A/N: You all knew it was inevitable. This one is shockingly long, probably tl;dr material, at least when it's finished. At least it isn't an angst fest…but yes it does mostly consist of angst…I'm terrible.

Elemental:

of or relating to the elements

I. Hydrogen (what the stars are made of)

Seriously, there weren't many things that Inoue Orihime wanted to bang her head against the wall for, but this was one of them. Why the hell hadn't she thought that her friends would come in the first place? Sure, Yamamoto speculated that she had been a traitor, but it was called speculation for a reason.

At least she'd definitely have a story to tell her (alleged) kids. 'Did you know that your mother went to purgatory, met spirits who could destroy the world just by sneezing and was holed up in a cell for all of three months?'

She had never truly considered how she'd present this unbelievable chapter in her life to people she'd meet, or even people she already knew. It seemed so unimportant at the time that it didn't even matter.

Right now, she'd rather be the oblivious girl she was a year ago than the one she was now. She wanted nothing more than to beOrihime, just the girl you went to high school with. But now, she was Orihime, the girl who was forced to cause a major shit-fan collision course.

A moon and no stars…

II. Helium (made by the stars)

She was annoying.

There wasn't anything to like about her anyway; she was clumsy, emotional, whiny…the list went on. Forever. That being said, Ulquiorra didn't consider it much of a privilege to have to metaphorically drag her back and forth everywhere.

That being said, she was annoying, but even more so entertaining.

III. Lithium (heat transfer)

She didn't think about it. Really, she didn't. Because if she did, she wouldn't have a drop of sanity by the time she left Hueco Mundo, or rather, if she left Hueco Mundo.

She was an explosion waiting to happen, and it was all his fault.

IV. Beryllium (the highest melting point)

Hoping didn't get anybody anywhere. So why did she even bother? He couldn't understand this. But on the same token, he couldn't understand anything about her.

She wasn't ordinary, he concluded, because anybody else would've been broken a thousand times over by now.

V. Boron (heat resistant)

This was getting old very quickly. He blamed her for most of what went wrong, but this was to be expected. At this point, she really, truly didn't care.

He was evading the fact that it wasn't her fault but his.

VI. Carbon (everything as we know it)

She wasn't God. Wasn't that position reserved for Aizen, anyway? The bigger question here, though, was if she even wanted that power.

You can't uphold the world forever.

VII. Nitrogen (below freezing)

"No."

That word alone was enough to drive him up the wall, but what was even worse was knowing that she had dipped way below the line of sanity.

VIII. Oxygen (air and what it entails)

One time, she tried to kill herself.

Tying the sheets of her bed together, she didn't feel anything, absolutely nothing was going through her mind.

The minute she realized that he had been watching her the whole time, she drew a sharp breath and knew what the value of air was.