Characters: Orihime, Ulquiorra
Pairings: Ulquiorra x Orihime
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Hueco Mundo arc.
Timeline: After Orihime has been incarcerated, but before Loly and Menoly show up.
Author's Note: There's now a companion to this; it's called Paper Moon.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
The walls were white-washed and cold, as hard as diamond and as frigid as ice. It looked like mortar or plaster upon a slightly darker stone. Everything was snowy antiseptic white, the walls, the ceiling and the dusty, unadorned floor, down to the couch which doubled as a bed and the small table. Sand somehow littered the floor, not in thick layers, but just enough to crunch under the feet of a person while they walked. Even her starched clothes were white.
Orihime paced the room as a caged lioness would, radiating discomfort and pent-up energy. Every muscle in her body was tense and ached with anger, with fear and sadness. She was nervous in the quiet, cavernous room, alone in the overwhelming, suffocating silence. Orihime may as well have been one of the only two people left alive on that strange world; she heard nothing beyond the walls, and saw none but her quiet, staring jailer.
"You are pacing again." Ulquiorra's flat, monotone voice provided an obvious statement, cold and calculating the way a scientist would observe its prized specimen; his eyes burned into her back. He leaned in the doorway that led to the antechamber of what could only be called her glorified prison, large, heavy-lidded green eyes staring at her intently, never blinking. He kept a good distance away from her, yet seemed to be standing within a hairs' breadth of her. Ulquiorra always seemed uncomfortably close.
The Espada who served as Orihime's jailer seemed to be strangely fixated on her, to have taken an odd, bizarre fascination with her, Orihime saw it, and prayed she was wrong but feared she was not. The very thought left her torn between wariness, a caged-in feeling, and grim acceptance of her position as a prisoner in a pit of vipers.
She stopped pacing abruptly, standing stock-still with her back to him and her fists clenched so that her fingernails bit into the soft skin of her palms. Orihime stood, waiting for something, anything to happen. The silence hummed and sang, giving her headaches that flashed and passed in seconds.
The sound of footfalls, only slightly heavier than her own, echoed in the room, and his voice came from just behind her. "It will serve you nothing. There is no escape from this place." The exhale of breath made her hair rustle.
Soon, Orihime was alone again, and she almost wished he was still there, if only because it gave a voice to chase away the silence.
.x.X.x.
There was no sense of time in that place. The room had no windows, and even if it had, it would have only shown night. Orihime had no idea if she had been there only hours, or days or weeks. She may have been there for years. It was a disorienting feeling, and the only thing that kept Orihime sane was the thought of her friends and the half-whispered prayer she sent up every time she went to sleep.
She had only one hope left, that her friends wouldn't come looking for her, or that if they did, they would not be killed. Orihime feared what Hueco Mundo held in store for any invader with thoughts of rescue in their mind.
"What is it you fear?"
One thing Orihime had learned was that Ulquiorra had a tendency towards asking odd questions. She was sure they made some sort of sense to him, but to her they were disjointed and meaningless. Like road signs that no one followed or could follow.
She sat on the edge of the couch, tense as a little cat, legs folded together and hands sitting on her knees, stiff as a board.
Ulquiorra stood with his back pressed up against the wall, as though she was the aggressor and he was simply operating under the desire to defend himself from her, his arms folded flat against his chest. The irony cut Orihime like a keen blade, putting a bitter taste on her lips, reminiscent of salt.
"Did you hear me, girl?" There was nothing in his voice, neither impatience nor the barest hint of irritation, just a blank, dead curiosity, colder than the bleakest winter Karakura Town had ever known. He didn't even raise his voice, and that voice brought up snow and ice.
Orihime's heart pounded as her brown eyes, heavy and drooping steadily lower, gazed at the stone floor. "What makes you think I'm afraid?" She cursed the circumstances that made both her hands and voice shake.
The question seemed to give him pause. Orihime felt Ulquiorra's eyes on the top of her head again and felt the familiar burning on her face like brush fire (why this occurred, she did not know) as he gathered his response, as meticulously careful in his words as ever.
"You are afraid." Orihime's composure shattered at the simple observation, and she bowed her head to hide how her face contorted in masks of agony and disturbed peace. "You try very hard to hide it, but in the end, your body gives you away.
"Your skin is pale and your eyes bloodshot. You sit as though you expect to be attacked at any moment; you are tensing your hands so that your knuckles are white from the strain. Your pupils are dilated, and you're sweating. No matter how you hide it, there is always something that will make your fear as plain as the hand in front of my face.
"What do you fear?"
The room seemed to breathe in itself as Orihime drew in a deep gust of air from the stagnant space. Ulquiorra stared at her as though the whole world hinged on her answer.
After a moment, Orihime raised her head, and felt only the slightest amount of pleasure in seeing Ulquiorra's face change ever so slightly, before rearranging itself into its normal apathy. Her eyes burned and leaked slightly (Orihime lifted a hand to wipe at her eyes with her sleeve) as she said, voice quiet and shaking, "I fear never seeing daylight again."
He actually looked startled, frowning slightly. "Such a…strange fear," Ulquiorra muttered, almost looking troubled.
She had cracked the mask, if only for a second.
A shaking, slightly unstable smile crossed her face as she whispered softly, "Not to me."
.x.X.x.
Orihime wondered what she would have seen if she had a mirror to look in to. The only time she caught even a glimmer of a glimpse of her face was when she saw it reflected hazily in the uncaring eyes of her jailer, and even then there wasn't a great deal in the features that she could make out, just an indistinct, melting blur like a desert mirage.
When she fell reluctantly into fitful, shallow sleep that left her exhausted once she woke up, Orihime would have dreams that she didn't have a face anymore.
She would be brought to bear against a reflective surface, and when she cast her gaze down at the black surface of the glass at her feet, there was a shadowy darkness where her face should have been. Her fingers went up to claw at her skin, renting it to ribbons and putting blood thick on her fingernails. She could still feel her face there, but she couldn't see anything in the darkness. Her fists shattered the glass, and instead of the glass breaking, she did, shards breaking off of her skin, crumbling and disintegrating, until she was a million shattered pieces floating away into oblivion.
Waking up in a cold sweat, Orihime slowly came to her feet off of the low, deep-cushioned couch, stretching her stiff joints and limbs. She went to stand by the wall, arms wrapped around herself and knees buckling as she thought of home, home's sweet sounds and smells, and of the friends she missed terribly. She wept softly, tears dribbling down her blotchy cheeks and chin and pooling in her collar.
As much as Orihime wanted to look in a mirror to see that she was still there, she was frankly scared to. She was afraid that if she saw her reflection, it wouldn't be her anymore.
.x.X.x.
It was a dream. She wasn't so far down that path as to be rendered incapable of determining the difference between fantasy and reality.
It was dream, and a heart-rending one, but just as it tore her to pieces, it made her happy too.
The summer sun was shining brightly down over the park as Orihime walked on the pavement side-walk. And there they all were, Ichigo, Rukia, Sado, Ishida and even Tatsuki.
Tatsuki noticed her first. Sitting high up on the bough of an oak tree, Tatsuki beamed and waved, flapping her arm in greeting like the wing of a bird. The enthusiasm came off of her in warm, exuberant waves, infectiously making Orihime feel more cheerful.
Sado, leaning against the tree Tatsuki sat in, nodded almost lazily, and Ishida, sitting on a bench with his nose buried in a book, looked up and smiled slightly.
Ichigo and Rukia were standing to one side, engaged in an animated conversation which was bordering on an argument. When they became aware of her presence, there was a smile on Rukia's normally solemn face, and Ichigo looked at her, causing the butterflies in Orihime's stomach to fly up at full force…
"Get up." A flat voice wrecked the happy illusion of her dream as a hand shook Orihime's shoulder roughly. She struggled to open her eyes, grogginess and sleep affecting the quickness of her reflexes.
"Get up," Ulquiorra told her in an apathetic tone that held more than a hint of steel in it. When Orihime didn't respond in as timely a manner as he would have liked, Ulquiorra leaned down, put one hand on the crook of her arm and wrapped another around her waist, literally hoisting her to her feet without even the slightest hint that effort had been required, as though she were feather-light.
Orihime straightened, endeavoring to meet his bleak, piercing gaze. "What's happening?" she asked bravely, managing to keep her voice steady.
He frowned slightly, clearly disapproving of her inquiry. "You are being transferred to another room." Ulquiorra pulled a long white rag out of his pocket; it was clearly meant to be used in the function of a blindfold. "Put this over your eyes."
The cloth was by no means sheer, having been made of what felt like a cotton cloth, but through it Orihime could, if she strained, make out shapes at the fuzziest degree of clarity. A hand grabbed her arm, forcing her to move forwards.
Ulquiorra made no attempt to speak to her as they walked through long, winding corridors. Orihime stumbled when they came to staircases, ran into walls when the halls bent in curves. The halls were cold, silent and oppressive, and Orihime began to wonder if they were the only ones in the fortress at all.
It was disorienting, being led around with no earthly idea of where they were going. Orihime started to feel as though the ground was swirling and falling away from her feet, until she no longer knew right from left, nor up from down.
Finally, they stopped, Orihime realizing how hard her heart beat. Orihime heard the slam of a heavy door behind her as their pace began to slow. Ulquiorra's hand transferred from her arm to her shoulder, heavy as lead. "Don't take the cloth from your eyes until you hear the door shut."
When Orihime removed the blindfold, a powerful wave of dizziness took over. Dizziness soon turned to vertigo. Stumbling all the while, she rushed to the basin in the small side room as she promptly began to dry heave.
Orihime wondered if her "transfer" had been anything more than a sick sort of game, playacting to put her off-kilter. The surrounding of the room were exactly the same as before.
.x.X.x.
"What is love?"
Orihime looked up, startled, seeing a pensive frown on Ulquiorra's normally expressionless face as he stood, rigid, a couple of feet from the couch where she sat. He almost looked like an inquisitive child confronted with a puzzle he couldn't solve.
With a singular combination of weariness and acceptance, Orihime had grown used to Ulquiorra's regular presence in her cell. She didn't want to be left alone in that white room, where the shadows didn't behave as normal shadows should have, where there was always light even though there were no light fixtures. She would accept any company with good grace, even his.
"Excuse me?" Orihime inquired politely, waiting for him to respond.
Ulquiorra still had that look on his face, faintly frustrated, mostly curious in a detached sort of way. "I have heard you humans speak of it often. What is it of love that makes it so important to you?"
Orihime hesitated; no one had ever asked her something of this scale before. Then she breathed out, deciding to humor him; there was no harm in it, not as far as she could see.
"Love," Orihime started, stopping to think for a moment, "is a very complicated thing. It's an emotion, an experience. You're right; most of us, humans, do consider it very important." She paused, but Ulquiorra didn't say anything. He merely stared at her as though she were one of the teachers at her high school delivering a particularly engrossing lecture.
"It's really very hard to explain. Love is…the desire to be near someone." Orihime smiled twitchingly, fiddling with her sleeve hem. "When you love someone, you want to be with them. You have a strong bond with them, and being with them, talking with them, laughing with them and even crying with them sometimes, makes you feel…I don't know, warm, safe. You just feel right when you're with someone you love."
She leaned into the cushions of the couch, feeling the muscles in her shoulders relax for the first time in what seemed forever. "Love is what binds us together."
Ulquiorra took a moment to contemplate the words Orihime had just given him ("I'm sorry I couldn't explain further," she murmured) as though it were a very serious matter for him; secretly, Orihime highly doubted it was quite as important to Ulquiorra as it was to her. He had never given any indication that things of the flesh concerning emotion intrigued him in any way, shape or form.
Finally, he nodded. The air swirled around Ulquiorra, reflecting a new turmoil. "I…see," he murmured, folding his arms against his chest as he looked away, the skin around his wide green eyes crinkling strangely.
He did not understand.
Ulquiorra did not understand the thing that was the most important thing in Orihime's life. He had no conception of love, and to him, it was a strangeness that could not be understood, a mountain that could never be conquered. It was a vast blackness, a strange new world looming just beyond the horizon.
He did not understand. Orihime found she pitied him.
.x.X.x.
Suddenly, she discovered that for a few hours at the time, the lights would extinguish, clouding everything in indistinct darkness and making the walls seem a velvety shade of gray.
At the same time, Orihime would feel a prickle on her neck as she slept. At first, she assumed it was merely herself and ignored it. She was used to feeling out of the ordinary things when she slept.
Over a while, though, Orihime realized that it wasn't just her. One night, when she felt the prickling on her again, Orihime opened her eyes.
Abruptly, a shadow in the antechamber moved and fluttered away like a bat, silent and looming.
Orihime moved the couch so it faced the wall and not the antechamber the moment she realized that he had been watching her sleep.
.x.X.x.
Orihime was alone. She had no idea how long it had been since she had last seen any living being, but to her, it felt like a thousand hellish eternities.
The walls were back to being their unbearable white. The absence of color was suffocating and maddening, beating her back down to oblivion.
The silence was pounding down on her; there was no one to talk to, nothing to say, and nothing to keep the madness at bay.
Soon, however, white was not the only color in the room.
"LET ME OUT!" Orihime screamed as her closed fists pounded at the door. Blood seeped from the cracked, broken skin of her knuckles. "LET ME OUT!"
Now, there was red in the vast whiteness too, crimson red trickling, staining and congealing.
.x.X.x.
Within minutes of Orihime composing herself and sitting down on the couch, eyeing with some wonder the sanguine blood coating her fingers and the hems of her sleeves, the door creaked open. The commotion seemed to have drawn Ulquiorra back.
He was carrying a basin filled with cold water with a rag in it, having clearly guessed what she had been doing and what she had done to herself.
"Use this to clean your wounds." Ulquiorra extended the bowl to her with those taciturn words; Orihime accepted the basin without comment.
The water was shockingly cold, as though there had been ice in it a second before. Orihime was silent as she painstakingly wiped the blood away from her fingertips (the stains on her sleeves would just have to stay there), seeing that she had cracked one of her fingernails clear down the center in the process.
"Do you fear the darkness so much as to do this?" Only Ulquiorra's eyes gave hint to what he might have been feeling inside; they roamed over her red, bloodied hands lingeringly, a dull gleam of—Orihime wasn't sure what, shining in the backs of his eyes.
Orihime didn't answer, but felt something alien rearing up inside of her, dark and roiling like the eye wall of a hurricane. She realized that it was rage, vitriolic and corrosive, the likes of which she had never felt before. Orihime lowered her head and bit her lip sharply, trying to hold her tongue and her patience.
Ulquiorra gave no sign that he noticed the way her back stiffened, going on without compunction or restraint. "You are one of us. There is nothing that can change that. You eat our food, wear our clothes. You will live as one of us, toil and strive as one of us, and ultimately, you will die as one of us. You have sealed your fate as one of Hueco Mundo. Do not shed your own blood attempting to free yourself."
Orihime's lip began to bleed in a slow, sluggish trickle from biting down on it so hard.
"Do you hear me, girl? You will reside here, for the rest of your life, or until Aizen-sama has no further use for you. Do you understand? Your life has been subsumed by—"
The basin crashed to the floor, the unfired clay shattering into a million pieces, sending water in waves, lapping against the tips of Ulquiorra's shoes. Orihime lunged up, fist closed, face fixed in a snarl, ready to strike in any way she could, but was stopped abruptly when Ulquiorra closed a vice-like grip around her shaking wrist, and for good measure grabbed her left wrist too to keep her from attacking with that hand. No matter how Orihime attempted to extricate herself, his grip didn't give.
"Do you hate me?" he asked softly.
That took all the steam out of what would have been Orihime's attack, as her pulse began to slow down and her mind began to breathe again. She shot a look up at his face, seeing the same emotionless features with the same melancholy eyes, familiar and the same.
The room spun as hot, unwanted tears that made Orihime ashamed of herself spilled down her face and her knees buckled. "No," she choked out. "No."
"Why not?" She didn't see the genuinely shocked look that passed over Ulquiorra's face, nor did she hear the slightly troubled tone sitting deep in his voice.
She grimaced, baring her teeth in pain as her shoulders trembled. "Because—Because if I hate you…then I'll have to hate everyone else, too." Orihime squeezed her crying, bloodshot eyes tightly shut, and thought of all of her friends and everything she still have to lose. "And I can't…live like that. I just want to go home," Orihime sobbed, her voice becoming so choked as to be nearly unintelligible. "I just want to go home."
Orihime continued to choke out sobs at odd intervals that eventually died down to smaller, more manageable tremors as she painstakingly regained control of herself. As she started to recover, her knees straightening out, Ulquiorra's eyes narrowed.
His tone was blunt but not unkind. "Even if your body is away from this place, you will always be here. There is no escape," he whispered. "Not for anyone."
.x.X.x.
When she laid down for restless slumber yet again, Orihime dreamt of her friends.
They were all sitting at a lunch table in the brightly-lit cafeteria of the school they went to, having a normal lunchtime conversation. Orihime smiled, and unzipped the top of her lunchbox to dig out her sandwich, peanut butter and honey.
As she as was eating, Orihime tried to make out the words her friends were saying, but realized she couldn't. She frowned, staring at them, trying to hear them. She couldn't hear anything.
Orihime woke up, staring at the ceiling, put a hand to her chest and was surprised to find that her heart wasn't trying to hammer its way out of her chest. It went at a normal "Thub-thub-thub" that did not speak of the settling darkness over her bones.
She laid on her back, silent and still, before closing her eyes and drawing in a deep, shuddering breath. The darkness did not answer back.
It was hard to accept, but no mater how vivid her friends' faces remained to her, Orihime was beginning to forget their voices, and beginning to lose her tie to the mortal world.
.x.X.x.
The light beat down mercilessly on her neck (as much as a light with no fixed source could), and made her sweat just a little bit. Perspiration trickled down her back, making her hair stick to the back of her neck.
"You do not wish for freedom." Ulquiorra's voice held no inquisitive hint of a question; it was a statement, assured and confident despite the pervasive, omnipresent apathy of it. He was patient, but did not ask questions he believed he already knew the answer to.
They stood two feet away from each other, straight-backed and stiff. Orihime frowned at his words, still feeling a slight stab jolt in her rib cage to remind her of what she stood to lose.
"You're wrong," she remarked softly, hands fidgeting with the linen material of her loose, baggy pants. Fidgeting with her clothes had become a nervous tic, something she did automatically when even slightly nervous, completely out of her control.
Coal black eyebrows rose slightly as Ulquiorra murmured, "Am I?"
Hours later, when the shadows fell deep again and the room settled into a semblance of night, Orihime stared up at the ceiling, and didn't have to look towards the inky blackness of the antechamber to know that Ulquiorra was there.
A few notes:
1. I was originally going to have this be a straight-out pairing fic, but upon realizing that Ulquiorra x Orihime works better with subtext, I decided to make it Angst/Drama instead.
2. Okay, Orihime had a bit of a freak-out moment up there. It may have seemed sudden, but the way I see it, when someone snaps, it tends to be pretty abrupt, and being left alone in a uniform white room would be enough to put me at least a little bit on edge. Not sure that I would be beating at the doors, but whatever. This was meant to be a psychological piece from the beginning; I adore Orihime (just to head off anyone who thinks I might not), and I think this is how she'd react to being imprisoned.