Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Bleach Fiction - Wild Hunt ❯ Chapter 3 ( Chapter 3 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Part3

He woke from the darkness slowly, coming up for air through what felt like thick tar, breaching the surface and gasping for a clean breath. Grimmjow’s body ached with every beat of his heart, feet and hands raw to the bone. He stared mutely at the shredded skin and muscles that looked like pureed meaty, blood licking up his forearms and shins were he’d been running exhaustively. He coughed as pain shot up from his extremities as what had been fingers spasmed stiffly. Grimmjow could feel his body’s vain attempts to heal itself now that he was awake and that was enough to spur him into painful motion. If he healed now, the wounds open, raw and full of grit and muck, then he’d only have to reopen the flesh later and scour the mangled skin and muscles clean.

He knew he should be worrying about something. He knew in the back of his mind that there was someone close by, someone familiar and unwelcome. But they were far enough off that Grimmjow could drag himself to the freshwater pool his nose told him wasn’t far away. The sweet clarity of that scent only just breaching the thick tang of copper that coated the insides of his nostrils and the back of his throat.

Grimmjow grunted with the strain of dragging his body across the blood streaked mud beneath him. His elbow’s scraped raw as he tried not to use his hands and feet to shift the full weight of his body across what felt like the sharp edges of hardened lava slicing and sawing against his broken and bleeding skin. At the first kiss of cool relief as water rippled up his arms, lapping gently against bruised elbows then the protruding ribs in his chest he breathed deep and shifted forward, lips skinning back from his teeth in a feral silence. He levered himself into the water as best he could, breath forced from his lungs as he landed hard after each grinding pull of his body across the ground. As he strained and rolled into the blessed black, his scream was swallowed as the murky water closed over his head rushing down his parched throat and flooding his lungs as he writhed in abject agony.

The thought that maybe, just maybe, he might drown in the dark was short lived. The water closed in filling his lung cavity and pressing against broken and flayed skin and instinct, all that was left of the feral man, roared inside him. It pushed him back to the surface in a rush of limbs, forcing his body out onto the shore to land hard on bruised forearms as he choked and coughed up bile and water. He emptied his lungs with violent heaves that shook his body, water and bile from his spasming stomach burning up his throat and out his nose to pool on the ground.

The haze of death receded in small increments, piercing brown eyes filling his mind and haunting him like some poltergeist as he lay sprawled over his arms, legs still hanging in the water. Grimmjow hacked and coughed, his body trembling with fatigue, but his mind remained fixed on the young man he’d last seen chained to the false King’s throne, he didn’t know how long ago that was now. Time had become irrelevant in the miles he had traversed. The mere memory of that compulsion taunted his senses, the muscles in his feet tightening in response and pulling a quickly bitten off groan from his ragged throat. Grimmjow shuddered one last time, his body running on fumes as it tried to repair itself with as much haste as it’s beleaguered form would allow.

A snap of branch drew his gaze much slower than was normal for him, but then the creature that filled his still dim vision didn’t normally go around snapping twigs underfoot. Grimmjow tried to speak, his voice a rasp of sound like the wind through dried autumn leaves brittle and broken, “Ulquiorra.”

That knowing green gaze judged him as the rail thin male stepped further into the clearing, his voice soft though it easily carried across the dead space between them, “You survived.”

Grimmjow tried to muster a glare, a retort, something but though the fire in his gut responded his body was too far gone to muster much of anything. “I did.”

If Ulquiorra wanted to do anything at all Grimmjow could do nothing at this point, his body was starved and thin, the muscle he’d had now barely covered his bones. He hadn’t eaten, the compulsion to run, to never stop moving, a burn so bright it blinded and anything else, even breathing grew harder. Force of will alone had kept that functioning; anything else and he would be dead.

The fire in his belly roared to life but he was as weak as a kitten, he snorted derisively at his own weakness, disappointed that he could not endure more and fight the bastard hovering over him like a carrion crow. Grimmjow did not look away from the other predator in his space, just because his body was weak, his will was fierce and he would not bow before anyone - never again.

He watched as Ulquiorra cocked his head slightly to the left, a barely perceptible movement but Grimmjow’s gaze was regaining its sharp focus and he caught the minute shift. That he wasn’t dead yet told him something, his mind was coming back online with increasing alacrity as the fog of instinct receded to the back of his mind, awaiting it’s next turn at the die. His hand clenched beneath him, the skin splitting and bleeding but left ignored in favour of the male in front of him.

“How long?”