Characters: Orihime, Loly, Menoly
Summary: She won't scream.
Pairings: None
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Hueco Mundo arc; rated T for violence
Timeline: Hueco Mundo arc
Author's Note: I remember that ominous look Orihime was giving Loly when the latter was beating her (the first time, anyway) and I couldn't help but notice that there wasn't a single tear on her face. My guess is she was past the point where this sort of thing could affect her anymore, and I'm still not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Oh, just to clarify, she's starting to lose consciousness at the end (not dying, people, just on the verge of passing out) of the oneshot.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
A foot goes into her mouth, grinding cruelly against teeth and making them crack and cave, and Orihime tastes leather, dust and iron on the sole. The iron is her own blood, she realizes after a moment; the fog spilling over her mind makes a murderous haze out of everything. Above leather, dust and blood there is the bitter taste of futility. She could end this if an instant if she wanted to, but it's pointless to try; they'll only come back later. Better to let them expend their rage so they're satisfied now.
Grim reality comes when the foot dislodges from Orihime's mouth and roots in her belly, again and again, and she prays that the snapping sound she's hearing isn't her bones cracking.
And still, there is silence. Not a cry, not a plea. Not so much as a scream or even a whimper. No tears shed on her own behalf.
It's frustrating the brunette, though the blonde just looks disturbed—it's interesting how similar their Hollow holes are; are they possibly sisters? Orihime wonders. To satiate her anger further, a small fist connects with Orihime's face over and again—"I'm gonna have some fun with that pretty face of yours!"—so that the fog keeps getting thicker and thinner and their voices fade in and out.
No screams, no tears. The walls bear witness to silence.
Fingers with nails like claws clench around Orihime's hair at the base of her skull and yank viciously. A tearing sound, terrible and sickening, fills the air. The Arrancar girl comes away with a long, bloody hank of auburn hair, skin still attached to the end, pale and triumphant, and looks with one fluorescent purple eye down on Orihime, waiting.
Silence.
The blonde, standing watch at the door, grows anxious and tense, calling for her sister to stop so they can leave the scene of the crime far behind them, but the girl in pigtails, snarling words that, for the life of her Orihime can not understand as she draws a small knife out of the top of her boot.
Her smile is a serpent's promise for slow death in its jaws.
The blade is set at her chest, resting against the curve of her breasts and at first barely tickles the skin going down, but gradually, fire goes through Orihime as the tip of the knife digs in deeper, shovel in the earth, a thin-thick-thicker trail of blood following sluggishly behind, and the front of the starched uniform now has a single crimson stripe to adorn it. There's a long slit in the front now, leaving her half-exposed; Orihime's stomach lurches.
Still, not a sound.
She knows what these girls want, reaching for it with a terrible thirst. To see her scream, break down and cry and beg for mercy, to have the satisfaction of demeaning her, dehumanizing her and reducing her to a pitiable, almost subhuman state, a trembling mass of flesh. They wish to see her made an animal, crazed and maddened by its fear.
It's too much to ask for now, too much to ask of the paper heart that's curling up and smoldering like newspaper being held to a candle. She is beyond tears, and can not be driven to them by any assaults on the flesh. Even being carved up with a knife isn't enough to draw a whimper from her mouth full of broken teeth.
Orihime's not the vulnerable little girl who needs to have Tatsuki or anyone else stand up for her anymore. That girl's little more than a memory and will never be real again.
Blood's falling over her eyes like a crimson wedding veil, over one still-seeing eye and the other nearly swollen shut and blind. Fog's coming in banks and droves again, blurring even the vision of her good eye; the voices of the two Arrancar girls are hazed and indistinct.
It's all unimportant now, but Orihime would like to lie down and rest. These two girls might as well be little more than scenery, but the only thing she can think she'd like to say—and she won't, won't let her aching throat and broken mouth form garbled words; if she speaks she wants to enunciate clearly —is that this is all so very pointless. She won't be dancing to music not her own today or any other day; she won't scream just to please them, even if it would probably make them stop.
The little brunette, in fine belligerent form, pulls Orihime up by her hair and shakes her head like a marionette with its strings cut, and smirks, but her face drains of what little color is there at what she sees.
Orihime's even stare is inscrutable, somberly serious, even reproving. Her dimly lit glare goes straight past the surface of the Arrancar's skin.
And apart from all the tainted waterfalls of blood and sweat, her face is dry.