 'Do you know what's funny about this, Grimmjow? You hate Aizen-sama, you hate the real me, and yet you're not so different from us after all.'

'What the fuck are you talking about?' Grimmjow shouted. 'I'm nothing like him -'

'Oh, really?' Her voice took on an icy steeliness. 'You said you lied to me for my own good, but that was a lie, wasn't it? You wanted me for yourself. You thought that maybe with Aizen-sama out of the way, I'd fall into your arms. How pathetic.'

She was playing with him. Grimmjow knew it, could feel it, but could do nothing to stop his own reaction. 'I –' His voice broke in a stammer, and he forgot what he'd been about to say. Blood stained the front of his cheap shitty suit, and the fabric clung to him wetly. Dark spots were beginning to dance at the edge of his vision.

'I never wanted to -' He tried again, but couldn't.

He could only see Amane's cold silver eyes, as if he was a moth and she was a lamp in the fog of his pain. 'You've always seen me as a victim,' she said. Her voice was gradually fading out of his existence. Grimmjow held on as hard as he could. 'When you were disgusted by me, when you pitied me, and then again when you thought you could love me. You always saw what you wanted to see, and it was the same when you looked at yourself. Did you think you were the noble choice, Grimmjow? My knight in shining armour?' She laughed again, more softly this time.

'You lied and you cheated and you connived to try and steal what you wanted away from Aizen-sama. Don't stand there, Grimmjow, with that aggrieved look in your eyes.' Grimmjow's gaze clouded. He was having trouble focusing on her. His sight flickered, and he focused on the dark collar around her neck. He wondered briefly what it meant, and then realised it didn't matter.

I'm going to die, he thought, and felt only relief.

'You're no better than me, or Lord Aizen for that matter.' She smiled that soft smile that the false version of her had worn, but it didn't reach her eyes. 'I think you might even be worse than either of us. At least we don't lie to ourselves.'

Grimmjow staggered, and gave in to gravity. He fell, the marble floor hitting him hard but still blessedly cool.

'Nnoitra.' She wasn't speaking to him any more. 'Get him out of my sight.'

Someone was grabbing him under the armpits, and from very far away Grimmjow heard the fabric of his suit jacket protest. He groaned without realising. 'Shut up,' the person holding him hissed in Nnoitra's voice.

'Kill him. Or don't. It makes no difference to me.' She was walking away.

'What are you doing, Nnoitra?' It was Aizen's voice again, and Grimmjow didn't even have the energy to think That bastard any more. 'My lady gave you an order.'

Nnoitra grunted, and Grimmjow's world disappeared in a sickening blur of Sonido. A moment later, he heard a tearing sound that he dimly registered as belonging to a Garganta. 'What's happening?' he tried to ask, but he felt the words slurring together.

'I told you to fuckin' shut up, didn't I?' Nnoitra dragged him roughly, and Grimmjow felt like a very bloody sack of potatoes. He remembered Amane's very first day in Hueco Mundo, thrown over his shoulder, but not without a sense of dark humour. 'You only get one favour from me, Jaggerjack. I'm not sticking my neck out for you again.'

Grimmjow tried to process what the other Espada was saying. 'Why?' he managed, as the world around them parted into white fluorescent light.

Nnoitra grunted again. 'So you can come back here and fuck them both up. Especially her.' He released Grimmjow suddenly, and Grimmjow felt his cheek encounter yet another cool marble surface. 'Don't disappoint me.'

The Garganta roared open again briefly, and Nnoitra was gone.

Someone screamed in the background, but Grimmjow didn't care. Maybe I'll die before they can get to me, he thought, and let his eyes slump closed.

'Someone get him medical attention!'

Very quickly, he could feel the presence of several humans clustered around him. Go away, Grimmjow wanted to tell them. Let me sleep. Let me die.

He had a sense he wouldn't be so lucky.