Day 18: Ghosts of Tomorrow

This article, , is the sixth chapter of the Investigating Grat arc, which is part of Bleach: Cataclysm. Tiffany Henderson and Garrett Sheppard serve as the primary point-of-view characters.

Tiffany seated herself at the small square-shaped desk in the middle row of Mrs. Summers history class. The desk two over and to her right was usually filled by Garrett, though he appeared to be skipping today. How did she know he was skipping? He was perfectly fine when she spoke to him yesterday, so unless he came down suddenly with a bug then he was simply skipping for the hell of it.

Still, she was surprised. Garrett hated school, sure, but he only ever skipped when he was fighting, and he hadn't any events scheduled for this week.

"Hey, May?"

May sat in the desk to her immediate left.

"Yeah?"

"You don't know where Garrett is, do you?"

"... Ah. He didn't tell you?"

May was usually bright and cheerful. She was the type of person who would go out of her own way to help someone, and she would happily do it without thought or want of reward. Garrett's absence however, and Tiffany brokering that subject, caused a look of profound sadness to creep its way across her fair-featured face.

"No?" Tiffany responded.

"Today is the eighteenth. It's the anniversary of his mother's death."

"Oh. I imagine he'll want his space then."

"That's what he'll say, at any rate." May claimed, looking a little more cheerful. "He's done this every year since he was nine, and he always maintains he'll visit her grave alone. He'd like you to be there though, even if he doesn't come out and say it. He's... complicated."

"Understatement of the century! Mind covering for me?" Tiffany asked.

"Oh, Tiffany! You don't look very good!" May exclaimed, with her hands to her cheeks in mock-surprise. "And you're running a temperature!"

Suddenly she was too. May had put her hand on Tiffany's forehead, as if to feel for her temperature, and sure enough she started to feel hot. "Is that her power?" Tiffany thought. In moments Mrs. Summers had May escort Tiffany to the nurse's office and in hardly any time at all she was being sent home to rest and take it easy.

"Tell Garrett I said 'hi'." May said.

"Thank you."

Garrett kicked out of his blankets and rolled over on the mattress so he was facing the photo on his bed-side table. Inside the frame was a picture of a middle-aged woman with shoulder-length brown-coloured hair and bright blue-green eyes. As he looked into those eyes he felt guilt rising within him again. He closed his eyes to hide her from his view but memories of that night seven years ago crept up on him unbidden...

''Before him lay his mother's broken body. Blood flowed in capacious amounts from an open-wound on her forehead. She lay sprawled over her son's body, her arms wrapped around him in one final protective embrace, her body the shield that saved his life. He wanted to cry out. He wanted to call for help. But he lay there, silent, too fearful to even breathe too loudly. And he hated himself for it.''

His alarm-clock rang out. It ceased when he grasped it in his hand and hurled it the length of his room! He didn't hold back either. All his strength, fuelled jointly by his rage and rising reiryoku, went into that throw. The clock exploded into a thousand pieces against the stone wall. Block-work was exposed with loose fragments falling freely to the floor.

"... Ah, fuck..."

He pulled on a pair of jeans and a white shirt with horizontal blue stripes on the front and back. Over that he pulled on his black leather jacket. He nearly shook the door from its hinges when he slammed it shut.

"Having a bad day, buddy?"

Lloyd, who was running late for school as usual, rested his arms on the fence. He looked dishevelled as well; his hair was messy, his shirt wasn't tucked in and it appeared as if he had just rolled out of his bed.

"You could say that." Garrett answered.

"So I see. I pity that door to be honest. Anyways, I've gotta run or it'll be another strike for me. I'll copy some notes down for you." Lloyd said before running off.

"Thanks!" Garrett called after him. "Heh, idiot."

Garrett looked towards the horizon and started walking...

Tiffany had gotten the details from May. Garrett's mother was buried at the old cemetery little more than a mile outside Grat, and that was where Tiffany was now standing. She had purchased a bouquet of flowers, but there still wasn't any sign of Garrett.

"I wonder where he-"

Then she sensed it. Hollow seemed to be attracted to graveyards. She had noticed that some new souls tended to linger close to their dead body, as if in denial that they where dead. It made for an easy meal for some of the more intelligent Hollow making the rounds. Tiffany's feet emitted a brief flash of green light as she sped towards the Hollow.

She didn't even need to raise her hand to fight it.

Garrett was side-stepping its blows in close-quarters. He closed around its defences and landed three successive jabs to its muscled torso before sending it skidding back up the path with a thrust-kick! " and ?" Tiffany thought. His body emitted a brief flicker of green light as he proceeded to move towards the Hollow. It attempted to move away but Garrett's fist slammed through its mask, and suddenly it was over. It had disintegrated before Garrett's feet had even touched the ground.

"How did you know where to find me?" Garrett asked, not unkindly.

"May told me."

"I didn't want to burden you with my problems." He started to explain.

She cut him off with a shake of her head. "I don't mind. I brought her flowers."

"Thanks. Her grave's a little bare at the moment."

He led her to a small grave on the far-side of the graveyard. A tree grew nearby and cast the area in pleasant shade. Despite summer nearing its end the day was still quite warm out.

"How did she die?" Tiffany asked.

"I got stupid." Garrett answered, fists clenched. "I've always been fit to see spirits: Hollow, Shinigami, whatever. I just couldn't tell the difference between a living person and a spirit." He was shaking now. "I saw this elderly lady step out onto a busy highway. When I reached to tug at her sleeve she transformed. I'd met my first Hollow. It attacked me. My mother dove in front of me, throwing her arms around me. Her head was split open on the pavement and there I lay, stunned."

"Garrett, I'm so sorry."

Tiffany reached for his hand. It was then she realized just how much he was shaking. Tears glistened in his eyes and his lips trembled. You'd have had to have been emotionally dead not to feel the hurt radiating from him. She pulled him into an embrace and he cried into her shoulder.

"That Hollow's still alive too." He revealed between sobs. "That's why I fight. When I find it -- and I will find it -- I'm going to take my time exacting my revenge."

"... I'll help."

He smiled then as he wiped his tears with the back of his hand.

"She would have liked you." He said. "C'mon, I'll treat you to lunch."

"Thanks. Take your time though. I'm in no rush."

"No, she'd want me to live, not stand around here mopping."

She saw Garrett in a whole new light as he walked away. A few of her unvoiced questions had been answered, and she was glad he had provided the answers willingly. Before now their relationship had mostly been built on adrenaline; they'd fought together, and things had progressed quickly as a result of that. Now the trust was beginning to develop.

"Wait up!"