Hey there. So this chapter has more darker things and mentions of rape so please do not read if those things will bother you.

Disclaimer: I do NOT own Bleach or any of its characters.

WARNING: DARK THEMES!

lets hop in—

It was dark when they opened again, and my arm felt numb as I pulled it away from Sam's furnace of a shoulder, my hand cramped as I bent my fingers.

"How long has it been since you've eaten?" Sam asked, without turning. I stared into the darkness where I knew his head must be. Sleep still fogging the corners of my mind as I struggled to remember. "Come on, Orihime. The rumbling of your belly was shaking the bed. You should know better."

He stood up and rolled his shoulders, and I wondered if he'd moved even an inch in the hours I'd been asleep. He took a step toward the door, and I sat up, "No, you stay here. I'm just going to get some dinner from the kitchens." And then you're gonna tell me what the hell happened. Is what he didn't need to add.

Sam brought me a steaming bowl of beef stew, and two loaves of bread. And when I golfed down my own bowl, burning the taste buds right off my tongue, he handed his over.

Belly full I slumped back against my pillows. Sam ripped off the end of the bread and took a big bite. "So, I saw that the dining room is blocked off, you know anything about that?"

"They must be scrubbing the blood from the table," I shrugged.

"Can't take you anywhere," he joked, with a shake of his head. But then he turned quiet and I knew there would be no more jokes. "Ichigo seemed pretty shook up when he found me. He said you were covered in blood and shaking in the center of the court's, that…" he trailed off, and I didn't want to know what else Ichigo saw. He always sees too much. "It's been a long time since I've seen you like this. A very long time."

I kept my gaze on my hands, folded in my lap, "It's been coming for weeks. Building up. I barely sleep, and when I do, I remember things I've forgotten. Things I've buried in the mass grave of my past." The dead should stay buried. "I see their faces." I looked at him, then. "All of them. They find me at night, they stare at me. They smile."

Sam's face was grim, "Yeah, mine find me too."

"It's not just that," I swallowed hard. "I've been having these dreams, but they aren't dreams. They're me, or who I used to be. I'm watching my memories as if I'm one of the Gods. Staring down on myself, watching helplessly as my brother tries to kill me. And from the pits…" Sam tensed, and I didn't want to tell him. Not because I was ashamed, no I'd fought my way past that with Ichigo on the wall. I just didn't want to see the look in his eyes. Didn't want to hear the words I knew he'd say. But he had sworn himself to me, and to understand, to really understand why I'd done the things I'd done, he needed to know. "I watch the men torture me. I see my skin open up, I see the blood hit the floor and I hear myself begging, for mercy, for death. It always takes me a moment to realize who it is, lying on that stone slab. It's when the men take off their pants, that I remember." He'd gone still. Ridged, not even a hitch of breath. "I watch as they rape me. I relive it every night."

"I'm not who you think I am." I tell him. "The girl you knew, she was butchered in the dark. She died screaming. I'm just a monster wearing her face." I closed my eyes, "I've lived my life wearing her as a mask, doing what was expected of her. She was destined to be general and so a general I made her. She'd been born with a pretty face, and so I held it high enough for the world to see. All the while some small, fleeting part of her remained. She was fragile and naked but there. I could feel it," A tear fell down my cheek, sliding across my jaw. "And I dedicated everything, every damn second of my life to ensure that part survived. I tucked it away, shielding it from the horrors I committed. I threw myself at the feet of my father and did what I needed to do."

I opened my eyes, and gave him a heavy look. He didn't recoil. "But something has changed. I can feel that tiny, human part of me shrinking away. I fear one day I'll look and it won't be there. And I'm just so tired."

Sam didn't hesitate, didn't even seem to think twice, as he brought a hand up to cup my cheek. I felt my lip quiver at the tenderness, and I couldn't help but lean into it. "We can leave right now. Slip away in the night and never look back."

I swallowed past the lump in my throat. "I can't abandon my people."

"You don't owe them a damned thing."

He was wrong. Those people today who had stared at my morbid face and continued walking. Who had barely paused a step in their morning routine. The ones who had existed around me as I grew up alone, who'd ignored my desperation for any touch that wasn't given with the intent to bruise... Oh, I owed them a great deal.

I had felt so numb for so long, and suddenly my insides burned with such a swollen, festering rage. Sam's hand on my cheek only made me all the more confident, all the more willing. The Golden Heir was alone no longer. "I owe them the deaths they deserve."

I had spent years as a shadow in the high courts. Years of my life drifting and floating within its crushing waves, but somehow, over those long years I had taught myself how to survive, to keep my head above water just long enough to gasp a lungful of air. It had been enough then, it wasn't now.

Ever since that first meeting with Bronze... She had stormed and raged in the sky above the sea in which I drowned and now nothing would ever be the same.

"Your head would roll long before you could touch any of the people who truly matter in this city."

"Then so be it,"

"I really wish you'd stop that," Sam sighed, voice thick and eyes lowered, but I could see the flash in the dark.

Minutes pass before I could mutter a whispered: "What?"

"Wanting to die."

The words dropped deep into me. And I was struck quiet by them. Once again I was presented with a view of myself I never knew existed. I wished desperately to see myself, if only for a moment, through his eyes. I wonder what always caught his attention first. Was it the muscles that had loosened with hunger? The mouth that had forgotten how to smile in happiness? Or the eyes that had long since gone vacant?

I thought I'd known. What I was to him. What he saw when he gazed upon me… It left me curious if I'd ever been right about anything.

"I don't want to die," I tell him, almost like a confession. Like I must whisper it as a well kept secret. "My biggest problem has always been my desire to live."

Sam gave a small dip of his chin, "We've buried every friend we've ever had. I can't bury you, Orihime." He was shaking his head, his mouth a hard line, "I can't."

I wove my arms around his shaking shoulders. No tears fell, and I wondered if it was his anger that shook his body. His anger at the Gods, at the world, at the men who'd stolen his friend. And at me; for even having the ability to be taken by death.

I didn't say the words. Didn't make him face that, one day, he would stand over my grave and weep. I had no intention of following him into the afterlife. He had always been destined to out live me.

But I was glad that we had now, that I could hold him as his grief overtook him.

I'd decided that there was nothing wrong with finding your strength in another person. You must fight for yourself, for your beliefs and for your dreams. But if it takes someone being there with you; for you to not be alone. Then I was glad that I had picked someone I was willing to fight for and who would also fight for me.

Sam:

I waited for Orihime to fall asleep. I sat once more beside her. Her touch, barley a weight on my skin, calming me as much as it calmed her.

I understood her need for contact, the need to be sure she was protected in the dark as she slept. I knew all darkness felt the same to her.

It was hard for me not to think about the pits. So impossibly difficult not to remember where'd I'd been in those weeks. Trotting around the high court's newly 16 and chasing the maids and ladies. I'd given her a few thoughts back then, but it had never occurred to me to be worried.

I wondered if she'd wished for me to hear her screams. If she'd been waiting for me to find her in that black pit. To pick her up and bring her back up into the sun.

She had hated me in the years that followed. Had recoiled from my very presence… I couldn't blame her.

I heard her breath turn even and deep. I took a look over my shoulder and saw her face relaxed into her slumber.

Orihime Inoue, General to the Western Army and the Enforcer of Law. Such a big name, such a heavy responsibility… and she looked so small.

I plucked her hand from my shoulder and turned to face her slowly, never letting her hand drop. Her fingers were long and skinny, feminine despite the cracked knuckles and rough skin. Her wrists were marred with scars long turned white, I ran my finger over them, noticing for the first time how much those scars resembled shackles.

Her arms had their own markings of a life lived during war and tragedies, I remembered some of those injuries. And I knew I had given her a few of them during our youth.

I forced my eyes away.

Orihime's face was soft, unscathed and beautiful. Her lips full and parted in sleep. She looked her age in that moment, looked so young and carefree. And I knew it was because I couldn't see her eyes, the eyes that had been spoken about since the second she was born. It was those eyes that reflected every hardship she'd endured, that showed every swing of the sword she'd been forced to carry.

Orihime Inoue was a warrior. She was a force of nature. And I believed she'd been born only because the Gods had dropped one of their own. Had accidentally let her slip down from the heavens.

And I'd never realized before, in all of our years together, how absolutely broken she was.

I prayed then to those Gods. If it was a warrior they needed, then they could have me. If they needed someone to bleed, then I would rip myself open. And if they needed someone to die...

Then I would kneel before them and smile.

Orihime:

Days passed in a blur. A blur of people and dinners and meetings. All of the leaders had stayed in the court's, their generals had let themselves into the Center, using its weapons and sparring rings to take the edge off.

And it was there I stood. Looking over the banister as they all fought and laughed and taunted. They'd all known each other for years, had fought beside one another on battlefields long before I was born. And they had never extended an invitation for me to join them. I was young and a woman, both things they seemed to resent.

I didn't mind. Much.

"They know you are stronger, and faster," Said a smooth male voice behind me. "That is why then avoid you." Santos finished as he slid up next to me. Keeping a polite distance, his eyes also on the men below.

I watch him carefully as I say, "Just the spoils of youth."

He nodded, grim. "Before long it will be you and young Elof who are experienced, and you'll look up one day and see the eyes of the inexperienced generals who have replaced the old men, staring down on you."

Is that how I looked? As if I wanted to be apart of them?

"It is likely I will be Queen before that day comes."

Santos slid his cool eyes to me, his posture straight and formal, "If your father allows it."

My jaw flexed and I spoke low, careful of listen ears, "Not even he can escape death."

"It is not him who will need to escape it."

The threat was there, in the spaces between his words. In the tone and the chill I felt creeping over my skin. I pushed off the railing, "It would be wise of you to remember what happened to the last Southern Lord who was foolish enough to threaten me, Santos."

The Lord clasped his hands behind his back, and slid his eyes away, back to the fighting men. "Do not worry, I have learned from my predecessors mistakes." His dark eyes flashed as they glanced at me, lazily, "Have you?"

My father had made many mistakes, and I did not have the energy, or patience, to decide which one he was referring to. Thankfully, he continued before I had time to speak.

"I have been curious why he has married you off to a distance court when you are still so young. When you still have many more battles to fight before you will be crowned. Heirs are usually kept unspoken for until it is their turn to rule, until the need for them to have their own offspring that will one day take their place." He shrugged a shoulder, "Perhaps, since you are the first female Heir in history, your father was unsure of the right course of action."

It hadn't even crossed my mind.

"Or perhaps, his past attempts to kill you while you were a juvenile had proven worthless and now he has set himself onto a new plot." I ground my teeth as I waited for him to continue, knowing he paused only to prove I was in need of his outlook. His experience in such matters. And when he spoke again, I could hear his slight smugness, "Your father has no bride, no one to give him legitimate heirs. And surely you would defeat them once they were old enough for their trials." He didn't seem to doubt that I would do it. Kill my half sibling to keep my title. "Yet if you were to marry, and produce an Heir of your own before you took the throne…"

My own child would be legitimate… would also have Clark's blood. "They could claim the crown."

"And your death would no doubt follow soon after its birth, when you are weak and defenseless."

The pureblood heir Clark had always craved. Half me and half Ryley. Gold and snow.

And the bastard born that had lived despite the odds, the first female Heir… he would claim I had died in childbirth. Claim that my offspring had been too strong of a soul for me to carry. The smear of his name- finally gone from the world.

I didn't want to believe it, didn't want to see the path Santos had laid out before me. "Why am I to believe you?"

"Because I have no reason to lie."

I shook my head, "Your people have everything to gain. To get rid of the general who had burned your capital down."

"I have never blamed you, Orihime Inoue. I know why you did it."

The faces flashed in my eyes. The faces of all the Northern troops I had been stationed with during the war. The people who had screamed and screamed as they were cut down. Who had been slaughtered by southern blades.

"I should have burned your entire culture to the ground. You're all just cowards who slither in the night, who butcher sleeping soldiers and unarmed men."

"The Southern army does not fight at night." Was his simple answer, as if it was the only defense he needed.

I snarled, "You attacked us,"

"Did I?" He said, too calmly. "Tell me, how could enemy forces get near your camp without detection? How did your men not have time to even pick up their sword's before they were cut down? Have you never asked why your father sent you to fight with the Northerners? With not a western face in sight?"

I hadn't. Thinking it was just another way for Clark to shove me down. It couldn't be true- Cuyler had been there. We had fought together with his men and he would have been one of the slaughtered if not for the sudden summons from his father-

I was shaking my head, though deep down I knew. I knew.

"You were suppose to die in the mud. Buried and forgotten with the rest of those foot soldiers, but you returned. And instead it was my city, my people who burned. Clark couldn't touch you then, not when your name echoed across the world. The name of the bastard born Heir, who'd ended the war single handed and returned to her father's side. A rabid beast waiting for orders." Santos chuckled lowly to himself, shaking his head, "It seems you have won many battles you never knew you'd fought."

My mouth felt dry. My shaking knees barely holding me up as questions bubbled up. And Santos knew, Santos waited for me to ask. To prove my inexperience.

I would find my own answers.

I leaned down again, resting my elbows on the bannister, my shoulders slumping in indifference. Calm. Relaxed. "You have given me much to consider."

His eyes were on me, but I didn't look at him again. A dismissal.

Santos merely clasped his hand behind him and spoke clearly, unflinchingly, "Long live the Queen."

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Chapter 35... wow can't believe it's been this long. Thank you so much for those who have stuck with this story all this time and who have been reviewing- it means so much and motivates me to never stop with this story. So thank you!

Till next time—