Human Anatomy

AN: Super glad the pendulum has stopped. It makes life much easier to write these chapters when the storyline is actually following the same events. Reviews are and have been greatly appreciated!


VIII. Desire

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The days stretch into weeks without change and her hopelessness accumulates into a lump of yearning, a burning desire to see, to feel, to have something outside of this quietness. There is time enough and more but she can never get her thoughts in order. She doesn't know what it is she yearns for, yet it is a longing so deep, so primal, that it claws away at her insides: beating on her heart, scratching at her throat. Her fingers reach for the stars, never touching. Had the sky ever been so beautiful? She wants so badly to hurt, to love, to smile, to die. She wants it all because it is all the same.

We hurt because of the things we long for, someone had once told her. She doesn't know her own soul. She longs for death as earnestly as she pushes it away, never quite knowing why she should die, or live, or be caught in between.

Ulquiorra is walking death, she thinks as he visits her. She wants to run to him, to throw her arms around him, to feel the touch of another being on her skin. Yet to move, to stand, to walk – all of these are frightening motions, ones that constitute a sentient being. And she's not sure what she is, these days.

"Hello, Ulquiorra-san," she greets languidly, watching the desert.

'My heart is already with them,' she had said, never fearing her imminent demise. She never looks at him, never even acknowledges him, but Ulquiorra can tell she is trying to get some sense of the battle, reaching out with her soul to that distant place they both know she won't be able to reach. It's a thought that frustrates him, her irrepressible, futile wish. It's a thought that he wished she would save for herself, or for those closer to her now.

"You want them to win the battle," he states dryly. The attendant that had followed him, bringing her the daily nutritional supplements, is long gone.

"I want them to win the war," she counters, turning to look at him but not seeing him at all. The truth of this fact angers him somehow. Behind her stretches the troubled sky, forever dark, forever haunting. She likes the sky at Hueco Mundo more than the clearest blue in the real world. Orihime turns back to the window, fond of the stability offered by her only view.

She wants to be that never-changing moon, always perfect. She wants every infinitesimal drop of happiness and sorrow in time to mix and meld the pieces of her being. Orihime wants, and she doesn't think Ulquiorra understands the concept at all.

"Have you ever wanted anything for yourself?" she asks, thinking it a rhetorical question.

What she does not expect is to feel his hand on her shoulder, swinging her about. If the look of anguish on his face surprises her, it is nothing compared to how she feels when his lips crush against her own, when he forcefully pushes her to the ground and with deft hands begins to undo the buttons of her clothes. His pale skin is unexpectedly warm as it slides against hers, as he makes love to her and shatters every hope she has of leaving nothing behind, of dying with no regrets.

That night, Orihime learns that Espada have more desires than any human could ever dream.


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