I do what I want. I update when I want. No shits given.
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Sometimes, strange things happen.
Sometimes, the stars align.
One moment, Ulquiorra was a standing tall but dying, hand outstretched towards the mournful form of Orihime Inoue, who was reaching for him even as he dissolved on her fingertips, and the next...
Ulquiorra lived.
The feeling...images. Breath. Warmth. Sunlight, seen trough a thick curtain of red hair. Orihime? Kurosaki? No, neither of those people. Mother. Limbs heavy, mind slow. Sleepy and wondering. And always, always the steady thumping in his chest, right where his hallow hole was meant to be.
What is this? It was like a dream.
Hallows don't dream. There was some mistake. Ulquiorra didn't belong here; he was...displaced.
More than anything else that felt out of place in this picture; the uselessness of his limbs, the fogginess of his mind, the foreignness of good things and sunlight, stranger than all these things combined-
Was the heavy weight on his chest, the dryness in his throat, the steady, squirming thumping of a heartbeat in his chest.
...
Memories faded.
The man with wild black hair and thick glasses, and the woman with red hair and green eyes. Father and Mother. There were others, too, who came and went, but they were less important. All that existed for Ulquiorra was the woman's humming and the man's crinkled eyes.
What is this feeling?
Him senses were numb to danger. His body unaccustomed to pain, mind numb to worry or fear or intelligence.
The peace...the warmth...it was like nothing could ever hurt him again. He always felt full, well fed. Satisfied.
It almost allowed him to forget. And he did, for awhile. For a short time, a time where he was a small thing being held, Ulquiorra Cifer ceased to exist, and Harry Potter was given a small chance.
...
Ulquiorra received a rude awakening on October 31st, 1981, when his mother died with the flash of green Cero light.
He'd been crying, because there were loud noises after the front door broke down, and shouting from Father that disturbed his peace. Mother was running up stairs while she carried him and it was giving him a headache, but then she had the audacity to put him down in his crib like an infant-
Mother turned around to face the door, shouting again, and-
He was crying, and then he wasn't, because suddenly he didn't much feel like being a toddler. Mother was hit by a green Cero, fell like a rag doll on the ground, had died right in front of him; and suddenly he remembered what a Cero was and he remembered that his name was not Harry Potter, but Ulquiorra Cifer, and he had eaten people over things that were less annoying than this.
The woman's-his Mother's-murderer, stood in the doorway, wearing a black cloak with the hood drawn up and beady red eyes gleaming out of the shadows. He held a weapon loosely in hand, a stick glowing green with the remnants of Cero. He was pathetic. He was trash. It was incredible he had enough riatsu to form a Cero, even one as small as that, because Ulquiorra didn't sense a single strand of riatsu wafting off him. Ulquiorra would crush him like an insect.
Or he would, if he wasn't currently inhabiting such a weak form. What trash, what a fool he had been, to let his guard down and allow the sleepy mind numbing aspect of reincarnation to blur his memories and intelligence. Ulquiorra had no defense save for that which his parents decided to gift him, and by the looks of it both of them were dead by this point.
The murderer looked Ulquiorra in the eye, raised his weapon as more green energy began to gather at the tip, smiled and aimed...
And for a brief instant, Ulquiorra could see; see thingsas they truly were.
The cloaked man, with ghostly rattling chains of fate snaking away from him in every direction, too many to be natural. His mother, body on the ground but soul standing before him, wielding a Zanpakto made of light. His eyes caught every detail as she swung the blade with no expertise but beautiful natural talent, and sword met lightning. The attacker's eyes widened, and then his rebounded attack struck him in the chest and his body went spinning away, trailing a cloud of ashes as it dissolved. His soul was unaffected though, remaining standing in the middle of the room, glaring hatefully at the figure of the Shinigami Lily Potter standing defiantly over her son's crib.
The murderer looked as he had in life, black cloaked and menacing; the only difference being the six rusty iron chains of fate tying him to this world. Five of them shot off in different directions, pulled taunt and anchoring him. The sixth flailed about wildly, anchored to nothing and quickly beginning to devour itself with unnatural speed. Though the murderer's body was destroyed, he would not truly be considered 'dead' to the world of the living by a Shinigami's definition until all six chains had been cut.
"I gave you a chance to display mercy." Lily said, as her body began to dissolve into the red ribbons of a Shinigami's riatsu. "This is soul magic. With my sacrifice, you'll never touch my boy."
The dark human screamed as the last of Lily's soul dissolved into riatsu and settled gently around Ulquiorra's small shoulders, like blood red wings. The man moved, flowing forward as if in a slow motion sonido, face stretched into a screaming visage worthy of any hallow mask. He came right for Ulquiorra, but the Shinigami riatsu flared at his approach and the man's form steamed and smoked when he came into contact with it. He screamed again and fled straight through the wall, clutching his burned face.
Ulquiorra reached out a small hand and buried his fingers in the mass of riatsu that surrounded him. Over the sound of the dark soul's chains dragging over the ground as they followed him through the wall, Ulquiorra heard a voice like his mother's voice whispering from the gentle cloud.
"Harry..." It said, and Ulquiorra swallowed dryly. "Harry, you were so loved-so loved!"
The last chain interrupted his mother, the one that wasn't attached to anything. It's unusual length and wild flailing brought it soaring towards Ulquiorra, and in an instant had sheered straight through the protective cloud of riatsu and clipped him in the forehead, where it sank straight through his skin and stuck like an anchor in his skull. His mother's voice grew quicker, more desperate. Her riatsu began pouring into his skull after the chain, winding around it and stopping it's painful advance. "Harry, mama loves you! Dadda loves you!"
Her voice grew fainter as the last of her soul's riatsu poured into his skull, and his ability to see grew fainter and fainter as well. Her last words to him were, "Harry, be safe. Be strong...", and then she was gone, sealed away inside him. The last thing he saw, before his sight faded, was the chain of fate that tied him to his family's murder, trailing out of his forehead and making minute twitches as the dark soul tied to the other end of it moved. A moment later, the lingering effects of whatever had happened that allowed him to see spiritual energy faded, and his ability to perceive the chains came to an end.
Belatedly, Ulquiorra realized he had fallen on his back after being struck. He raised a hand to his forehead while he sat up, and his fingers came away sticky with blood. He looked around the room, and realized he was alone in a dark nursery, kept company only by the body of his mother and the smear of ash on the floor that was all that was left of her murderer's body. His seemingly temporary ability to see spirits had disappeared with his mother. He could't even see the chain that he knew bound the murderer's soul to Ulqiorra's body. He realized with some dismay that if his father had suffered the same fate as his mother, but his spirit remained on earth instead of going straight to serietei, then Ulquiorra wouldn't even know he was there.
Ulquiorra realized that he was, as always; alone, in a barren place with nothing for company but death, and not a single thing in all the world to give him purpose.
...
I hope you have a lovely day.