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Consolation Prize (of Victory)	By : blackfox1 Category: Bleach > Het - Male/Female Views: 5764 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach, any of the characters mentioned here and I'm certainly not in this for the money.

Chapter List
- 6
- 7
- 8
Consolation Prize

Interlude 3: Enough to Go Around

In which blame goes every which way...
When Renji rejoined the world, he found he was confined to the cavern beneath the Science and Research Division. He had about ten seconds to finish coming back from the blackness he’d floated in, before he remembered what he’d done… and why.

Then all he wanted was to fall back into it and stay there. If he did, he wouldn’t feel the weight of the massive self-loathing that sat on his chest, its heaviness crushing his rib cage. Someone had lugged him down here, placed him face-up on the one bed in the room and tossed his sleeping yukata over him. Renji mentally went through the list of ‘most likely’ suspects and couldn’t decide if Nemu or Grimmjow was the one responsible.

He’d been healed as well, to the point where no evidence remained of the wounds Szayel had given him, or of his broken hand. Renji had Orihime-chan to thank if Karin had gone through with what Grimmjow had ordered her to do, back in the wreckage of the lab. Unfortunately, the human girl couldn’t do the one thing he wanted, which was to wipe his memory clean of the hateful knowledge of what he’d done just as she’d rid him of his injuries.

Renji wasn’t sure how long he’d been down at first, but eventually, growing thirst gave him the idea it had been at least a day. There were no restraints on him, and the bathroom adjoining the chamber remained open. He drank greedily from the tap and used his sleeve as a towel. Zabimaru was nowhere near; when he’d dragged his body off of the bed he found that anything he might have either used as a means of escape or as a weapon was gone. They’d even removed the tie to his yukata, lest he try to hang himself with it, leaving him to clutch the fabric one-handed to keep it closed. He didn’t know the codes to the door, but he suspected that Szayel had changed them, just in case. Eventually, he sat back down on the mattress, curling up in a ball and wrapping his arms around his bent knees.

Whoever had stripped the room knew what they were doing. The bed frame was one welded together and wouldn’t come apart easily. The mattress was useless, unless he wanted to try to asphyxiate himself by shoving the ticking into his mouth. Renji kept that idea in the back of his mind as a possibility. The control console was gone; it was probably the first thing taken from the place once he became its inmate again.

The question then became, why was he still alive? What followed was, 'did he want to be'? If Grimmjow or Szayel wanted him dead because of his attack, why prevent him from doing what honor demanded? Why not give him the means to end his miserable life? Why not just kill him while he was sedated? Szayel could concoct a reasonable explanation for a ‘pet’s’ death, such as Renji breaking his Claim and going after the scientist. It would only be a hair’s breadth from the truth. The twins still needed supervision, but now that they were older, one of Szayel’s minions in the Division could take over their day-to-day care. No one would be the wiser, at least, outside of Szayel and Karin’s strange little circle.

Thinking about the children made him curl a little tighter, in a futile attempt to shrink away from the pain that began to throb just under his sternum.

Szayel would never allow him anywhere near them again, but that was just as well. No parent in their right mind would want someone like himself within a mile of his or her child. He didn’t know what that said about the scientist, since Szayel had seen fit to hand Vindula and Abisara over to him anyway, knowing what Yammy had made him do. He’d used the same hands that had held down his former Taichou to dress, bathe and wipe tears away. Maybe whoever had locked him in this overly-large cell did understand, as there was nothing in it that could be used to cut his hands from his body.

Perhaps, he reasoned, Grimmjow wanted him awake when he decided to punish Renji. If so, he hoped the Sixth wouldn’t hold back. He’d seen what Grimmjow had done to Ichigo the first time the two had fought one another. He wouldn’t last long without Zabimaru, but that was all right with him. The quicker the better and Karin’s ‘mate’ didn’t seem to be the type to indulge in torture. Then again, Renji had attacked someone that Grimmjow considered important enough to lay a Claim on and there was the little unresolved issue of the Espada’s fraccion he’d killed all those years ago, while Grimmjow was busy using Ichigo as punching bag.

Eventually, Renji lay back down on his side, facing away from the door. He remembered that judging the passage of time here was difficult, so he simply gave up trying. Eventually, he heard the door open and close and braced himself for a shitload of pain. Instead, he heard something metal gently touch the floor and then the door closed behind them. Rolling over revealed a tray of food that one didn’t need utensils to eat: a bowl of soup and some mochi.

He stared at it for a moment, and then turned away. The redhead had no appetite and when the person who brought it came back a little while later, they removed the untouched tray. An idea presented itself while he contemplated the far wall, an idea brought about by the sight of food he could no longer stomach. It might take more time than a few quick slashes up his arms, or a cut to the artery in his neck, but he knew from experience that hunger could kill a Shinigami as easily as violence.

The lights never dimmed and Renji seriously lost track of time after deciding how he would go about atoning for his crime against Kuchiki Byakuya. He heard the door opened and closed ten times. Each time, someone would place a tray on the floor and leave, saying nothing in what little time they were there. Then they would take it away.

While he could deal with the hunger gnawing at him, a long-standing feud he’d begun as a boy in the 78th District, his thirst was far harder to ignore, so he didn’t attempt it at all. He drank what he wanted, only because a belly full of water tended to forget it was really empty and it might make his method of self-execution a wee bit easier. With a water-only diet, each trip to the toilet, on increasingly shaky legs, left him that much more light-headed.

How long could a human body endure without food? Renji tried to remember. Two weeks? Three? Maybe it would take less time than he thought for a Shinigami. Maintaining high reiatsu levels required that the owner of those reiatsu levels eat, which was why he and Rukia had been such good thieves. It was either steal or starve. The longer one went without food, the weaker one became. Plenty of the children they’d run with had died because of that. If either he or Rukia had been less of a survivor, less adept at making off with their next, haphazard meal, maybe their fates would have been the same. Renji, mouth pulled thin, eyes dull, wished that he hadn’t struggled so hard against the day-to-day challenges in the Rukongai. If he’d succumbed, he wouldn’t have been around to be used as a weapon against Rukia’s older, adopted brother.

He did not seek Zabimaru, nor did he try to ask for solace from his Zanpakuto. He knew what kind of bleakness he would find if he descended into his inner world. He hadn’t been able to prevent Zabimaru’s destruction all those years ago and as a result, his body had been used for something unspeakable. He deserved neither comfort nor care from the half of his soul he’d inadvertently dragged along on this awful journey. It would be best if he could just go quietly about the business of letting himself starve and make a beggar’s end of it. It was, after all, what he’d earned.

The day finally came when he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to get out of bed and knew he was close to ending things. Maybe it had been five days, maybe ten… he wasn’t sure if they were bringing him food once or twice a day. Renji drifted in and out of hallucinations as well, at times hearing Rukia berating him for stealing a jar full of pickled radishes instead of candy, or seeing Madarame Ikakku do that god-awful ‘lucky dance’ of his in the middle of the street. He caught himself shoving what felt like a very heavy Dondochaka off of his back and unlike all of the other ghosts surrounding him, this one was a little too tangible for his liking.

“Abarai-san, you’re going to eat something or I’m going to bloody your nose!”

Now his hallucinations had begun to threaten him. How jolly. Renji was in the middle of debating whether or not to lock up the Arrancar that had decided to tag along and ‘help’ him behind the next door he saw when he was slapped by a hand suffused with just enough reiatsu to dissolve the phantom scene before him.

His eyes cracked open and he found Karin glaring down at him, one hand balancing her torso as she leaned over the bed far enough to pull it back to smack him again.

“I mean it. I will force-feed you if I have to!”

He spoke, and his voice sounded like sandpaper scratching over old wood.

“Why? Isn’t your mate going to just kill me later on?”

Her dark, angry eyes blinked in surprise at his answer and she slowly lowered her hand. Then she stepped back and rubbed her forehead.

“It’s been ten days. If Grimmjow wanted you dead, he’d have killed you in the lab.”

She left him to stare at the ceiling and he heard her footsteps as she moved towards the door. More footsteps and the sound of something scraping across the tiles filled his ears, until Karin dragged a chair around to the bedside and placed it where he could see her if she sat down. Then she turned the thing around and sat down backwards, placing her forearms on the chair’s back and resting her forehead on her arms. Silence descended and Renji’s eyes wanted to close, to go back to the hunger-induced dreams and stay with the rest of the apparitions until he joined them.

“Don’t make me use Nel’s Claim, Renji. I will, you know.”

She sounded tired and Renji didn’t blame her. She’d probably had to deal with the fallout of his actions and what that entailed the gods only knew. At the very least, she’d had to contend with Szayel and perhaps, try to prevent the truth about his attempt on the scientist’s life from leaking to the rest of Szayel’s staff. While he doubted that the majority of the researchers and assistants had been near enough to know what happened in the laboratory, only the slowest of them would have gone on about their business without noticing something was amiss and none of them would have missed the damage he’d done.

“It would be easier if you just let me do this. Let me at least make this right.”

He said it quietly, hoping she’d understand. Instead, she looked up at him and glared at him with such ferocity that he half-expected her to hit him again.

“You selfish FUCK!!” she spat and then she did take the front of his yukata and pull him up, until she was nearly nose-to-nose with him.

“You think you can just die and leave a mess behind? How do you think Orihime would feel if you threw all of her hard work restoring you in the trash? What about everyone who was so damned happy you were back to normal? I will not allow you to starve yourself to death on some stupid principle and force me to be the one who has to tell everyone there’s been another casualty!”

“When they find out what I’ve done, they’ll understand.”

Karin dropped him just as suddenly as she’d grabbed him and sat back down, hands clenching the back of the chair with white knuckles. Then she pinched the bridge of her nose.

“No one knows what happened except those who were there when Yammy opened his goddamned mouth. Neither Ukitake, nor Starrk will say a word, and Starrk’s threat to Yammy stands. He’ll report Yammy, and he’ll let Aizen know about Yammy’s attempt to strike me after the Claim meeting. My mate, unlike Yammy, has a fully-functioning brain and neither he, nor I, will say anything either. And…” she muttered angrily “Szayel is under orders to keep his trap shut.”

“Covering it up won’t erase what I did” Renji said. Did she not understand the gravity of this, the stain on his soul that he needed to wash away, with his blood if need be?

“I swear, you are just like my idiot brother sometimes…” the young woman growled at that. The redhead turned to look at her. Now he felt a frown coming on. The comparison to Ichigo, in his opinion, was unwarranted.

“You both shut yourselves up in your room and sulk and blame yourselves and beat yourselves up over something you couldn’t have prevented. I want you to get it through that thick skull of yours that what happened wasn’t your bloody fault, just like Jushiro told you! If you don’t believe me, at least believe him. He apparently has a thousand years on you.”

Karin went back to glaring at him.

“Do you want Yammy to win?”

Renji’s mind must have been a bit foggy because he gave her a blank look.

“If you take your life over this, then that walking mountain of dog shit wins. Kuchiki-dono has been trying to keep you from finding out, probably because he knew you’d try something stupid. He’s been living under the threat of Yammy doing this again for all this time…”

He closed his eyes and tried to turn away but a hand on his shoulder prevented him from doing so.

“Now that I and Grimmjow know, Yammy can’t pull that card. Szayel is mine and that means that you and Nemu are mine as well. Yammy will have to go through me first and I’ve already let Yammy know what I think of his disgusting behavior, with my fist. I can’t stop what Yammy does to him outright, but he won’t have access to you. Like I told him, you’re off–limits now and as long as you ‘belong’ to Szayel, I can keep it that way.”

Then she took a deep breath and her glare softened, eyes filled with regret.

“Look, I get why you went after him. Believe me, I wanted to kick his ass to the Living World and back too. However, he was telling me the truth when he said that he had no idea what Yammy was doing with you until he walked in on it. While you were shuffling around with half of a soul, the only things he ever got from his Claim on you were basic physical sensations, like pain or cold. He could also tell if you were breathing or not, but that was about it. He didn’t feel your emotions at all, because you weren’t there to feel anything.”

Karin laced her fingers together over her nose, resting her chin on her thumbs, so that all Renji could see of her face were her eyes.

“Once he saw… what Yammy had ordered you to do, he did what he could to get you out of there while you were still in one piece. If he hadn’t, Yammy might have decided to escalate things. From what Szayel tells me, there’s a reason why the only one willing to work with the asshole in the past was Ulquiorra. Szayel has been trying to side-track Yammy every time he stomps into this Division wanting him to do something idiotic or outrageous, so there won’t be a repeat. ”

“How do you know he isn’t lying to you?” Renji snarled. The young woman looked away, towards some spot on the floor nearby and she seemed to be contemplating something.

“He can’t lie to me. He can try to defend his actions, he can come up with plenty of excuses, even reasonable ones, but the one thing he can’t do is hide the truth from me. He knows it too.”

She shivered a little, and then the look she gave him hardened, her eyes getting flinty.

“Starve yourself to death and all of Kuchiki-dono’s efforts to spare you, to keep you from doing this shit, right here, will have been for naught and Yammy succeeds. Stay alive and stay out of his hands, don’t let him use you and he loses ground.”

Clever of her to couch things in tactical terms, he thought wearily. Tossing another layer of guilt on him was a nice touch. However, what was one more bucket of earth on the landslide that covered him? She must have been able to read his thoughts, since he didn’t seem to have the energy to conceal them any longer, because she proceeded to pull out the big guns.

“Vindula and Abisara have been asking about you.”

It took some effort on his part, but he ground the heel of one hand into his forehead.

Can we please be done with this? Renji begged silently. When he didn’t respond, she continued, taking his silence for acquiescence.

“I told them you were sick and that you needed to stay down here until you’re better. Szayel doesn’t want them around you until he can be sure you aren’t going to off yourself in front of them. Nemu told them to say nothing, and that you weren’t in your right mind when you cracked Szayel’s Hierro. She told them you were affected by one of Szayel’s less-than-successful experiments.”

Renji looked startled at that and Karin gave him a wry, half-smile.

“What kind of power are you playing with, Abarai-kun? I had to ask Orihime to fix the side of Szayel’s face before it blew up like a balloon. Thankfully, no one but I, Grimmjow and Nemu know you tried to kill him. She’s not happy with you, I might add, but she’s not happy with Szayel either. I think we’ll be able to keep your little attack a secret, if I stretch things a bit. If you’d pulled out your Bankai, we’d all be screwed.”

“What about Vindula…?” he asked, and then trailed off, throat tightening.

“Nemu said she had a nightmare the other night and called for you. I’d hate to think that you’d do something stupid and leave her to deal with this by herself.”

Karin’s voice practically dripped with sarcasm.

“You need to think, Renji, and you need to get your head out of your ass now!”

It was a low blow, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t right, at least as far as how he’d gone about trying to redeem himself. He hadn’t been thinking, not really. All he’d wanted to do was destroy Szayel in a rush of hatred and fury and he’d botched the job a second time. Karin’s words, however, nagged at him and reminded him that he’d yet to figure out what the connection was between the human girl and her ‘pet’. He didn’t think it was as simple as Grimmjow handing over the Espada to Karin to humiliate him further.

“What are you hiding? What’s so important about that pink-haired prick that you’re willing to go to such lengths to protect him?”

Karin’s eyes narrowed, then bit her lip and then rubbed the back of her neck, as if to relieve some knot of tension growing there as their conversation continued.

“I’m responsible for him. That means, by association, that I’m responsible for what you and Nemu do as well. Aizen will hold my feet to the fire if any of you step out of line. If he’d found out that you went after Szayel and why, he’d start asking a lot of questions and… I’ve seen what happens to those he interrogates. It’s best you stay out of the loop on this one. Besides…” she said ominously “what you don’t know, Abarai-san, you can’t reveal under torture. I wouldn’t wish Aizen’s preferred method of digging information out of people on you, or anyone else.”

She pushed up and away from the chair and walked back towards the door. When she returned, she carried a tray of food and a pot of tea with two cups. Turning the chair around so that she could sit properly, she set the tray down on the seat and reached over to grab his upper arm. From the tugging, he guessed she wanted him to sit up so she could pour soup down his throat.

“You’re a lean guy anyway, without a lot of reserves. Another day of this crap and I would have had to call for Unohana-Taichou and I do not want to drag her into this mess, got it?”

It seemed she was going to go through with her threat if he didn’t comply with her wishes. As much as Renji hated to admit it, she was also right. Dying would raise too many questions and the last thing he wanted as a legacy was Aizen doing anything to the children. Kami, he’d fucked that up royally, but Vindula seeing him kick her father’s ass was one thing. Aizen sniffing around the twins was something else entirely.

She placed a bowl of miso soup in his hands and scowled at him until he’d raised the edge of the bowl to his lips and choked it down, watching him to make sure the contents of the vessel were gone. Then she handed him one of the rice balls and poured him a cup of not-quite-hot tea.

“If this tray isn’t empty when I come back with some clean clothes and some soap, I’m going to…”

“Shove it down my throat with your bare hands. I heard you the first time.”

His stomach, so long without food, roiled a bit with the first solid meal he’d had in well over a week. He gagged a little, but Karin promptly shoved his teacup under his nose to ‘suggest’ that he use it to wash down the sticky rice and red bean paste. Someone had gone to the effort to make something he actually liked. It was too bad it tasted like ashes in his mouth. Her lips thinned a little at how unenthusiastically he ate. However, he’d done as she asked and with her threat hanging over his head, he reached out and took the second rice ball in hand.

Seeing that, she rose, set the tray back down on the chair and pulled it closer to the bed.

“I’m going to get some things so that you can at least wash in the bathroom over there. You’ll stay here until you can convince me that you aren’t going to do anything drastic. Your choice, Abarai.”

Renji understood an order when he heard it. Therefore, he ate the food set before him and handed back an empty tray when she brought his extra uniform, toiletries and clean sheets. Once he resumed eating, he regained some of the strength he’d lost, but he still felt as if he was walking through a thick fog, going through the motions of taking care of himself without really wanting to do so. No matter what Karin said about blame, his self-hatred was still there, the shame and guilt unabated. Sleep was elusive. Now that his brain had enough nutrients to work with, it did him no favors by conjuring up images of the crime in question. Despite eating what Karin and presumably Nemu put in front of him, his expression remained haunted. Karin handed him a broom at one point and told him to sweep things up, and if he did a half-way decent job of that, she had a few more rooms that needed tidying.

He was technically free at that point, but as Renji mopped and swept and dealt with the same menial chores that had been his lot for the last thirteen years, he noticed that he was never actually alone. A staff member or a researcher always seemed to be busy nearby with a task Renji recognized as busywork. It appeared that while he was no longer considered a suicide risk, he wasn’t entirely trusted either. He returned to his rooms, but Zabimaru wasn’t there. He presumed that Karin had his blade, probably because she felt she couldn't trust him with it, which Renji could respect, as he didn’t entirely trust himself either. Maybe, he thought bleakly, this was the punishment he actually deserved: to remain tormented by one’s thoughts and mind, and yet be unable to do anything about it.

On what he thought was the seventh morning after Karin had first forced him to eat, the young woman appeared before him while he was on his hands and knees, scrubbing the floors in Laboratory 8. He dropped the scrub brush when she reached down and grabbed his wrist, forcing him to stand. She had Zabimaru in the other, gripping the red sheath tightly.

“Come on. Get cleaned up. You’ve got an appointment to keep.”

He had no idea what she was talking about. Karin seemed grimly determined to drag him somewhere, so after a quick shower, he followed her back down to the cavern, startled to find the usual set up for his meetings with Nel underway. Nemu had inked the proper circle and Karin picked up the glowing cube from its place in the small containment box. She placed it in his hand and curled his fingers around it with hers.

Was he mistaken? Was it time already and had he just misjudged how many days had passed, how many months had passed since he’d seen her? Karin frowned up at him in a manner that eerily reminded him of Rukia in her more frustrated moments.

“If you won’t listen to me, then maybe you’ll listen to the one person I think can get through that concrete head of yours. Go!”

Then Karin gently handed him Zabimaru. He reflexively pulled his Zanpakuto towards his chest and he could feel the weapon’s seething anger as it finally connected with its master.

Fool… stupid fool!

He looked down at Zabimaru, could almost taste how upset his blade was with him and wondered if there was anyone left in any of the worlds that he hadn’t wronged somehow, or pissed off. Nemu stood quietly by the console that had been relocated to its old spot and Karin went to latch the door. Szayel was nowhere to be seen. Feeling as if he was sleepwalking, Renji turned on his heel, walked to the middle of the circle and placed the cube in its accustomed spot. He then sat down on the bed, leaning sideways against the headboard, facing a far wall whose rough details he’d memorized over the last few weeks.

It occurred to him that he’d missed an opportunity, that if he’d told Karin to place the cube instead, the power of the walls would have made short work of him. Then he remembered that she’s read the instructions before he had and probably wouldn’t have fallen for it.

A dead arm can’t strike a vengeful blow, idiot.

Zabimaru’s voice came to him clearly, coldly, angrily. He winced at it, knowing the Baboon King was right on a rational level, that he didn’t have the luxury of dying in lieu of an apology that would be inadequate anyway. However, he had no idea if he’d ever be able to look Kuchiki Byakuya or Rukia in the eyes again.

When the walls had done their usual number on his body and the barrier finally solidified, Renji bowed his head.

He had no idea how he was going to be able to face Nel either.

That their meeting was early made his spirits sink even further. Kami, did she already know about it? Worse, did Rukia know what Yammy had forced his body to do to her older brother? The idea of Rukia hating him actually made the muscles in his sides and abdomen ache, the pain creeping along the muscles in his gut until he felt sick.

“Renji-kun!!”

He heard something hit the floor, as if it had been dropped there and a few hasty steps. A pair of arms, clad in a sweater, wrapped themselves around his shoulders. Hair that smelled of snow, the cold still clinging to it, tumbled around him and it was all he could do not to shove her away, not yell at her to leave, that he wasn’t worth risking herself. Her fingers moved his headband out of the way, tracing down his face, running along his scalp and down to his shoulders, moving as if searching for an injury of some kind.

“Renji, tell me what happened! I felt whatever it was, so it had to have been bad and I’ve been fighting with Yoruichi for over a fortnight to let me come here! Please, let me see that you’re in one piece, please…” she said in a rush.

The sheer amount of worry in her voice only made him feel worse. Maybe she was looking for the wounds Szayel had inflicted in his attempt to get away from his attacker. He grabbed the hand that moved to push his kosode off of his shoulders, before she could examine him.

“Nel-chan… you shouldn’t…”

He dropped her fingers, only to find them lifting his chin, forcing him to look at her.

From her expression, he he knew he'd failed to measure up to some standard she had for mental stability.

Nel tugged, pushed and maneuvered him until he was half prone, his head resting on her shoulder. Pillowed thusly, her arms wound as tightly around him as her smaller build would allow, he couldn’t help leaning into her warmth. She usually managed to undo his ponytail in some manner or another during these visits and she wasn’t going to make an exception this time either. She carefully undid it and then ran her fingers through his long hair, trying to soothe his turbulent emotions. He could also feel her reiatsu crawling along his limbs, in much the same way that she’d managed to convince him to let her Claim him the first time.

“I can’t take it away, but… I can at least share this burden with you. Tell me, please!”

He couldn’t ask her to do that. She didn’t deserve any part of what he felt right now. Her knuckles smoothed over one cheek, drawing him closer, until his face was hidden in the crook of her neck, his hair spilling like a river of blood down his back and across her bosom.

“Renji-kun, you’re miserable and in pain. At least let me know why,” she whispered, pleading with him.

Of course, he would inflict this on her anyway, just by the virtue of her Claim on him. He couldn’t do a goddamned thing right, he cursed silently.

A drop of something warm splashed on the small portion of her collarbone that her winter sweater exposed, followed by another and then another. Once it started, he couldn’t seem to shut it off and it poured from him unchecked. Renji soon found himself weeping uncontrollably, huge sobs wracking his body as the torrent of self-hate, blame and bone-deep shame spilled over what was left of his pride, washing that away as well.

Throughout it all, she ran her hands over his hair, his shoulders and any other part she could reach while he cried like a baby. Renji managed to choke out the story between bouts of tears, his voice thick with wretched emotion. When he was done, throat closing in sorrow, eyes red, nose running and his hands fisting in the thick wool of her sweater and skirt, Renji wanted to sink through the floor.

Instead, she cradled him against her, while she made the sort of sounds he’d made when one of the twins would wake in the middle of the night, before they could speak and tell him what was wrong. He’d had almost no idea what to do with a crying infant until Nemu and Karin gave him a crash course in placating a fussy or upset newborn. He found it odd that, in this situation, she would do something similar to him.

“Renji-kun… do you remember what I said about Barragan? About my father’s warning?” she asked softly, stroking his hair.

He nodded while scrubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand, like the brat he’d been all those years ago.

“Barragan wasn’t the only one I had to fear. My father warned me of the three strongest Arrancar he knew of. He warned me about the King of Hueco Mundo. He warned me about a pair of nameless Vasto Lordes whose mere presence was toxic to any who came near them. Finally, he warned me about Yammy Llargo, because he was more dangerous than the King of Hueco Mundo could ever hope to be.”

Her fingers brushed strands of his hair out of his eyes and gently traced the tattoo over his left eye. Renji shivered and she responded by sliding a leg beneath him, as much as her skirt would allow, until both her arms and legs held him where he lay.

“You’re aware of how Aizen numbered us?”

Renji thought of the ‘3’ tattooed across her back, and nodded. This time, she cupped his cheek and tilted his face up so that he could see her serious expression.

“The Espada are numbered one through ten, in descending order, according to power…” he began, but she used her thumb to press against his lips, stopping him before he could finish.

“No, Renji-kun. That’s not quite right. The top Espada carry the numbers ‘0’ through ‘9’. When Yammy becomes enraged…” Nel began and Renji froze, his eyes growing wider.

When Szayel had Claimed him the first time, Renji had been whole in body thanks to Orihime, but his reiatsu levels were lower than the Seireitei’s sewer system. The second time had been harder for the pink freak’s reiatsu to overpower his, and it had only worked because the initial Claim had yet to fade. Renji had never understood how someone as powerful as his former Taichou could be kept by a creature of a lower rank than Szayel. He’d assumed that Yammy had to refresh his Claim on Byakuya continually, trading frequency for the lack of power, but now he saw he’d been wrong.

“…his number changes, from ‘10’ to ‘0’. His anger can destroy mountains, Renji-kun, and it doesn’t take much to infuriate him. On a good day, he was a vicious, deplorably stupid brute. You didn’t want to see him on a bad day. Hurting others needlessly seemed to be a sport with him. I wore clothing that wouldn’t betray my nature, not only because of Barragan, but also because of Yammy Llargo. I did not want to end up Claimed by such a beast.”

The idea of Nel, sitting as he’d seen Kuchiki Byakuya crouched in that hall, her existence made a living hell under the monster’s thumb, made Renji want to throw up, save that his stomach was empty. His grip on her tightened, but if it caused her discomfort, she said nothing. Instead, she continued on, her soft girlish voice almost a balm to the tattered parts of his mind.

“I was fortunate. Of the three Espada that outranked me, two preferred their own gender, while the third chose sleep over all else. But if things had been different… tell me, Renji-kun, would you have hated me if I were Claimed by Yammy and he forced me to hurt your Taichou?”

He reared back, staring down at her in pure horror at the scenes his mind created from that one question. She gazed up at him calmly, her gray eyes regarding him through dark lashes. Her expression was expectant, as if she was waiting for him to finish sorting something out before he spoke again.

“No! It wouldn’t have been…” he began and then realized what he was saying. Renji also understood the point she’d been trying to make. She finished his sentence for him instead.

“…my fault? Even if it was my hand that delivered the blows, my hand that shed his blood?”

Renji didn’t answer, and looked away. Unfortunately, his body’s position didn’t give him many other places to turn his eyes and it was either face her, or the slight hint of cleavage he could see peeking from the collar of her sweater. He could understand the point she tried to make. Karin had said something similar during her little lecture, but he hadn’t really considered the situation while picturing another in his place.

“Yammy’s purpose was to hurt Byakuya, to dominate him. Your body was a convenient tool for him to do so. You,” Nel declared softly, and reached out to tap his forehead with one long finger, “weren’t at home at the time. If something terrible happens in your house, and you’re not there, how can anyone blame you for it?”

It wasn’t a great analogy and Renji could make any number of arguments as far as his own culpability. If he thought long enough about her metaphor, he could make a case for assigning blame based on the fact that Szayel had been the one with the key to the place and had let Yammy in for the weekend. However, he understood her reasoning. She was asking whether or not he would blame her, hate her in the same way he blamed himself for what had happened. Logically, he ought to answer ‘no’, that in such a hypothetical situation she would be just as much a victim as the person she was forced to ‘punish’.

“It was still my house” he replied sadly.

“I hardly think it was ‘your’ house, since Szayel forcibly evicted you.”

He stared at her, trying to find some way around her assessment of his condition at the time it happened. Renji couldn’t quite come up with anything that would qualify as a ‘comeback’ to that.

A pair of hands, placed on both his cheeks, drew him back down and he felt her lips briefly capture his. The move startled him; it also abruptly reminded him of exactly how he was pressed against her, how her calf-length skirt had ridden up her thighs when she’d parted them to hold him closely. Renji told his hormones to crawl into a corner and die, that any response from him right now would be the epitome of inappropriate behavior. Instead, he refocused his attention on what Nel tried to tell him.

“I bear some blame as well, at least for part of what happened with Szayel. Last time…” and here she blushed furiously, “…I failed to make sure that my Claim was strong enough, and I failed to give you instructions that might have kept you from possibly revealing our… arrangement, with your actions. I didn’t think that something like this could happen.”

Well, Renji thought, at least this was something for which he could take responsibility… or credit, depending on one’s point of view. He kicked the tiny part of his psyche that wanted to do cartwheels at this admission into a deep hole and gritted his teeth.

“Nel-chan, you… that was my fault. I distracted you.”

The magenta mark across the bridge of her nose nearly disappeared as the color in her cheeks deepened. Again, she shook her head.

“No, Renji-kun. I could have stopped you. I knew we were nearly out of time. I let you distract me.”

This time, when she pulled him back down to kiss her, he didn’t put up a fight or try to extract himself from her embrace, but let her lead him wherever she wanted to go. Her destination involved a great deal of tongue. When she broke away, he had to gasp for air.

“Anger is a powerful force, Renji-kun. There is a terrible strength in it and it can easily turn on the one wielding it. Believe me when I tell you that it almost allowed you to break free of my Claim.”

The redhead gaped at that little bit of information and she reached up to stroke his hair, twirling a long section of it between her first finger and her thumb.

“If Karin-chan hadn’t been there to reinforce it with an order, you might have succeeded in killing him. Renji-kun, I know you hate Szayel, but please, take what I’m telling you seriously. When Nnoitra tore the masks from my fraccion, crippling them, his aim wasn’t to hurt them as much as it was to goad me into fighting him, to give me a reason to engage him in battle... and you know what? He succeeded. I lost the fight that resulted in this…” and here she reached up and touched the faint scar that ran along her nose, “…the moment I let my anger motivate me.”

She seemed pensive and distant as she said it. To Renji, it sounded as if she was berating herself for some moral failing, when in his mind, all she’d done was attempt to dish out some sorely-needed justice. She probably would have destroyed the pig too, if Szayel hadn’t been lying in wait for her with that machine of his… and then understanding dawned yet again.

Szayel would have never had the chance to trick her if she’d just walked away.

He didn’t like the lesson she was trying to impart to him, but at the moment, he wasn’t exactly in a position to argue with her. Not with her Claim surrounding him, not with her limbs curled around him in what was becoming an increasingly distracting posture and certainly not because her reiatsu was busy trying to find any and all chinks in the wall of guilt and pain he’d built around himself in the last few weeks. Half of him thought what she was doing was a waste of time and the other half wanted to lower his guard and invite her in if it meant he could let go of some small amount of hurt.

“Rukia-chan told me once that you were always much harder on yourself than you needed to be. I can see what she was talking about now.”

“Does she know… does she have any idea…?” Renji suddenly asked. Panic, dread and desperation in equal parts colored his words. Nel sighed softly, and gave his hair a quick tug, not hard enough to be painful, but strong enough to make him wince a little.

“No. And I won’t say anything” Nel replied softly. “There’s no reason for her to know, not unless Kuchiki-sama tells her himself someday. That will happen, by the way. Yoruichi’s still working out the details,” she told him. “I’ll just tell her… tell all of them, really, that you nearly threw off your Claim to go after Szayel when he inadvertently hurt you.”

Renji rested his head on her shoulder as she said this, taking a deep breath of the underlying perfume that he could detect in her hair, trying to ward off the sudden resentment he felt.

“Why make excuses for him? Both Karin and that pink freak said that he didn’t know what was going on, but how is that possible?” he spat out. Nel seemed about to say something, and then paused. He could see the corner of her mouth quirk up as she made up her mind and it was all the warning he got.

Nel undulated beneath him, pulling at his clothing, threatening to tear his uniform from him as her hands sought out his skin. She had his obi undone, his kosode in disarray and his hakama loosened before he could stop her. Meanwhile, she kissed him again and this time there was a hungry edge to it. He flailed a bit in her grasp and his left hand landed on her outer thigh, sliding upwards until he cupped the swell of her hip in his palm.

No underwear today either… Kami…

One of her hands fisted in his mane of hair, keeping him from breaking their extended bout of tonsil hockey. The other slid between the cotton pleats of his hakama, her fingers easing under the binding there. Renji stiffened as she palmed him, moving the cloth until there was enough room for her hand to slide against his shaft, fingertips ghosting over his tip before making their way back down to the root. He fumbled at her hip when she lifted her pelvis, tilting it upwards so that his hand had to travel along the warm crease where her thigh joined her body. The damned thing had a mind of its own, as Renji was certain he didn’t tell it to skim along the line of silky curls he found there. At least, he thought he hadn’t told it to do so. It was getting very hard to think with all of the blood rushing from his brain towards the part of his body currently under the care of Nel’s teasing fingers.

She left off kissing him and pulled his head back down against her neck, her lips close to the shell of his ear.

“You feel this, Renji-kun?”

There was no intelligent way to answer that, other than to nod weakly and gasp as her palm swirled over the head of his cock, spreading the moisture leaking from its tip all over. She did this a few times, until his hips jerked upwards and he shivered.

“Well, thanks to what is left of my Claim on you, so do I. I feel what you feel, whatever it is. Pain, pleasure, sorrow, happiness… everything I do to make you feel good or bad, I get to experience as well.”

Nel gently removed her hand from him and he swore that an actual whine escaped through his clenched teeth. The she moved her slightly sticky fingertips over his parted lips and like the stray dog he was, he caught one of them in his mouth. He tasted himself, bitter and salty as gray eyes met glazed brown ones. If he was panting and on edge, then she was as well. Renji took in her kiss-swollen lips with eyes still somewhat red from crying and her flushed cheeks, the blush extending well below the knitted collar of her sweater. Then she appeared to gather her wits and moved her leg up, trapping the hand beneath her skirt.

“From what Karin told you, Szayel felt nothing from your body while under Yammy’s orders. That means that you felt nothing, because you weren’t there to send anything to him via his Claim. From the moment I walked into this chamber, I knew how awful, how guilty, how despondent you were. You’re mine Renji-kun and it’s my task, my duty, to try to take away some of the pain, to get you to see that you’re not what you believe you are.”

She whispered this, imploring him to let go of at least a portion of the self-loathing coiled in the pit of his stomach. Renji hadn’t expected her to use her Claim as a means of demonstrating the other half of a Claimer/Claimed relationship, in order to try to absolve Szayel of some of the blame the redhead had laid at his doorstep. The problem was that, as he took in what the splash-back from his reaction to her skilled hands had done to her now, he had to wonder what had come across their link when he’d found out the awful truth, what she’d really sensed when his fist collided with the Seventh’s jaw. Then again, he recognized, he was sending her all sorts of mixed signals. Desire battled it out with despair as he lay trapped between those lovely, strong legs of hers, wanting forgiveness for a crime, one that he still considered his fault at some level, whether from her or from himself he still wasn’t sure. His fingers, squeezed tightly between their bodies and trapped just above a spot he greatly wanted to touch, twitched.

“Nel-chan… please… I want…”

I want to feel something other than disgust at myself, something other than pain… please, if that’s possible, if only for a little while, he silently implored her, unable to fully articulate what he wanted. Can you take just a little bit of it away?

Renji found himself flipped over onto his back; her speed and strength were greater than his at present. His clothing ended up scattered every which way when she was done, and he found his hands twisting in the sheets as her core settled against his swollen shaft. Her sweater ended up draped over the foot rail. She reached behind her and he heard the purr of a zipper. Nel pushed up a little to try to remove the thing, but it was Renji who sat up and tugged the skirt out from underneath her sword belt. He watched as she unbuckled it and set ‘Gamuza’ next to Zabimaru, sheaths touching, at the foot of the bed. Stretched out as she was and facing away from him, she still squawked in surprise as he grabbed her ankle and pulled it with him.

He lay back, tugging first her legs, then her hips as soon as he could grab them, into a position he’d once heard Hisagi brag about while he was well into his cups during a night out with the erstwhile and perpetually underfunded members of the Shinigami Men’s Association. Renji hadn’t actually believed him at the time. The whole thing sounded awkward and a little strange, a product of too much sake and too much time and too many daydreams on Hisagi’s part involving his poorly-concealed crush on Matsumoto-Fukutaichou.

Her inner thighs brushed his cheekbones and his mouth opened, tongue seeking out her center, lashing at her folds until he heard her cry out. Moving his hands beneath her legs, he brought his thumbs towards his jaw and through the patch of short curls tickling his chin. Sliding them along either side of her sex, he briefly used them to expose the entrance to her channel, which he promptly filled with a questing tongue. The shriek he earned was music to his ears. Then he moved his right thumb closer to the small bit of nerves he knew would get her to thrash against him, circling it, aided by her growing wetness and his saliva.

The hands that had brought him to attention earlier redoubled their efforts and she managed to distract him temporarily when her mouth joined the party. Renji moaned, the sound muffled by her slippery folds, as she took his shaft between her lips and let her tongue lavish attention on the tip. Then Nel decided to cut to the chase and swallowed him, taking him as far down her throat as she could, her body braced on one elbow and the fingers of the other hand coiled tightly around the base of his cock. Between the suction and the circling motion of her tongue, she soon had a wicked rhythm going. He matched it, one plunge of his tongue and a swipe of his thumb every time he felt her lips descend and her spread-out tresses sweep his belly and thighs.

Meanwhile, he gave himself up to her reiatsu, the energy snaking its way around him, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand straight up and his skin break out in goose bumps. The more he gave way to it, the more it seemed to blunt the abysmal emotions he’d grown so used to since the day of the Claim Meeting, rounding off the sharp edges that kept ripping him before he’d had a chance to heal.

This was bliss, Renji thought, and put some extra effort into making the woman above him writhe. She would moan around his shaft whenever he touched, or licked a sensitive spot and the vibrations were sheer torture. So was her taste, not quite as sweet as clover honey, but addicting nonetheless. Trickles ran down his chin, coated his tongue and small droplets collected in the hollow of his throat. He pulled her closer, held her hips a little higher and attacked her clitoris directly, flickering it relentlessly with his tongue, until the tremors in her frame warned him she was close. For that matter, Renji wasn’t all that far away from the edge either and every bob of her head dragged him perilously close to losing it completely. While he would have loved to let her mouth finish him off, they didn’t have the time for it.

He had to be Claimed, thoroughly this time and he needed her to get back to the Living World, to whatever safe place Yoruichi had chosen as a fortress for her people. Last time she’d left evidence of her visit; he couldn’t allow that to happen again. Tearing his mouth from her, he pulled her off of his aching cock and spun her around, so that she sat in his lap, straddling his hips. Hooking his forearm around the small of her back, he eased his shaft between her nether lips, seeking her slick entrance. Renji was a little startled when he felt himself slide inward a few inches and he ground his teeth together, choking down a few profane words. She was so damned hot inside and all he wanted to do was to get on with the act that would help ease the turmoil within him. He wrapped the other arm around her waist and looked up at her.

“Please, Nel-chan, please…” he begged.

She appeared utterly wanton, lips wet, flushed, eyes darkened to the color of a storm at sea, her glorious locks tangled and wild from bed-sport. Her chest rose and felt against his collarbone, evidence he’d caught her just before she’d reached her climax. Reaching up, he stroked the back of her neck, ran his fingers through the turquoise fall of her hair, gliding along the curved horn of her mask, until his fingers reached her mouth.

“Claim me.”

Renji never thought he’d ever beg for this; she’d always been the one to do the asking. Nel’s answer was to slam her hips down, taking him all the way in and to kiss him equally as fiercely. She swallowed his cry, forcing his mouth open with her tongue. His large hands gripped her bottom and he helped her maintain the ferocious pace she set, riding him as if her life depended on it. Her passage tightened each time she rose and Renji had to fight not to cum on the spot as her reiatsu cascaded down his throat, until it was all he could do to breathe. The rush of it rendered him unable to do anything but take it in, letting it swamp him the way a boat would succumb to a too-large wave.

It overwhelmed him, banishing the hatred he’d had for his weakness, the shame he’d felt, the guilt for hurting another and even though it was temporary, her reiatsu granted him some badly-needed peace. There was no room in his psyche, his body or his mind for both Nel’s energy and his demons and so he allowed her to banish them, to wash them away and replace them with something just as powerful. His orgasm was entirely up to her this time and he gave up any sense of control over that as well. Renji’s reward, when it came, when he came, was to shatter into a thousand tiny pieces, unraveling, throbbing up into the shuddering body above him.

The force of her Claim left him gasping into her mouth. His cock was quite happy with the shivering, furnace-hot flesh milking him and he wrapped his arms around her partly to keep himself upright. When he felt her reiatsu recede, the excess trickling away, he let his head rest against her shoulder.

“Renji-kun, I left my purse here the last time, by mistake.”

Nel whispered this, shakily, into his ear and he nodded, gathering her up and pressing as close as he could get.

“I burned it before Karin or Szayel could see it. Don’t worry,” he replied and he felt her relax a little. “There’s no evidence.”

“Do you have any information to pass on or anything you think could make a difference?”

She asked the question between soft kisses and with a groan, he let himself revel in it, in her, in the fact that for the first time in weeks, he felt something other than pain.

“Not really. The Swarm, when it does show up, throws itself against the Net and fries to a crisp. Aizen mixes up the Espada patrol areas as well. There’s some variation as to whether it’s inside or outside of the Net, and which Espada gets what portion of the perimeter. Szayel also pulled back staff from the towers and the surveillance system is fully automated now. He said he’d rather have the Division’s members doing something useful, trying to figure out more about the Swarm, rather than acting as lookouts.”

Nel stiffened in his arms and he heard ‘Oh, I forgot!’ before she scrambled off of his lap. The cool air hitting still-wet and very sensitive parts of his body made him inhale sharply and cringe, pulling what turned out to be her discarded woolen skirt over his lap.

He watched her scamper over to what looked like a plain, white cardboard box. Renji remembered the ‘thud’ he’d first heard when she entered their little Kido-constructed room and figured that she’d dropped it on the one crumpled corner. The former Espada ‘shooed’ him back and she sat down on the mattress, pulling the box between them.

“I wanted to come here immediately, but Yoruichi thought it would be too dangerous to do so, at least until she did some scouting to see if there was any news about you. She made at least two trips, but there wasn’t any ‘scuttlebutt’ as she calls it, or rumors or… so she thought a trip to Karin was in order. That was yesterday. I guess she told Yoruichi what you told me, and Yoruichi also told me some things you didn’t.”

She undid the closing flap on the box and a burst of warmth escaped the interior. Nel fished out a large, wrapped package, two plain paper cups and a thermos. He could feel the Kido seal as it dissipated, now that she’d opened the lid. Carefully unwrapping, the package, Nel revealed three different kinds of taiyaki, as hot as if they’d just been taken from the waffle grill.

“You mentioned ‘fried’ and I remembered that I asked Hachi to get these for you. Karin told Yoruichi that you weren’t really eating anything, until she threatened you. So I asked her what you liked and she said she remembered that you liked taiyaki. There are some savory ones and some sweet ones… they had a few different kinds so Hachi bought an assortment from the vendor down the street.”

Was it his imagination, or was he drooling? He stared down at the food until a sudden constriction on his newly-refreshed Claim made him catch his breath. Renji found her actually glaring at him crossly.

“I’m not leaving until you eat at least four of these and drink some tea. You’re not allowed to hurt yourself any more, do you hear me, Abarai Renji?”

The short amount of time they had left involved Renji stuffing his face with hot, crispy, fish-shaped waffles, gulping down cups of strong green tea and listening to the amended commands Nel gave him. She searched around for her clothing, an act that was fast becoming an odd tradition with the two of them, dressing as she spoke.

He wasn’t allowed to touch Szayel again, unless Szayel attacked him first. Renji interpreted ‘attack’ as something physical and Nel concurred. The same was true for any ‘experiments’ Szayel might suggest. He pointed out, between bites, that the scientist hadn’t tried anything in the last three years, not since Renji had first let the Seventh know about the rules he had to follow.

He was to eat regular, proper meals, take care of himself, get enough sleep and above all, keep away from both Yammy and, to Renji’s unhappiness, his former Taichou. While Karin had promised to keep the redhead out of the hands of the Tenth with what little influence she had through Grimmjow, Nel didn’t feel all that confident about Karin’s ability to keep the bastard at bay. That secretly relieved the former Fukutaichou; at least he wouldn’t have to stare into the eyes of the man his body had hurt. Eventually, if Yoruichi’s little band of escapees ever miraculously brought about Aizen’s downfall, he would have to deal with Kuchiki Byakuya and the horrors that Yammy inflicted on the both of them.

Until then, he was to stop beating himself up as well. Renji wasn’t sure she could order him what to feel, but he assumed that pertained to anything tangible he might try to do as far as penance. His body, in contrast, decided to take her order to eat quite literally. He’d burned off the miso soup he’d had for breakfast more than a few hours ago and his stomach proceeded to snarl at him until he’d tossed at least a few tayaki back as a peace offering to it.

He’d nearly finished the tea, devoured all of the red bean paste and chicken taiyaki and had two of the custard-filled ones left when the iridescent walls around them flared scarlet. Renji set them aside, swallowed the last of the liquid in the thermos, and wiped any crumbs from his face. Screwing the lid back on to the container, he stood and pressed it into Nel’s hands.

“I can take care of the cardboard. That will get us into trouble, though,” he said quietly. She took it carefully and gingerly tucked it under her arm. Nel placed her palm on the spot where the tattoos spanning his chest met, warm fingers circling the point.

“You’re so strong, Renji-kun. I didn’t realize just how powerful you really were.”

There was that strange light in her eyes again as she stared at him, the same feral, Hollow-like hunger he’d seen last time, when she’d reminded him what she really was with torn clothing and some minor damage to his epidermis. What worried him was that he was beginning to respond to it and this time, he was stark naked and unable to hide anything. He chose to pull her close, kiss her briefly and take one last deep breath of her perfume, before he gently pushed her away.

“Go, before you’re caught. I’ll be alright” he assured her. Nel bit her lip, then turned on her heel and moved swiftly to one of the walls. She cast one last, unreadable look his way before she pressed her palm to the Kido barrier and hastened into the blackness beyond the door.

When it slid closed, Renji wasted no time. By the time the walls started to close in around him, he’d managed to get his hakama, if not the bindings that were supposed to be beneath it and shrugged his kosode and the under tunic back on. He’d just managed to tie everything together with his obi before the wall hit him, crackling through his nervous system. He had to grab the bedstead for balance. The two remaining taiyaki beckoned to him, not entirely due to Nel’s orders, and he wolfed them down as best he could before he had to turn around and face Karin. He handed the dark-haired woman the empty taiyaki box, saying nothing and hoping she got the message. She gave it the evil eye, folded it up and handed it to Nemu, who promptly used Kido to turn it to ash.

Later that evening, Renji took his first real trip in weeks to his inner world. The redhead told himself that he shouldn’t have been surprised at the damage to the place. The carved-stone city, half-hidden by vibrant green jungle vegetation and vines, was silent, building stones scattered by the trauma both done to him and done by his own actions. It didn’t take him long to find Zabimaru, the great white Nue sitting hunched over on a pile of rocks that, prior to his mental breakdown, had been a lovely statue of a dancing goddess. The beast’s tail hissed unhappily at him, draping itself over the rubble in what Renji thought was a dejected pout.

You need a keeper, you ungrateful jackass…

A jackasssss would be sssmarrter than thissss….

Renji supposed he had that coming. Therefore, he quietly agreed with his blade and set about the job of restoring his inner world, a somewhat thankless task considering he’d been the one to inflict some of the worst damage.

Nel was right; he hadn’t truly been at fault for what had happened and as her demonstration had revealed, Szayel’s worst crime as far as that was concerned was negligence and hiding what had happened from Karin. The more he thought about ways of making Yammy pay for what he’d been allowed to do, the happier Renji felt.

Karin was right; if he died, then that fuck-stick Yammy would win.

Finally, Zabimaru was right. A dead arm couldn’t strike a blow for a just revenge, and revenge was very much on Renji’s mind. He was in the middle of setting one stone back on top of another when he felt something coiling around his calf. Crouching, he was aware of the Baboon King leaning against him, red eyes closed and fangs hidden. The serpent’s head popped up to rest on his knee, golden eyes blinking up at him. Renji let himself relax against Zabimaru’s bulk, fingers reaching behind him to bury his nails in snow-white fur. He absently scratched the beast’s back, the action calming him as well as his blade.

Sorry, guys. I owe you an apology.

You ssssssertainly do…

You also owe us an explanation… for that…

The Baboon King transferred his weight to one fist and pointed at something sprouting in what had once been a lushly-overgrown courtyard. The redhead squinted at it before recognition set in. He could only hope that the Baboon King wouldn’t find anything in the wreckage to fling at his head about his lack of a plausible answer.

Five days later, Renji found himself moving a set of storage shelves from one side of Laboratory 12 to the opposite wall. The shelves were composed, he guessed from their weight, of lead. One of the researchers needed everything shifted, just in case his project had any unintended, pyroclastic side effects. Szayel had given the project a green light and Renji had resigned himself to not only prepping for the disaster-in-the-making, but also cleaning up afterwards. He hoped that whatever the outcome, he wouldn’t have to re-tile and re-grout the lab when the thing was over.

As he wrestled the last cabinet into place, he heard the door open behind him. It was, in all likelihood, the researcher in question, back with an amended diagram on how he wanted the tables positioned, so he waited for instructions.

“Ji-ji?”

Renji went stock still as a small, feminine voice piped up hesitantly. The fear he could hear in it tore at him, but he forced himself to calm down, to take a deep breath. Kami, it had been nearly a month since he’d seen either of them.

He turned around slowly, careful to make no sudden moves, and found Vindula peeking around the half-open door at him. She didn’t look quite sure of him, so he eased himself down to the floor, sitting cross-legged with his hands folded in his lap.

“’Dula-chan. How are you, sweetie?” he asked, taking in her wary posture, how nervous she seemed as she took another step into the room.

“’Tou-san said you’d been really sick. Are you better now?”

She hadn’t let go of the door yet, but she didn’t seem ready to bolt either. Renji took another deep breath, and then tried to relax and put a small smile on his face.

“Yeah, mostly. I’m… I’m sorry if I scared you. I wasn’t being myself.”

The next minute seemed like an eternity as he saw the little girl try to decide if her ‘Ji-ji’ was back to normal. Then the redhead found his arms full of a small squirming child, his long red mane buffeted by the breeze from her furiously beating wings. Little fists gripped the front of his uniform and large, golden eyes looked up at him pleadingly as she crawled into his lap.

“You gotta be better! You can’t be sick ever again! Rin-san’s really bad at reading stories an’ he keeps fainting when we go to the park, ‘specially when I land on him. He doesn’ like being pretend prey. He doesn’t make good soup either. ‘Bisara says Rin can’t tell the difference between a soup pot ‘anna bucket a’ laundry water…”

He couldn’t help it. Renji choked and wrapped his arms around his charge, mindful of the gossamer wings, placing a kiss against the child’s temple and stroking her messy black curls. Someone hadn’t put her hair up into its usual pigtails, probably because that someone couldn’t be bothered to try to catch her long enough to take care of it. Hot, salty liquid spilled from the corners of his eyes and he buried his face against her tousled locks.

“I’m so sorry, ‘Dula-chan. I didn’t mean to frighten you” he sniffed.

“Are you done bein’ scary? Otou-san says it’s okay to be around you now.”

Renji looked up to see Abisara slide through the opening between the door and the frame, just as hesitant as Vindula had been. His green eyes also contained a skeptical glint missing from his little sister’s expression. That gave Renji some pause; he had no idea what Abisara thought of all of this, since he hadn’t been with his sister and hadn’t seen the violent results of the fight between their caregiver and their father.

The door swung wider, and Renji saw Szayel standing there, the Espada watching him with a chilly expression that told the redhead he was non-too-pleased to have to deal with this. Then the pink freak sighed and looked down at his son.

“He’s fine, Abisara. Go on.”

Abisara nodded at his sire, and trotted up to Renji, trying hard not to show that he was in just as big a hurry to see him as his sister. Renji swept the boy up with his free arm and settled him on the other side of his lap, closing his eyes and pressing a small kiss to the top of his other charge’s head. Abisara gave him a slightly annoyed look, but didn’t pull away. Rather, he tucked his head under Renji’s chin and closed his eyes, ignoring the tears leaking down the Shinigami’s cheeks.

Szayel cleared his throat and three pairs of eyes met his stern gaze.

“As I said, children, your father made a serious mistake and as a result, your ‘Ji-ji’ became… unwell, particularly in the head, which was doubly bothersome as he doesn’t have all that much up there to spare. The other members of this Division and I worked to make sure he recovered from my error in judgment. Now that he’s fully-functional again, he can resume his duties as your caregiver, especially since Tsubokura Rin will need a week of administrative leave and some bed rest. You can finish setting this place up tomorrow, Abarai. I have a few errands for you to run and the twins could use some fresh air. The shopping list is with the front desk.”

Szayel’s eyes held a warning in them and Renji understood what wasn’t being said. The scientist’s little speech was as close as he would get to a formal apology. Nevertheless, with the twins in his arms again, the redhead was in the mood to be, if not entirely forgiving, at least somewhat conciliatory. When Szayel had slithered out from under his Claim-frozen form, his first action hadn’t been to strike at Renji. It had been to grab his child and get her to safety. He couldn’t fault the guy for that choice. He would have done the same.

“Dinner will be promptly at six-o-clock. Your mother told me to let you know.”

Then Szayel turned and left, sending Renji one last sharp glance before he disappeared.

“I missed you, ‘Ji-ji. It wasn’t very fun without you,” Abisara said somberly. Up close, Renji could see how much worry the little boy was trying to hide and that brought on another round of tears. Chiding himself for blubbering in front of the kids, he was about to reach up and wipe them away with the back of one hand when a piece of what felt like cotton dabbed at his cheek. Looking down, he saw Vindula pull back, a wad of white cloth clutched in her little hand. It took him a second to remember where she might have gotten such a thing, until a bit of slightly faded blue and yellow on the edge jogged his memory. He’d forgotten that she carried it everywhere these days.

“A lady never cries in public, ‘cause it makes everyone sad. That’s what the Silk Prince said.”

“So he did,” replied Renji, voice thick. “But sometimes, adults cry when they’re happy too, and I’m very, very happy to see you both again!”

“Grown-ups are silly…” Abisara declared, but cuddled into the crook of Renji’s arm readily enough. Vindula contented herself with reciting a list to her guardian of everything they’d put poor Rin through in the last several weeks.

Renji was going to have to send flowers or something to the guy, as a get well gift. He hoped the 4th Division wouldn’t skimp on Rin’s anti-anxiety medication either. Kami knew the man had earned it.

The last few minutes stilled an unresolved ache in his chest and he leaned back against the edge of the storage shelf, relief flooding through his body and soul. The position wasn’t particularly comfortable and his new orders for the afternoon wouldn’t wait forever, but at the moment, all he wanted was to bask in the fact that what had been taken from him had just been restored. This would go a long way towards repairing the damage done to his inner world over the last month. At least, it might, if he could figure out why the central courtyard of Zabimaru’s temple ruins now hosted a stand of fragrant meadow grass, growing out of a patch of bone-white sand.

To be continued...
- 6
- 7
- 8
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Consolation Prize (of Victory)