Title: Your Heart Laid Bare
Summary: Ulquiorra is simply suggesting he's gonna wrench Orihime's heart from her chest with his bare hands. In another place, Ichigo races to where she is, and hopes, hopes to hell he's not too late. In the end, he finds himself looking straight into her heart. IchiHime. IchigoxOrhime. One-shot.
Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach; genius Kubo Tite does.
A/N: This has been idling in my computer for months now. I guess it's hight time I upload this sht. And oh, a warning: this sucks.
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Like anything that wasn't supposed to exist, you had a power that defied the gods. Time and Space Reversal they named it; I called it the power of your sheer magnificence, a power which you achieved merely by your character. I must have designated the best of names on you after all. And like everything great and beautiful, you couldn't be much exalted and praised without the feeling that you'd be gone soon. So they took you away, Aizen did, without intentions of giving you back at whatever expense or grandeur of negotiation. I wondered if I'd ever see you again, before finally settling with the idea, or hope, that someday I would. We'd meet again, if that should be the last thing bound to happen, if only as strangers.
And thus I pelted headlong towards danger and went over thousands of leagues in pursuit of your rescue, something I'd undertake on any given condition, naturally so, if only for you. At length I had to discern, mostly out of presumptions and foresight, what manner of despair you prisoners had subjected you to. I could almost hear Ulquiorra Scheiffer ask you, with so much beyond verbal boasting,
"What is a heart? If I rip open your chest, will I see it? If I crack open your skull, will I find it there?"
At that, the pace of your heartbeat did not gain speed, nor did it slacken in submission. I allowed my solitary limbs wander frantically, as if that could paraphrase my anxiety. Around me, everything seemed to dissolve into something which had no more account than a grain of sand in Hueco Mundo; only you remained, and though between us there was not enough strength and luck, I had come to save you.
As such was the case, I had to take comfort from the fact that I was almost always never late for any appointment, so much that on countless occasions I was even given awards at school as tribute for my punctuality. Now I was faced with a pressing matter, I simply couldn't afford to lose time so as not to lose you.
And then—it was just one of those 'and then' matters—I had come to where you were. I could scarcely give thought to what my vision was presenting, that Ulquiorra Scheiffer was standing over you with his back on me. Whether he detected my arrival or not, I didn't seem to particularly care. I was completely cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; I reckoned there were only me and you.
And so it didn't occur to me until quite too late that in one swift movement of his fingers he had managed to extract that one thing in you I had for so long then desired to unravel and understand.
You could've reversed it like, you know, retract everything with that magnificent power of yours. Only that your heart now belonged in his hand, motionless, blood-soaked, and lifeless, and it beat no more. And alas, you, too, breathed no more.
END