A/N: For rumdiculous on request. Intentionally this short, complete, and won't be updated, so please don't ask.
Enjoy!
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Debate
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Had Orihime been an especially poetic person, she might have said something like I feel like the ocean, trying to explain myself to the desert.
She wasn't of course, so she settled for making frustrated faces at Zaraki Kenpachi, who was very unmoved by them.
"It's just good karma!" she said at last, flailing desperately. Yachiru nodded sagely beside her, not helping in the slightest.
Zaraki snorted dismissively. "Screw karma," he said, and then for good measure, "fuck loyalty."
Orihime threw her hands in the air and tried not to cry. She'd been attempting to explain why she was here in Soul Society, chasing a boy who didn't even love her. She loved him, she'd said over and over again, so it didn't matter whether he cared or not. Reciprocation wasn't important, she just had to be there beside him, no matter what. In someone else it might have been a matter of pride. In Orihime it was a matter of stubborn morality.
He, who had killed to get to his current position without a single qualm, who had bathed in blood during his years in the hellhole he'd taken his names from, didn't give a shit about morality, or love, or anything other than strength.
Yachiru, who'd she'd been sure would be an ally, mostly stared at her just as blankly as Zaraki did. Kusajishi had been little kinder to her than Zaraki had been to him. She was more at ease with blood and misery than she was with joy and sweetness. Orihime's talk of unconditional love and honour meant essentially nothing to her.
"But you're loyal to Zaraki-taichou," she said, grasping at straws. "You follow him no matter what."
"That's because he's the strongest," Yachiru answered, befuddled.
"But even if someone beat him, you'd still follow him, right? You stayed with him when Ichigo defeated him, even though he was wounded and helpless."
A pause. Yachiru was confused, at last.
Orihime rounded on Zaraki again, determined not to let this opportunity slip past. "If Yachiru were hurt, wouldn't you stay and protect her?" she yelled.
He stared at her, but there was something there this time more than blank confusion. Even if only a tiny bit, he understood now what she was going on about so persistently.
"It's the same with me and Kurosaki-kun," she continued wearily. "Even if there's not much I can do to help him, I have to be there. I have to try."
"Freakin' nuts," Zaraki muttered, but there was no conviction in his voice.
Orihime let out a long sigh and leaned wearily against the wall behind her. She could talk until she was blue in the face. Even if he actually did understand, he would never admit it. It was a losing battle right from the start. To tell the truth, she didn't even know why she was here, preaching to a deaf congregation about something so intrinsic and yet simultaneously so foreign to them it was like explaining drinking to fish.
Maybe she just wanted someone to forgive her for being here.
"Ken-chan, we're going to be late," Yachiru whined, "and Gramps is nasty when he'd mad."
"Yeah, right," Zaraki said absently, then swung Yachiru up onto his shoulder and set off down the alley with a casual wave at Orihime. "See you later, you crazy girl."
There was no forgiveness here, but there was a lesson: loyalty doesn't need to be understood to be effective, only acted upon.
Orihime got it.
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