Emotion.
It was something that he had once felt, something that he had long ago forgotten through the centuries that had passed. Maybe he still felt it, but that part of him was not there anymore. It hadn't been for a very long time, perhaps forever. And eventually, all he knew was power. Power, and loyalty to the being who bestowed upon him the grace of massive power. His silent strength was his value, and all beneath him were worthless. And it was true, most everyone and everything was beneath him.
Beneath him and his strength, his power.
His weakness.
Perhaps a criminal mastermind when alive, maybe never alive but a fallen angel sent from hell to claim the devil's price from heaven. What was he when he was alive? His memories have long faded and so have the emotions that went along with them. His heart- did it ever exist? What was a heart?
In order to feel, you must have a heart. And all these silly beings that were beneath him always spoke foolishly of hearts, which didn't exist. They spoke like fantasizing idiots about these emotions that affected their every word, every step, every swing of their sword or incantation of their power or every action that they incurred in their piteous lives.
So many were below him. Ulquiorra Schiffer, Cuatro Espada. Loyal servant to the man who would one day rule the world. Everything that he did was executed with unsurmountable perfection. A natural inclination to feel nothing, to be a perfect assassin, to detach himself from the prey, all an indubitable part of who he is.
Yet, who is he?
And everything changed when the girl with the special power came into his flawless, perfect, untouched life of undamaged, stoic, caustic killing. When the man he called his master took an interest in such an unreadable being, in such a strange form of matter, Ulquiorra Schiffer's world changed.
He took no interest in her at first, her powers were worthless, beneath him, and not even the slightest glimpse of a threat to his royal purpose. And so he deemed. But as his psychological cage of fear for her friends took effect, something new stirred.
Curiosity.
Insatiable, for he knew nothing. But that could not be, for he knew everything? How could it be that an inferior being knew something he did not? The way that she reacted to the death of the people who came to save her, and the way that the people who came to save her reacted to her abduction. His perfectly planned out scheme, or his master's mastermind's concoction, was falling straight into place. He solved the equation, yet he did not understand the math behind it. The unreachable knowledge was the presence of hearts. But he did not see them, so they must not exist.
But somehow, they did exist, and they enabled all of his master Aizen's plans to work out, and they were the very foundation of the ultimate creation of the Royal Key. If something so significant existed, then why couldn't he see them? Emotions were the result of these hearts: a useless product to him, but were they always?
Somehow, watching the girl with the special powers opened up Ulquiorra Schiffer's need for satiation in his curiosity. And it awakened something he no longer understood, but might have if it were half a millenia ago. Perhaps a spark of emotion was awakened.
He did not feel anything at first, but it is inevitable that even the coldest, most unfeeling being must suffer some emotional awakening when being around someone like Inoue Orihime. The girl whose power and strength relies on her emotions- the girl to whom emotions and hearts are something that is only easily felt and of the utmost importance. A girl who shows nothing but her emotions, who openly cares, and feels for the enemy, was someone who the all-seeing one could not understand.
Perhaps it was when she slapped him, that it brought back a faint shadow's shadow of a memory, of feeling something. Maybe insult, maybe a slight hurt, maybe shock. And most of all, disbelief and wonder. Maybe when he found her with Kurosaki Ichigo and Grimmjoww Jeagerjaques he felt a slight sense of betrayal, that he was her captor, that she must only obey him. And most definitely, when he stepped out of another world to be the fishing hook as she was the bait in the 5th tower, he was completely and utterly confused by her display of courage and her hearts. Regret and annoyance when the Arrancar girls pointlessly attacked her.
He knew of the intense feelings between the girl and her rescuer, and the way they cared about their friends. He knew how to manipulate feelings, how to twist and torture them to extract the result that he intended. He knew every emotion that went on in their hearts, the nonexistant, invisible things called hearts, yet, there was one problem.
He did not understand them.
But perhaps, the prisoner girl had changed that, even if he did not realize it.