Rating:T
Pairing: UlquiHime --with some IchiRuki & maybe a hint of TatsuRenji, much later on.
Summary: It has been two years since Aizen's defeat, and yet questions remain. Is it possible to straddle the lines of life and death? Of Whole and hollow?
Warning: Spoilers up to 286. Mmm, crack.
Disclaimer --I don't own Bleach, or any of the characters I am going to play with. They belong to Tite Kubo & his publishers.
--Chapter One--
Counting Blue Cars
Inoue Orihime leaned against the pedestrian railing, staring down at the steady rivulets of cars below her. It was the main artery of traffic between the suburbs such as Karakura Town and the busier districts of Tokyo's metropolitan centers. She pictured, as her flighty brain was wont to do, that the cars were blood cells moving to and from a beating heart, that the commuters; harried businessmen and families with children pressed all eyes against the glass for anything to amuse them, were like the oxygen being carried along with the flow.
Cities needed people to thrive the way the body needed oxygen, right?
While she pondered this, her lips moved almost unconsciously. "One..two..three..."
Tatsuki, her best friend, rejoined her side, and lightly nudged the apparently daydreaming Orihime. One hand held out a can for her to take. "Here. I bought you a drink. You like the Aloe Peach Yogurt stuff, right?" Her tone was a bit unsure, but she had long ago learned that the stranger the combination, the more likely Orihime was to relish whatever it was.
"Seven...eight...ni---Oh! Tatsuki! Yes! How did you know that was one of my favorites?" Slightly glazed expression snapped back into focus, and a broad smile curled over the ginger-headed girl's mouth as she accepted the drink. She tapped the top a few times, and then popped it open. "Phew! How do you get used to this? We've been running together in the morning for a month now, and it just isn't getting any easier!"
Tatsuki smirked, and leaned her back against the railing. "It gets easier. Wait until I start you on the course with all of the hills. Then you can complain." Her own smirked spread into a smile as her companion fought the urge to blanch. "Where were you just now, anyway? You were.. counting."
"Oh? Just then? I was counting blue cars. My brother and I used to do that sometimes when we'd go for walks." She explained quickly, a slightly embarrassed look crossing her features.
"Hmm." Was her friend's only response, as she popped the top of her own (far tamer) drink, and dropped in a straw. She watched Orihime as she seemed to settle right back into her fog of daydreaming, eyes fixed upon the cars below. It had been two years since Orihime's disappearance and subsequent return. Two years since she had begun to see the black and white monsters and the robed spirits that drove them away. Two years since Kurosaki Ichigo had changed everyone's worlds, though whether for the better or worse...she still couldn't say.
Orihime had never regained all of her former exuberance -- most had chalked it up to age and budding maturity, but Tatsuki seemed to know better. Sure, her warm smiles and amusing eccentricities still shone through, but there was reservation now -- as though some part of her refused to share itself with anyone else. Part of her was distant, unreachable -- when she daydreamed, it was as if brown eyes were staring out at another world entirely.
"Why did you decide to start running with me anyway, Orihime? You've never had any interest in sports as long as I've known you."
"Because. You told me once that when you ran, it was like meditation. You stopped thinking and feeling and just went where your feet lead you." The ginger-haired girl smiled slightly. "I wanted to see if you were right."
Kuchiki Rukia groaned and dropped silently down from the tree limb she had been perched upon. A cellphone-like device was plucked from a pocket, beeping insistently.
"Ichigo. Hollow." She kicked, none too gently, the softly snoring body of Kurosaki Ichigo.
"Huh? What the hell, Rukia? Couldn't you take care of it!?" He snapped as he woke with a start. The manga volume that lay still open in his lap was launched at the petite shinigami, who caught it effortlessly and began flipping through the pages. Her nose crinkled disinterestedly, and the book was cast aside. She greatly preferred the romance titles Orihime lent her than the childish action stories Ichigo read, she could barely see a point in them, when their own ordeals had been far more harrowing and eventful than stories of foolish and over ambitious ninja boys or kids who thought card games were life or death situations.
"Stop whining. I got the last one."
"Well of course you did, it's your job!" He seethed as he pulled the emblem from his pocket that would allow his spirit to disconnect from his body. "Gimmie a break,huh? I've only got a few more weeks before I leave for college."
And with that, the black clad spirit of Kurosaki Ichigo pulled itself from his human form, and searched for the direction from which the ghoulish reiatsu was emanating. In a flash, he was gone, leaving Rukia with the manga, and his unconscious shell.
The hollows had not stopped coming after Aizen had been defeated. To assume such a thing would happen would have been foolish. The hollows would continue to exist as long as humans did. As long as pain and suffering and sadness and jealousy endured, so would the vengeful and regretful souls of those that could not let go.
And as long as Karakura town remained the epicenter of so much spiritual energy, beings of all sorts, benign and malignant, would remain the bulls-eye on the target.
Had anyone been watching, it would have been odd to see such a petite young woman pick up and the much larger and possibly passed out figure that she so easily manhandled. With a few easy movements Ichigo's body was propped back up against the tree, roughly in the same position as he had been before. A small hand unconsciously reached out and brushed at the wild orange hair, a gesture she would have never dared had the body's owner been present.
It had been foolish to think that Ichigo would remain here like this forever. That they could share an endless string of mostly uneventful afternoons. High school had ended. Humans had their own ambitions, their entire lives to live and savor in such a short span. It was easy to forget that he was still essentially human and still essentially mortal. Rukia could play at being human, could pretend she understood this world. But it was as foreign to her as the brief suggestions that he, Ichigo, forfeit his life on Earth and take up with the ranks of the Shinigami. To help them rebuild.
It was a suggestion he had rejected. And soon he would be gone.
Elsewhere, there was darkness. There was cold. A lone figure loped along the periphery of what had been a gleaming white citadel in that barren and monochromatic wasteland. It was his kingdom now, an empire of dirt and desert and silence. The arrancar had all either dispersed or had been disposed of. The other hollows dare not draw near anymore, for fear of the former cuarta Espada.
Unnatural, their whispers told him. Pity, some had gleefully intoned. For a creature that had been created in the image of a human from that of a monster and seemed to lack all desire to revel in being either. Trash, he had called them. All of them. Unworthy of his enmity or his blade.
His footfall was silent among the ruined halls, green eyes wide and striking against the monochrome rubble. He told himself inwardly that he had no true destination within these walls. And yet, he always ended up there, outside that cell. Her cell.
Ulquiorra had never been demonstrative in life. In death, only as the mindless soul devourer had he lashed out. And in this half-life he had learned to shut out all sensation and focus only upon his objectives and the will of those he had placed his loyalty in. His face became a tempered mask more impenetrable than even the bone remnants of his hollow self. Aizen had been his God. Inoue Orihime had been his devil, a tempting things from him that he had not been aware that he had wanted.
In the end, he had chosen sin. He had chosen free will.
He sighed faintly, the expression cutting the silence like nails on a chalkboard. Deliberately, he reached up and plucked out one of his green orbs. Time may have lost all meaning in Hueco Mundo, but he knew he had waited as long as he could. Ghostly white finger clasped around his eye, and crushed it quickly. The dust rose and swirled around him, enveloping him in a sensory memory that he decided to breathe in slowly. To savor.
The touch of a soft hand against his face. The endless questions and cajoling. Begging him to find some way, any way to come with them. To leave this place.
"Don't stay..." She whispered into his ear, breath hot even in this memory. Her warmth seemed so close now, delivered to his narrow lips, a kiss for the departing. "There is more to you than this. Don't you want more than this, Ulquiorra-san?"
"I cannot. The shinigami would pursue me endlessly. Your nakama…they would not approve. There is no room for me in your world, Inoue. It is illogical to consider otherwise."
Her face had crumpled into hot tears. "They would. I would. You saved me." The bluish tearmarks on his own face seemed to burn. Was this how an arrancar cried? The pain caused his conscious self to twitch.
If this was Hell; if her touch was damnation, he cursed himself silently for not giving in completely, however foolish and impossible such a thing may have been. The idiot girl saw only that part of him which looked human in those moments, and in that memory, he could feel, truly feel...that he was the bigger idiot for wanting to believe what her eyes told him.
And then she was gone.
And now he remained in Purgatory, damned and alone.
To be Continued.
A/N: This is my first fanfic. EVER. I was inspired by the UlquiHime pairing and the excellent fics this ship is attracting, and couldn't resist. I'm not entirely sure where this is all going, but hopefully somewhere good (or at least somewhere that doesn't suck.) This chapter was really an attempt to try and capture the personalities of the characters. I'm not entirely certain if I was successful. I feel like I'm in over my head!
Suggestions would be eternally adored. 3
So, uhm..please enjoy! Or don't!
PS -- the Title of the fic is for the Collective Soul song of the same name. It just seemed to fit. The title chapter is a song by the band Dishwalla.
--Dani