Human Anatomy

Author's Notes: There are now ten planned chapters to the story. If you have any suggestions or requests as to an emotion you would like to see written, let me know and I will see if I can follow your lead. Big, big thank yous to reviewers.

II. Guilt

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Orihime was remarkably sensitive, much more than she ever dared to show.

There were heaps of tragedies, mounds of sadness that she had accumulated slowly into her soul. It took her a long time to get over her brother's words. How sorry she was that she had hurt him. There were also the unsaid words she kept frozen, waiting for a spring to thaw their loneliness and manifest them into being. Even Ulquiorra's brusque irritation at her ignorance, this developing Stockholm syndrome, caused her no small amount of grief.

Orihime didn't believe in regret, so instead she lived with blame.

Ulquiorra watched her place the morsels into her mouth, watched the line of her throat as the chewed lump descended down her esophagus and fell ungracefully into her stomach. His eyes never stopped at her chest but instead roam all the way down to her belly and she shivered when his gaze met hers again.

"Why do you watch me eat?" she ventured. "It must not be very interesting."

"Humans are uninteresting by nature."

She put down her fork, resolved never to be uninteresting again.

Her stubbornness lasted several days. In that time she felt a change in the atmosphere, thought she detected more than one presence that was familiar. Blindly she pushed away the thought of rescue; she had made the selfish choice, she had chosen to be a martyr. She had no right to expect any more than she had given.

Ulquiorra was always watching, even when he wasn't visible. The pressure of his reiatsu was as natural now as breathing. She took no notice.

When he first told her that "they" had come to rescue her, she was horrified to first feel a tinge of excitement, then shame. When she slapped him for saying her friends were all fools she felt nothing but the stinging pang of guilt. There were monsters in her head she hadn't known existed, trying to convince her that he was right.

Much, much later, she would realize that it was the first time they had ever touched each other; constant proximity had obscured this glaring, trivial fact. Orihime felt her chest expand.

This, too, made her feel guilty.