A/N: Written as a Christmas gift for my Livejournal friend orange_fuu. Yes, not a very cheery holiday story, but who reads UlquiHime for the cheerfulness anyway? :)
This here, in my hand. It is the heart.
Once upon a time (isn't this the story you were waiting to hear?) a princess was kidnapped and sentenced to live in a castle made of ivory, sharp and glistening like perfectly cleaned bone. A man who wore his self on the outside guarded her from the outside world. One died while the other cried. And the beautiful castle came a-tumbling down. As it should be. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
If I crack open your chest, what will I find?
Once upon a time (because fairy tales won't sate your hunger for the truth) they brought a man back from the dead. He clawed his way out of his grave, fingernails cracked and bleeding, so he could lay in the open air and rediscover the pain of living, of being. Once again he is loved (or not) and once again he returns to the life he lived before (again, or not).
She violates the realm of the gods.
So she does. And the dust and bone and sand comes together again to form a person and she is the robed figure kneeling by the water to make men out of clay and water, only this one isn't exactly the prototype for new life. She rejects death on behalf of the reluctant to die. She recreates Ulquiorra and suddenly it all doesn't seem so hopeless any more.
Goodbye, halcyon days.
Before this, Orihime never spent much time outside the walls of Las Noches. Now she is standing in a field of white sand that stretches out beyond the horizon to a point unseen. Even the trees are starkly monochrome, looking lifeless and dead. It is cold; she shivers and draws her arms around herself but it brings little warmth. She has to get to Las Noches. She has to make herself warm.
One hand flies absently to her hair, where her hairpin would be if it wasn't gone. Shattered into an untold multitude of fragments which not even she could put back together. And all because she dared to defy the laws of creation.
She feels a small pressure on her arm, heavy and cold. Orihime looks up into a pair of sea green eyes, clouded over and looking blankly at her. His face seems paler than before, the lines running from his eyes more distinct than ever. (She refrains for the hundredth time to try to wipe them away; they are tears which dried long ago from the absence of a hand like hers and nothing can undo them.)
"You are tired," Ulquiorra murmurs. His hand slides down to feel her bare hand. "And cold."
Orihime shakes her head. He is right, but she does not want him to know. Not yet. "I'm all right." She withdraws her hand from his touch, and he frowns.
"Are you afraid of me?" It seems that Ulquiorra is the only one who can ask such a question and sound absolutely bored with it.
"Not anymore." Despite the cold wind, she smiles.
Ulquiorra nods, then takes Orihime by the shoulders. She let's him; she's tired and she trusts him. There's nothing else to do. He is soon carrying her like so much a sack of flour, but gentler.
"Don't break me, Ulquiorra," she teases. If it had been possible, she is sure there would have been a smile on his face, thin but there.
There is a familiar surge of reiatsu below them. One of Ulquiorra's foot moves forward, and soon they are flying across the sand to their castle in the sphere.
What happened?
She had watched Ulquiorra slowly turn to a fine powder and her heart, her entire being cried out in pain. Magic is but a test of one's will; a spell respondes to the power of the user's belief. Pulsing like a storm, the Shun Shun Rikka responded to the wishes in her heart, both of them.
Her first wish, a selfish wish, granted: Take me somewhere safe and far from here. So it took here to the lost battlefield of death's giants: Hueco Mundo. Her second wish: keep all my beloved ones from harm. Ishida and Ichigo, the shinigami sent as back-up, everyone she loved --- healed. Her love was so great it shook the foundations of what was acceptable and, with its last breath, brought back a man from the clutches of death.
And then ---- the last thing she was able to see was the flowered hairpin slowly spin away from her and break apart into infinite bits and pieces until no more. And the look on Kurosaki's face as he watched her slip away into a white void, followed by a dead-but-not-again Ulquiorra; he looked as if he was about to cry.
I'm sorry, Kurosaki-kun. But the words were eaten by the air and never heard. She was gone. They were both gone.
Now she is sitting in what was once Aizen's throne room, in his chair. There's a gaping hole in the roof, and beams of moonlight are shining down to illuminate her unmoving figure. Ulquiorra stands next to her, looking perfectly at home.
"What do we do now?" Her voice echoes through the empty room.
Ulquiorra looks over at Orihime. "We live."
Despite herself, she giggles. "I suppose we do, since I brought you back and ---" She gasps. "I brought you back! Ulquiorra, you were dead and ---"
"Have you just realized this?" Ulquiorra looks disapprovingly at her. "Your Shun Shun Rikka revived me from death itself. It was your wish to see me alive again."
Orihime nods. "That's right." She holds up her hand. "We never finished. Remember?"
"Remember . . . finish what?" Even though he is confused, Ulquiorra holds up a hand in turn. It's exactly like his old hand, he thinks, the same flesh and bone but born by a different being.
She smiles. "Creating your heart."
"Do I need one?" Ulquiorra asks.
"Of course. Everyone needs a heart to live." Orihime tilts her head to one side, curious. "Don't you want to live?"
"Perhaps. And perhaps I prefer living without a heart."
Orihime frowns but still keeps her hand up. "That's not really living though, is it?"
"What is living?"
"I'll show you once I make you a heart, okay?" Orihime smiles and even Ulquiorra has to wonder what she'll do to go through with such a promise.
In the stillness of dead air, their two hands close the space between them until their palms are pressed together and Ulquiorra can feel the heat radiating from Orihime's fragile body.
Back home, this would have been the subject of schoolgirl whispers and excited chatter, becoming gossip fodder in the hands of experienced talkers. But in the quiet of Hueco Mundo, it is a private moment exclusive to the two of them. There is a spark --- not a flame, but a flash of something like emotion --- and then between them, something is created.
No. Something is born.
The moonlight drifts aimlessly over their bodies, revealing their tugging hands and entangled limbs, mouths pressed each other in desperation, the one sliding into the other wordlessly as the other cries out his name for the first time not from fear but from something like affection.
She won't be telling anyone how (or where) her first time was any time soon.
She is the first to feel Ichigo's arrival in Hueco Mundo. The air carries the scent of his reaitsu, still leaking from his zanpaktou like a leaky sieve. When she does, she's in one of the towers watching the birds wheel by in strange patterns through the air. By the time she reaches the bottom of the stairs leading from the top, Ulquiorra is there waiting for her. He always is.
"Should I greet Kurosaki ahead of you?" His hand clearly comes to the hilt of his sword, resting soundly on his hip.
"Ulquiorra!" Orihime scolds. "Kurosaki is a friend of mine!"
Ulquiorra did not even blink. "Does that mean no?"
"That means no using Resurrección on Kurosaki!" Orihime shook her head, a teasing smile playing at her lips. "I'll go greet him before Neliel tricks him into a never-ending game of hide and seek."
"Hmm."
Orihime moves past him and Ulquiorra follows her, walking through the many twisting hallways of Las Noches. When they reach the doors leading into the barren desert of Hueco Mundo (left wide open as a gesture of good will, another human touch by her), Orihime turns around and points a finger at Ulquiorra. It's almost menacing in a way.
"And no Cero!" she adds.
"The thought hadn't cross my mind," Ulquiorra said blankly. It had, but he would not admit to it.
Orihime laughed and turned around to face the desert winds. She was wearing one of the many white dresses she had spent the days in before, only now it was willingly. Her orange hair was a striking contrast to the colorless fabric as it blew behind her in the wind.
"Onwards!" she cries out in a silly voice. They can hear the sounds of Nel and her friends in the distance, and start off in that direction, assured that soon they will not be alone. Also, that they will have to do some explaining about, well, them.
Knowing that she can not see what he is doing, Ulquiorra smiles. It doesn't hurt.