This and the past one aren't quite interconnected
Okay so the last few chapter titles are:
Mirage- wavering image, usually seen in the desert due to heat and dehydration
Yokou-japanese for afterglow, lingering light
Requiem-music usually played at a funeral
Rachis-the central shaft in feathers
Overature-the beginning of a series of musical pieces, commonly used in musical theater.
The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Cloaked in the Sun-part of 3 paintings of William Blake done as the Great Red Dragon series. They're intended to represent scenes from the Bible. This one is my favorite.
I think thats it...
I swear I'm getting to the requests. There's just gonna be one more dark, twisty oneshot but that might tie in with another...who knows!
Enjoy!
Dying was not fun.
It was not a conclusion Ulquiorra arrived to without some experience in the matter. After all, he was not one to believe what he had been told simply because another person thought it was so. No, he knew dying was unpleasant because he had died. In fact, if one approached it logically, he had died multiple times in his life. He had died as a human to be reborn as a Hollow, then he had died as a Hollow to be reborn as an Arrancar. Each time he had been sure that this, this was the end no matter what the Priest said about Heaven or Aizen said about power. But each time, after an indiscriminate amount of time, he would open his eyes and the world would be a bit sharper, a little brighter. He would feel more power flowing through him.
But that would be all he would feel.
It seemed that with each death and rebirth, his heart did not make the trip. Past the most basic of needs he was unaware of what he was feeling as a Hollow but was that not the heart at its most simplistic? The heart sought to protect itself, for without a heart, what was a person? But as an Arrancar he felt nothing. He was nothing, Aizen had made that clear again and again. At the toss of a coin, at the drop of a hat he could be replaced. He knew he was more valuable than that but only to a degree and pushing the boundaries of Aizen's patience was not something he was foolish enough to attempt. It was a matter of survival. Keep your mouth shut, do what you were told or it was over. Loyalty, actually, had very little to do with it. He was as loyal to Aizen as a clown fish to an anemone or a hyena to a lion. They were all used to the cannibalistic nature of Hueco Mundo: eat or be eaten. Once their conscious was regained going back to that was unfathomable for most. So they did what they were supposed to. They stayed.
And then she had to come along.
Her appearance marked the first time he had felt anything past a vague sense of disgust at the world filled with those who had the luxury of having morals. It was not jealousy, morals was what had gotten him into the mess of being a Hollow in the first place. Morals and an inability to let go and, of course, his heart. But when he saw her standing there it was more than her power that stirred him. He would be lying if he did not say he found her beautiful, standing there in the golden glow of her power, her lavender grey eyes quickly shifting from fear to anger. Aside from that idiot Grimmjow, no-one showed him anger. But she did, pure and bright as the light behind her. Even when he showed her her friends in such dire circumstances, even when fear shown in her eyes the anger was still there. It was like the sun, even when it was hidden behind the clouds one knew it was still there, burning brightly.
He always saw it there. Through her tears, her fear he always saw that spark there. He doubted she was even aware of the anger that burned through her. He was never one for games except when he was terribly bored--no small feat for someone who had once spent hours on a roof watching clouds. But he was bored and the spark of anger, it seemed to be taunting him. How could she still be like that despite everything? He supposed he had pushed her too far that one time when he told her that her friends were stupid--even if they were--but instead of breaking like he thought she would she strode forward and slapped him. Even Grimmjow gave him the honor of a curled fist or an outright battle. Slapping was disrespectful, it was saying that someone did not deserve the effort it took to curl ones fist. But she strode up and slapped him, the spark in her eyes roaring to a flame.
Fire, it had no place in a world of dark and cool, no more than a Princess had a place in a world of bloodthirsty warriors with their warped codes of honor. Yet both, it seemed, were encompassed by the woman with the sunset hair and the spark in her eyes. Fire was warmth and light, it was life and it was her. In the world of the dead something like that was more than precious, it was fascinating. He imagined he was put in charge of her because of all the Espada he was the one who pushed his heart away the least. His heart simply did not make the journey with him through his forms. To have a living, breathing, glaring reminder of the foolishness of the heart--what was a better way to ensure his own did not get in the way? Whatever fragments of his heart he pushed them aside until a heart was nothing more than a faint memory, like a dream.
One knew it was a dream but dreams were never what they seemed. Dreams were never practical or told the truth or did anything they were supposed too. Their truths were veiled in gossamer lies. One could glimpse them but never completely, never clearly. He would never fully understand what brought him to his existence as a Hollow anymore than he would understand what brought him to his existence as the Fourth Espada. The pieces would always be scrambled and veiled. His heart had long been lost but under worse circumstances hers shone more brightly. The brightest stars shone even in, no especially in, the darkest night. Hers did even though her stupid friends seemed to think she was in need of protecting and rescuing. Did they not see she was strong? Did she not see? Perhaps she was just as foolish as they were.
It would be a lie if he said he didn't want to kill Ichigo Kurosaki. He wanted to kill him. No, he wanted to rip every lib, ligament by ligament from his body. His heart burned with a desire so profound he barely understood it. After he learned the bastard was alive all he wanted to do was murder him in the most excruciating way possible. The worst part of it was that he was coming for her and she would leave with him. Part of him wanted to her to go, wanted the world to be a simpler place again. But he knew the moment she left she would become the simplistic creature he had stolen an impossibly short time ago. It was not concern that filled him at the thought of her being babied once again, it could not be concern. When he felt all he felt was anger at the orange haired idiot whose black blade would cut him down. And if Ichigo Kurosaki killed him he would have to endure one of those long winded speeches on friendship and love and all the nonsense he had tried and learned--the hard way--was nothing good.
He still asked her about it. How could he not? She had given up everything to save people who treated her like the glass doll she clearly was not. She had gone willingly with him--or as willingly as anyone in Aizen's service did anything--to hell. Yet she still looked at him with those burning grey eyes. In that moment he knew that sailors could have navigated towards the fire that burned in her eyes. After all, wasn't that what the sun was? A star. Just a closer one. It was disgustingly human how the shards of his heart ached or how his fingertips reached for her, for the light and warmth she represented. He had wanted to reach for her before but his fingers always managed to remain by his side. He always remembered he was no longer human and had no right to act like one. But that moment when he reached for her, it was the most human thing he had done in some time.
But her idiot friends came. Dumb and dumber flew in to save the woman who had never really needed to be saved. He didn't pay attention to the one who looked only after her. He could keep an eye on her all he wanted. His attention was consumed by the desire to put Ichigo Kurosaki in a world of pain. He thought it was probably a combination of things. The knowledge that there was no way he could win the fight. The idea that this idiot considered himself worthy of her and she considered him worthy. The fact that Grimmjow had been right in saying they should kill him did not ease his anger any. He did not know when his control snapped, when he went to his second release without a thought to the idea he was winning in his initial release. The only thing that matter was breaking Ichigo Kurosaki, shattering him until there was nothing left but broken bits just big enough so that everyone knew that Ichigo was dead.
In hindsight, if he was approaching things rationally he would have known not to reveal all his cards before his opponent. But emotions had no place in battle, emotions never had any place in battle. His emotions got the best of him and before he knew it he was regenerating more than any battle had required him too. His mission was to protect the castle, duel with him to defend the honor of that woman against her foolish foolish suitor. It so pathetic that the only consolation he could see is that the thing Ichigo Kurosaki became could not string together more than just a few syllables so he wouldn't have to listen to a long winded speech about friendship and redemption. Thankfully by the time the idiot learns to talk again he will disintegrate soon enough that by the time words come out of his lips he won't have any ears for the words to go into.
Throughout it all her eyes continue to burn.
They can't see it but he never looses sight of that spark. It might have been Ichigo's hand that held the sword, his horns that fired the cero but it is her words that brought him to that state. It was her cry for help that reached past the huge fucking hole he blew in his chest and dragged him back to fight. Funny, she did not even have to use her power to reject what he had done. All she had to do was cry out. He did not think even Aizen had power like that. At least he got a handful of good strikes in against whatever Ichigo Kurosaki became, though it was not enough to win the fight. He regained enough of himself to remember that his mission was to defend the castle, not to destroy Ichigo Kurosaki. So he defended the castle---what was left of it anyway.
He knew the feeling too well not to recognize what was happening inside his body. It was fitting that he would die in a different form. His previous deaths had been in different forms as well, the ones he remembered anyway. Standing with few organs, his body healed only to conceal the damage inside, it was a miracle he stood at all. Of course he survived long enough to hear the abbreviated 'friendship speech' . He did not think he had ever heard such few words sound so incredibly long winded.
Well, if the fool is going to be predictable he might as well do something interesting.
The spark is almost gone.
He feels his eyes widen in surprise. It is sputtering and all that is taking over it is a bone deep sadness that seems to cut him to his core. He thinks it is when Kurosaki announces that he still wants to fight on equal ground, despite the fact that he knows just as well as Ulquiorra does that Ulquiorra's death marks the end of any farce of honor the man possessed. When he screams that he wanted to 'win' as if this has all been some game to him even as Ulquiorra feels his body begin to blow away with the wind while Ishida bleeds out somewhere behind him. They are all broken in some way or another but in that moment even though exhaustion is covering her and blood is seeping from Ishida and he is blowing away, despite that all in that moment, at that place Ichigo Kurosaki is the most broken one of them all.
But he is not important, not anymore. It is easy to find her gaze, easy to pick out the sorrow that fills her eyes. Somewhere in the magnification of her tears he thinks he sees the spark once more. The sun is still there, the clouds are simply thicker now. He feels himself blowing farther away. Its not the most pleasant feeling in the world but it hardly the worst he's felt. Once again he finds himself drawn in by the sun. The words that come from his lips are the most natural he's spoken, he gives no thought to them when he questions if she is afraid. The question is not designed for her to tell him a lie or even to give him a revelation, he can already see the answer in her eyes.
When the words leave her lips, in that moment the spark turns from anger to determination and that burns more brightly than he's ever seen it.
And for the first time, in his eyes, she is beautiful.
Standing there, torn and dirtied in the endless night she is the sun and he is the shadows being burned away by her brightness. She has found the strength he had seen from the moment he saw her and he knows, no matter what happens, that Orihime Inoue will survive this war. not as the childish, girly doll they came to rescue but as the woman he always called her. His hand extends just as it did before even though they both know a heart is not something so easily reached. The real surprise, if he is even capable of feeling such a thing, is that their hands do not touch. His fingers are gone before she can reach him. He supposes that is most fitting, after all shadow and light do not co-exist, there is always a line drawn between them. The sun and the moon can forever circle each other but they will never touch, not in a physical way anyway.
The thing about dying, the thing he never quite learned was that to die properly one has to let go. Holding on has brought him nothing but trouble and when he pushed the world away he met the one girl who wouldn't let him do such a thing. Its rather silly but at the end, to him, it seems that the world reaches some kind of harmony. She is solid just as he is ephemeral, the light to his darkness, the hope to his despair. The tears on her cheeks are as real as the ones on his cheeks, the ones he could never cry are fake. The sun in her gaze is the thing he sees as he lets out the air in his lungs and allows the world to slip away. She holds his gaze until he has no more eyes to see it with, as he quietly slips away, the wind carrying him to some unknown place.
She will forever be the bright, glorious sun, but it will only be because he will forever be the quiet darkness that showed her she could shine.
In that way the world reaches its balance.
Its harmony.