Chapter 6

Still holding her wrist, he squeezed until the bones ground together and he felt a pop. She objected, loudly, but he was pleased to discover that there was no distracting transfer of energy. He felt a small flare of reiatsu around the joint, but that was all. He suspected he may also have been more sensitive in his heightened state last time. He was not going to make that mistake again. Murcielago stayed in its sheath.

"Ow. Please. I'm not ready," she panted, sitting up and reaching for the injured wrist with her other hand.

He knelt beside her and pulled her back to the ground, stretching the captured wrist over her head. This brought his expressionless face down closer to hers. Three small vertical lines formed in the center of her smooth brow. "This is not about your convenience," he told her.

He released her wrist, and she immediately struggled to sit up again. "I don't want this," she said. "Please stop."

He pushed her back down with a hand on her face. "This will not stop, just because you ask," he said, moving his hands to her waist. "I am not your friend, to give you relief because you want me to." His fingers wrapped around her surprisingly small ribcage. "There are no friends here to save you." She struggled upward again as he began to squeeze. "Kurosake Ichigo is not here to save you!" The floating ribs on each side gave way, and she abruptly fell back again with a gasp. He shifted his grip higher and began to squeeze the next set of ribs. She squirmed within his grip, but the broken ribs kept her from trying to sit up again. "There is no one. You have no friends. Do you understand?" The next set of ribs cracked. She screamed this time, tears streaking down the side of her face into her hair. He eased the pressure back, waiting for her to catch her breath again, in pained, shallow gulps. "Do you understand?" he repeated.

"Yes," she whimpered.

"What do you understand?"

"I'm alone," she cried.

Good. They were making progress. Leaning over the woman was awkward. He ripped her skirt up the middle and knelt between her legs, instead. She began to struggle again. Her legs flailed, causing distracting, but ineffectual blows to fall on his head and chest, until he casually reached up to snap her left ankle. The kicking stopped, allowing him to seat himself more comfortably. He sat seiza, with one of woman's smooth thighs draped over each of his own.

She was whimpering something, begging, "Please don't, Ulquiorra-san." Orihime had managed to prop herself up on her elbows and was trying to pull herself off of him. He put his hands to her waist and pulled her hips back to his, tilting them up off the ground.

The terror on her face was gratifying. Of course he knew there was more than one way to break a woman. No doubt Grimmjow or Nnoitra would have validated her fear. But he had no intention of breaking her in this way, especially knowing the hazard exposure to her reiatsu represented. He was no animal.

But here, he had only to put her in this exposed position. Even the perceived threat was wrecking her almost as much as the actual broken bones. Unable to sit up, she was struggling still, pushing away at his hips and stomach, where she could reach him, even with the broken wrist. Her bare thighs clenched with her efforts, squeezing against his waist.

He wondered if there had ever been a man here, between Orihime's thighs, thrusting himself into her, to sighs instead of screams. Men do such things with women. Maybe Kurosake Ichigo had. He took in the whites of her eyes, wide in panic. He didn't think this woman had done this.

And it was perhaps not the time to ask.

He waited for her to tire of her struggles, and finally she stopped. She lay there, panting shallowly and watching him. Sure he had her attention, he drew his right hand across to her right hip. He put pressure on the soft skin and tense muscle there, careful not to break through, until he felt he had a firm grip on the bone beneath. He wrapped his left arm around her right thigh and began to apply a little pressure, using his own thigh as a fulcrum.

"I am going to remove your leg," he informed her, calmly. He had no intention of removing it completely. In addition to the hazard of exposure to her reiatsu, there were arteries there that would swiftly cause problems if ruptured. That didn't matter, though. He was discovering that her mind would make the threat much more damaging than the act. She was conveniently doing most of his work for him.

Ulquiorra began to pull, twisting the femur slightly outward. The ligaments attaching it to the hip were straining. "You're… what?" Orihime exclaimed. Her eyes widened again, the panic renewed. Her thighs clenched around him again as she tried to shift her hips to relieve the pressure that was building. "Stop! Ow! Aah!" She struggled, eyes closed now against this new pain. He had her immobilized now, and there was nothing she could do about his mangling of her leg. Nevertheless, she seemed to become quite frantic. She tried to find purchase against him with the other leg, but the angle was wrong. Her knee just slid past his shoulder. Ulquiorra twisted another few degrees and finally felt something snap as the head of the femur left its socket.

It was then the woman reached her limit. She screamed, "Soten kisshun!" and the healing field formed suddenly over the abused joint, and right through Ulquiorra.

He froze. It was… unbelievable. But there it was. He could feel it, having formed in a plane through him as he leaned over Orihime. It went through both arms, entering his abdomen at the front, and exiting his lower back. He was careful not to move, in case it disrupted the field, and concentrated on the feel of the joint reforming through her flesh beneath his hands.
The energy pulsing through him felt… pleasant, but curiously lacked the overwhelming impulses that accompanied his last exposure. The focused reiatsu associated with the exercise of her powers was more refined, compared to the raw reiatsu coursing through her own body.

He was fixated on the energy filling him when the field suddenly cut off. Annoyed, he glanced up at Orihime's face. She was still terrified. "I panicked," she explained. "I didn't mean to." There was a note of pleading in her voice. She expected him to be angry, he realized, for healing herself before she was given permission.

Ulquiorra moved his hands from her hip and thigh to her ribcage again. She flinched as he leaned forward to cup his hands over the broken ribs on both sides. She had only dealt with the hip, in her panic. He carefully undid the fastenings on the arrancar jacket, and pulled it back to expose her broken ribs. He placed his hands directly on her skin, over the angry red marks from his mutilation of her earlier.

"Continue," he breathed.

This time the field intersected him from shoulder to hip, coursing through new areas. He drank it in, carefully noting its effects, on himself and on her. He saw the marks fading between his outspread fingers, and could feel the ribs throbbing and shifting back into place.

The field flickered off again, this time eliciting a soft, involuntary, "Ah," from Ulquiorra, at its suddenness. The woman was whole, unharmed and in no pain. She had yet to deal with her clothes. His position made it impossible to fix the skirt. Yet he did not move for some minutes. He was… thinking.

She lay still, watching him. She couldn't get up with him pinning her clothes to the cold, hard floor of her quarters, but she didn't try either. Finally, her eyes slid away to the barren walls, and she reached both her hands up to his right one. He allowed her to slide his hand up from her ribcage, under the edge of the jacket, and over her left breast. His own skin felt impossibly rough against the wide, soft, warm nipple. It stiffened, the skin under his hand pulling into tiny ridges, the entire breast firming in response. He squeezed, experimentally, curious, but stopped when it elicited a small whimper from Orihime.

Her eyes were still fixed on some far-off point, away from him. "What are you doing, woman?" he asked her softly. The aftereffects of his broad exposure to the healing were leaving him in an unanticipated state. He was feeling strangely contented. Part of him knew this should serve as a warning, but he had difficulty working out a reason to move from this spot.

She was unable to answer immediately. Tears had started again, and only strangled noises came from her throat at first. Finally she hugged his hand and forearm to her tightly and managed to speak. "You.. you're right. Ulquiorra-san. I am alone. No one is going to come save me. Not even Kur… nobody." She stopped to breathe, and sob. "All I have is you." Her eyes flicked to his face briefly, then back to the wall. "I don't want to be alone." She was begging him. She brought her knees up again, this time to wrap her legs around him more securely. Her hips settled awkwardly against his thighs, and she appeared to be waiting.

Her grip on his arm brought his face closer to hers, as he leaned down. By her words, she had accepted her fate and her place in Hueco Mundo. This certainly looked, and sounded like despair, her hope broken.

Success, thought Ulquiorra, but the thought brought with it an unpleasant sensation. The buzzing contentment he had been enjoying until then concentrated suddenly in his chest. It was painful. Bitter.

It passed just as suddenly, but it had broken the languid comfort that immobilized him. He disentangled himself from the woman's limbs, and stood. "We're done," he told her, firmly. He then acted on an uncharacteristic impulse and reached down to help her up. She flinched away from his hand, triggering another sharp, sudden ache in his chest.

Something had gone wrong, again. His rejected hand unconsciously found the ache in his chest, centered around the gap there. How could something hurt like this, when it wasn't even there? Would it fade as her staining, infectious reiatsu faded? Suspicion entered his thoughts. Had she done something to him deliberately? Her lack of guile might have been an elaborate charade. Certainly Lord Aizen would have been capable of such a thing.

But not this one. He didn't believe it of this woman. Girl. He watched as she turned away from him to fix her clothes, something she might not have bothered to do previously. Because she had trusted him. Someone had trusted him, and no longer did. The ache this time threatened to double him over.

He needed to think. He needed to get away from her. Ulquiorra strode out of the room before she could turn back and see the distress he was in.

He laid a hand briefly on the door as it closed behind him, and reset the wards. However, with all his senses turned inward, he failed to notice the blue haired espada waiting around the corner.

After Ulquiorra hurried away from the door, Grimmjow sauntered up to it from the other direction. He put his own hand on it, and gave an experimental push. "Tsk. Not this time," he said, to no one in particular. He gave a brief sniff at the door, and, satisfied, breathed even more deeply. Grimmjow then went to lean up against the opposite wall, watching Orihime Inue's quarters, humming to himself.