Receiving And Bearing

Ulquiorra Schiffer, not that he had been particularly interested in looking for him (only slightly off-put by the reports that he’d gotten into a fight with Grimmjow again), found the Vaizard prisoner by chance while walking Las Noches. Kurosaki Ichigo was leaning against a wall in the hallway, clammy forehead pressed against the smooth, cool tiles—Ulquiorra could see the sweat and the paleness of the boy’s brow from where he was).



Kurosaki’s issued clothing was rumpled, spotted with drops and splashes of blood, shoulders betraying his ill mood, shaking and slumped. Yet more blood was drying at his neck, a wound on his broad forehead starting to scab unattractively. Ulquiorra stepped up to the boy, expression cool and patient. If he stared long enough, then the boy would tell him what had occurred recently that had left him so unsightly.



Kurosaki always did break down, if one simply stared long enough.



At length, the prisoner sighed and looked down at Ulquiorra as he approached on light steps, sickly face filled with grim amusement. Ulquiorra could hardly see what was amusing about the situation, standing around looking vulnerable and reeking of sweat and blood. One would think he actively tried to draw out the less than savory components of Hueco Mundo.



“What?” Ichigo finally snapped as predicted, sliding off of the wall in an attempt to move past Ulquiorra, favoring one of his sides slightly with a hand clutching at his chest—not tightly, just there. He had a broken rib, perhaps, which would explain the off appearance and the shaking, shallow breathing. Ulquiorra watched him shuffle past, slit pupils on the back of Ichigo’s neck. The welts from the other day were finally faded, the Arrancar mentally observed. Halfway down the hall, the boy stopped moving. He turned to glower at Ulquiorra, who was still staring because the stare continued to work.



“Accidentally picked a fight with someone I didn’t mean to. Don’t worry about it, everyone’s alive and it’s still none of your damn business.”



“It was Grimmjow Jaegerjaques,” Ulquiorra observed the obvious for the second time in so many days, voice stable and without any accusational inflections. “I’ll ask you for the details when and if you’re willing to give them, Kurosaki Ichigo. Lord Aizen still desires you to have some level of comfort. This entire situation does not appear as if it has been very comforting to you.”



“I’ll be willing to give details, uh. About never.”



Ichigo shook his shaggy head at the Arrancar before heading in the direction of his rather unnecessarily large living quarters. It was likely, Ulquiorra thought, that he went to the bed that was the boy’s typical refuge and had been for the better part of three years. He never did understand the boy’s predilection for sleep when upset about something—perhaps he thought it would lessen the time he would have to remain under metaphorical lock and key. Perhaps at times it was more convenient for a creature like Kurosaki Ichigo to simply choose whimpering nightmares to consciousness.



He’d heard the noises the boy made in his sleep.



Around three hours later, sufficient time for one of Kurosaki’s naps, Ulquiorra entered the boy’s bedroom without knocking and without warning. He found Kurosaki sulking pathetically in a red plush chair in his bedchamber, one leg on the ottoman in front of him, still with taxed breathing. As expected. Kurosaki sniffed in mild surprise and looked away when he spotted Ulquiorra approaching from the doorway, expression upset and immature; weakly human. Also as expected. Ulquiorra walked over to him, setting a small bag of medical supplies on the oriental carpet below and sliding onto the chair’s ottoman next to the long leg that was propped there.



There were no greetings exchanged. It would have been curious if there had been. Kurosaki simply shook his bright head, not immediately kicking the Arrancar out, giving Ulquiorra all the impetus he needed to begin whatever treatments were necessary. He pulled some cotton balls and swabs out of the bag, as well as a bottle of clear, astringent liquid which made Kurosaki’s nose wrinkle and his head jerk away; witch hazel and alcohol. There were other things mixed in as well, no doubt. More than likely, things for healing boiled and refined by Szayel Aporro; things Kurosaki would surely not appreciate being used on his body.



Ulquiorra simply wouldn’t make note of it.



Ulquiorra wet a small puff with the clear liquid, fumes filling the air. He pressed it against the wound on Kurosaki’s abused forehead, cotton staining roseate as the dried blood seeped into it. Ulquiorra brushed the wound up and down, hands gentle and quick and deft. The Vaizard only jumped away momentarily, biting his lower lip from the cold and the sting. It was telling, that he would deign to so easily allow Ulquiorra Schiffer to touch him so intimately. If you fed the beaten dog enough times, it would come to the door despite itself, he supposed.



Even Kurosaki must have realized the importance of proper care.



“Ah,” he whined, he winced. “I’m just fucking fine. It’s only a scratch and I really don’t need someone like you to take care of me like I’m some five year old ki—ow. Ouch! Stop!”



“Don’t be a child.”



Ulquiorra discarded the first puff into a small, translucent bag. He moistened a second and continued to work at the cuts, scrapes and bruises, slowly working down the raw-looking parallel striations across the boy’s strong-featured face.



“I’m attending to you personally because you never allow yourself proper medical care unless it’s brought to you and then forced upon you. I will not allow you to mistreat your health as if you don’t care. We are raised in this place and it was made for us; you are not, being chiefly a Shinigami. Remember that while the Arrancar have immunities, there are still diseases in the sands of Hueco Mundo that will completely liquefy your innards in a matter of days. It would benefit you to listen to educated advice, lest you end up leaking offal. Have I made myself very clear?”



“I’ll bet you’re fucking with me.”



“I do not ‘fuck’ with anything. I have no solid proof to offer you that you would accept; however, you far too readily write off anything that you can’t plainly see before you as insignificant and this is a deplorable habit to find one’s self exercising.”



A laugh rattled out of the Vaizard’s tight, wounded chest—quiet and dry. “Small but deadly, eh Ulquiorra?”



“Droll. Extremely droll.”



Ulquiorra let his dainty wrist slip, just so, pressing against one of the thin red grooves which ran along Kurosaki’s upper chest.



“Shit! That really hurt, you know!”



“My apologies.”



Sighing, Kurosaki relaxed into the thickly padded chair once again, having known the obvious malevolent intent behind Ulquiorra’s slip-up but knowing through years of experience that it would be better to let it slide than to hold it ineffectually against the Quatro Espada. Being angry at the small punishment for the snide remark would have been pointless at this point. It was pleasant to note that the Shinigami trash was finally coming to realize these points. Perhaps in time, the bigger idiot that was Grimmjow Jaegerjaques would follow Kurosaki Ichigo’s example.



Ulquiorra could hope, though he seldom did.



Hepaused suddenly, fingers hovering above the wound on Ichigo’s neck and shoulder, origins obvious to a trained and experienced green eye. It was a bite mark, red and indented with skin broken in some places where a set of pointed canines would have been located, weeping translucent lymph fluid.



Grimmjow Jaegerjaques had not been simply joking around.



“Where did that bite wound come from,” Ulquiorra asked rhetorically, voice raising in intonation just slightly, as much as it ever really did. He ran the wet, vapor-leaking cotton over it, so softly as to tickle, a shiver running visibly up Ichigo’s back like minnows, brown eyes closing for just a moment. In pain and unwelcome memory, that much Ulquiorra could surmise. The Arrancar could have done anything just then, while Kurosaki closed the world out.



He could have snapped his head clean off, sent it flying into a nearby wall.



“What come from,” Ichigo mumbled, eyelids fluttering back open, blush spreading across his nose-bridge.



Ulquiorra could read the boy like a witless little manuscript, body language more open to the prying eyes of Arrancar with every month Kurosaki Ichigo spent in Hueco Mundo. Right now, his expression reeked of the very telling and specific kind of guilt that came when one was being obstructively obtuse and knew very well that what they were doing was not working. Avoiding questions; what a pointless exercise in the useless.



“That place on your neck that looks as if some wild animal was gnawing at it.”



Ulquiorra thought the description was quite exceptionally valid.



The blush of pain on Ichigo’s face grew more prominent, coloring with something new. Ulquiorra shrugged as if to let the topic slide and went back to his job of cleaning, putting extra time into this particular area of bloodied skin. Kurosaki’s face grew warm under thin fingers.



“I’m going to assume it was Grimmjow Jaegerjaques.”



“It wasn’t.”



“I am more than certain that it was.”



Ulquiorra blinked dour and owlish eyes, distinctly unamused by the Vaizard’s idiotic but predictable lying streak—more protection of Sexta Espada, more strange behavior. “I’m not quite as certain what would ever possess him to be chewing at your neck, Kurosaki, as much as I would like to believe he is little more than a beast. Would it be unduly rude to ask what the motive was, in this case?”



The boy cleared his throat carefully, eyes shuffling to look up at the ceiling and then to the intricate rug below them; looking everywhere but Ulquiorra’s heart-shaped face.



“I was restless today.”



Ulquiorra stared for a second time.



“And…so I went to speak with Grimmjow, and then we got in a little tiff. Not that there was ever any real like… intent to kill or anything in it. I’m sure something like you wouldn’t give a shit if we wiped each other completely off the map, though.”



“Untrue.”



Ulquiorra left it at that, wanting Kurosaki to continue to speak at his will. It was an ideal situation, the boy spilling his thoughts and feelings to Ulquiorra of his own accord, something that had happened only a small handful of brief times in all three years he had been hidden away in Las Noches by Lord Aizen. Ulquiorra needed to know these things that Kurosaki was saying—to have a working mental mood register on Kurosaki Ichigo which would tell him what he needed to know about how far one could push before he would begin to push back, how to predict what would cause good and bad reactions.



“How are your ribs?”



Ulquiorra’s gaze darted down to the boy’s naked and purple chest, eyeing it with a detached, scholastic sort of interest. “You seemed as if they might be broken, the way you have been breathing.”



“Naw,” he replied to the question with false nonchalance and bravado (why he was using it on Ulquiorra, the Arrancar was unsure), pain-thick voice betraying him.



“Maybe they’re bruised, but I’m sure it’s nothing worse than that. It’s not like he wanted--”



Kurosaki cut himself off.



“If you insist,” Ulquiorra muttered, packing away all of the supplies but a small, powdery, unmarked white pill. He held it in front of the boy, between pale thumb and forefinger, eventually dropping it into the Vaizard’s own large, rough hands when he held them obediently outstretched.



“What is it?” Ichigo asked, suspicion darkening his voice.



“For the pain,” Ulquiorra stated without pretense. A truth.



“I don’t know if I really believe you,” Ichigo grunted, setting the pill down on a bookstand by the chair. Not taking it. Ulquiorra’s expression shifted, nearly imperceptibly.



“I feel there is no longer a need for my presence here. I’ll be leaving you to yourself, then.”



Ulquiorra moved to stand, pausing. He reached small hands out, leaning forward until his thin chest barely brushed against Kurosaki’s naked shoulder. Ulquiorra’s fingers retrieved a thin piece of hair plucked from the velvety fabric of the armchair, slightly over a foot long. He eyed it critically, holding it between himself and the boy.



“Ah.” It was a warm shade of auburn. Ulquiorra singed it away with a flare of reiatsu, turning his back to Kurosaki and leaving the room without any wasted words. His mind prowled along itself, a fox with a baby animal clutched between its bloodied canines.



“The woman’s.”



Ichigo glared at him as he went, expression heated but distantly melancholic.



If Ulquiorra had felt things like comfort, it would have been a comforting look, that flowing and unsure anger.



Three years flowed like an aqueduct, all according to plans.