Pale Fire: A Bleach Fanfiction

Chapter twenty-three: Friendship

Chapter twenty-three: Friendship.

After Akari blacked out, Fang left without another word. Grimmjow grabbed his zanpakuto back from Reina’s grasp. Then he left as well.

Gin turned to Ulquiorra. His grin dropped. “Clean her up, will you?”

Ulquiorra nodded and as Gin left, Ulquiorra picked Akari up and cradled her. Her presence was strange and new to him and he couldn’t figure out when he had seen her face.

He took her to her room and into her bathroom. He got a cloth and wiped the blood off her garments. As he proceeded to take off her jacket, he realized that her hood was attached to her jacket. As he was about to take her hood off, strands of red hair came into view. Akari suddenly grasped Ulquiorra’s hand. She moaned.

“Ulquiorra, don’t take my hood or mask off,” she groaned.

“I won’t,” Ulquiorra said. There was a chair in the bathroom which he helped place Akari on. She had enough strength to remove her clothes and to wash herself in the bathtub. “Take your clothes off and wash yourself. I’ll go get you new clothes and I’ll place them on your bed, along with your new hood and mask. I will then wait outside your room until you tell me when I can come back in. Whatever I do, I’ll make sure I won’t look at you without your mask on.”

He then closed the door behind him. Ulquiorra thought hard. What did Aojirohonō-sama have to hide underneath that mask? And if it was any other person, he wouldn’t have fired that cero at Fang. But he felt as though he had to protect Akari and that she received her injuries because him. Why had he stopped and not moved when Grimmjow said that he had fallen in love with her? Questions flowed endlessly through his mind. Am I her friend? He thought. Impossible, she was merely answering his questions. Why does she keep telling him to call her Akari? She tells everyone else to address her by her last name, Aojirohonō-sama. What does falling in love mean? What did Grimmjow know that he didn’t?

Most of all, the question that he thought about the most: Is Aojirohonō-sama my friend?

He went and took Reina’s new clothes and proceeded to her room. As he stepped inside, Akari sat on the couch, with a huge blanket wrapped around her face and body.

“I have your new clothes,” he said.

Akari nodded but didn’t say anything. Ulquiorra placed her new garments on her bed. “How are your injuries?”

“They have healed. Fang didn’t put much effort into it. But still, I was defeated,” Akari said in a soft voice, as though she was crying. Ulquiorra would never imagine someone like her cry. Ulquiorra never knew what to do when people were too happy or too sad. He didn’t know how to react when things like this happen. So what he always did was be unemotional.

“You were just caught off guard,” he said.

“No I wasn’t. I knew she was behind me before she attacked me. But I was so blinded with my anger for Grimmjow. Didn’t he anger you with what he said? I thought I changed, that I wasn’t the girl who got angry at everything.” Ulquiorra didn’t know what to say next.

“He is trash. When people are like trash, what they say goes unnoticed by me and it is insubstantial for me to react.”

“What about Fang? Do you think she’s trash?” Akari asked with a small voice.

“Fang is incredibly powerful. She attacks without mercy which is Hollow-like.  I don’t call people that are stronger than I am trash,” Ulquiorra replied.

“You must think I’m trash then,” she scoffed.

“I don’t. Our strength is near to equal and you have high intellect. You think about things before you act.”