Characters: Orihime, Ulquiorra
Summary: Adapt or die.
Pairings: Dark UlquiHime
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Hueco Mundo arc
Timeline: Hueco Mundo arc
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
His attempts to shape her are clumsy at first, but grow more subtle over time. Ulquiorra learns how to mould the clay without tearing it apart, though he works it hard. Too hard, but effective and efficient he remains. Orihime has neither dried out nor torn apart.
And she is changing. He has seen to that.
Take away her hope, take away her happiness and her smiles, and Ulquiorra is left with an empty vessel on which he can work, without hurry or fear of interruption. That blank slate looks up at him with vacant brown eyes, and though Ulquiorra has never thought of her by her name, he takes that away from her too.
Not Orihime, not anymore. She will never hear that name spoken aloud again, and it becomes a word. Just a meaningless word.
Not Orihime.
Just the blank slate. Just the tool. Just the vessel of power, to be used at Aizen's behest until she bleeds and dries up, a worn husk.
Just whatever Ulquiorra can work with. Just whatever he can shape in his own image until he is pleased with it, because the urge to infect her, to make her bleed, make her bruise, make her finally look at him and see submission in those endless eyes is too great and powerful to behold.
He wants to make little pieces of her die, one at a time, for what she is doing to him now. Since he can not kill her, can not destroy her, can not bring himself to raise his hand against her, he will simply change her.
She has no other choice, after all, and in the end, she folds, and proves herself to be so very willing, so very submissive and docile to his will.
Anything other than complete obedience, Ulquiorra will not tolerate out of her, in any sense of the word.
On the surface, she doesn't appear much in the way of different. The only changes that can be seen is the newfound pallor of her skin and the way it stretches tightly across her cheekbones, like a mask too tight. In the smudges under her eyes and the dullness of her hair. In the way her fingernails have been worn down to bloody stubs.
What goes on inside is far more profound. Ulquiorra has infected her, thoroughly, and with each hour that passes the names of the ones she left behind become less familiar to her until they, too, will become naught but words without meaning. Within time, she won't be able to remember their faces. Her only reality will be Hueco Mundo.
And for Ulquiorra, this is the only acceptable outcome. His urge to control her demands nothing less.
Metamorphosis is a slow process, but it is near completion.
She has been a caterpillar, but now she is locked in the cocoon.
And when the silk threads split, she will emerge, a moth with a body made from black glass and wings made from the white lace of carved bone.