In that waiting time before the war began, in the moments when he had no duty to perform, Ulquiorra would sometimes visit the library of Las Noches. No one else, not even Aizen, seemed to visit the room regularly. The only Espada he'd seen more than once was Szayel Apporo Granz. Granz kept respectfully quiet, but always wore a smirk that shouted how predictable he found Ulquiorra's presence there. Thankfully, he quickly found what he was looking for and never appeared again. Ulquiorra suspected he was analyzing Aizen's taste in books more than any of the books' contents. Ulquiorra had noticed something too - Aizen owned several books on the topic of illusion. There was one book in particular that he remembered well. It focused on optical illusions, with detailed explanations of how each illusion tricked the human eye. Ulquiorra found it interesting precisely because they didn't fool him.
It was like an encyclopedia of human weakness. Lines the same size and dots the same color - Ulquiorra saw them accurately for what they were. But according to the book, a human would see some lines appear longer, or oscillate like moving objects. Some swatches would appear lighter or darker, or with a halo of contrast around the edge. The human eye assigned meaning and importance where there was none. A drawing of an "impossible triangle" made Ulquiorra picture the possible reality. An open shape instead of closed, with carefully notched ends, viewed from just the right angle that its arms held apart in space briefly appeared to line up on top of each other. A fragile illusion at best. If it were in three dimensions instead of two, the slightest tilt of the head, or any object passing through it would shatter the appearance of a connected triangle. But even in two dimensions, the illusion should only hold so long as you viewed one corner at a time. The angles suggested could not all match up. The human mind clung to contradicting things, failing to see that the unified whole was meaningless and absurd.
In a different illusion, the book claimed the human eye could even create something from nothing. Another triangle shape, which Ulquiorra found more impossible than the last one. Against a white page, a human would summon a white triangle from empty space, simply because of the coincidental placement of some solid black shapes. Ulquiorra could see they would have fit perfectly around the corners of an equilateral triangle. But there wasn't actually a triangle there. Only those small round shapes,
parting in the middle,
like reaching hands.
The meaningless end to his meaningless existence was about to arrive. But finding himself still alive for another few moments, Ulquiorra didn't see anything left worth doing except trying to touch that woman one last time. It yielded an unexpected result. She tried to close her hand around his fingertips, but they only passed through ash, flying away on the wind. It clicked for him then. He had felt something else in the space defined by their hands. As he reached out to her, as she reached back to him, as she grasped and failed and reached again. It needed no further outline to bring it into being. He finally saw the shape, the pattern behind the actions, as a thing in itself. There in his hand that had already vanished, was that thing she'd called the heart.
Some unknown interval later, Ulquiorra noticed he was thinking. If he was asleep, he couldn't wake up yet. He could only analyze his own lucid dreams. He thought back to that book and the white triangle, until his mind's eye zoomed in and changed it to gold. A golden triangle, held out in space by a pair of delicate hands. When he found he could open his eyes, somehow the dream followed him. His whole field of vision was gold, and the woman's hands, Orihime's hands, hovered above.
Like any new piece of knowledge, he noticed that now he was seeing that pattern almost everywhere. He saw it in her face as he woke up, the way it changed so quickly from a familiar look of despair to one he'd never seen before, but felt like just the opposite. He saw it in the curve of how she leaned over him, in the path of her teardrops that fell with a splash on his cheek. But there were still things he couldn't understand.
"I'm sorry," she said, as they stood up.
"Why are you apologizing?"
"I didn't want either of you to get hurt. But I didn't stop it."
"How would you have stopped it?" He had to wait a moment for her answer.
"I could have told him that I wanted to stay here."
"Do you?"
"No," she said, looking away. "But maybe... just a little while longer."
They walked back inside, back to where they belonged, outside her room with the small window. He couldn't feel her friends' reiatsu anywhere nearby, but didn't ask for explanations. Ulquiorra walked first up the long white staircase and opened the door, turning to see if she would still follow. She was already halfway up the stairs. The door shut behind them. He could feel the extra gravity when their hands finally touched, the air growing heavier and pulling them closer. Some force made them hesitate a moment, stopping just short like two magnets repelling, until something slipped and their lips crashed together.
Ulquiorra observed every detail about her. The way she let him take the lead but then responded in kind, more softly, like an echo. How tentatively she first parted his clothing, barely touching two fingertips to the bare skin below his tattoo. The way she looked sitting naked on the edge of the bed, her hands on her knees shyly hiding herself, but her eyes watching him intently as he finished undressing. When he approached her, it was just like that time in the hallway. He wanted to ask her again if she was afraid. But he hated repeating himself, especially when he already knew the answer. They laid down and he leaned in to kiss her neck, but she gently guided his chin up, holding it there so she could look him in the eye as he entered her. She held that gaze even though she braced herself and flinched in pain, which gradually melted away from her face. Her arms suddenly wrapped around his body, and soon her legs did the same. That was all the encouragement he needed, all she had to do - hold on to him. He listened to the rhythm of her breathing, the way it replied to each of his movements just as closely as her body fit around his. Even with his eyes closed, he could see another one of those patterns emerging. Each moment was adding up, hinting at the corners of something larger, until the disjointed shapes gave way and the sense of the whole overwhelmed him.