Author's notes: For Necrofriggian, because she asked nicely, and I had a plot-bunny. I just thought it might be nice to go into the early canon (volumes 3-5, and Chapter 0, Side A from volume 23 and the SOULs databook) and consider what might have been going through Uryu's mind at certain points in the early story. I'm certain that this is it, though, any further and the premise is ruined because it would just be a more general alternate-POV fic. :)

As the weeks went by, Uryu became more and more accustomed to the way Orihime Inoue appeared to be cheerfully fighting her way into his bubble, and more and more alarmed by the fact that his best attempts to prevent her could be described, at best, as half-hearted.

"Good afternoon, Uryu!"

The sound of her voice, which he had once found grating, was beginning to grow on Uryu. Whereas it had once sounded shrill and high-pitched to him, he could now discern a delicateness and femininity in the sound, along with such convincing emotion that she always gave the impression of caring. That was nice, Uryu had to admit; it had been a very long time since anybody had even pretended to care about him.

Uryu fought back the ghost of a smile threatening to erupt on his features and looked up at Orihime. "Good afternoon. I trust you're well?"

Orihime beamed. "Oh, I'm fabulous! Well, I'm much better than poor Michiru, anyway, she came down with the flu last night so I'm missing my sewing-partner! I hope you don't mind if I sit with you, today?"

Uryu really wanted to come up with an excuse, to push Orihime away, to gently repel her small hands from the bubble she was pounding on, but he made the mistake of looking up at her face and found that he was unable to tell her to take a hike.

"By all means," he found himself saying, and he shifted his sewing materials to the side of the desk, the better to give her space to sit down next to him.

"I'm glad," said Orihime, setting down her own sewing kit and pulling up a chair. "I really do want to be your friend, Uryu."

For some inexplicable reason, Uryu suddenly felt uncomfortable. It was something to do with the way his collar suddenly felt tight around his neck, and how the sun must have come out from behind the clouds outside because he felt the familiar heat pouring through the window, casting its warm glow over the classroom. Funny how nobody else seemed to be affected by it, though...

Uryu chanced a glance out of the window and saw that the sky was still cloudy. Odd.

"Anyway," Orihime continued, apparently sensing Uryu's awkwardness and brushing it off as though it were nothing.

She's so kind.

"I'm curious. Are you going to tell me about that mantle you were sewing a while ago?"

Uryu gave a polite smile, before reaching into his school bag and taking out the folded mass of white fabric. "You mean this one?"

Orihime took it from his hands and examined the garment, running delicate fingers over the evenly stitched hems and undoing and re-doing the metal clasp. "What's the story?" she asked, quietly, as her hands ghosted over the smooth cotton.

"I'm just really fascinated by the whole medieval Christian knight look," Uryu responded.

"Oh, so like the Teutonic Knights?" asked Orihime.

Uryu was pleasantly surprised; evidently Orihime was clever, despite her reputation for ditziness. "Yes, exactly like the Teutonic Knights," he confirmed. "I just always preferred the colour blue to black," he continued, turning the cape over and revealing a (five-pointed, not at all flower-like) blue cross stitched onto the inside of the material. Orihime beamed.

"I like that colour, too," she said, nodding her agreement. "Actually, do you have any of that colour thread left that I could borrow? I was looking for some to stitch the flowers on my embroidery..."

"Certainly," Uryu's mouth said, and his hand moved of its own accord into his small bag of cotton reels, picking out a spool of sky blue and handing it to Orihime. "Use as much as you'd like."

"Thank you!" exclaimed Orihime, delightedly accepting the thread as Uryu wondered just when he had become such a pushover.

As hard as Uryu was trying to concentrate on his book, it was nearly impossible with such a racket going on around him.

"Animal crackers," said a familiar voice, almost hesitantly. Uryu's ears pricked up at this; what could possibly be causing Orihime uncertainty? He glanced up, to see Chizuru Honsho scratching away at a sheet of paper with a pen.

"No way," she said. "You like frankfurter kranz too, right?"

Orihime gave a small laugh. "Oh! Yeah!"

Uryu winced as Chizuru finished scribbling away and adopted an expression he did not like. Not one bit.

"All right!" she shouted, throwing her arms in the air. "The results of your love test are in! Your perfect match... is me!"

Some indescribable force tugged at Uryu, making him feel as though he had to step in at that moment, before Chizuru could get her hands on Orihime. He didn't know what it was, but Orihime seemed to have the power to just make him want to protect her; whether it was her wide, beseeching-looking eyes, her childish demeanour, or the fact that her uncommonly beauteous physical appearance was infamous for drawing in a lot of less-than-savoury types.

However, before he could interrupt Chizuru, another dragon, Tatsuki Arisawa, had slammed her foot down on the pervert's head. "Those questions were rigged!" she yelled, as Chizuru's nose crunched against the desk and a stream of blood poured from the injured girl's nose.

"What was that for?!" she wailed.

As Tatsuki prepared to respond with another punch, Uryu noticed Orihime's attention being drawn towards the door. "Oh," he heard her soft voice exclaim, as Ichigo Kurosaki was about to walk out.

"Going home, Ichigo?" she asked, brightly, and although her face was turned away from him Uryu could see the trace of a blush on what little of her right cheek he could see.

She likes him.

Uryu couldn't say why, but this thought bothered him somewhat.

"Yeah, I gotta run," said Ichigo, disinterestedly. "See you, Orihime!" And with that, Ichigo walked out without a backwards glance at the waving Orihime.

He doesn't see her the same way.

Ah, that must have been what bothered him. Poor Orihime had a crush on somebody who would never like her back.

Uryu felt sorry for her.

"Hey, Uryu, did you hear? Spontaneous Trips is visiting Karakura tonight!"

Surprised by this variation of her afternoon greeting, Uryu blinked. "Spontaneous Trips?"

"Yes, you know, Don Kanonji's show!" jabbered Orihime, plonking her bag down on the floor by Uryu's desk and bringing her hands up to cross over her chest as she made the familiar pose. "Bwahahaha!"

"I am aware," Uryu responded, as Orihime pulled up a chair. Uryu found that although she was being particularly raucous today, he welcomed her presence. Whatever happened to finding her annoying? He was even coming to appreciate her unreasonable enthusiasm for everything she saw.

Orihime pursed her lips. "Well, are you going?"

"Yes," Uryu replied without hesitation, somehow finding himself glad that she was a fan of the programme, too.

"Brilliant!" she exclaimed, taking out her sewing project and humming happily. "Perhaps I'll see you there, then!"

Uryu gave a small smile. "Perhaps."

It was a strange day, Uryu thought, when Orihime didn't turn up to the handicrafts club.

The emptiness of Orihime's usual seat in the classroom concerned him; despite the excitement of Don Kanonji's visit to Karakura, Orihime had been emanating a feeling of melancholy ever since the anniversary of the onset of his mother's coma. Had she somehow picked up on his own sadness? Uryu doubted it. It probably had more to do with the fact that Ichigo Kurosaki happened to be absent from school on the very same day. What right did that bastard have to be so miserable that he couldn't come to school, when Uryu had lost his mother on that day and yet didn't feel the need to bunk off? Some people had real problems.

Perhaps Orihime's absence was because she was busy studying. She had to make some time to do so; there was no other explanation for how her results for the last school assessments were third in their year group, only nine points behind his own.

Suddenly, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and Uryu felt the sensation that he was being watched. Without turning around, Uryu focused on the spiritual pressure floating in from the door, and determined that the smell was the somehow comfortingly familiar, yet somehow abhorrently enemy odour of Ichigo Kurosaki's newly-developed and distinctively chaotic spiritual pressure, along with faint traces of a new, flowery scent he had been picking up on for the last couple of weeks.

Was that... Orihime?

Ichigo was a Soul Reaper (albeit a very strange-smelling one), but Uryu had never smelled anything like Orihime's spiritual pressure before her. What powers could she possibly be developing? He didn't have a clue.

What a fascinating girl.

"It's true, he really is in our class."

Stupid Ichigo, Uryu thought, as he heard Ichigo's low voice. He really had no idea I existed until I confronted him the other day. What could Orihime possibly see in him?

"See?" he heard Orihime's soft voice say. Uryu sighed, packing up his bag and standing up, deciding to leave before Ichigo's idiocy provoked him into punching the moron.

"Oh, he's leaving!" Ichigo said.

Well spotted, genius. Your observational skills astound me.

"Wait! Look!" Orihime's voice penetrated his thoughts. "Michiru's taking her torn doll to him!"

Uryu turned his head in surprise, and saw that Michiru Ogawa was indeed approaching him, clutching a stuffed animal. "Ishida!" she cried. Without a word, Uryu reached inside his bag for his sewing kit.

"What's he got? A pencil box?" Ichigo's voice demanded from the door. Uryu set the sewing kit down on the table, restraining the urge to scream in frustration at his ignorant classmate.

Orihime appeared to giggle. "No, it's a sewing kit."

"So..?"

"Sewing!" Orihime corrected him, and Uryu felt a rush of gratitude to her for hammering some logic into Ichigo's brain.

Suddenly, it hit Uryu that Orihime was talking about him. More to the point, she was watching him. Watching his every move.

Why?

Ignoring Michiru Ogawa, Uryu snapped open his sewing kit and selected the thread closest to the colour of Michiru's doll. Careful not to make a silly mistake which would make him look like an idiot in front of Orihime, like dropping the spool onto the floor or stabbing his finger with the needle in his haste, Uryu raised the needle and the end of the thread to his eyes and carefully but swiftly threaded the needle, relief flooding him when he managed to get the cotton through the eye on his first attempt.

Uryu proceeded to patch up the doll as dramatically as possible, making a row of stitches in record time, constantly aware that he was being watched. After just a few seconds, he finished with a triple stitch (a double would usually be enough, but he wanted to be certain that he had done a thorough and perfect job - Michiru was friends with Orihime, and he knew that she would be the first person to know if his work on the doll ever began to unravel), threw the doll into the air and bit off the end of the thread. Scissors would probably have been tidier, but it just wouldn't have had the same cool effect.

Uryu silently handed the doll back to Michiru, hoping that Orihime had caught his epic job of fixing the animal, and Michiru proceeded to enthusiastically throw the doll in the air.

"You fixed him! Thank you, Ishida!" she exclaimed, her face alight with joy.

"Don't do that," he responded, quietly, pushing his glasses up his nose as he smelled another waft of Orihime's spiritual pressure and felt his face burn, knowing that she was still watching him. "It was nothing."

As Michiru walked away, Uryu wondered why the whole situation made him feel so embarrassed, and why he had felt the need to show off when he had realised that Orihime was watching. Why the hell should he care so much about what she thought of him, anyway?

After he felt Orihime's and Ichigo's spiritual pressures disappear from the door, the penny dropped.

Oh.

Uryu's eyes widened as the world around him cracked, falling, in shattered fragments, to the floor.

I like this girl.

Well, Uryu had always known that he had to grow up at some point. However, that didn't make the fact that his bubble was finally lying in shards by his feet any less disturbing to him.