I can hear sirens, sirens

He hit me and it felt like a kiss

I can hear violins, violins

Give me all of that ultraviolence

Ultraviolence - Lana Del Rey


Yo soy la princesa

Her eyes opened gently. Her body felt groggy and heavy. She couldn't move.

What happened? Orihime felt like she had been asleep for years. She turned her head to the side and saw her arm, sticking out with an array of needles inserted, hair lying over the side.

The old Orihime would have ripped them out immediately. Now, she was realising where she was, and she just wished they would pump in something stronger.

Familiar steps echoed in her ears and her eyes focussed on the black nails holding the drug lines and tilting the liquid containers to read their various names. "Hey," a voice said, low and calm, and it wasn't his so it must have been herself who was talking. He was right, she couldn't help chatting aimlessly.

She could feel him turn towards her, he was so close. Ulquiorra probably had questions…overwhelming despair would not let the will to stay strong emerge. Orihime knew this situation did not look good. This might be the last time somebody talked to her before they drugged her again, and who knows if they'd want to wake her up to full consciousness ever again. "I'm sure Kurosaki-kun would understand," she thought, feeling tears fall down her face as she gave up and let herself appreciate the company of another person.

The Espada tilted her chin up, blankly staring as she cried. "Are you going to do it again?" he asked.

She shut her eyes and ignored him. After a second he let go, and she waited for a violent or medicated response. He would not have any patience for non-compliance with his orders, Ulquiorra had told her as such when she first came here. But she could not fight anymore. Either way, the pain would numb, and she might even see Sora again…

She opened her eyes. Ulquiorra was crouching down beside her, continuing to look into her face. She could feel the shock contort her face and an answer fall from her lips unwillingly. It was cruelly unfair how devastating he could be with the briefest shadow of humanity. "I don't know what you mean." Orihime looked away, feeling uncomfortable under his complete gaze. "I don't know what happened."

There - all of the information she had that they didn't, handed over with a single look. Her friends would be disgusted if they could see how freely she was helping the enemy, how cheaply she was selling what little value she had.

"It was a book in your apartment. Why do you keep it there?" Ulquiorra lowered his voice and Orihime tried to remember it was not a conscious act of consideration, and also to recall what had happened before she…passed out? Was drugged? The memory was so dim and her brain was fuzzy from the various IVs circulating in her bloodstream.

Book…it must have been Kuchiki-san's graphic novel. Why else would she have dreamed about her? Why Orihime would keep it…it would be easy to answer any other person. But Ulquiorra didn't have a heart, so there was no point in trying to explain. Orihime exhaled, trying to forcibly let go of her sadness, like she could expel it if she sighed hard enough.

Ulquiorra's fingers hooked under her arm, gripping where the needles entered her veins, gentle and painful. His touch was warmer than she thought it would be, and his nails balanced on the edge of her skin.

Attraction exploded in her toes, thighs, moving up her body where it escaped involuntarily through a gasp from her throat. All her carefully constructed walls swept away with one intimate wave of pain. "Was I ever winning against him?" Orihime thought helplessly, through the static in her brain. She couldn't go back now, she knew. It would be the equivalent of fighting with one arm tied behind her back, trying to keep the upper hand when she would reach out to him on instinct.

"This is what it did to you," he said; ah, so this grip was for emphasis, and she knew he was wrong, because they had injected her, but feeling his fingers and the needles created a bliss she hadn't known since she first arrived, a base response of approval, and she could not be bothered to correct him. "Why would you keep something close that causes harm?"

"I can't explain it to you," she said, shutting her eyes. He did not let go of her arm, and Orihime could have remained like that forever, it was somehow so satisfying to be held, even in an abstract way. She remembered Kuchiki-san and felt incredibly guilty, to be sitting here enjoying the shreds of comfort offered by her captor. There was no way Kuchiki-san would have acted like this when she was a prisoner, she was too strong for that. Maybe I can't be strong without my friends, Orihime thought sadly. "That book makes me happy in the living world."

That answer seems to be sufficient, as he waited a moment and then let her go. "Well it did not do so in Las Noches. And you are not leaving here." He stood up, and walked off a short distance, apparently writing down what he had learnt from her. "It has been destroyed."

That thought was not as distressing as it should have been, Orihime noted unhappily as she watched him write and study the various intravenous liquids that would probably be shot inside her veins. She could feel her self-control and will going out like the tide returning to the sea. I need to destroy the Hōgyoku. I need to get my friends out alive. Remember. The needles' entry point tingled numbly where he had gripped it. Her heart jumped as he walked back to her to switch out an IV, and she watched as a different liquid was hooked up to her system. Orihime knew it was no use.

She had one surprising hopeful thought before she returned to a medicated slumber: if she was falling, she could at least take Ulquiorra down with her. Aizen had kidnapped her for a reason: he had recognised her strength, and Kuchiki-san had also believed in it. She had to be able to do something to drag down an important member of his army. Two problems solved for Kurosaki-kun in one neat solution. Sleep covered her brain before she could start crying again.

Ulquiorra double-checked the drug information he had from Szayel, looking from board to IV to prisoner. Then, when Orihime's breathing slowed and evened, and her face became blank, he exhaled. So that behaviour of her's did have a point, he noted; it was oddly detaching.

When would she stop trying to escape? Her first psychotic episode had been spectacular, but she had been at her most broken today, right after she woke up from her strange sleeping. So Szayel had been correct in his haunted hypothesis.

It was intensely annoying that she was torturing herself better than he was, and the woman wasn't even doing a proper job of it. He had to find out what she was dreaming about.