One of the original set of Fic Title prompts that I did almost a year ago on tumblr, now edited and slightly expanded.
Orihime spins out her dreams into fragile, beautiful glass figurines, colored with the too-sharp, not-quite-right tones that exist in that in-between world. She's done it since she was little, since her brother took her away from the family she was born into; a tiny little glass-mage born to a family of jewel-mages.
(It was okay, her brother reassured her. It didn't mean any of the things she still remembered her father screaming at her mother. Forms of magic could skip generations, lurking until the right circumstances came about.)
(She missed her brother and his comforting words. His lessons and assurances that It Would All Be Okay. Without him at her side, she'd had to learn everything on her own, through mistakes and problems and more bloodied hands than she can even remember.)
Sora's secret Gift of healing magic has been put to more use than her actual birth-magic, not that she will ever let anyone know. Not when those who carry the magics of others are looked down upon so strongly.
Healing magic will never come instinctively to her call, not the way it came to her brother's.
(Her brother who wanted to be a doctor, who wanted to save children like themselves when no one else would.)
But that's okay. Orihime practices every day in the safety of her home, golden wisps trailing from her fingers and shimmering in her wounds. Her arms and hands are scarred, her progress etched into her skin like a piece of practice glass, and slowly she masters Sora's Gift.
(She keeps him close with every golden thread and pale scar. Memories she will never release.)
Orihime spins her dreams into fragile, sharp-edged pieces of glass. She holds those pieces close, in bloodied fingers that call the magic to shield her friends from harm. Her shields are made of dreams and glass and will—
(Never again will she stand aside and allow her loved ones to pass on without her.)
—and when her shields shatter, when her friends falter, broken and wounded, she kneels at their side and unleashes the Gift her brother granted her in his last moments. She is thankful that her friends Don't Question, thankful that they ignore her use of magic Not Her Own, and she repays that loyalty with her own.
(She is not the only one who carries something she should not.)
Sora wanted to be a healer.
Orihime will honor her brother. Will use his powers to Save. To Help. To Heal.
(She refuses to disappoint him by turning her own magic against others. She refuses she refuses she refuses she refuses she refuses…)
(Blood drips from red-stained glass held in a clenched hand.)