Before we begin...

It's been exactly a year since Shrapnel ended. This story is basically a broken mirror of Ulquiorra. It carries bits and pieces of his past, present, and future.

Okay, that just now was a load of bull. Roughly translated, it means this story involves a lot of stream-of-consciousness and flashbacks. To understand some of the finer details, I recommend you read the prequel Shrapnel first.

Edit: I've decided to change this into a twoshot. There's going to be one more chapter on Grimmjow's past, so tell me what you think.

Warning: Spoilers for chapters 348 and onward. And a bit of rambling.

Note

"normal" - English

"italicized" - German

italicized - Thought

Ulquiorra

A black blade hovered over his throat.

His eyes were closed and he couldn't open them. He had no choice but to listen. He heard urgent yelling, a shriek, and, most of all, he heard the muted mumbling of a broken radio.

Help her. Help her. Help her.

The radio grew louder.

"Kurosaki-kun!"

Help—

He needed to break the radio.

Ulquiorra seized a blade and aimed for the horned one.

"Oy."

Ulquiorra sat alone at the table, the long table Aizen-sama reserved for their usual meetings. He sat, cradling one eerie-green eye in his hand, replaying what had happened in the human world, reflecting on what his eye, what he had seen.

"Oy!"

Grimmjow slammed his hand on the table.

Ulquiorra waited, but the seconds dragged on until the echoing thud was long-gone.

"If you have nothing to say, then don't speak to me in the first place."

Grimmjow's scowl darkened. He removed his hand and shoved it into his pocket. "Whatever," he mumbled.

He spat on the ground.

Ulquiorra stood up, no longer wishing to stay in the same room where a pale glob of spit glimmered in his sight.

"You—"

The footsteps came to a halt.

"Do you…"

Ulquiorra's brow creased. Since when did he become this impatient? Waiting for Grimmjow to gather his meager jumble of thoughts was an everyday activity.

Grimmjow gritted his teeth and looked away. This was a first. He always made sure to look a person in the eye when he spoke. It was a simplistic display of dominance.

"Do you," he breathed out. "Do you remember?"

Ulquiorra opened his hand. He had crushed his own eye without noticing.

No matter. He'd just regenerate it later.

The mask shattered.

He collapsed onto the ground and the woman rushed to his side, crying out in that grating, pitiful voice.

Ulquiorra glanced at her. She was crying, her eyes, her attention, everything devoted to that Kurosaki boy.

He waited for her to whip up her power, but before she could even move, there was a burst of energy. The Kurosaki boy returned to normal, his hole gone without a trace.

Ulquiorra let his face slip without even realizing, "High-speed…regeneration?"

The hole that could never be filled was gone.

Aizen-sama, is this the answer you were looking for?

Ulquiorra remembered everything.

He remembered the war, he remembered the platoon that came and went, he remembered each and every face he killed and every face he let die.

He remembered being a Nazi German when his paternal great-grandmother was a Jew.

He remembered the orphanage he grew up in and the Jewish street he lived on. He remembered the matron and her harelip. The devil's child, she called him.

"He doesn't cry, he doesn't speak," she insisted, shaking her head, distressed. "And-and have you ever touched him?" She shuddered. "Ice-cold, I tell you. Like I'm hugging a corpse! It's disgusting."

The other children heard her and soon they were all calling him that in a sing-song voice.

"Devil's child, devil's child, why are you here with us?"

If he had a place to go to, he would go there.

"'Cuz I remember," Grimmjow said with a hiccup.

He was drunk. Even hollows could get drunk if they so desired. Perhaps it made them feel a little warmer, a little more in touch with their lost half.

"I remember everythin', fu—cker," he drawled. "You were an ass even then, though you're a bigger ass now. I remember everyone, I remember me, them, you, Ai—and Gin. Shit! I can't believe that bastard screwed me over like that. Fuckin' shinigamis havin' nothin' better to do than—"

Ulquiorra took a sip. He preferred Aizen-sama's tea.

Grimmjow slammed his glass on the table, buried his face in one arm.

"I know I'm not supposed to remember. Not everythin'. Cuz bein' a hollow does that to you, it screws around with your head until you lose all sense of self, right?"

His favorite was Earl Grey, he recalled.

"It wasn't so numb when I was…before. Thought it might be better like this."

Ulquiorra gazed at the content inside his tinted glass. At a certain angle, it was black and deep and round.

Grimmjow mussed his hair with one large hand.

"So keep your hands off my prey, 'quiorra. He—" He burped. "When I'm fightin' him, feels different. Feels like… like when I was on the battlefield—the real battlefield. When I got to differ-en-ti—" he spoke haltingly, "fuck it… when I got to separate 'em, you know. Got to separate what I'm feelin' inside."

His hand unconsciously reached for his stomach.

Ulquiorra poured himself another drink.

Her name was Adele.

He knew her face because the day she was dropped off, she was so sure. With a red, glowing face, she kept telling the other children her mother would come back, repeated it like a chant, and refused to budge from the doorstep.

For a week, she would silently cry on the doorstep each night until she was bedridden with the flu.

The matron was seeing a man and inexplicably sent him in with a wet towel in her stead. Ulquiorra treaded carefully across the groaning floorboards. The dying candlelight shied away from him and flickered against the girl's face. She was the one lying on the bed and yet she seemed more alive than he could ever be. She was ruddy and sun-kissed, and her hair so coarse, so different from his own fine hair.

He dipped the towel in the bowl and laid it across her forehead. She squirmed and the towel slipped off. It was already warm, inflamed by her own temperature.

Ulquiorra lifted his hand and pressed his bare skin against her.

She stirred at first but gave a little sigh. She didn't move for the rest of the night.

Gin loved to tease the Arrancars.

After all, he'd been there by Aizen-sama's side at each "recruitment." He knew all their dirty, little secrets, every hole in their armor, and he delighted in tasting their unease every time he stood in the same room.

Grimmjow was his favorite target because his volatile reactions were the most amusing. Gin was especially merciless the time when Grimmjow lost his arm.

"Already miss your six?" Gin crowed. "I could always do a lil' favor. Maybe even stamp ya another one."

"Fuck off!" Grimmjow snarled.

He swung around but with only one arm, he almost lost his balance.

"Never thought I'd see ya lose to Luppi," Gin sniggered. "Sure makes me think o' old, better times."

Ulquiorra watched Grimmjow quake from behind. As he walked past him, Ulquiorra recognized a certain habit, something Grimmjow did usually in Aizen-sama's presence. Whenever he was helpless.

Grind.

"Ulquiorra!"

Protected by the shade, he sat beneath a tree on a hill, reading a book by a recent politician on the rise. After all, he now approached an age when he should be thinking about his future.

Adele plopped down beside him and turned her back to him expectantly.

"Braid my hair," she ordered. "Heinz stole my ribbon again."

He put down his book and gathered her unruly hair, while Adele griped about Heinz and his friends as usual, especially Heinz.

"Such a child! Always teasing me, always taking my stuff, sometimes I really wish he was dead!"

He pulled her hair up.

"No, not like that!" she scolded, slapping his hand. "I want it in pigtails like my mo—"

Her breath caught in her throat. She looked down at the grass. He took no notice, and separated her hair into two, then three, and continued braiding. He yanked his hand back the second his finger accidentally brushed against her neck.

Adele grabbed his wrist. She bit her tongue but gave him a small smile.

"It's okay," she said.

The tension in his shoulders slowly seeped out.

"It's okay."

"Will you look at this?"

A swarthy blond boy marched up the hill, flanked by two other boys. Johan, Jakob, and Heinz. He remembered them and would remember them always.

"Adele Eckstein, aren't you too old for pigtails now? Unless you really think that's going to impress him."

Heinz hated him. It was painfully obvious that he harbored a crush on Adele and was too stupid to portray it properly. He was also too scared to vent his jealous anger on Ulquiorra, so he fought for Adele's attention through petty tricks.

Adele stood up, wearing a lofty expression. "I just might want that. Ulquiorra's always been there for me, you know? Now if you're done, why don't you go away and leave us alone?"

Heinz opened his mouth in mock surprise. "What do you think, Johan? You think I should just go away?"

"I don't know, Heinz, the devil's child could curse you!" Johan laughed.

"Leave Ulquiorra alone," Adele shouted. She placed her hands on her hip. "He's better than all of you! He's smarter, he's faster, he's, he's better-looking, he's—"

Heinz's eyes flashed. He turned redder as Adele listed off the ways Ulquiorra outstripped them, but an ugly smile gradually unfolded.

"Jakob, you have that with you, don't you?"

Jakob gave him a wary glance. "You sure about this?"

"Are you going to give it to me or not?"

Jakob drew something from his pocket. It flashed in the bright sunlight. Heinz seized it.

Ulquiorra leaped to his feet, eyes alert.

"Always wanted to do this," Heinz breathed. He was now panting, despite having stood still for the last ten minutes. "Maybe I should use it on your face. No one's gonna say anything if I scar the face of a devil."

Adele shrieked when Heinz lunged. Ulquiorra evaded his swipe.

"What've you been doing to Adele?" Heinz growled. "What lies are you feeding her?"

"Stop! Stop it!"

Ulquiorra slid past Heinz's jab and the boy tripped over Ulquiorra's foot. With a yell of frustration, Heinz started swinging the knife wildly.

"You're no better than me!" he yelled, spittle flying.

The knife snipped the end of Ulquiorra's hair.

"Just because you're not Jewish, you think you're better than me? I'm the one with blond hair! I'm the one with blue eyes! I'm the one Adele should—"

"Heinz, that's enough!" Johan shouted.

Ulquiorra smacked Heinz's wrist and the knife buried into the tree. Eyes burning, Heinz charged toward it, yanked the knife as hard as he could. Ulquiorra shot forward. Grabbed the knife the second Heinz loosened it from the bark and changed its direction midair.

Right for Heinz's baby-blue eye.

There was a terrible howl. Johan and Jakob stared in horror, Johan dropped to Heinz's side as the boy screamed and shrieked. Face sickly white, Jakob ran to get someone.

Ulquiorra plucked the eye from the blade.

If Heinz was too blind to see that Adele returned his affections, why should he keep his eyes in the first place?

The eyeball sat innocuously on his palm. It was too red for him to see the iris.

Ulquiorra heard a strange high-pitched noise.

Behind him, Adele trembled on the ground. The bitter stench of urine filled his nostrils. He gave her a hand to pull her up, Heinz's eye still pressed against his flesh.

Adele's eyes bugged out. She leaned over and retched.

"No!" she choked.

"Get away from me!" she cried.

"Don't touch me!" she screamed.

Grimmjow gave a long, obnoxious burp.

His eyes were a little red-rimmed and when he pointed at Ulquiorra with his glass, his hand was slightly shaking.

"Bet you never tasted a woman," he said. He widened his eyes. "Holy shit, that means you died a fucking virgin!"

He howled with laughter and pounded his fist against the wall, like it was the most hilarious thing he ever heard.

"I know you certainly didn't die one," Ulquiorra replied.

Grimmjow instantly sobered up.

Johan, Jakob, and Heinz.

Two years later, Johan was an apprentice to a baker, Jakob a butcher, and one-eyed Heinz a shoe-cobbler. He remembered them and would remember them always.

They were living on the same street as the orphanage when Ulquiorra brought his men to purge the Jews.

Kurosaki Ichigo frustrated him until the end.

He was always too wide-eyed, too determined. Even during Ulquiorra's last moments, he had to endure Kurosaki's blathering about fairness and botched-up identity. It was painful.

Wasn't the boy aware of his fate? Didn't he know he himself had been engineered and tethered by Aizen-sama from the very beginning?

He piqued Ulquiorra's interest in the first place by how not real he seemed. Kurosaki was a fake, but that wasn't important. Kurosaki had been successful because he had been created for that very purpose.

Besides, the one who frustrated Ulquiorra the most wasn't him.

Ulquiorra turned around.

The woman was watching him. She was watching him again with those eyes. In this sterile desert, he breathed in a floral scent. She'd been suffocating him with her scent from the moment she stepped in here.

He lifted his hand. He held it in her direction and waited for the screams to begin.

"Your hands are wonderful."

He reached out for her, but she didn't recoil in terror.

"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust…in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection into eternal life."

Where did those words come from?

She stared at his outstretched fingers, but her eyes were just wide with surprise, nothing else.

He asked, "Do I frighten you, woman?"

She didn't answer immediately, but she didn't hesitate either. With eyes filled with sadness and hope, she finally answered,

"No, you don't."

"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust…in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection into eternal life."

He remembered now.

It was the Bible.