Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

Her name is Casandra Black and she's an ordinary girl in every sense of the world. Fair skinned, with nondescript brown hair and hazel eyes, she's easily overlooked in a crowd, and likes it that way. Even her schooling isn't particularly remarkable. She spent seven years in a primary school in a small town, following her peers to the local secondary school when she was eleven. Her GCSEs weren't particularly astounding, either. She took ten: Maths, English language and literature, Single and Double Science, Spanish, History, ICT, Geography and Art, and came away with a mix of Bs and Cs with a couple of As. Nothing remarkable, but it was enough to get her into college, where she chose to study Law, History, Spanish and Art, dropping Art in her second year and entering a respectable but not top league university to study Law with three Bs to her name.

By this point in her life she is twenty two, and just finishing her final year of university, where her only real care is how well she did in her dissertation and what her final grade will be. So far she's working solidly at a 2:1, again not remarkable, but still good enough. That's the story of her life, both in and out of education. She has a few friends; she's popular enough despite avoiding the limelight.

And like everyone, she dreams. Daydreams of the perfect life. When she was younger she wanted to marry a prince and spend her life with pretty dresses and jewellery. When reality caught up to her she begrudgingly left that dream behind, revisiting it when she wanted to be the innocent little girl again, instead focusing on her future. Now she dreams of being a top class lawyer, who always ensures that justice is served. Men don't feature in her waking dreams anymore – after a few failed boyfriends she's decided that she's not ready to settle down with a man any time soon, instead choosing to focus solely on her career. Her friends and family support her decision, as they always have. She sees and hears stories of families divided by some reason or other and is always thankful that hers is intact, with no signs of splitting in sight.

She dreams as she sleeps, too. Normal dreams, of course. She's normal is every sense of the world, after all. Dreams of flying, dreams of places so wonderful that every little girl wants to visit.

But then there are the other dreams. She rarely remembers them when she awakens in the morning. Occasionally a thought will linger, slipping from her mind no matter how hard she tries to keep it there in the morning light. She notices a difference between these dreams and the others. For one, if she has one of those dreams and doesn't remember it when she wakes, her brain doesn't struggle to remember. It accepts the gap in her memories and gets on with her life. Those normal dreams are just pleasant images her brain conjures when she sleeps, after all.

These other dreams felt different though. Her brain fought to keep a hold of them as they slipped away, sometimes succeeding in retaining a single tendril, enough to remind her of what she dreamed. These dreams changed as she grew older, too. When she was young they were terrifying – nightmares that made her run crying into her parent's room. Dreams of emptiness, where she was surrounded by white sand and black figures, out in the dead of night. They were the reason she was scared of the dark – a fear that even now she had not yet completely shaken.

As she grew older these dreams lessened in frequency, and now these particular dreams only plagued her on occasion, overtaken by others, similar but still different. Those dreams had been followed by no dreams at all, or rather, dreams of sleeping where no-one could get her. She'd liked these a lot better, surrounded by a defensive wall of thorns that kept everyone away.

Those dreams had persisted until puberty had hit her, changing not only her body but her mind, too. The dreams had gained an intensity to them and for the first time other faces appeared. Faces she could never remember, but knew they were there nonetheless. Physical descriptions for them escaped her, so she associated each one with an emotion. One was a mix of loyalty and fear. She felt that she would do anything for that one, but at the same time it scared her and she didn't like it when that one encroached into her sub consciousness. Another she considered as insanity, and a reason to be avoided. Lazy. Unintelligent. Maniacal. Another three faces that entered her dreams from time to time. Justice. Arrogant. Repulsive. Three more. Peaceful. Playful. Protective. Then there was one more. It was one that she saw in almost everyone and associated with the strongest feelings. She looked down on it, but then up to it. She loved it, and if there was one thing she remembered about it, it was that their eyes, whenever settled on her, were filled to the brim with love.

Those eyes comforted her in the waking world, too. Sometimes she thought she saw them – a colour she could never name despite their familiarity. She'd see them and think of a colour, only to have it slip from her mind before she could remember it. Another thing was that, ever since they'd appeared in her dreams, she felt as if she was being watched. She'd mentioned it to her friends, once. One of them laughed and said she was just paranoid – they meant it in a friendly teasing way and she took it as such – while another, religious, said that she could feel God watching over her. A third joked that maybe she had a guardian angel and, as she remembered the comfort the feeling brought her, she liked to think that maybe they were right.

The feeling waxed and waned, seemingly at random. There were days that she didn't remember it at all, and other times where it was so vivid she could see those eyes as if they were really there. Their colour still escaped her, and it infuriated her, but they were usually there when she felt the most alone, and hopeless. The first time she'd been dumped she'd felt worthless and shut herself away from everyone. After her phone kept ringing, she'd shut it off. She'd turned off her computer as well, locking her door so that no-one could come in. Loud music blared, rendering anyone calling at her through the door ineffective, and she'd curled up in a ball on her bed, crying her eyes out.

The eyes had been there then, watching her with a deep sadness, as if they wanted to take away her pain but couldn't. There had been a fury there, too, but she'd known that it wasn't aimed at her, although how she'd never be able to tell anyone. The next time she saw her now-ex she'd noticed a burn on his hand, which he'd explained away as a cooking accident. It cheered her up more than it should, and she was horrified at herself for thinking, even momentarily, that he'd deserved it completely.

Her dreams stayed with her. Even if she could never remember more than feelings about them, it was enough to know that, in those dreams, she was loved. Maybe the eyes appearing when she felt broken, needing to be loved, were her imagination supplying them. It was her own coping mechanism and was surprisingly effective for a mere figment of her imagination.

But now, once she'd become an adult, the dreams had changed once again, filling her with the same terror the first ones had, all those years ago. This time, she was crumbling away into ashes, returning to nothing. Those eyes had gone, and she knew that this was a dream of her dying. Of all the dreams, this was the worst. Like the others of its likeness, and unlike the mundane ones she'd share with her friends and laugh because they were so stupid and dream-like, these felt real. They were almost memories, and certainly filled her with a sense of déjà vu as she experienced them, disorientating her upon waking as she tried to sort out which was reality.

After all those years, she'd managed to work out a few things about her dreams, particularly the ones that had dominated her teenage years. In them, she had been male. How she knew that, she didn't know, but she had been. The hair that had sometimes drifted in front of her eyes had been black as the night that perpetually surrounded her within the dreams, and her skin had been as white as the sand beneath her feet. She could never picture what she saw in the dreams, but the feelings that they gave her were unmistakable. Her dreams took place in a world full of black and white and those eyes, belonging to the face she could never remember, stood out because they didn't fit the pattern. They were loud against the dull monochrome, and that somehow fit the personality she was building around the eyes.

She attended her graduation, accepting her final grade gracefully in her academic dress, black hat perched on top of her head. The feeling of being watched strengthened again and she caught a glimpse of those eyes once again, at the back of the hall. They were full of pride, and joy for her and with a start she realised something.

They were blue.

Let me explain things to those of you who are confused after reading this. Casandra Black is Ulquiorra's reincarnation. Casandra means 'love', and the surname Black means either "black" (from Old English blœc) or "pale" (from Old English blac). It could refer to a person with a pale or a dark complexion, or a person who worked with black dye. I thought it fit Ulquiorra quite nicely. Also, the education system I described is the English one, for those of you that don't know it.

With reference to the Espada, all the 'faces' Casandra associated a feeling with are members of the Espada, Aizen, Tousen and Gin. See if you can work out who's who.

Finally, this is a oneshot and I have no plans for a sequel.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari