The rabbit tapped his white foot and said with tremendous agitation, "We are late! We are late! We are late for an important date!"
His long whiskers shuddered and his fur bristled underneath his finely made dark blue velvet vest.
He hopped and looked towards her, pleading with brown eyes, his furry finger beat on the glass of his gold pocket watch.
"We are late!"
Orihime's thought it was strange-not the talking rabbit mind you, that was pretty normal. Nor was she fazed by the stark landscape, sand dunes created by painful white sand, impossible black shadows and a blue sky so pale and bright it hurt to look at for long periods of time.
No, the thing that struck Orihime Inoue was the mention of the word "date."
Were there dates in Hueco Mundo? And if there were, where would you go? She leaned up against a dusty reddish pillar and contemplated the idea. A date in Hueco Mundo would be an unfortunate thing, she mused, tapping her finger on her full lips. The Espadas were a bit starved for entertainment. That is if you discounted dismembering each other, ripping holes into chests, or trying to kill prisoners.
She frown. No, that would not do. A very poor date it would be.
A gust of dry wind whipped a clump of her long, auburn hair in her face, obscuring her vision of the white rabbit.
The sky darken, like a bruise, purple bled into the blue until only an unrelenting black stared back at her. The moon high above it all, it's cold smile gracing the sand. Orihime blinked, wondering what happened to the day, when she noticed the rabbit.
His once clear brown eyes, nervous and sweet a moment before turned dull and empty. The warm brown faded leaving only a soulless yellow in its wake. The whites of his eyes spilled with the color of the sky and his beautiful fur began to grow in jagged spurts, as if his body rejected it, growing out as a tainted orange-red mane. His body contorted and cracked, the velvet shredded under the treatment, tearing and ripping all around his body.
He let out a wordless scream. It vibrated into the dead air.
Orihime's heart pounded.
No
The cute whiskers stood stiff like boards and expanded like a fan across his face. They melted and spread, solidifying in a bleached mask, streaks of red stained vertically. His ears grew into long horns, curved and pointed like a bull or a Satyr, Orihime once saw in a picture one of Onii-chan's old books.
The rabbit opened its bone jaw and roared. Grains of sand danced in the madness, kicking and hitting her, striking her face, the tender flesh of her hands and stinging her eyes.
She needed to turn away-had to- but nothing seemed to work. Her body became the pillar she leaned on. Frozen and vulnerable to the creature in front of her.
It, the cute rabbit, now hovered in the air grotesque and powerful. The air whispered, as if responding to the oppressive reiatsu swirling around him. He started down at her. Claws extending from his feet, his hands and those yellow, empty eyes gripped hers.
"Help…you," he uttered.
Her breath stopped. It must have. A horrible pain pressed on her chest and she watched him come closer. Those yellow eyes, the mane churned behind him.
His arm extended towards her and the world ended, somewhere between the distance of her and the claw hand now holding a lock of her hair.
….
Orihime shot up in bed. The quite hum of the fan answered the sound of her thundering heart.
Sweat drenched her night shirt and the sheets below her. The image still suspended in front of her.
Kurosaki-kun floating above the debris, Ulquirra's dismembered arm dangling from his right hand, drips of blood puddle below. Those frozen eyes, that mask, his face…
I did that, she thought, I forced that on him.
A shudder ripped through her despite the room being warm. Orihime hugged herself and tried to rub the goosebumps away, but it didn't help.
Nothing would, she knew. Only the sun seemed to work. The thoughts of Hueco Mundo, Kurosaki-kun's hollow form, the horrors…all faded under the bright light.
Night was another story.
Three weeks now since they had returned to Karakura Town. Three weeks of trying to return to normal and more than three weeks since she had slept through the night.
A heavy sigh escaped her lips and she went into the bathroom, careful not to make noise. Rangiku-san was in the other room and Orihime didn't want to wake her.
Going back to sleep was useless, regardless of what she tried to do, the same thing would happen, she would close her eyes and imprinted the image of him on her eyelids would fill her vision.
It seemed his new form was scared of the dark, because it didn't leave her after she dreamt of it.
And each night it was a repeat performance.
She turned on the light and tried not to wince at the sight of her face. Pale and sickly-looking with dark circles under her brown eyes, her hair hung down in sweaty clumps.
This time it was a rabbit, another time it had been a robot, and even another, much to her dismay, was during a dream of her eating a bowl of popcorn. That transformation was particularly disturbing, since she had been in the middle of eating the popcorn, with a wonderful dip made of wasabi and red bean paste.
But the worse were always the ones with Kurosaki-kun face down on the ground with the massive, gaping hole in his chest and those sightless eyes.
She swallowed down a bit of anguish at the memory.
No. She stared hard at herself.
Kurosaki-kun is okay. He won. He is alive. Stop this!
She closed her eyes, trying to calm her heart.
He is okay. He is okay. She continued to whisper to herself.
She leaned her forehead against the cool glass, letting the soothing sensation into her skin.
She really couldn't keep going on like this, and when she opened her tired eyes again, she thought, I really would like to be able to eat popcorn again…