Characters: Orihime, small cameo by Ulquiorra
Summary: Stargazing in Las Noches.
Pairings: None
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Hueco Mundo arc
Timeline: Hueco Mundo arc
Author's Note: Just speculative work again; I do that a lot, you've probably noticed.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
Inactivity would likely drive her mad if she succumbed to it, the silence finally overwhelming her and the white walls growing close and claustrophobic. She had to do something, anything, to relieve the doldrums and escape madness prowling up behind her like a hunting wolf with lamp-like yellow eyes, hungry and greedy.
Orihime slid down with fluid slowness to the cold, white-washed stone floor, feeling the small dusting of sand—sand crunched underfoot wherever anyone when in Las Noches, blowing in from the desert outside; sand was omnipresent—grit into her thin legs, bare from the knee down. The window was high and narrow and barred, a nick carved deep into the solid wall.
She did not know the stars. They were as alien to Orihime as the desert world she had been unceremoniously thrust into. She had no name for these stars.
But, as her eyes roamed aimlessly, she began to give them names.
They were simple names, of course. Names that would be easy to remember. It was a strange experience, to be the giver of names to stars that likely already had names given to them by the nomadic Hollows who wandered the breadth of the endless desert of Hueco Mundo. But it was comforting, to fill the growing, yawning void within her.
In time, Orihime would, with her fingers and a mouth that formed the words silently but never spoke, trace the lines of what she thought to be constellations. Stars that formed shapes would be given collective names and they came into being as new creations altogether.
This was the limited scope of her existence, the limited sight to the outside world.
There was nothing else, nothing else left to her.
Nothing.
.
If she wasn't careful and she allowed a torpor to fall over her mind like a glossy tapestry of sight, Orihime started to remember the faces. They traveled long through a thick fog and a dense haze, fuzzy around the edges but otherwise devastatingly clear. Memories grated across her skin, rubbed it raw and bleeding as thought she was mortifying her flesh with a cheese grater.
Look at what you've lost, they seemed to say, their choral voices eerie and indistinct. Look at what you could have again if you just wished for it.
No! She screamed within the confines of her skull. No one could hear.
No. Orihime's inner voice was weary and drained, collapsing into abject defeat.
She would never see those people again, and if she did, it would only ever be as an enemy. Never again as a friend.
Nothing could ever go back to being as it was.
There would be naught but anguish from these murderous memories. Better to forget.
Her old life was over. Better to forget.
Nothing, nothing left to Orihime but the stars she faithfully, dutifully, emptily watched.
.
Ulquiorra's voice was soft with its usual piercing monotone, but Orihime didn't register it or his presence except for her heart to start to pound, her body reacting even when her mind did not. She did not look at him as he would have perhaps preferred. Her lips mouthed out words that were soundless and none but she could understand.
No one could comprehend the malaise of her heart.
Especially not Ulquiorra. Never Ulquiorra.
Something metal could be heard sliding dully across the gritty floor; her skirt had to have been getting filthy from all the dust, but she didn't rise. Orihime didn't turn round, even when the familiar dull smell, tinged with sickening copper as always, filled her nostrils full. Her stomach ached but was strangely devoid of hunger; the need o eat had fallen away from the girl whose appetite had formerly been voracious. In its place, Orihime was aware only of a vague feeling of nausea.
"It is the same as before." Ulquiorra's voice was a cacophonous bell, not human but the hollow mockery of it as it rang dully. "If you do not eat, I will make you eat." His footsteps were whispers against the stone as he walked away, and was gone.
Orihime would not touch the food until it was nearly cold and even then would not really comprehend that it was cool and soggy and nearly tasteless. The stars glittered coldly, reflecting in the pools of her eyes, coming in and drowning there.
She had no use for food.
.
With the whole sky as a backdrop and more than just a barred narrow window as a viewport, Orihime saw new worlds of alien desert stars open up before her eyes, exploding and blooming into being, glittering, sparkling in all their shades and facets.
There was no time to contemplate though, she realized as another explosion echoed across the otherwise frigidly silent night and dust impacted against her face.
No time for thought when the war all around threatened to tear the ground out from under her feet.
.
Back in her own bed for what seemed an eternity, Orihime found the sheets and mattress strangers and found little rest there, not at first.
Everything seemed dull and tarnished, less real than it had before, like the blindfold had been pulled form her eyes and her eyes had been opened to reality. Nothing was as real as it had been.
Eventually, Orihime succumbed to the weariness of her body and slept, though her mind was wakeful and did not with to sleep.
Her dreams were strange ones.
Stars swirled around her eyes, slowly at first. Their passage was the slow, majestic tide of the sea, inexorable but slow and regal, in no hurry. Their song was almost soothing to her, trying to sing her off to a better world, a softer world, a gentler world.
Then, things began to change.
They grew faster, swirling in circles round Orihime's eyes. Faster and faster, until their trails became themselves and they burned into her retinas, remaining in her vision even after she closed her eyes. They tormented Orihime, taunted her, burned her flesh until it charred.
And when she woke up, she could not remember anything at all.
Could not remember the stars she watched, the stars she named and the constellations she formed with delicate fingers and an open, silent mouth.
Funny, what the mind forgets.
.
Though she did not remember that which had kept her from madness in her cell in Hueco Mundo, Orihime still watched the stars. She didn't know why she did; it was a compulsion that called to her, an obsession that sang in her ear until she heeded it and stared upwards. It would not let her go; it gave her no choice.
She rested on a grassy hill, drinking in the sweet smell of the fine grasses, lying on her back with her long copper hair spilling out around her and her arms behind her head. Orihime stared upwards.
With the path of her eyes she traced the lines of familiar constellations, ones she had never paid much attention to before but still knew. They opened up new worlds to her, always singing, reaching down to her like they never had before.
But still, something was wrong.
No, not wrong.
Just off.
Orihime frowned, and wondered why she always expected to see different stars in place of the ones in her eyes.
Wondered why the patterns that burned behind her eyelids were different from what she opened her eyes to see.