Author's note: And now, the first interactions between Orihime and a newly-human(ish) Ulquiorra. Also, having thought about the matter further, I realized another reason for the long delay of the previous chapter. I don't think anyone will be surprised to learn that Ulquiorra is one of my favorite characters in Bleach, and chapter 6 was the first time he was entirely out of commission. As for whether it will be the last time... well, let's just see what happens, shall we? *Aizen-like smile*
Disclaimer: Bleach was created by Tite Kubo and is published in Shonen Jump. Studio Pierrot is responsible for the anime adaptation, and Viz Media for the official English release. No copyright infringement is intended or should be inferred.
Chapter 7
The next morning, Orihime awoke to sunlight streaming through the blinds of the room's lone window. Normally, such a thing would have bothered her, but today she was happy just to be seeing the sun again – it was the first time she had awoken to sunlight in a month. In fact, apart from the fake sun of Aizen's fake sky and the few hours of daylight yesterday, it was the first time she'd seen the sun in a month, and she smiled as she felt its old, familiar warmth melting away the last remnants of Hueco Mundo's chill. She sat up... and screamed to wake the dead as Nnoitra loomed over her, grinning, grinning.
Ulquiorra's eyes flew open. The woman hadn't screamed often, but he would never forget the few times she had... not least because, prior to this one, he was responsible for the last and worst of them. He didn't know what had terrified her like that, and he didn't care. She was his charge, and no one would harm her on his watch. He threw off his covers and jumped to his feet in one fluid motion. He threw himself in front of the woman, who had crossed her arms in front of her face, and found himself face-to-face with the disgusting grin of Nnoitra's gigai.
Ah, so that was what had scared her. Ulquiorra supposed he couldn't blame the woman; he himself could thrash Nnoitra with hardly any effort, and even he would not enjoy waking to the sight of that loathsome grin. Ulquiorra was more than a little irritated with the shopkeeper, for although his attention to detail was commendable, there was no reason for him to choose such an unpleasant expression for the gigai's default setting. Perhaps he could convince him to destroy that form; it shouldn't be difficult, since, with the Quinta Espada dead, there was no point in keeping a gigai that looked uncomfortably like him. Perhaps the resources that went into it could even be used for other gigai: Nnoitra, who had always been ready to pounce on the slightest weakness, and who tirelessly, tiresomely preached the unforgiving nature of a Hollow's existence, would himself be cannibalized to feed others of his kind. That seemed fitting to Ulquiorra. Frightened breathing interrupted his thoughts, and he snapped back to the present. Of course, she was the reason he was here, in this position.
"Woman," he said, turning to her, "this is a gigai. The Fifth is dead. You have no reason to be afraid." She looked up at him, and her jaw fell open in wonder. It was Ulquiorra-kun, there was no mistaking that, but with no bone-white skin, no green streaks under his eyes, no helmet on his head, and – she saw from the open neck of his black robes – no hole in his chest, he looked so... human. None of that was what caught her attention, though. She was focused on a far more important detail.
"Ulquiorra-kun..." She trailed off into silence, unsure of how to voice such a momentous thought.
"Yes, woman?" he said. His voice was of course overwhelmingly flat, but there was just a hint of interest there, and she knew he wouldn't fake an interest in anything. He really wanted to know what she had to say, and she couldn't hold back from saying it.
"Your hands aren't in your pockets."
Silence.
"These foolish Shinigami robes have no pockets," he said. Her eyes went wide.
"You're wearing Shinigami robes!"
"Your powers of observation continue to serve you," he said flatly. Orihime pouted.
"Don't make fun of me!"
"I'm not." He probably was making fun of her, but even she didn't know him well enough to know for sure. She threw her pillow at him anyway, and it hit him square in the chest. He stared at her, his face verging – for him, anyway – on open disbelief.
"Then stop talking all the time like you're making fun of everyone around you!" He didn't respond, and she began to worry that she might have hurt him. How fragile was that gigai, anyway? Rangiku-san's and Rukia-san's gigai were strong, although nowhere near as strong as their Shinigami bodies, but Ulquiorra was a special case. Maybe Urahara-san had made him especially prone to injury, just to make sure he wouldn't get out of line. What if she had to take him to the hospital? He didn't have a National Health Insurance certificate – would they take hers instead? But he didn't have an alien registration certificate, either. What if the hospital workers decided there was something suspicious about him? What if they thought he was a foreign spy she was trying to smuggle into the country? They might lock the two of them up together in the same room until they could figure out what to do with them! What if she and Ulquiorra had to use the bathroom at the same time? And what would they do about only having one bed? What if she was sleeping, and he tried to-
"You can have the bed!" she shouted, closing her eyes and waving her hands frantically. "Just don't do anything weird to me!"
A sword was at his throat. From the corner of his eye, Ulquiorra saw Tenth Division Lieutenant Matsumoto Rangiku glaring at him with the coldest eyes he had ever seen... including his own.
"I told Orihime I'd give you a chance, and that's exactly what I'll do," she said, her voice as cold as her eyes. "You have one chance to explain yourself. What. The hell. Were you doing to her?"
He returned her gaze as best he could without moving his head in the slightest. "I did nothing."
"Um... he's telling the truth, Rangiku-san," the woman said, waving her hand in embarrassment. "I just... uh... was thinking about something else."
The Lieutenant looked at her with a mixture of relief and skepticism. "Oh? And what was that?"
"Um, well, it's..." She scratched the back of her neck. "Gee, it's hard to say!"
"This is absurd," Ulquiorra cut in. "The woman has corrected your hasty assumption. Lower your sword, and leave me in peace." When the Lieutenant failed to comply, instead resuming her frigid glare, Ulquiorra raised his hand to push the blade away, and gasped in pain as it sliced deeply into him. He fell to the floor, cradling his hand and breathing heavily through gritted teeth. The woman rushed to his side and examined his wound, looking sick. She took his hand in both of hers.
"Souten Kisshun. I reject," she said firmly. The orange light, and its attendant warmth, bathed his hand, soothing the injured flesh, and turning back a piece of the clock until it had never been injured to begin with. He tried to look away from her, but his willpower failed him for several seconds. Finally, he glanced at her futon, on which the two of them were kneeling, and grimaced.
"Woman... I have stained your bedsheets." He began gathering her blanket, and she looked at him in confusion.
"What are you doing?"
"I made this mess. I will clean it up."
She smiled in embarrassment. "Really, you don't have to worry about it – there's not that much blood on it."
He just looked at her. "I made this mess. I will clean it up." Orihime stared silently. She knew that Ulquiorra-kun's surface calm was just that – a surface covering a maelstrom of thoughts and impulses, more than a few of which were constantly clashing with each other. That was one of the reasons for his extraordinary intensity, which charged even his smallest actions until they were fairly crackling, but even he had never looked at her with such determination. She blinked, nodded, and backed up off her futon to allow him to finish collecting the blanket into his arms. She and Rangiku-san watched him leave, Orihime in stunned silence, Rangiku-san with a wide smile.
"He sure is nice, isn't he? I hope the people around here give him a chance."
Orihime smiled awkwardly. "Um, you're the one who threatened him." Rangiku-san draped her left arm around Orihime's shoulder.
"Come on, it's your first full day back in the human world! It should be a happy occasion – let's not bicker and argue about who threatened who!"
"E-Even if you say that, you held a sword to his neck..."
"Details, details," she said, waving her right hand dismissively, and leading Orihime past the assembled Espada gigai and out of the room. "Come on, let's see if Urahara's got breakfast on yet!"
Urahara indeed had breakfast going, and Ulquiorra found him preparing it.
"Shopkeeper," he said without preamble, "The Nnoitra gigai you prepared was left in a singularly ill position. It gave the woman a severe fright just now."
"Is that what that noise was?" the shopkeeper answered, looking over his shoulder with a nonchalant grin. "Well, I couldn't feel any unknown reiatsu, so I knew the trouble couldn't be serious."
Ulquiorra's grip tightened on the bundle in his hands; the man's insouciance was infuriating. "And what if it had been a mundane intruder? Or worse, someone skilled in the cloaking of reiatsu? I am not well-versed in customs of hospitality, but I doubt they include allowing a guest to be murdered in her sleep."
"Well then," Urahara said, turning back to his stir fry, "I suppose it's a good thing you were there for her."
Ulquiorra's eyes widened in shock before narrowing in suspicion. "Explain yourself, shopkeeper."
Urahara paused for a moment and sighed. "Using a gigai to seal reiatsu is nothing new for me; I've got it down to a science. And while I've never tried to use it on a Hollow before, it shouldn't be that different, especially since, in your case, you're part Shinigami."
"I am not-"
"Right, right, I forgot how much that bothered you. But it's really not that bad, you know?" He paused again, and when Ulquiorra said nothing, he shrugged. "Anyway, it seems I miscalculated. When Orihime-chan screamed, I felt a sliver of reiatsu – nothing like it was before, but it was unmistakably there. And it was unmistakably yours."
"Are you saying..." He couldn't finish; the implications of those words troubled him deeply.
"On the one hand, you shouldn't have any of your spiritual energy available to you. On the other hand, I'm glad to see you're channeling it toward a noble end." He looked over his shoulder again, and his smile, though crooked, seemed genuine. "Maybe Orihime-chan was right about you. Maybe all you needed was a chance."
Ulquiorra was far too stunned to speak. If his reiatsu was available to him, if there were some crack in the wall through which he could reach it, he should be able to widen that breach until he had all his powers back. But if he did that, it might be construed as a hostile act. His position was not nearly strong enough to move against Soul Society, and he didn't want to move against them, anyway. As he had told the captains, he was here to better understand humans, and this heart they spoke of so easily. Was his unexpected ability to channel his reiatsu a manifestation of the heart? Impossible; he had none. But where had it come from, then? Perhaps the woman would have some answers; he would have to ask her about it later. In the meantime, he had work to do.
"Where may I clean this?" he asked, seizing upon the task before his eyes, reassuring in its definitive, concrete nature. The shopkeeper looked at the blanket and raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
"Is that blood?"
"Lieutenant Matsumoto of the Tenth Division overheard the woman screaming. Her reaction was more decisive than yours."
"She cut you?" His eyes narrowed in puzzlement. "I wouldn't have expected that of her."
"That's not it. I cut myself when I tried to push her sword away. Your attention to detail is impressive, shopkeeper, but the fragility of this form is an unwelcome surprise."
Urahara grinned. "Well, I guess that's just one more thing you'll have to get used to about being human."
His eyes narrowed. "For the last time, I am not human. The woman seems to have trouble understanding that, but I thought you would be more grounded in reality." An uncomfortable silence stretched between them as the shopkeeper stared at him.
"Turn right as you leave here. The laundry room is the last door on the right." Ulquiorra nodded and turned to leave. "Ulquiorra." The peremptory tone of the address stopped him in his tracks, and he turned to the shopkeeper, who was not smiling. "Whatever you may be, it's time you start thinking of yourself as a human. If nothing else, it will help you maintain the fiction that you are one, and you'll need that fiction if you want to live among them without having to answer some very difficult questions." Ulquiorra frowned for a moment, then nodded.
"That argument is sound," he said, and left for the laundry room. He felt the shopkeeper's eyes on him as he left.
The residential area behind the candy store consisted of a long rectangular hallway, with rooms on both sides. It connected to the store via the room that currently held the Espadas' gigai, which itself connected to the room with the maze of crates and boxes. On the side of the hallway opposite the store were the doors leading to half-a-dozen bedrooms, and on the store side were doors leading to various utility rooms: apart from the gigai room, there was the kitchen, the bathroom, the main living and dining area, a room for quiet meditation, and the laundry room. It was in this last that Ulquiorra found himself standing quietly as he listened to the rattle of the worn-out washing machine. The events of the previous day turned over and over in his mind, mirroring the endless cycles of the machine, but unlike the woman's blanket, his musings were coming no closer to any discernible conclusion. On the contrary, the more he brooded, the more confused he became, and the blacker his mood grew. Perhaps coming here had been folly after all; what business did he, a heartless monster who devoured others of his kind to survive, have in trying to understand humans?
"Ulquiorra-kun?"
He turned to her with a frown. "Woman... I didn't hear you approaching."
She looked confused and a little awkward. "Um, well, you left the door open, and I decided I should put on indoor slippers if I'm going to be walking around, so-"
"That's not the problem." She cut off her words, biting her lower lip, and Ulquiorra felt a faint gnawing in his gut. Did the woman's sad expression cause that? If so, the easiest remedy would be to ease her mind, though he wasn't happy at the thought of her being able to so easily manipulate him. Still, like it or not, he couldn't hold back. "I couldn't feel your reiatsu, either. I can't let myself get distracted like that."
She frowned in a way that was both sad and curious. "I'm sorry. What was distracting you?"
He looked straight at her with an intensity that would have made her cringe once, and a small part of him marveled that it no longer seemed to bother her in the slightest. "I have hardly had a moment to think about what has happened since the end of the battle atop Las Noches. But I have time now, and I find that the more I think, the less clear things become. No matter how highly we evolve, Hollows are still fundamentally creatures of instinct, and our lives are correspondingly simple. We sleep, we fight, we feed, and we kill. Asking why we do these things is pointless and redundant – we do them because we must." He turned away from her to face the washing machine, and his voice became distant even as it took on a harder edge. "For the first time in my life, I find myself asking why I act the way I do, and I have no answers." He felt her hand on his shoulder, and, as it had yesterday, it somehow made him feel both more confused and more certain than he did a moment ago.
"Maybe that's your problem. You're just thinking too much!"
He turned to her, standing behind him with a bright smile, and frowned in puzzlement. "What do you mean?"
"Well, you say you're a creature of instinct, right?"
"Of course."
"So what are you doing thinking all the time, silly? When was the last time you just felt something and went with it?"
He narrowed his eyes and frowned. "What inane logic is this? Among the Espadas, my powers of observation are second to none, and for analytical thinking, only Szayelaporro was my match. Those qualities, more than any amount of raw power, make me as valuable a soldier as I am, even in combat."
Her face crumbled, and the gnawing in his gut magnified tenfold. "So is that all you want to be? Just another soldier in Aizen's army?"
For some reason, he felt an urge to reach out to her, but he ignored it. "It's not about what I want to be. Apart from a lone wanderer, that is all I have ever been."
"That's not true!" she cried, and Ulquiorra could see her eyes turning wet with unshed tears. "You were human once, even if you don't remember it! All Hollows were!" He stared at her in silence, eyes wider than usual, too stunned to speak. He knew that the use of the "-kun" honorific meant that she thought of him as a human, but this was the first time she had explicitly insisted on identifying him as such. She looked up at him with a mixture of sorrow and defiance. "You may have just come here as an observer... but I brought you here to remind you of what you lost."
"Woman..." He tried to think of something more to say, and failed. After a moment, her expression softened into a smile that considerably eased his gnawing feeling, and she took him by the hand.
"Well, come on – you can finish cleaning up your mess later. Urahara-san made rice balls and stir fry!"
He was still trying to formulate a response as she led him into the hallway.
Author's note: Oh Matsumoto, you so crazy!
