She had been having the same dream for a while now, each night, or every other night at least, after she had returned from Hueco Mundo. He would reach out to her, like he had before he turned to dust, and like before, he would evaporate at her touch. She would wake up crying.
Ever since her return she had been wearing more white and more black.
He had been near her so often that he had become a comfort; he never laid a finger on his in aggression like so many others had done. He would come to see her, to check on her, force upon her that blank stare that searched her, made her feel naked and split open. She saw his face when she closed her eyes. She began, in a way, to look forward to his visits. They were a reminder that she was not yet dead, not yet entirely useless.
Once the dreams started, however, she stopped looking forward to seeing him. Each night she got in her bed trying to think of something, anything else. Like the one she claimed she loved, the one she was supposed to love, the one that saved her. She tried to ignore her shame, the shame she felt when she considered that maybe, even for a moment, she had not wanted to be saved. Despite her best efforts she would have her same dream, standing there in her torn white dress, reaching out to him as he died. It was unfair, she thought, that he was teasing her. Making her hope that one night he would stay, not appear just so vaguely and sprightly, that their hands would touch. Making her hope that somehow, someway, he had lived, that his dust would collect again.
This night was hot. Midsummer, the height of the season, and she lay in bed without any blankets. She wore a white t-shirt, long enough to cover her thighs, and an old pair of black underwear. Her bright hair was tied in a bun at the top of her head, the tendrils too short to fit in it sticking strongly to her sweaty brow. She had tossed and turned for a while, unable to fall asleep, feeling all too saturated with sweat and longing.
Eventually, she drifted into a light slumber.
It began soon after. Her dream, her nightmare.
It was dark, like it always was. She was standing in the ruins of the battle that cost him his life. She felt not the flowing of her white dress, and looking down she noticed that she was still in her makeshift pajamas. Strange, she thought, and then looked back up to search for him.
She was in the tower of Las Noches next, still in her shirt and underwear, her nervous body suddenly cold in the stale air.
"Ul-," she choked, "Ulquiorra?" She looked around frightfully, searching for a glowing pair of green eyes.
As she turned her head around she felt a hand on her neck, firm and gloved. She turned back around to see the hand. It was slender, covered, reflecting no light off of its blackness. It began to collect the dust, forming a figure.
Soon he appeared, taller than she remembered. Slimmer, too, but still with the same face, that almost bored-looking stare that haunted behind her eyelids.
His fingers were feeling for the pulse in her throat, his thumb brushing against her lower lip as it shook. Slowly, she lifted her hand to feel for him, to check, to be certain he wouldn't disappear. Her fingers rested on the half-skull that framed his pale face, and then drifted into his dark hair.
"In the palm of my hand..." he began to say, but she silenced him, grabbing that same hand and clutching it close to her chest.
"No," she whimpered, her eyes beginning to flood, "It's here. Where the heart is. I never got to tell you that you live in it, someplace."
"Orihime," he said, low and quiet, though it echoed amidst the pillars of the tower. She felt herself beginning to melt, squeezed her knees together as they weakened. He had so seldom said her name when she was in his captivity, before he had died...No, he seemed so very much alive, so real, his hand and his face, before her like on the day they met.
The scenery changed again. They were back in her room, back in the thick heat of the summer, pulsing through her open windows. The curtains were pulled, the moon casting its light through the thin fabric. She felt awake and asleep at the same time, happy and terrified, excited and nervous.
She was still gripping his hand to her breast as he stepped closer, using his free hand to touch her face.
"You're just a young girl," he mumbled in that low voice, the one that, after weeks of isolation, had begun to intoxicate her. "A human. What kind of power could you possibly have over me, what more could you know than me?"
"I'm not that young," she found herself saying, releasing her grip on his hand and letting it rest comfortably on her chest. It was true, she had a birthday, some time, maybe while she was captured, maybe when she had come back. She had stopped counting the days. She only counted the nights during which she dreamed. However, standing there, in her dream, her nightmare, her room, she forgot the tally she had been keeping in her head. "Why aren't you disappearing?"
"I was being coy," he admitted, stepping even closer to her, his body now pressing lightly against her own.
"You mean," she said softly, "you came on purpose?"
"I had so much more to learn from you," he told her, beginning to trace the outline of her skull with his eyes and hands. "I'm certain you were petrified."
"You threatened to kill me."
"Nonsense. I simply wanted to know what I would see if I did."
"Hmph," she scoffed, trying to shake her head loose from his grasp. "Still curious?" She hated herself, acting like the young girl he claimed she was, haughty, begging for respect.
"I owe you too much to kill you," he told her, and he sounded sincere.
"Then what do you want?" she asked, the tears welling up again, "Why did you come here?"
He dropped one hand below her chin and tilted her face up to meet his gaze. His green eyes grew even darker, and his normally cold, pale face seemed to radiate warmth.
He pressed his lips to her forehead, first, coy as he claimed to be. If I split open your skull, she heard in her mind. Next he kissed her blushing cheek, the heat from it surpassing that of the summer night.
"I see now," he whispered into her ear, "what motivates you humans."
She gasped, unable to help it, wrapping her small hands around the back of his head, pulling his dull face to her, kissing him on his white lips. They were warmer than she had imagined. His hands fell from her head and rested on her back, at the waist, that small, pinched waist that had fit so well into that white dress.
Her knees felt weaker still, and she could sense herself falling toward him, felt him holding her up. This was not how she imagined it would be. Her first real kiss. He was not the one she had daydreamed about at school, not the one she believed to be a hero. Suddenly she grew even more afraid, and she pulled away, guarded herself.
"I'm-" she studdered. What? She thought. A virgin? Can the Espada even...do they have...She knew her face was red. She was in that moment very aware of her state of undress, of her bare legs and free breasts beneath her t-shirt. His hands found their way beneath it, began to inch up to her shoulder-blades. She was being stupid, and she scolded herself with each sigh that came from her lips as he breathed onto her neck. This man, this thing, she guessed, had shown her no kindness. He had only forced his way into her soul, into her heart, by withholding from her any violence. It was some cruel form of seduction, she thought.
"You're frozen like we're still in Las Noches," he mused. It was true, she felt frightened. She was no longer certain that this was a dream. "Waiting for him to crash through the window and rescue you?"
"N-" she hesitated. "No."
She began to cry, those big, shining tears that she always cried. She was tired of crying. No one else cried. She was weak, and everyone knew it. Ulquiorra knew it too when he laid her head to his chest. She could hear the summer breeze whistle through the hole in his chest. His normal white jacket was ragged, unbuttoned halfway, dyed gray from months of existing only as dust.
"You cry all too often," he said softly, with a weakness in his voice she had never heard before. "I suppose I'm very much to blame."
"Why?" she sobbed, shaking herself loose. "Do you think it's because of how you held me hostage for that...monster..?"
"Aizen..." he lamented, "He was a false god to us, and for that I-"
"Or do you think I'm crying because-"
She held it in, knowing that she would only sob more if she said what she was thinking. She had hinted to him before, and regretted having said anything about his place in her heart.
"Orihime," he said, the weakness having left his voice. She numbed at the sight before her; he was kneeling, on his now-knobby knees, the tails of his coat spreading on the floor. With his arms he pulled her close to him by the waist, laying his pale head in her lap. The tears stopped, soaking back into her skin, coating her every inch with sweat and longing. She placed her hands on his head, one on the edge of his skull, one in his soft, black hair.
"What?"
"The circumstances under which we met were unfortunate," he mumbled into her skin, his breath warm on her body, his lips brushing the elastic of her underwear. She begged her knees not to give out beneath her. "If I wasn't what I am..." he paused and looked up at her from his place on the floor. "Do you remember your dress?"
"My...Yes, I do," she whimpered, melting even more as she looked at his dark eyes.
"The design was so vulgar," he said, "It had this little..."
"There was a circle there," she remembered, a cut-out circle of fabric that reminded onlookers of her fertility. "I felt so exposed."
"I hated it at first," he admitted, tracing with his finger the place where the circle had been. "Silly, when that wasn't even why we held you prisoner."
"At first?"
"But then," he went on, placing a small kiss on her hip between words, "I found I looked at it always." She laughed, more of a giggle, and she covered her mouth with one hand. "That's funny?"
"It tickles," she said, hating how young she sounded. "Also..."
"Yes?" he asked, returning to his work on her wet skin.
"I hated your stupid face," she told him. "You were so scary."
"Regrettable, but at the time it served my purpose."
"Maybe I..." she paused, wondering what kind of trouble she would find herself in if she went on. Not the kind of trouble that got one punished, nor the kind that left them anxious. The best kind of trouble, the kind she secretly wanted but told herself she would not give into. "Maybe I liked being scared."
He let out a deep sigh, his fingers digging harder into her waist, slipping around from her back to her sides. He slipped off her pair of old, ratty underwear, let it fall to the floor of her room, and she did not protest. Gently he kissed her where her nervous legs met, forcing her to let out a frightened gasp. A pleased gasp. It was finally too much for her weak knees to bare. She fell into his arms, onto the floor, so that he could see her red face and glazed-over eyes.
"I remember thinking, as I disappeared," he said, placing his hand where his mouth had just been, "how beautiful you looked, how much your beauty had filled my emptiness." He moved his fingers against her, looking for the right place.
"Oh-" she sighed, overwhelmed. "How do you even know...can you-"
"One learns things about humanity," he informed her, sliding one finger back and forth. "You people prize your chastity."
"Hnnh-" she stammered. "Yes, but..."
"But...?"
"Ulquiorra," she panted, grabbing at his elbow as if afraid he would take his hand away. Her other hand grasped blindly at him, eventually gripped onto his coat, pulling the buttons out of their buttonholes. "What are you going to do?"
"Nothing against your will," he said, his fingers moving up to her stomach, leaving her feeling empty. "I've done enough of that already."
"Are you even real?" she begged, lifting her other hand to join the first, running them up and down his chest, stopping coyly just before his belt.
"Must I really prove it to you?"
She stayed silent for a moment, wondering how unromantic it would be if she stopped to pinch herself. At least that's what everyone said ends a dream.
"Yes," she told him, her fingers traveling to tuck themselves into the top of his white pants.
"Not yet," he scolded her, moving them away.
He began to lift up her white t-shirt, slowly revealing her young, supple skin and her full breasts, and she saw something in his eyes that she had not seen before. A hunger. True emptiness.
He laid her down on the floor as he pressed his face against her chest, sniffing her, and she wondered if he truly had a sense of smell. As if curious, he traced her every curve with those long, dark fingers, studying her, understanding her as she lay below him, sweating and waiting. Again he lowered his mouth between her legs, parted her like hands running through clear water, wet and warm.
She would be lying if she claimed she had not noticed it before: his mouth. Dark lips and a sharp tongue. She had gazed at is when he spoke to her, admired how it hardly needed to open to speak his calm and frightening words. His sharp tongue now caressed her, made her every muscle twitch in a way it had never done before. Sometimes she felt like this, when she woke up crying. Empty, with a strange pressure on her pelvis. She tried not to giggle again, thinking of herself waddling to the bathroom, under the impression that she just really had to pee.
She looked down her own body to try and find his eyes, noticed that he was already looking over her soft skin, his hands resting on her breasts as they spread out across her body. His eyes brought it out of her, made it wash over her in waves, that pleasure, unlike anything she'd ever felt. She cried, wept, but it was a joyful weeping.
"Please," she sobbed, sitting up so that she could grab him by the shoulders. "Please prove to me that you're real."
He wasted no time, did not take his eyes from her as he slid his once so well-ironed white pants down his legs.
"Are you certain?" he asked.
"I'm not that young," she insisted. She felt ready. It was not how she had planned it. He was not who she had planned it to be with. But she was ready; every inch of her was crying out for him. She placed her fingers lovingly on the hole in his chest.
It hurt, as she knew it would. She knew also that Ulquiorra was well equipped to cause much, much more pain for a person if he wanted to. He must have been easing up, being gentle. So they...they can do it, she thought. She hadn't the bravery to look down, to see what their bodies meeting really looked like, so she kept her eyes on his face. It was calm as ever, like it was even in the heat of battle, except that his brow was shifted, weakened.
"I don't deserve you," he confessed as he drove into her. "I've done nothing to deserve this."
"I don't care," she said, and it was true. It was wrong, that she should so badly want him, he who had held her captive and caused her such great suffering. But each time she considered those facts, she was accosted with the image of him evaporating before her, disappearing into nothingness before she could reach out to grab his hand. "Please don't stop, it's okay, really."
He obeyed, and it gave her a sense of power. She was in control. He was her prisoner. She could lock him up here forever and he would have no choice but to stay and do her bidding. Have I suffered enough? She thought. She decided, between listening to Ulquiorra's unfamiliar grunting, that yes, she had. If he did not deserve her, then at least she deserved the power she had over him. It was her sweet revenge, her redemption, her prize. She eased into it, grabbing at his back, pulling him in deeper and harder, taking what she was owed.
It ceased to hurt near the end, when his body grew rigid and his voice hoarse. He shook as he came, spilling nothing into her young, fertile body, which she was thankful for.
He collapsed onto her, and she was struck by how light he was. It made her fearful, at first, because it felt as though he may not be real. But then, as she wrapped her weak arms around his slender back, he became heavier, tangible, he proved his existance.
"My heart is with you," he told her, softly, into her ear, which was still ringing with pleasure. "You are my heart, as I don't have one."
"You can have mine," she said, quickly, instinctively, as if she had wanted to for along time.
He kissed her again, on her now-pale cheek, and she closed her eyes.
When she opened them it was past sunrise. It was cool, like all summer mornings before the season descended into autumn. She was naked, her shirt and underwear thrown aside on the hardwood. He had been there, she knew it, she felt it between her legs on her breasts and in her mouth. The little bit of pain that he had left in her was to strong to have been just a dream.
"How will I ever know?" she whispered, dreading how she would go about finding out. Asking Rukia if arrancars can exist in an afterlife would raise some questions. She smiled and ran her hand through her messy hair, which had long-since fallen out of its elastic band. As she stood she felt dizzy, like all of her blood still laid in her lap, like the dream she had lived had smashed her skull, and she shuddered, walking naked around her room to look for clothes.
On the floor beside her bed she found a small white button. She sighed as she held it to her lips, trying to feel whatever spiritual pressure she could from it. Nothing. She considered that maybe that was the afterlife; you had no more power. That was why he had become her prisoner.
She began her day with a strong eagerness for the nighttime to arrive once more, so that she could dream again.