The woman is wearing a muddled expression, the likes of which he has not seen before. The look she gives him is nothing like the one she gave Kurosaki, when she thought he was dying: there is no horror, no tears. She looks simply blank, as if she can't quite understand what's happening right before her very eyes.

Shall I explain it to you?

He's not sure what he expects of her, but it certainly isn't this. Their relationship has always been strange, having never been the traditional captive and captor scenario. He would have thought that she had been manipulating him, and not the other way around, had he not known better: regardless, it was odd to think that he might come to miss her and her irrational behavior.

When we used to talk about hearts… I used to think you were so ridiculous, so pathetically human.

Ulquiorra has never been afraid of his own mortality – he had accepted the inevitability of such an end upon first becoming an Espada. Kurosaki has yet to perform the konso, and he certainly doesn't seem to be in the frame of mind to carry out such a duty – not that Ulquiorra much cares. If anything, the end that's surely coming for him is little more than a long, deep sleep. A welcome change, after all the mental and physical warfare.

I am not afraid. But I am… what?

"Woman," Ulquiorra says, and the sound of his voice at last startles the ginger-haired girl out of her reverie. She looks to his wings first, slowly crumbling away into tiny flecks of ash.

"Are you frightened of me?"

She inclines her head, looking him full-on in the face. The gesture might have been brazen--daring, if her eyebrows weren't furrowed in such a manner that makes her look so profoundly sad. It's then that Ulquiorra recognizes that dull ache in his chest as wistfulness.

Now he sees tears, or at least the start of them, gathering in the corner of her eyes. The sight of it stirs up dregs of something else, something he hasn't experienced in so long that he doesn't know what to make of it.

"I'm not scared."

He wants to say something, but there is nothing to say. Ulquiorra is not the type to give comfort, and so he remains mute. He's dying, and suddenly the absoluteness of it troubles him. He is not afraid – no, never afraid – but he realizes, with a sudden epiphany, that he's simply not ready.

Ulquiorra reaches for her, as if establishing a physical link between them will somehow keep the darkness at bay. It is futile, meaningless gesture, of course – because even though she reaches for him in return, their fingers never eclipse. It's too late, and Ulquiorra is gone.

--

He's dead but he isn't, because he is secured in the sanctity of the woman's arms. A golden aura surrounds the two of them – the protective dome that Ulquiorra recognizes as her Shun Shun Rikka.

"Woman," Ulquiorra says, and he is surprised by how hoarse and brittle his voice sounds. "What are you doing?"

She is very plainly ignoring him, instead concentrating fiercely on the task at hand. Ulquiorra is not longer in his release state; he has been reduced to his weaker form, the one with the bone helmet and the number four tattooed on his chest. His clothes are in rags, barely-there, but Ulquiorra has never been body-conscious. He lies there in her arms, laughably weak, and the hands that clasp him by the shoulders and behind the knees are vice-like, unyielding.

"Woman… your grip…" he intones weakly. "It hurts."

Pain… when have I ever felt pain before?

Despite his protests, she does not let on. The glow surrounding them intensifies, sharpens, like a lens coming into focus, and that pain in Ulquiorra's joints intensifies, suddenly white-hot; it sends electric bursts down the red and blue chords of his body, so awful that Ulquiorra has to bite back the scream.

He hears a cracking sound, and at first he thinks it's what's left of the bones in his ruined body; but then the samurai helm above his brow breaks cleanly down the middle before falling to the ground and shattering into hundreds of tiny pieces. Ulquiorra stares down at the shards in disbelief, before there's a flare of pain in his chest, acute and agonizing.

This time Ulquiorra really did cry out – a high, keening wail that was entirely unfamiliar to his own ears.