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Before You Forget About Me
Chapter 9: The Plan

{*XOXOX*}

Grimmjow roared with abrupt laughter. "That's your plan?" he asked Toshiro.
Hitsugaya's expression sunk before he swung it to Ichigo. "I hate this guy."
"Look, it's not the worst plan ever," Ichigo came in to mediate. "I just think we need to be more discrete, is all."
"No, I'm with Hitsugaya," Rukia added her input. "Gotta be direct! Isn't that right, Byakuya nii-san?"
Byakuya made a wounded sound before coming back with no reply.
Ulquiorra looked pissed--at the lack of order present--for the entire duration of the debate. They were wasting valuable time--in his eyes-- a commodity they had very little to spare.
And everyone was too sidetracked by their own whirring thoughts to be bothered with connecting.
I'm so aware of myself right now, Byakuya was thinking. How the heck does one end up this way trying to do a good deed?
This group lacks cohesion, Ulquiorra thought dismally. And leadership.
I wanna be leader, Hitsugaya was thinking petulantly.
If I swing this right, I can get Hitsugaya to be all heartbroken and go in for some love triangle drama! Rukia thought ecstatically.
Ichigo looked puzzled as he noted the enigmatic range of expressions before him. Then he spoke up at last. "Why don't we just split into teams and finish off whoever comes at us?"
"No!" Ulquiorra practically gasped. "Splitting up would mean chaos. We can't have that."
"Well, would you rather have them gang bang us?" Ichigo quipped back rudely.
Ulquiorra paused. "I would think you'd know that numbers on numbers would be the same whether disjointed or joined, in the bigger picture."
Ichigo shook his head, glancing at Grimmjow. "I'm pretty sure we'll break down the building if we try to fight them army to army."
"This is barely an army," Renji put in, turning heads because he'd been quiet for such a long time.
Byakuya looked at him and blinked a little. Then he looked at all the other faces and felt grossly outnumbered for some reason. He wished to get away from them. "I want to go ahead with Ichigo's plan."
"But…the chaos…" Ulquiorra moaned.
Byakuya glared at him. "Oh, I'm sorry. Did I screw you over?"

{*XOXOX*}

Rukia ran in fervent bounds. Hitsugaya was panting while trying to keep up with her.
"So, where are we headed again?"
"Somewhere. Say, Hitsugaya…bet that came as a surprise to you, didn't it?" Rukia slipped into the conversation in a way she must have believed was inconspicuous.
Hitsugaya frowned. "Um, if you're talking about Ulquiorra's joining us, then—"
"No, I meant Byakuya's undying love and infatuation with Renji Abarai."
"Oh, that," Hitsugaya said, cringing at the flashback. "Well, I'll bet it came as even more of a surprise to Renji Abarai. Which part of the building did Ichigo say we needed to cover?"
"Um, I dunno. But say, Hitsuagya. Doesn't it bother you just a little bit, under the surface? That they're together right now? Somewhere out there?"
Hitsugaya snorted. "Well, a little. I mean I'm not homophobic or anything, but, they could at least do it all at home, ya know."
"Where you wouldn't have to watch," Rukia whispered, as though it were something tragic.
Hitsugaya nodded for different reasons. "Exactly. Hey, isn't that an Arrancar?"
Rukia spared it a glance, and then gushed on in her excitement. "Don't change the topic!"

{*XOXOX*}

Now, more than ever, I want to be invisible, Byakuya dwelt on that wish dimly. He cast his eyes to Renji, forgetting to smile when Renji looked back. Stupid life lessons, teaching me things I didn't want to know.
Renji coughed to clear his throat. "So," he said pleasantly. "Are we proceeding to the bottom floor?"
Byakuya sighed. "I suppose that would be the obligatory thing to do, since it's our instruction. Which way is down, Renji?"
Renji continued to play the ignorant card to its full effect. "Um, just down…the stairs."
"Good. That's good." Byakuya slid his eyes away. "Say, remember when Ulquiorra joined this little escapade?"
"Yeah?"
"And then before that, we were all hanging around and…saying stuff…"
"Aha."
"And then, some of us did stuff…" Byakuya made a point of staring.
Renji tried to be the nice person he was and avoided the uncomfortable topic. "Yes."
"For the love of everything, just react already!"
"Now?" Renji asked in surprise, taken aback by the pressure. "I guess I—"
"You know what--it's obvious!" Byakuya stole in with his surmise, unused to listening. "You made it very clear by your aberrant silences and your avoidance of the issue."
"Well, actually, I was just waiting for a better time to tell you—"
"Should have known…my heart was too vulnerable to throw into this world," Byakuya stared nobly ahead of himself and uttered, "and now I'll never get it back."
"I wanted to say—"
"Let's just keep moving, shall we?" Byakuya choked on the words as he shifted into motion. "Wouldn't want to linger in these halls, where the ghost of my once beating heart now haunts us in its wasted death."
"You're pretty poetic today," Renji noted, unable to get a word in edgewise.
Byakuya nodded. "Poetry is how the lovesick man cries."
"You know I've been here the entire time, right?" Ulquiorra interjected, following along they started to move.
Byakuya sighed mournfully. "I know that."

{*XOXOX*}

Say something, Ichigo demanded of himself, stifled by the expectations. Say something!
Grimmjow maintained an even pace, his stride wide and graceful. Ichigo liked his panther state, whether he admitted it or not. He liked all sides of Grimmjow.
"Do you think if we split up, they'll automatically split up, too?" Grimmjow asked suddenly, in his seductive panther voice.
Ichigo blinked twice. "That hadn't occurred to me."
Grimmjow dropped his eye level. "I mean, you're the one they want."
Ichigo stopped running abruptly. Grimmjow slammed to a halt a second later, tossing a look back at him. "What's the matter?"
"Before we go a step further, tell me why you keep discussing that part."
"What part?"
"The part about me dying. Why does everything have to link back to that?"
"Because it happened! I don't want it to happen again."
"You're blaming yourself for something I did," Ichigo stressed the words. "I chased after you that day, Grimmjow. I took some random sword and was arrogant enough to land myself in Aizen's lair without any hope of getting out."
"And I took the only sword that would have gotten you out," Grimmjow inserted. The room was colored in splashes of fading daylight from the high arched windows. "Want me to go over it again?"
Ichigo stepped right up in front of Grimmjow, almost wishing he could physically fend his argument off. "No. I've heard it. Now all I want is for you to forget about it. And do this with me, in the present."
"It's true what I said, you know."
"What you said?"
"Before you died, I told you something. It was true. It's still true. In fact, I think the only reason I was able to tell you was because you were dying right afterwards."
Ichigo frowned on trying to digest the information. "What are you talking about?"
"It doesn't matter. Just, follow me." And Grimmjow broke into a run again.

{*XOXOX*}

"There they come," Gin said to Tosen, grinning fiendishly. "I wonder if it matters which one we kill first."
"Do you sense that?" Tosen asked suddenly, straining to listen. "I think…Aizen is in our presence."
Gin raised an eyebrow. "Oh? You don't think he came to finish off Ichigo himself, do you?"
"Somehow, based on the last conversation I had with him, I believe he's actually come to finish Grimmjow," Tosen corrected him. He touched his own sword. "I'm afraid that means we have Ichigo to deal with, since the Arrancar are so set on finishing all the Captains off first."
"It's a good idea, in theory. Then the Captains won't be able to access Grimmjow or Ichigo's death scenes."
"Hmph," Tosen acknowledged reluctantly. "I guess it's hard to believe, considering that Arrancar are so few on good ideas."

{*XOXOX*}

"That's one heck of an Arrancar," Renji noted, staring at it from a fair length away. He was tucked behind a collapsed pillar its bulbous body mass had probably knocked over when it was breaking and entering.
Ulquiorra crept up between Byakuya and Renji and joined their hiding spot. Byakuya stiffened unappreciatively at his presence."That's Zommari, number seven of the Espada. I could beat him, but you'd have to stay back from the battle."
Byakuya snorted as though it were arbitrary information. "Avoiding encounters suites me just fittingly. Abarai? Are you going to adhere to this decision?"
Renji nodded at the strange word choice. "Um, sure."
"Good. Then fair thee well, Arrancar," Byakuya told Ulquiorra, a liar's smile jumping to his lips. "May this all work out the way I hope."
Ulquiorra frowned at the ambiguous wording. Then he leapt from his cover and charged at Zommari.
Renji looked to Byakuya quietly. "Hey, um, about what we were saying earlier?"
"I'm aware of your insatiable hunger, Abarai. There is nothing I can do about that now."
"No, I mean uh, before that."
"Oh. What?" Byakuya asked as though sulking.
The battle of the century erupted beyond their hiding place. Ulquiorra's screams of battle infiltrated the air and clashed with the sound of swords and ceros.
"What would it mean to you if I admitted that I made you like me?" Renji asked him.
Byakuya frowned at that. "I don't see it as wholly possibly."
"No, really…think about it."
And he did.

{*XOXOX*}

A FEW WEEKS EARLIER…

Renji caught the mass load of papers before they toppled off his Captain's desk. Looked like a lot of work. And Byakuya wasn't back yet--probably still stuck in what he'd call 'one of Yamamato's tedious meeting arrangements.'. Couldn't hurt to start grading off some of the workload for him, right?
Renji settled down in his Captain's chair and set to work filling in all of the easier parts of the overabundance of paperwork. He kind of just wanted to free up Byakuya's time. In fact, that had become the only reason he did any work lately.
Byakuya spotted him on his way up the path back home, when he stole a glance in through the windows. What an overachiever, he had thought proudly, before going off to do something that would not disturb the process of his work getting done for him. Later that night he came back to find a sleeping Abarai with his arms on Byakuya's desk, being adorable. Byakuya didn't suspect anything, even though his little sister Rukia kept passing comments about it.
Events for the last few months had been similar. Byakuya had begun to feel a sense of warmth towards Renji Abarai—something unusual for him. Ever since Renji had made the list of his Lieutenant candidates without any prior experience. How suspect was that, anyway?

{*XOXOX*}

Byakuya returned to the present, becoming aware of the times Renji stood in his corner or at his back or at his side, and then looked up. "You even started reading the dictionary just to better converse with me," Byakuya noted, suddenly elevated. "How…considerate."
"That's what I've been saying," Renji said, taking a breath. "I just never thought it was working. You were always so cordial with me."
"I am cordial with even myself, Renji," Byakuya said, shimmying closer. "But now that I think about it—"
The raucous sound of Ulquiorra's body being slammed into the far walls broke their dialogue. Ulquiorra cried out suddenly. "Change of plans! I'm gonna need backup!"
"Bad timing," Byakuya said quietly to Renji. "We should probably help him."
"Or…" Renji suggested, "We could run away and avoid work?"
"I like the way you think, Abarai."
They took off to the baying cries of Ulquiorra's fury. "Do you have any idea how much effort this is, you ungrateful—are you seriously leaving me?" Ulquiorra's wings flapped to keep him suspended in the air. The outrage that enveloped him for their impertinence was more than sufficient to finish of Zommari.

{*XOXOX*}

"Can't believe we just beat that Arrancar in cold blood," Hitsugaya admitted.
"Never get in a fangirl's way!" Rukia told him. "Now tell me, and be honest, what do you really think Byakuya's feelings for you are?"
"I don't know. You should ask him."
"But if you had to guess?"
"Just ask him. Look, there he goes right now."
Rukia glanced in the direction he pointed. Sure as anything, there went her brother, racing off beside Renji. They were not even being subtle about abandoning the building.
"He's escaping," Hitsugaya said dryly, looking to Rukia. "He was from the Noble house, did you say?"
"Well, then there's only one pairing really left to fight for," Rukia put into perspective, staring out behind her into the looming passageway. "GrimmIchi."
"Grimm what?"

{*XOXOX*}

Description
Before You Forget About Me
Chapter 9: The Plan

{*XOXOX*}

Grimmjow roared with abrupt laughter. "That's your plan?" he asked Toshiro.
Hitsugaya's expression sunk before he swung it to Ichigo. "I hate this guy."
"Look, it's not the worst plan ever," Ichigo came in to mediate. "I just think we need to be more discrete, is all."
"No, I'm with Hitsugaya," Rukia added her input. "Gotta be direct! Isn't that right, Byakuya nii-san?"
Byakuya made a wounded sound before coming back with no reply.
Ulquiorra looked pissed--at the lack of order present--for the entire duration of the debate. They were wasting valuable time--in his eyes-- a commodity they had very little to spare.
And everyone was too sidetracked by their own whirring thoughts to be bothered with connecting.
I'm so aware of myself right now, Byakuya was thinking. How the heck does one end up this way trying to do a good deed?
This group lacks cohesion, Ulquiorra thought dismally. And leadership.
I wanna be leader, Hitsugaya was thinking petulantly.
If I swing this right, I can get Hitsugaya to be all heartbroken and go in for some love triangle drama! Rukia thought ecstatically.
Ichigo looked puzzled as he noted the enigmatic range of expressions before him. Then he spoke up at last. "Why don't we just split into teams and finish off whoever comes at us?"
"No!" Ulquiorra practically gasped. "Splitting up would mean chaos. We can't have that."
"Well, would you rather have them gang bang us?" Ichigo quipped back rudely.
Ulquiorra paused. "I would think you'd know that numbers on numbers would be the same whether disjointed or joined, in the bigger picture."
Ichigo shook his head, glancing at Grimmjow. "I'm pretty sure we'll break down the building if we try to fight them army to army."
"This is barely an army," Renji put in, turning heads because he'd been quiet for such a long time.
Byakuya looked at him and blinked a little. Then he looked at all the other faces and felt grossly outnumbered for some reason. He wished to get away from them. "I want to go ahead with Ichigo's plan."
"But…the chaos…" Ulquiorra moaned.
Byakuya glared at him. "Oh, I'm sorry. Did I screw you over?"

{*XOXOX*}

Rukia ran in fervent bounds. Hitsugaya was panting while trying to keep up with her.
"So, where are we headed again?"
"Somewhere. Say, Hitsugaya…bet that came as a surprise to you, didn't it?" Rukia slipped into the conversation in a way she must have believed was inconspicuous.
Hitsugaya frowned. "Um, if you're talking about Ulquiorra's joining us, then—"
"No, I meant Byakuya's undying love and infatuation with Renji Abarai."
"Oh, that," Hitsugaya said, cringing at the flashback. "Well, I'll bet it came as even more of a surprise to Renji Abarai. Which part of the building did Ichigo say we needed to cover?"
"Um, I dunno. But say, Hitsuagya. Doesn't it bother you just a little bit, under the surface? That they're together right now? Somewhere out there?"
Hitsugaya snorted. "Well, a little. I mean I'm not homophobic or anything, but, they could at least do it all at home, ya know."
"Where you wouldn't have to watch," Rukia whispered, as though it were something tragic.
Hitsugaya nodded for different reasons. "Exactly. Hey, isn't that an Arrancar?"
Rukia spared it a glance, and then gushed on in her excitement. "Don't change the topic!"

{*XOXOX*}

Now, more than ever, I want to be invisible, Byakuya dwelt on that wish dimly. He cast his eyes to Renji, forgetting to smile when Renji looked back. Stupid life lessons, teaching me things I didn't want to know.
Renji coughed to clear his throat. "So," he said pleasantly. "Are we proceeding to the bottom floor?"
Byakuya sighed. "I suppose that would be the obligatory thing to do, since it's our instruction. Which way is down, Renji?"
Renji continued to play the ignorant card to its full effect. "Um, just down…the stairs."
"Good. That's good." Byakuya slid his eyes away. "Say, remember when Ulquiorra joined this little escapade?"
"Yeah?"
"And then before that, we were all hanging around and…saying stuff…"
"Aha."
"And then, some of us did stuff…" Byakuya made a point of staring.
Renji tried to be the nice person he was and avoided the uncomfortable topic. "Yes."
"For the love of everything, just react already!"
"Now?" Renji asked in surprise, taken aback by the pressure. "I guess I—"
"You know what--it's obvious!" Byakuya stole in with his surmise, unused to listening. "You made it very clear by your aberrant silences and your avoidance of the issue."
"Well, actually, I was just waiting for a better time to tell you—"
"Should have known…my heart was too vulnerable to throw into this world," Byakuya stared nobly ahead of himself and uttered, "and now I'll never get it back."
"I wanted to say—"
"Let's just keep moving, shall we?" Byakuya choked on the words as he shifted into motion. "Wouldn't want to linger in these halls, where the ghost of my once beating heart now haunts us in its wasted death."
"You're pretty poetic today," Renji noted, unable to get a word in edgewise.
Byakuya nodded. "Poetry is how the lovesick man cries."
"You know I've been here the entire time, right?" Ulquiorra interjected, following along they started to move.
Byakuya sighed mournfully. "I know that."

{*XOXOX*}

Say something, Ichigo demanded of himself, stifled by the expectations. Say something!
Grimmjow maintained an even pace, his stride wide and graceful. Ichigo liked his panther state, whether he admitted it or not. He liked all sides of Grimmjow.
"Do you think if we split up, they'll automatically split up, too?" Grimmjow asked suddenly, in his seductive panther voice.
Ichigo blinked twice. "That hadn't occurred to me."
Grimmjow dropped his eye level. "I mean, you're the one they want."
Ichigo stopped running abruptly. Grimmjow slammed to a halt a second later, tossing a look back at him. "What's the matter?"
"Before we go a step further, tell me why you keep discussing that part."
"What part?"
"The part about me dying. Why does everything have to link back to that?"
"Because it happened! I don't want it to happen again."
"You're blaming yourself for something I did," Ichigo stressed the words. "I chased after you that day, Grimmjow. I took some random sword and was arrogant enough to land myself in Aizen's lair without any hope of getting out."
"And I took the only sword that would have gotten you out," Grimmjow inserted. The room was colored in splashes of fading daylight from the high arched windows. "Want me to go over it again?"
Ichigo stepped right up in front of Grimmjow, almost wishing he could physically fend his argument off. "No. I've heard it. Now all I want is for you to forget about it. And do this with me, in the present."
"It's true what I said, you know."
"What you said?"
"Before you died, I told you something. It was true. It's still true. In fact, I think the only reason I was able to tell you was because you were dying right afterwards."
Ichigo frowned on trying to digest the information. "What are you talking about?"
"It doesn't matter. Just, follow me." And Grimmjow broke into a run again.

{*XOXOX*}

"There they come," Gin said to Tosen, grinning fiendishly. "I wonder if it matters which one we kill first."
"Do you sense that?" Tosen asked suddenly, straining to listen. "I think…Aizen is in our presence."
Gin raised an eyebrow. "Oh? You don't think he came to finish off Ichigo himself, do you?"
"Somehow, based on the last conversation I had with him, I believe he's actually come to finish Grimmjow," Tosen corrected him. He touched his own sword. "I'm afraid that means we have Ichigo to deal with, since the Arrancar are so set on finishing all the Captains off first."
"It's a good idea, in theory. Then the Captains won't be able to access Grimmjow or Ichigo's death scenes."
"Hmph," Tosen acknowledged reluctantly. "I guess it's hard to believe, considering that Arrancar are so few on good ideas."

{*XOXOX*}

"That's one heck of an Arrancar," Renji noted, staring at it from a fair length away. He was tucked behind a collapsed pillar its bulbous body mass had probably knocked over when it was breaking and entering.
Ulquiorra crept up between Byakuya and Renji and joined their hiding spot. Byakuya stiffened unappreciatively at his presence."That's Zommari, number seven of the Espada. I could beat him, but you'd have to stay back from the battle."
Byakuya snorted as though it were arbitrary information. "Avoiding encounters suites me just fittingly. Abarai? Are you going to adhere to this decision?"
Renji nodded at the strange word choice. "Um, sure."
"Good. Then fair thee well, Arrancar," Byakuya told Ulquiorra, a liar's smile jumping to his lips. "May this all work out the way I hope."
Ulquiorra frowned at the ambiguous wording. Then he leapt from his cover and charged at Zommari.
Renji looked to Byakuya quietly. "Hey, um, about what we were saying earlier?"
"I'm aware of your insatiable hunger, Abarai. There is nothing I can do about that now."
"No, I mean uh, before that."
"Oh. What?" Byakuya asked as though sulking.
The battle of the century erupted beyond their hiding place. Ulquiorra's screams of battle infiltrated the air and clashed with the sound of swords and ceros.
"What would it mean to you if I admitted that I made you like me?" Renji asked him.
Byakuya frowned at that. "I don't see it as wholly possibly."
"No, really…think about it."
And he did.

{*XOXOX*}

A FEW WEEKS EARLIER…

Renji caught the mass load of papers before they toppled off his Captain's desk. Looked like a lot of work. And Byakuya wasn't back yet--probably still stuck in what he'd call 'one of Yamamato's tedious meeting arrangements.'. Couldn't hurt to start grading off some of the workload for him, right?
Renji settled down in his Captain's chair and set to work filling in all of the easier parts of the overabundance of paperwork. He kind of just wanted to free up Byakuya's time. In fact, that had become the only reason he did any work lately.
Byakuya spotted him on his way up the path back home, when he stole a glance in through the windows. What an overachiever, he had thought proudly, before going off to do something that would not disturb the process of his work getting done for him. Later that night he came back to find a sleeping Abarai with his arms on Byakuya's desk, being adorable. Byakuya didn't suspect anything, even though his little sister Rukia kept passing comments about it.
Events for the last few months had been similar. Byakuya had begun to feel a sense of warmth towards Renji Abarai—something unusual for him. Ever since Renji had made the list of his Lieutenant candidates without any prior experience. How suspect was that, anyway?

{*XOXOX*}

Byakuya returned to the present, becoming aware of the times Renji stood in his corner or at his back or at his side, and then looked up. "You even started reading the dictionary just to better converse with me," Byakuya noted, suddenly elevated. "How…considerate."
"That's what I've been saying," Renji said, taking a breath. "I just never thought it was working. You were always so cordial with me."
"I am cordial with even myself, Renji," Byakuya said, shimmying closer. "But now that I think about it—"
The raucous sound of Ulquiorra's body being slammed into the far walls broke their dialogue. Ulquiorra cried out suddenly. "Change of plans! I'm gonna need backup!"
"Bad timing," Byakuya said quietly to Renji. "We should probably help him."
"Or…" Renji suggested, "We could run away and avoid work?"
"I like the way you think, Abarai."
They took off to the baying cries of Ulquiorra's fury. "Do you have any idea how much effort this is, you ungrateful—are you seriously leaving me?" Ulquiorra's wings flapped to keep him suspended in the air. The outrage that enveloped him for their impertinence was more than sufficient to finish of Zommari.

{*XOXOX*}

"Can't believe we just beat that Arrancar in cold blood," Hitsugaya admitted.
"Never get in a fangirl's way!" Rukia told him. "Now tell me, and be honest, what do you really think Byakuya's feelings for you are?"
"I don't know. You should ask him."
"But if you had to guess?"
"Just ask him. Look, there he goes right now."
Rukia glanced in the direction he pointed. Sure as anything, there went her brother, racing off beside Renji. They were not even being subtle about abandoning the building.
"He's escaping," Hitsugaya said dryly, looking to Rukia. "He was from the Noble house, did you say?"
"Well, then there's only one pairing really left to fight for," Rukia put into perspective, staring out behind her into the looming passageway. "GrimmIchi."
"Grimm what?"

{*XOXOX*}