Author's Notes: The manga is finally returning to the Ichigo/Ulquiorra fight! Alas, I've already chosen how that would end, so this is obviously AU. Happy Holidays to all (comments are a terrific gift)!
X. Apathy
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Orihime lets him carry her back to her room of imprisonment without protest, without awareness, without anything, overcome as she was with shock and despair. The foundations of her faith had been knocked loose. Ichigo was dead, and Ulquiorra forever lost to her. He carries her like a small child, trekking slowly up the spiral stairs to her tower. Orihime doesn't see the stones that flash past her eyes, or hear the heartbeat that is pressed firmly against her ear. She no longer cares for the feel of his touch on her skin, the roundness of the moon. The world was small as dust and empty as the sky.
When she doesn't eat or drink for two days, Ulquiorra threatens – as he did the first time – to force the food down her throat. She doesn't flinch or rebel at the suggestion. The scene beyond the window no longer interests her and she gazes now at the darkened ground. When he puts her under observation, Ulquiorra realizes that she also no longer sleeps. Her apathy both repulses and angers him; the hubris of humans, to throw away the gift of life.
The battles progress as he knew they must. Ulquiorra is grateful that he is not required to partake in the bloodshed; he has never been one to take pleasure in killing, although there had been a twinge of satisfaction at the fall of the Kurosaki boy. There are scores of deaths on either side, too many to count, and his mind grows numb at the thought of war. He thinks that perhaps Orihime is holding on to some slim thread of hope that someone will still come to rescue her and this passive starvation is a twisted form of mourning, the only one available. Ulquiorra himself finds the concept silly, but humans were creatures of contradiction. He watches as her friends fall, one by one, until the legions of Hueco Mundo had overwhelmed the shinigami completely. He thinks that perhaps this news will shock her into emotion, into realizing that her grief and rebellion are all for nought. He tells her so the next day.
"No one can save you now."
She doesn't flinch at the news of this destruction like he thinks she will, doesn't shed a tear for her friends or the decimation of Karakura town. Her continued silence irks him, and he is about to force a sound out of her when she speaks for the first time in seven days.
"The truth is we're too small to be noticed by that infinite expanse of sky. Isn't Aizen jealous of the world?"
He is taken aback by her words, having never considered that humans as well as Arrancar mulled the question of existence.
"In the end, everything fades."
He leaves without replying, but finds the next day that a few bites are missing from her food. It was sustenance; she is alive but not living. There are cracks inside her heart that have begun to spread, crumbling everything to ashes, turning everything to ruin.
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