Note: This has some gore in it- just briefly. I've twisted cannon events a little, but this still follows the main story line.
I will go back and add more to this story later, so if you ever re-read and notice I've added a couple of things, don't be surprised.
The Closet
When she was younger, she and Sora would play hide and go seek. It was silly of her, but she almost always hid in the same place- in the coat closet. Each time Sora began to count she'd run around the apartment, listening as he counted down from one hundred.
"Ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six…"
She'd duck under the bed, pressing herself flat against the floor as hard as she could while she stilled her breathing.
"Ninety. Eighty-nine, eighty-eight…"
Suppressing a giggle, she'd get up and run into the bathroom, ducking behind the shower curtain.
"Seventy."
And so on it would go, until he was down to ten seconds and she'd already tried to hide everywhere but the closet. She wasn't sure why she always hid in there- the space was creepy. There was a spider web in the back, so she couldn't move too much, and the coats all became scary specters in the dim light coming under the crack between the door and the carpet. So she'd shiver in slight fear, listening as Sora went around the apartment.
"Hmm… not under the bed!" He'd loudly call.
She'd press her hands to her mouth to stop herself from laughing, still consumed by slight tremors. She'd always been slightly afraid of the dark, and knowing that there was a spider in the closet with her made every little tickled of hair against her neck seem like a potential attack from the arachnid.
"Not in the pantry!"
She'd probably let a giggle loose then, mostly due to nerves, but Sora would pretend he didn't hear it. He'd check every possible place in that apartment before he came to the closet.
Finally, when he did, he'd throw open the door and yell, "Found you!"
She'd shriek with fright and bolt out of the dark space, laughing while she made a mad bolt for the bed. He'd chase her while he made loud corny monster noises, and then when he reached her, he'd collapse beside her and tickle her until she was breathless.
Looking back on it, Orihime wonders why she never found it odd that he never checked the closet first. It was always the last place he'd look.
Maybe it's because of that, maybe it's because small places are good for hiding, she's not sure, but she found that even after his death she'd hide in the closet.
The first time she'd half expected him to rip the door at her and roar, scare her, prove to her that she'd only been tricked into thinking he was gone. But by the time morning came around she really knew life wasn't a game anymore, and so the next time she went to hide in the closet, she didn't expect to be found.
It was comforting, somehow, closed in the tiny room with the weightless forms of coats. Even the dust and the odd old-shoe smell became sort of comforting after a time.
She'd hidden in the closet in her apartment so many times she could tell you exactly what each of her coats smelled like- she'd counted each strand in a cobweb way up in the top corner- she knew how many stray leaves had taken up residence in the right side.
Her closet in Los Noches wasn't anything like that.
It was naked.
Three white walls, one white door, and no light, the closet in her prison room was just enough space for her to sit in the bottom with her knees drawn to her chest. There was nothing familiar about the closet, but she still turned to it for refuge, crying softly for her friends in the dead of the night- pretending that Ulquiorra couldn't hear her if she was inside, just like Sora had pretended he couldn't hear her giggles.
~o.0.o~
She has reasons to return to the hiding spot, anyway. For supposedly being better than humans, the arancar don't seem to think to check in the closet. Maybe it's like Sora said- the monsters are very bad at looking for little girls when they're hiding.
"Fuck." Loly cursed. "The pure little bitch isn't in here."
Menoly sighed, nervous. "M-Maybe it's better like this. We should go before we get caught. I-f Ulquiorra-sama were to-"
"Fuck Ulquiorra! I don't care if he finds us in here! He doesn't like her anymore than we do! What does he care if we came in here to beat her?" For a second they were quiet, and so Orihime pressed her hands to her mouth to keep her erratic breathing quiet from within her hiding spot. "As long as we don't kill her he doesn't give a damn. She's just a pet, after all."
I'm not! Orihime thought, pressing back tears. I'm not a pet!
Suddenly, he was there. "What do you think you are doing?"
She could practically see the two jump in her mind's eye.
"U-Ulquiorra-sama!" Loly yelps. Now she uses the –sama. "You startled us!"
"I asked what you think you are doing here."
"Oh! Oh, of course! We… we were just…."
"Did you come here to harm the woman?"
They didn't answer.
"What did you plan to do to her?"
Orihime listened to loud footsteps- it must have been Loly; Menoly hadn't made a single peep. She listens as Loly moved to where she'd heard Ulquiorra's voice come from, and then listened with wide eyes as the hollow woman began to speak.
"Oh, Ulquiorra-sama." She sighed- purred- she was all sex and sultry seduction. "You're not angry with us, are you? We were only coming down here to play with her."
"Play?"
"We weren't going to kill her. Nothing that Aizen would be upset with."
"Hn. And what exactly does that entail?"
"Nothing bad. Break her pretty little fingers, cut her legs…"
Orihime started to tremble again.
"Oh?"
And suddenly Loly was screaming.
"Like this?"
Orihime could here a loud defined crunch, and then a snap and a pop, and somehow she just knew that Ulquiorra had crushed Loly's fingers.
"You are trash." Ulquiorra surmised when Loly stopped screaming. The woman was still whimpering, and there was a fire in the sound- she must have been very, very angry. "Leave. Before I decide to finish you."
They scurry away quickly, quietly, Menoly finally speaking as she frantically drops apologies at his feet before she flees with her friend. Or maybe they're sisters. Orihime wonders if hollows have family.
Perhaps they don't. Maybe that's why they didn't think to look in the closet.
When they left she came out of the closet, not bothering to let Ulquiorra look for her. She didn't want to find out if he would look in the closet first or last- because for some reason, she's sure that's the first place he would look, and for some other reason, she's sure that if he had found her right away she'd have the answer to a lot of questions about him she didn't want answered.
"You're like a child." He said as she came out. Hm, he was chatty that day, she noticed. "Hiding from your tormentors. Why did you not call for me? Or confront them? You easily could have defeated them."
She shrugged. "Sometimes this way is easier." And she tried, she really did, but no matter how hard she pushed the images back she couldn't get the nights of her desperate scramble for the closet as her father roared behind her. His wasn't a fake-monster roar, like Sora's had been. Her father's had been a drunken roar- one that promised pain.
"I didn't want to hurt them."
~o.0.o~
Sometimes when she hid in the closet it was from things outside her room. The extra barrier muted the sounds and feelings of death and violence, and with her hands clapped over her ears and the darkness around her, she could almost imagine she was in her closet back home, being childish again while she waited for Tatsuki to find her.
She used to fear the dark. She'd been afraid that she'd become one with it- be lost- be a shadow- and no one would ever find her again.
Now she desperately pleads with the darkness to take her as it's own. She doesn't want to be found. Not by any of them, anyway.
She never gave him the chance to look for her. As soon as he came in and called for her she would come crawling out of the closet, limbs stiff from lack of use, and wait for him to say something. After the first time, back with Menoly and Loly, he'd never said anything about it again.
She wasn't sure if that pleased or troubled her, but she didn't comment on it either. All her words were hiding in the closet of her mind.
~o.0.o~
When her friends came for her, so too did he.
She didn't want to see him, and so she sat in the closet, waiting, her breathing a forced calm shallow pace as she listened to him walk into the room.
"Woman."
She didn't answer, legs starting to shake. It was nothing like a game of hide-and-go-seek in that moment. She was afraid that when he found her he would break her fingers, one by one, just as he had to Loly. She could already hear the snaps of each knuckle sliding out of place, the crunch of each fragile finger bone under his hands. Maybe he wouldn't stop there, maybe his punishment would include the other tortures that Loly had thought up. Maybe he would throw her on the couch and make little marks on her legs, cutting one long stripe into her flesh for each time she had ignored him calling her- watch as the blood soaked the white couch red, her pale dress dark, the clean world dirty. Maybe. Maybe.
"Woman." His voice was sharper the second time. Icy the third. "Woman."
Her heart started to beat faster as he approached, quietly, his feet the only sound in the room outside of the blood rushing through her ears. Each step was like a gunshot in the still- Bang! Bang! Bang! – as she waited for him to throw open the door and discover her.
He slowed as he got closer to the closet, and the stopped before the door.
"Woman." He softly called- but there was a spark of annoyance in his whisper. She feared that the spark would roar to a fire as soon as she came into his sights, though he'd never harmed her before. She'd never really given him a reason to.
When again she didn't answer, she heard his arm move up- the smooth slide of his sleeve against the crisp side of his coat. She pressed her teeth into her lower lip and clasped her hands tighter over her ears, trembling, silent.
She looked up in the dim and watched as slowly, the knob turned.
But just before the latch sprang free he stopped. Slowly, he turned the knob back the way it had been, and then for a moment Orihime listened as he just stood- silent.
And then he walked away.
She wasn't sure how she felt about it- suddenly she very, very much wished she'd never hidden at all. And at the same time, she never wanted to stop hiding again.
All she knew was that something in her heart had torn the minute he walked away. She almost wished he would have broken her fingers instead.
~o.0.o~
While Ishida-kun and Kurosaki-kun were out she watched Ulquiorra die. She wasn't in the closet, but for some reason, the whole event had the same kind of feeling as being stuffed inside a little room, hoping that no one would find her.
He was laying on the ground, arm stretched out to her. Kurosaki's hollow had retreated, and so the poor boy lay sleeping on the sidelines. Ishida was in similar condition- out from lack of blood, safely stashed away underneath her healing shield.
She watched as slowly Ulquiorra turned to dust.
Once his little end speech was over, she lay down next to him, feeling sort of empty and lost. Tentatively, she pushed her chilled fingers into his surprisingly hot hand, watching for any change in his expression as she did so.
She imagined his eyes widened, but in reality, she was sure they had not.
"Why?" She asked quietly- as though she was afraid of waking her two sleeping friends if she talked too loudly.
He did not change expression, though she imagined if he wasn't dying and was feeling himself, he would have raised an eyebrow. "Why what?"
"Why didn't you open the door?"
For a long, long moment he stared at her.
"Why didn't you decide to find me?" The words barely left her mouth; she was so quiet. But she knew that he could hear her.
Tired, Ulquiorra closed his eyes for a moment, his hand clutching hers a little tighter as the other half of his body slowly disintegrated. "I'm not sure." He answered.
"You knew I was there."
"Yes."
"And I disobeyed- I didn't come out when you called."
"Yes."
"So why…?"
He let out a long, tired breath, and then he opened his eyes again. "Because." He said simply. "You've prattled on about yourself long enough. I know why you hide in the closet." Without looking at her, he goes on. "You hid there for your games, did you not? You've told me so, woman. You've told me that you feel as though nothing bad can get you there."
"You could have opened the door." She breathed. "And my belief would still have been true."
He let out a quick breath through his nose- a snort. "At the time it would not have seemed that way."
"But now-" She swallowed, inching closer to him, her fingers wiggling in his hand. She ignored how the sand got in her dress and her hair. "But now, if I hid… would you find me?"
He had closed his eyes again- so tired, so tired- but he cracked one open to answer her. He watched her, for a silent minute, and as his face began to crumble into ash he said, "Yes."
She didn't know why, but she suddenly wanted to kiss him. Maybe it was because he was dying, maybe because she felt like she was dying, maybe because she suddenly understood and yet didn't understand at all. Many of things could have compelled her to do it- lack of sleep, hysteria, nerves. But it didn't matter. She didn't have the chance to touch their lips together before he was gone.
Just like that.
Ashes on the wind.
~o.0.o~
She's been hiding here for a long time. It doesn't feel like she's been there long, but the light under her door proves that she's been there for a great stretch of time.
She's noticed that the little spider web that had been in her closet when she left was falling apart. She figures the spider is dead, and for some reason, it makes her a little sad. She wonders about it, then. Did spiders have souls? Did her spider go to Soul Society? Or was there a tiny little hollow-spider crawling through the sands of Hueco Mundo now, in search of the closet she had stayed in there in that world, too.
She hasn't said a word since she crawled between the coats yesterday morning, and she doesn't plan to say one until that damn door's been thrown open, and so not one sound leaves her mouth. The silence is sort of comforting, somehow- it reminds her of him. She pretends she can see him stirring in the darkness on her left, quiet as usual, staring at her with those deep viridian eyes. She's tried to touch the ghost her mind has projected at her side many times, but each time her hand slides through empty air, much like it did as she turned to kiss him so many days ago- back when the war ended. How long ago was that? It seems like she just got back. But then, it seems like she just sat down inside of her closet, and she knows that's not true.
Two days.
Two days she's been waiting in the closet.
When they finally come for her, they check everywhere.
Under the bed, under the couch, behind the shower curtain. They check slowly, methodically, and keep in close communication as they do so. "Not here." Chad says, and she hears him shut the pantry door from within her kitchen. She's not full of nerves like she thinks she usually would have been. She doesn't feel anything at all.
They check in every nook and cranny for her, until finally, there is just one space left.
In the end, it's not Ulquiorra who finds her, but Rukia, who just looks at her and sadly shakes her head. The shinigami woman's been hanging out with Ichigo's sisters and father, and so she sees the parallels here that the arancar would not.
"Found you." The woman softly whispers.
It's not Ulquiorra.
But hide-and-go-seek is over now, and she knows finally that even though she was the last to hide…
She was not the winner.