Title: Childish Fantasies
Pairings/ Characters: Ulquiorria
Word Count: 494
Summary: Ulquiorria wants to know: is there even such a thing as love?
The trouble with love is… there's no such thing.
----
Love doesn't exist. He knows it doesn't. If a person felt an emotion that was so strong they were willing to kill and die, then surely they couldn't function. The world would be a place of chaos.
Fear exists. He's seen it in the eyes of shinigami, of his fellow Arrancar, even once in the eyes of Gin Ichimaru.
Anger exists. Many of his peers have known it. Of course, he himself would never be burdened with such a thing.
Pain exists. It's not an emotion as such, but a physical state of being. In this case, he has felt it. He disguised it perfectly, so no one knows. But yes, when he removes his eye and crushes it, it's absoloute agony.
But love?
He has never seen anyone do anything that makes him believe in love. He has watched as people have sacrificed themselves for others, but he's never believed that it was in the name of this 'love'.
It's human idiocity, their excuse for being weak. There is no such thing as love.
But sometimes, in the dark nights of Hueco Mundo, when the blank corridors of Las Noches seem to stretch into eternity, he thinks he can remember a feeling from a long time ago. Back before Aizen-sama, back before he was an Espada, before he was an Arrancar, even before he was a Hollow.
Back to when he was just a man.
In the loneliness of the palace, he can sometimes recall a faraway voice, a soft sigh. He tries, with a sickening feeling of shame, desperately to remember more. But that's all there is.
----
A whole becomes a Hollow for one of two reasons. The first; the soul is attacked by other Hollows and becomes one of the fold. The second, the soul experiences such strong feelings for a person or place that it is consumed by grief and devoured by the darkness.
Ulquiorria sometimes wonders, when Aizen-sama and Ichimaru and Grimmjow have all left him, as to how he became a Hollow. He doesn't wonder openly. He keeps it hidden in the darkest corners of his mind. And he prays it was for the first reason.
Because if he thought it was for the second, then he might have to admit that there are stronger emotions than hatred and fear and pain. All the hate and fear and pain in the world couldn't turn him into what he has become.
----
Ulquiorria leans his head to the wall and closes his eyes.
He is thinking again. In that untouched place in his memory he can hear that faraway sigh, that whisper on the breeze.
Here, in the cold unfeeling barrens of Hueco Mundo, love has never seemed more unlikely. But at the same time, it is the only thing that makes sense.
He can't help but think; it might be better for him that there's no such thing as love.
