（ longest five seconds of his life, actually. ）

I don't know that I was — like that.

（ the choking on flowers bit, anyway. ichigo draws his knees up, which makes the sword drop between the hinge of hip and thigh, and he wraps his arms around his knees. on him, it simultaneously feels like the gesture of self-soothing a kid might do, and a gesture of exhaustion an old man might do. ）

But I thought — sometimes, with Grimmjow. When we fought. It was... sometimes I thought about what would happen if we didn't stop there.