Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Once They Walked Among Us
When Grimmjow looked to the night sky, his gaze fell without effort to the constellation highest above the western horizon. His father had taught him many years ago where to look for Zangetsu the protector, the cluster of stars that took the form of a great sword, but even if he had not, Zangetsu was among the easiest to spot on a clear, dark night.
Even the smallest child in their village knew the protector. Perhaps they might not know the winter dragon, or the baboon and snake, or any of the other lesser constellations that dotted the sky, but everyone knew the protector.
When Grimmjow was four, his mother showed him how to pray to their gods. Senbonzakura brought the first bloom of spring, and Hyōrinmaru turned the morning dew to frost and breathed fury into the snowstorms of their winters. But these, and many other constellations, waxed and waned with the seasons.
Zangetsu did not. The protector was omnipresent in their night sky, never faltering, never wandering, and this, his mother said, was why their people prayed the most to Ichigo, the brightest star in Zangetsu.
And so Grimmjow prayed alongside his mother and father when the need arose. They prayed for safe travel when his father was called to duty to the neighboring villages that lined the coast. They prayed for protection against the vicious sea storms that often battered their coasts, against the marauding nomads who roamed the hills beyond their borders and the wild beasts who raided their pastures.
Ichigo protected them from these hardships and many more.
Ichigo was a difficult star to mistake for any other, for he shone the color of blood an hour old, a darker, more somber red than Zabimaru, the baboon and snake. Ichigo took his place at the hilt of Zangetsu, like a king on his throne before the smaller, lesser stars in his constellation, guiding the blade to its purpose.
Grimmjow had spent many an idle night gazing upon him and all the others, his young mind filled with wonderment and imaginings of what their gods might look like had they not taken their place above the mortal world as stars. He wondered why most stars were white while Ichigo was a deep, ominous red, and why, if Zangetsu was the protector, did it not take the form of a shield rather than a sword?
His mother and father listened to these questions patiently, and though they did not know the answers to all of them, there were some that others before him had wondered also and for which stories had been told to answer.
Long ago, in an era when the night had been without light and the moon shared the sky with no other, the gods had lived amongst their worshippers.
Toshiro, the winter dragon, appeared as a child, but with hair as white as an old man’s. Kenpachi, the only star who stood alone without a constellation of his own, was a man of great height and fearsome presence. Byakuya was proud and Jushiro was kind, and Ichigo…
Ichigo was strong. Some stories said he was frightening to behold, bearing the white face of a demon with great horns and insatiable bloodlust. But others described him quite differently, as a man with kind eyes and peculiar orange hair.
As a child, Grimmjow had preferred the Ichigo of gentler description. When he prayed alone for safety from the monsters that haunted the steps of any imaginative child, it was to the Ichigo who was noble, self-sacrificing, and gentle. Perhaps Ichigo appeared as a skull-faced beast to those who threatened Grimmjow and his people, but to those he loved, Grimmjow thought, he must be kind.
Grimmjow prayed often, more than most children did and perhaps even more than most adults. He prayed because he was a child unusually taken by fears both real and imagined, and as the son of their tribe’s greatest warrior, it was unbecoming to be seen jumping at shadows.
He prayed also for his father who was frequently absent for his duties in the assurance of their tribe’s safety. There were other villages that dotted the coastline and more still further inland, and his father travelled often to these places to convene with their leaders and negotiate shared defenses of their collective nation.
There were other nations beyond their western borders. While some cared only in trading for fine silks and other goods produced in their land, others were not so friendly, eyeing their fertile soils and good seasons with envy and wishing to take their land for their own.
The summer after his tenth year, Grimmjow grew tall enough to seat himself upon his father’s horse and was deemed ready to begin his warrior training. While every boy in his tribe undertook such training at some point, Grimmjow began earlier than most, a fact that caused him to puff his chest with adolescent pride when he passed the other village boys on his daily walk to the training fields.
He was fiercer than most, his father told him the day he presented Grimmjow with his first practice sword, a nameless blade with blunted edges and a plain, blue-wrapped hilt. And as Grimmjow swung the mock weapon about in excited, childish glee, his father remarked that he was fearless too.
Back turned, Grimmjow smiled then, for his father did not know that this was far from true. He was fearless because Ichigo kept the sharks at bay when Grimmjow swam far from the coast, and Ichigo ensured his father’s safe return from every trip abroad. If Grimmjow was fearless, it was because Ichigo gave him no reason to fear.
Grimmjow trained with the older boys of his village, but his days were not over until his father was finished training him alone at home too. At night, he would lay upon a hammock slung between two trees, nursing the day’s scrapes and bumps, and gaze upwards towards the skies.
As his mother had told him long ago, the dark red star in Zangetsu’s hilt never faltered or waned. Even when there were clouds, Grimmjow was content to know that Ichigo was still there, perhaps hidden from sight but ever-present and vigilant.
He would whisper a quiet prayer, thank the star for his protection, and fall asleep under its watchful gaze.
...
When Grimmjow was seventeen, his father began leaving home for longer periods of time.
Grimmjow was no longer a child, and in the last year he had sprouted like a weed into a gangly youth with too-big hands and feet and long legs that had him looking over the heads of many of his peers. He would overtake his father’s height in the next year or two, but his new frame would take several more years to fill out.
Tall warriors, his father said, had to work harder to fill their height with muscle.
And Grimmjow did. When other boys ached and complained of exhaustion, Grimmjow did not stop until he could no longer rise. His training never ended until he was well and truly beaten into the ground. He challenged anyone he could, peers and senior students and teachers alike, until finally one day he broke the arm of another boy in a sparring match and from then on his age-mates began to shun his challenges.
Grimmjow was insatiable.
He took to fighting like a bird to open skies, swung his mock weapon around as though the motions of swordplay were more natural than breathing. He reveled in the art of war like one gone mad. Some of the elder teachers spoke disapprovingly of this, whispering amongst themselves that the boy’s heart was touched by Kenpachi, the lone star who lusted for blood, and this was speculation of damnation, not reverence.
But Grimmjow’s father always looked upon his son with grim approval, and on the night before the boy’s nineteenth birthday, Grimmjow received a true blade of his very own, which whispered to him and told him its name.
Pantera, it said, and Grimmjow understood.
Pantera was worn with pride on Grimmjow’s hip and from that day forth, he began accompanying his father on his long journeys to their brother tribes. His training continued, but under his father’s tutelage now instead of the teachers who shook their heads when he smiled after drawing blood. Every night after a full day of travel, they would set up camp and find an open field to practice in.
Although years of training with a practice sword had made Grimmjow accustomed to the weight and feel of one, Pantera was sharp, and mistakes were more painful now. Instead of bruises and scrapes, Grimmjow would nurse deeper wounds after training now, but a prayer to Ichigo before sleep every night ensured that his wounds healed quickly and without festering. Though his travels took him to strange lands and unfamiliar terrains, Ichigo never changed, and so Grimmjow never felt homesick.
It was during these travels that he learned of the encroaching threat from the west. Unrest in the nations beyond their borders had been brewing since Grimmjow was small but only now beginning to threaten their lands. The people to the west were no longer content with the land they had been allotted and now looked to the lands of other nations with envy-green eyes. The tribes of Grimmjow’s people watched their borders with suspicion, hoping for the conflict to die out before reaching their lands but preparing for war if it did not.
This, Grimmjow realized, was the reason for his father’s frequent absences as of late. This was why his father watched him train with such grim satisfaction, why he did not rebuke Grimmjow for his savagery, and why he was bringing the boy to accompany him now to their brother tribes. He was preparing Grimmjow, educating him for a war that might soon appear upon their doorstep.
The first night after this revelation, Grimmjow sought solitude beneath the open heavens. There was no training tonight, but Grimmjow brought Pantera with him anyways, accustomed by now to the sword’s weight at his side and comforted by it.
Ichigo shone down upon him as he always had, and Grimmjow closed his eyes and conjured up the face he imagined the god might have. It was a face he had crafted in his mind many years ago as a small child who had been afraid of anything and everything. He had decided long ago that his Ichigo was the man with kind eyes, not the skull-faced demon other legends described.
Through the years, Grimmjow had never faltered in his devotion. He prayed as often as he had when he was small, though few things frightened him as they had before. But tonight, for the first time in many years, Grimmjow felt fear take his heart, the sensation familiar like an old friend but unwelcome. He lowered himself to his knees, Pantera laid out before him like an offering, and prayed.
He prayed because although his blood sang for battle, although Pantera wished to cleave flesh and bone, he did not want a war. Grimmjow was savage, but he did not want to see his homeland burn, nor his people slain.
He prayed for protection, that this land would never see the invaders from the west. He prayed for good fortune that his mother and father might live to see old age. And finally, he prayed for strength, that if his first two prayers could not be granted, that he could at least have the power to defend himself and his nation instead.
These prayers he repeated to the red star over and over, until his voice grew hoarse and his eyelids heavy.
Hours later, when Grimmjow was fast asleep in the open field beneath the stars, the brightest star in Zangetsu blinked and faded into darkness.
Chapter 2: At the Altar of a Forgotten God
Much changed in the year that passed after Grimmjow learned Pantera's name as the idyllic days of his childhood came to a sudden and unequivocal end.
His mother was not well, gripped by an illness that struck swiftly and made her cough without end. She seemed to waste away day by day, and with no siblings, the duty to care for her fell to Grimmjow.
Life in the village was changing as well. News of the threat from the west had travelled home in the time Grimmjow was away, so that when he and his father returned from negotiations with their brother tribes, everyone in the village knew. The decades of peacetime would soon come to an end, and their way of life would have to adapt.
Boys in the village would begin their warrior training as early as their ninth summer, younger even than Grimmjow had been when he had begun his. And Grimmjow, once shunned for his savagery, was now called upon to help teach them.
When diplomacy failed and war seemed inevitable, Grimmjow's father left with half their village’s warriors to join forces with their brothers on the western borders. They would attempt to hold off an invasion, hoping to buy some time for those left behind to prepare. Grimmjow's father forbade him from this journey, telling him that his place, for now, was in their village. His parting words were simple: Protect your mother. Protect our home.
Grimmjow clutched Pantera, the sword warm in his hands as though ignited by inner fire, and bid his father farewell.
When the last leaves fell, news of his father's death in the borderlands arrived from the west, and Grimmjow's mother, who had been clinging to life for a reunion that never came, saw no reason to live on into this frightening new time.
There was no time to grieve. Winter was upon them early that year. Early chill killed a portion of the harvests, and more than a handful of people succumbed to sickness and hunger.
The stars were displeased, people began to whisper. Hyōrinmaru’s anger had been roused, or perhaps Senbonzakura had seen his empty altars and did not deign to bring the first bloom of spring. But, most of all, people spoke of Zangetsu.
The great sword was incomplete, for where the red star of Ichigo should have been there was darkness. Never, for as long as anyone could remember, had a star disappeared from the night before, and the implications of Ichigo's sudden absence birthed fear and despair.
But there were none who felt Ichigo's disappearance more keenly than Grimmjow.
At first, he had not understood. He had stared at the heavens in stunned silence, disbelieving and incredulous. The star to whom Grimmjow had given his unwavering faith and devotion was suddenly and inexplicably…gone. Ichigo, and Ichigo alone, had been privy to Grimmjow's every whispered fear and uncertainty, in a way that Grimmjow had shared with no other living soul. His tribe called him fearless because Grimmjow burdened no one with his troubles, because Ichigo knew every one of them and promised him safety so that Grimmjow did not have to fear.
He had prayed to the star every night for as long as his memory stretched. He had slept in the open fields beneath its light more times than he could count. He had wept before it, sung its praises, and vowed his devotion.
Grimmjow still gazed upon the broken blade of Zangetsu on occasion, but when he knelt on one knee with his head bowed in the proper deference owed to a star, prayer would not come to him. What was the use in praying to one who was not there? The other stars of Zangetsu were yet unchanged. Shirosaki still shone in brightest white at the tip of the blade, but without its master at the hilt, the sword was without purpose.
Ichigo's absence was not temporary.
Grimmjow searched for the star the night before his father departed from their village for the last time, but Ichigo was not there to grant safe travel and protection in battle. The star was not there when his mother drew her last breath, nor when the winter storms threatened to tear his home down and hunger gnawed at his belly.
From the night Ichigo disappeared and all through the winter, Grimmjow's people performed their sacrifices. Goats and sheep and prized steer were bled before his altar. Bread and cheese needed to feed hungry mouths were burned to atone for any perceived slights or insults to the god. But still Ichigo did not return, and the people grew frantic.
What had offended the star so deeply that he would abandon them in this time of greatest need?
When the spring finally arrived to greet the bedraggled, weary survivors of the difficult winter, offerings at Ichigo's altar diminished to a trickle and then ceased altogether. The great sword had been broken for a year now.
The protector had forsaken them.
The faithlessness of his people angered Grimmjow. Tried by hardship though he was, he continued to bring an offering to the shrine every fourth night long after every other person had stopped. Blood from fresh slaughters, for all gods demanded carnal sacrifices. Fruit on the new moons, for Ichigo had a particular fondness for sweets. It was customary to say a short prayer of thanks after burning offerings, but the words always died in Grimmjow's throat when he saw the blank spot in Zangetsu's hilt.
Was anyone there to hear him?
...
"The other stars have not forsaken us, Grimmjow."
It was summer now, the season of greatest abundance. It followed on the tail of a brief but revitalizing spring and brought the land to swell with food and drink. The pains of the previous year had not faded from the hearts of the people, but summer was generous and lavished upon them warm days and ample fruit.
Grimmjow did not have many friends, but Shawlong was one of few who tolerated his vulgarities and brash manner. His father too had gone to the borderlands and perished there, but unlike Grimmjow, Shawlong still had a mother and a young wife to care for.
Grimmjow brushed him off, but Shawlong's hand fell heavy on his shoulder. He looked at the covered basket of fruit in Grimmjow's arms with an air of weary exasperation.
"We ride to war tomorrow. Pray to Kenpachi for strength, or Komamura for power. These are stars our voices may still reach. Do not squander your efforts on one who cannot hear you!"
But Grimmjow shrugged him off. "My business is my own," he growled. He pulled the basket away from Shawlong's disapproving gaze and pushed past him.
With no one but singing cicadas for company, he took the winding trail to the top of a small hill overlooking much of the village. The path was unkempt, almost overtaken by wild grasses. Grimmjow frowned. Up ahead, the twin trees framing the gates had grown unpruned, and dead leaves littered the shrine's stone floors, strewn about by wind and rain.
Grimmjow laid his basket of offerings on the altar before sweeping away the detritus with a broom he kept at the shrine's gates for this purpose. His wrists snapped a sharp flick, flick like the tail of an angry cat with every sweep.
With no one to bring offerings, the shrine had been allowed to fall into disrepair. Grimmjow had neither the time nor knowledge to maintain the trees and gardens, but he made sure the floors were kept clean. Ichigo deserved that respect, at least.
Finishing this task, he knelt before the altar and let his hands perform the familiar rituals of sacrifice while his mind drifted elsewhere.
Tomorrow, he and the remaining warriors in his tribe would set out for the borderlands to join their brothers. The western nation had not yet breached the border, but new reports suggested that they may soon. In his father's absence, the people now looked to Grimmjow to lead them to war. It was a burden Grimmjow had not asked for, but with the trials of the past year and Ichigo's disappearance, he could not tell them no.
The other warriors were enjoying their last night at home with loved ones, but Grimmjow had no family left to see him off in the morning.
His heart was heavy as he uncovered the basket and laid it all out upon the altar. There was a fragrant cake made of honey and milk, peaches as soft as baby skin and apples the color of a young girl's blush, succulent grapes and sweet pears and an abundance of strawberries, for Ichigo was said to favor these most of all.
It was a splendid array, perhaps the grandest that Grimmjow had prepared for his favored god. It seemed fitting to offer as much on his last night in the village, for it was uncertain whether Grimmjow would return here again.
One by one, Grimmjow washed the fruits and dabbed them with oil. Half of them he placed upon the burning tray to be consumed by the fire. The other half and the cake were left on the altar to be scavenged by passing animals, for it pleased the god to see his supplicants give to lesser souls.
When it was all done, he sat at the feet of the altar, watching the fruit blacken and peel in the embrace of flames. Thick black smoke billowed and curled up and up, reaching for the stars themselves. If Ichigo had truly abandoned his people, never again to return to his place in the sky, then Grimmjow would at least give thanks for the years of protection the god had given him.
His boyhood was behind him. The growing pains of adolescence had subsided, leaving in their wake a handsome young man of twenty-one who moved with the grace of a wildcat and fought with the ferocity of one too. His father had done his duty and taught him all he could. His mother had nurtured him and given him warmth. He had been allowed to grow in a time of peace and prosperity, and for that, Grimmjow should be grateful.
Why, then, did he feel so abandoned?
Grimmjow rested his back to the altar, and his eyes fell by habit to the constellation of Zangetsu. Though he was by now accustomed to it, Ichigo's absence struck a dull ache in his heart. Should he pray? He had not in almost a year.
Who would tend the shrine after he left tomorrow?
No one, probably. The altar would be empty but for dry leaves, and weeds would overgrow the garden. The image of the shrine of his most beloved star falling to ruin moved Grimmjow to speak, at long last.
It was not quite a prayer, for he was not in the proper kneeling form with his head bowed, but rather, sitting with his back against the altar and arm resting on one knee. The gods did not take notice of men who spoke at them so casually, but no matter. Perhaps Shawlong was right, and he was wasting his breath.
"I leave for war tomorrow, Ichigo," he said to the empty night. "I do not know what happened to you, but wherever you are, you better be watching me. Pantera and I, we shall grind them all to dust. I want you to see it."
A wicked grin curled his lips. Despite everything—the fear for his nation, his people, and their way of life—despite all he had been taught to fear about war, Grimmjow felt a terrifying, hungry thrill of elation for battle. Touched by Kenpachi, his elders said of him. He would show them just how right they were.
"I do not know if you will get visitors here after tonight," Grimmjow admitted. "But if there are other villages where I go, I will visit their shrines to you."
The night grew late. In the distance, lights flickered out one by one as people prepared for sleep.
There was little point in returning to his house. No one waited for him there, and the night was warm enough. Grimmjow untied Pantera from his side so that he could sleep more comfortably and lay down on his back with his arms folded beneath his head. The sword rested against his arm, and it was warm as though it had lain beneath the midday sun for many hours. Grimmjow let himself be comforted by Pantera's familiar weight and heat, as he had once been comforted by the red star.
As his breaths slowed and evened out, the sacrificial fire on the altar grew smaller and smaller until finally it too dimmed to embers. The summer cicadas droned on, like the earthly voice of stars that twinkled silently above. Not long ago, a warm summer night like this would have been an ideal occasion to celebrate Ichigo.
But tonight, his shrine was empty. There were no processions, no priests, no worshipping crowds.
There was only Grimmjow. Just a man at the altar of a forgotten god.
Chapter 3: The Ryoka
Two years later, the western invaders breached his nation’s borders.
Like the swell of a great wave, they crashed down upon the most inland village first and engulfed it in a tide of fire and blood. Their cruelty knew no bounds—no woman, child, or elder was left alive save those spared to spread the message: the invaders would not stop. What they had done to this first village was but a taste of their intentions for the rest of the coastal nation.
Grimmjow’s company arrived mere hours too late to find what the invaders had left behind. That night, he sat inside his tent listening to mournful wails of men who lost everything today—those who had found the bodies of loved ones in the ashes and those who were still searching—and for the first time in three years, thanked the gods that he had no one left to lose.
The war escalated. After breaching the borders, the westerners spread through the countryside ravenous and unchecked like an infection. For the first time in Grimmjow’s lifetime, foreign men claimed the soil of his motherland, and the true horrors of war played out before his eyes.
Villages were plundered and sacked, the people slain in the streets or barricaded in their own homes and burned alive. Their shrines were toppled with blasphemous disregard, their crops set ablaze and livestock turned loose for the wolves. All was left to ruin, and in this the enemy’s message was clear: there would be no negotiations, no bargaining, no mercy. They had come to conquer.
There were men whose minds splintered under duress of war, but others, like Grimmjow, grew hardened and learned to see such sights through a stranger’s eyes.
Confrontations with the enemy were brief and bloody, but it was in these battles, far from his home village and everything familiar to him, that Grimmjow came unleashed. The savage ferocity that had set him apart in the training fields of his youth now drew the attention of both comrades and enemy warriors alike. Here, there was no one to rebuke or frown upon his bloodlust, and now when men whispered that he carried the madness of Kenpachi, they said it with fearful reverence.
When Grimmjow fought, he forgot pain and fear and all manner of restraints. When he held Pantera, the blade warm and heavy in his hands as though possessed by a living soul, it was as if Ichigo himself was at his back, holding his fears at bay. In these moments, he imagined the face of his beloved god by his side, his hands clasped over Grimmjow’s as one upon Pantera’s hilt as they guided the blade to its purpose.
There were few men who could stand before him in battle for long before fleeing from his madness or falling to his sword. His reputation spread through the land until every tongue knew his name: Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, la Pantera, for by some odd happenstance the man had become synonymous with his sword.
But one man alone, no matter how skilled, could not stop an entire army. The enemy was far greater in number, their ranks endless as they wore down Grimmjow’s people by attrition alone.
One year wore by and then another. By the third, Grimmjow was given a regimen of three hundred to command as he pleased, and he led them with the same ferocity by which he fought.
The war seemed never-ending. Some days were more trying than others. There were times when even Grimmjow felt weariness so deep his very bones ached for rest, when his men were beaten and hungry and wept for a warm hearth or the loving embrace of a woman or child.
Today was one of these days.
The aftermath of battle was always a solemn affair. The living scoured the battlefield for any wounded who might still be salvaged. The dead were accounted for and shallow graves prepared for their bodies. Vigils for those fallen in battle were held through the night and into the next morning. Grimmjow oversaw these duties and more, so that when he was finally allowed to rest, he could barely stand on his own two feet.
He retired early. Without even taking his evening meal, he retreated into his tent with strict orders that he not be disturbed. After stripping to a simple sleep garment, he wiped himself down with a wet rag and collapsed face first onto his sleeping mat.
It seemed scarcely an hour later that he was being roused again.
“Captain Jaegerjaquez…”
The young soldier sent to wake him sounded more than a little reluctant to be here. He carried a small lantern, which he brought closer to the captain’s face as he hesitated before raising his hand to nudge the man’s shoulder. “Captain Jaegerjaquez, we need your—”
His words died with a gasp as Grimmjow’s fingers snapped around his wrist in an iron grip, and he found himself inches from the man’s scowling face.
“Did I not order to be left alone?” Grimmjow’s voice was a rumbling growl. He sat up, still crushing the young soldier’s arm, and reached for Pantera.
“Yes you did, Captain, but—”
“Was I unclear?”
The soldier shook his head fiercely, wide eyes watching Grimmjow grasp the scabbard near the hilt and unsheathe it an inch with his thumb. “No, Captain, it is only the matter of—”
“Grimmjow, stop playing with him and come.” Shawlong stood at the entrance of the tent, arms folded across his chest and unimpressed. “There is a matter requiring your orders.”
“Tch.” Grimmjow scoffed but released the man, who stumbled back before making a hasty exit. “This better be worth my time, Shawlong.”
Outside, the camp was quiet. Most of the warriors, save those on watch duty, were fast asleep. Even the horses were quiet tonight, and Grimmjow’s scowl grew deeper as he followed Shawlong to the single fire still lit in the center of the camp.
Three of his warriors stood there with their weapons drawn and a fourth man whose face Grimmjow could not see was on his knees before them.
“Captain Jaegerjaquez.” One of his warriors approached him. “We found this man just outside the perimeters, watching our camp. He is not one of ours.”
Grimmjow gave the captive a once over. Even without seeing his face, he knew this man was indeed not one of his. His hair fell to mid-back and its color was that of the fire flickering behind them. He wore only a pair of lightweight linen trousers.
“We have searched him,” another warrior spoke. “He carries no weapons, nor anything else. He refuses to speak.”
Grimmjow barely heard him. He walked half a circle around the man before coming back to stand before him. “Oi, let me see your face.” There was no answer, not even a glance upwards, and Grimmjow’s scowl returned. “Did you hear me?”
One of his men fisted a hand in the captive’s long hair. “The Captain asked to see your face.” A sharp tug forced his head up, and the firelight brought his face to sharp relief.
This was no face Grimmjow had seen before. Though he could not have been older than twenty, his features had the handsome cut and strength of manhood. His eyes were brown and bore into Grimmjow’s with intensity the captain did not like.
“What is your name?” Grimmjow demanded. “Are you with the western army?”
Again, he received no answer, and Grimmjow felt his patience wearing thin. A dull throb had begun to pound in his head, and he wished nothing more than to lie down for a few more hours. He turned to Shawlong. “I am going back to sleep. Do what you will with him.”
Grimmjow turned and headed back towards his tent. He heard Shawlong giving orders, but he did not care to listen. He would tend to things in the morning, when his head was clear and he felt less like one the corpses they had buried today.
…
Grimmjow slept until well after sunrise. He woke ravenously hungry and joined his men for the midday meal before remembering the orange-haired stranger from last night.
Shawlong was nowhere in sight, so Grimmjow asked one of the other warriors and was brought to a little patch of land behind the fenced in pen where the horses were kept. The captive was sitting with his back to a tree, bound there with thick rope that encircled his chest many times.
He looked up as Grimmjow approached.
“Are you going to talk today?”
Silence.
Grimmjow frowned and crouched until he was eye-level with the man. “Tell me who you are with. Are you a scout?”
The man’s brown eyes narrowed.
“What were you doing at the perimeter of our camp?” Grimmjow tried again.
Still no answer. Grimmjow looked him up and down. The men from the west had dark hair, in varying shades of deep brown to black, and their skin was sallow like the color of a sick man who had lost too much blood. They were short with broad shoulders and deep set eyes. This man, with his fair skin and orange hair and lean build, did not look like a westerner. But nor did he look like one of Grimmjow’s people. Ryoka, Grimmjow thought—outsider.
Where did he come from? Who were his kin? Did he have any relation to the coastal nation or to the nation of the west? The man kept his silence with these and every other question, but not once did his keen gaze leave Grimmjow’s face. Though he answered nothing, he was not ignoring Grimmjow, but rather, regarding him with single-minded focus that was unrelenting and strange.
Unsettled by this scrutiny, Grimmjow wrapped his hand around the man’s throat and squeezed. The brown eyes went wide and a hoarse gasp came from his throat, the first noise Grimmjow had heard him utter. He grinned.
“So you do have a voice.” His fingers tightened until blood blanched from his knuckles and the sinews of his forearm rippled under the skin. The man’s pulse pounded a thunderous rhythm beneath his hand. He shook and writhed, gasping until the fingers around his throat tightened again and silenced that too. Grimmjow felt a familiar thrill rush through his veins, coursing up to his head until it filled his ears with the sound of his own heartbeat.
The ryoka’s eyes opened again and met his.
Something in Grimmjow calmed. It was like the moments he imagined Ichigo at his side in battle, but this time, the ghostly face of his patron deity was shaking his head, and the hand he laid upon Grimmjow’s urged him to loosen his fingers instead.
Grimmjow let go.
He rose to his feet, and without a further look back at the man coughing and gasping for breath behind him, he left. He knew without turning that those eyes followed him until he was out of sight.
…
By Grimmjow’s orders, the ryoka captive was moved to a spot closer to his tent, where he could be easily seen from most corners of the camp.
As Grimmjow went through the day’s duties, he found himself glancing often in the direction of the tree that shaded his tent. The man was tied there in kneeling position, his head bowed like one in prayer and his long hair falling over his shoulders and down his back like a river. It could not have been comfortable, but he stayed there unmoving and uncomplaining like a silent, frozen statue.
The ryoka drew many a passing glance from the warriors in the camp. Once or twice, someone would try to touch or speak to him, but not once did Grimmjow see him react. The prisoner seemed present only in body, oblivious or uncaring to the goings on around him.
At the evening meal, Grimmjow sat with a group of his men around a small fire to share bread, wine, and stories. Edrad was regaling them with a retelling of how he had once laid waste to an entire battalion, but Grimmjow had stopped listening to his comrade’s embellished tale some time ago. From where he sat, if he leaned just a touch to the right of Nakeem, he had a straight line of sight to the ryoka.
Although darkness obscured most of his figure, Grimmjow could make out enough to guess he had not moved at all from this morning. Long hair caught in the wind and furled outward like a teasing invitation to freedom.
And then, as though sensing the attention upon him, the ryoka’s head rose. Grimmjow could not see his face in the dim light, but he knew without question that the man’s eyes were on him.
Grimmjow frowned, remembering what had spurred him into strangling the man just that morning. He almost rose to his feet when he noticed a man approaching the captive. It was one of the three who had caught him the night before, and Grimmjow guessed his intentions. Perhaps by Shawlong’s orders, he had come to force the ryoka into speaking and determine what threat he posed to their camp.
Their voices did not carry across the distance, but the scene playing out was easy enough to decipher. The interrogator’s straight-backed stance and crossed arms conveyed authority and demanded obedience as he pressed for answers.
The ryoka would not give them, and as the minutes ticked by, Grimmjow watched as the warrior went rigid, first with frustration, and then with anger. He knew what would happen next, and so he did not flinch when the first blow came like a thunderclap to the ryoka’s lower jaw.
Grimmjow did not care to watch the rest. He already knew the beating would yield no answers. He shifted just enough so that Nakeem’s bulk blocked the interrogation from view, and finished his meal.
…
It rained that night.
The thunder woke Grimmjow sometime after midnight. He lay half awake in his sleeping mat and listened to the rain slapping against his tent, one hand resting upon Pantera’s hilt absently.
The horses would be huddled together for warmth under their makeshift shelters, and Grimmjow did not envy the men posted for watch duty tonight.
But they were not the only ones weathering the storm.
Silent as a cat, Grimmjow slipped from his covers and went to the side of his tent where he lifted a small flap of canvas to peer outside. It was difficult to discern anything, and Grimmjow squinted, looking for the ryoka he knew was still bound and kneeling not far from his tent.
In a flash of white lightning that lit everything for a single heartbeat, Grimmjow saw him.
The ryoka was doubled over, from exhaustion or cold Grimmjow could not tell, hair plastered wet against his skin and head bowed under the torrential downpour. Yet even in this humble state, beaten and half naked and muddied, he looked…magnificent. There was something in his suffering that appeared both noble and tragic.
For that brief moment, Grimmjow was breathless.
And then the moment passed. The land was dark once more, and Grimmjow pulled the canvas flap down more roughly than he intended.
He returned to bed with Pantera at his side, but tonight the sword offered little comfort for it was cold like lifeless steel. Grimmjow did not sleep well.
…
The following morning, the men endured their captain’s foul mood. Poorly rested and unhappy besides for reasons no one knew, Grimmjow bore down upon his company like an ill-tempered cat, baring his teeth at the slightest provocation and once even drawing Pantera on a hapless errand boy.
Shawlong, who was by now accustomed to his oft-unpredictable moods, stopped him before he could run the boy through.
“You are a madman today,” he told Grimmjow with a frown. “I will take your duties. Go—rest if that is what you need.”
It was only his long friendship with the captain that spared him the brunt of the man’s temper. Grimmjow stormed back to his tent, but the sight of the ryoka boy gave him pause.
The prisoner stared at him still. His bottom lip was split, and bruises covered his bare upper body from his recent beating. His thin trousers dripped water and mud from the storm and he shivered from cold but still Grimmjow could not enter his tent without those eyes following his every step.
Grimmjow remembered how he’d looked in the lightning last night, the rainwater glistening on the taut muscles of his shoulders and chest, the graceful bow of his head and the wretched, soulful beauty of his humility. Something stirred in his heart.
He had taken the fur pelt from around his own shoulders before he realized what he was doing. Grimmjow held the pelt in his hands for a moment, its warm weight reminding him how cold Pantera had grown last night, before he knelt and draped it across the ryoka’s shoulders.
His knuckles brushed cold, damp skin for a bare instant as he did so, but Grimmjow pulled away quickly and stood. He looked around, but no one had borne witness to what had just happened.
When he looked back down, the ryoka’s eyes were softer now, and the corner of his lips curled upwards in a ghostly smile.
Grimmjow was about to enter his tent when he heard the hoarse voice whisper after him.
“Thank you.”