10This, like some of my stuff, came from a dream. There is another scene or two to it. I don't know where this was going to go exactly. It is purely serious. And the other scene I remember involved Urahara and Ichigo, and put them in a very uncomfortable situation. I'd like to finish this one sometime, and it would only be at most three fast paced chapters. Just not right now.
Juni
BROKEN
A thousand razor edged knives tore through his skin like it was brittle paper. A million volts of current screamed white hot and burning through his veins. As his insides were being torn apart, they were melting together, his muscles fusing into tight knots of excruciating pain.
He was being tested, tormented, murdered, over and over again. Dying once, sometimes twice, a day.
He had thought he'd died somewhere on the quiet empty plains of Hueco Mundo. In fact, he was sure of it. He'd been attacked by one of his own comrades. Dismissed. Cut up and left to linger between the life that he knew and the next one, whatever it was going to be.
But he hadn't reached the next.
At first he thought he had. Because it had to be hell, this place, this space.
But he was beginning to realize that he'd been hijacked, snatched from where he lay, bleeding and choking on his own blood, waiting like the fallen soldier that he was, to drown in it.
He had been suffering as he lay dying. But he was not afraid of pain. It was his own defeat that he couldn't face, couldn't escape, his only hope, the release of death when it finally found him.
But it never came.
Instead the sands had pulled him down, swallowed him hungrily, dragged him under and away from the false sun and laughable sky. At first that was good. He didn't feel like he was dying in his own home under that foreign blue. But the dragging continued, sucking him deeper into suffocating darkness and pressure.
If it was good, then he was supposed to come out of the other side of something, wasn't he?
It was claustrophobic and terrifying, not a sweet release at all. And he'd tried to fight and kick and claw his way out of it. He could feel every single fucking grain of sand that scraped across his skin. Each and every sharp edged fragment of stone forced its way inside, cutting and biting, opening him up, dragging right through him as they slowly tore him apart and pulled him relentlessly into hell.
X X X
The constant drug induced fits, the seizures, the paranoia... they were the norm now.
The limited freedom he'd once had to roam great white halls, to move across endless plains of sands, to converse at a distance with others of his kind, to flex his muscles and draw his power and test his strength against his enemies... that was all gone, replaced with these abysmal conditions, a disgusting situation he could no longer understand.
How he had ended up here was a sick joke. He had been free. Free to fight, to make his own decisions, to unleash his power. The overseer wasn't coming back, and Grimmjow had enjoyed himself to the fullest, for as long as it had lasted.
There was no freedom here, only bars and a floor, needles and gasses he couldn't escape. There was nothing to fight against, nothing left of him to want to.
He only struggled to keep breathing now, and to hang on to the last vestiges of sanity that he had left. The cocktails burned his veins like napalm and always, always sent him spinning violently into oblivion, screaming in agony, until his throat gave out, until he didn't know up from down, where the experiments ended and he began.
He'd asked once, when he still could speak, could reason out thoughts in his head... How long? How long would this continue?
Two months had passed, they'd said. And they had no intentions of stopping. He was full of too many promises. A wonderful test subject and an interesting specimen. Property. Nothing more than that.
Property.
Somebody else's property. Not even belonging to himself.
And he didn't care. Couldn't.
There was already nothing left of him that he recognized. If there was a mirror around for him to see himself, he knew the thing he saw staring back would not be him.
The only things that shined and reflected enough to give him brief glimpses of skin and eyes, were the sames things he had learned to shut his eyes against.
Sharp, cutting steel. Tiny blades that opened him up and cut so clean, that nerve endings screamed like raw fire.
He never used to hide from pain, but now he always flinched away. He wanted to die, curl up into a tight ball, and give up. Just stop fucking breathing.
It used to be... that he wouldn't go down.
It didn't mean he didn't fall from time to time. But no matter what, he would never allow himself to stay down. But he just wanted his miserable existence to end. He could be reborn somewhere else, with no memories of this nightmare. Even if he broke apart into a thousand souls and lost himself, that would be acceptable, because he was already lost. He was being pulled apart, separated, driven into pieces inside himself, his mind systematically shutting down.
He had always been physically powerful, and even stronger willed, expressing his emotions freely and without remorse. Nothing but contempt for the world and its weaknesses.
He didn't know who he was anymore. He had been powerful. He was great. He'd had name once. A place. He was... not even a whisper of a name would come to him now... something...
He was...
was...
broken.