Hello hello, back again. Late as usual...

Better late than never right? No probably not. I've tried to get myself onto a schedule of writing but I can never seem to force it that way. I mean I CAN but it comes out as utter garbage. Let me know if you guys have any tips on that, because I hate making everyone wait.

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

lets get back into it—

I sat on my cot, elbows on knees, chin cupped in my hand, for however long. I just knew the sun had started to shimmer through the cracks of the world, and muffled sounds of life began to stir.

Then the sun cut through the tent, and Cuyler was kneeled before me. He didn't touch me, didn't reach out to comfort.

Cuyler's eyes were a black storm, and I could practically see lightning flash within them. He looked into my eyes for a moment, calculating, assessing. And when he spoke, his voice was as sharp and startling as loudest thunder, "We will tell no one of this." Then he stood in one strong, sure movement.

I raised my head from my palm, "He didn't touch me,"

He paused, long enough to consider his words carefully, "It doesn't matter. We tell no one." And then, softer, kinder: "If he didn't force you, then why do you look so sick?"

I'd taken my time alone to ready myself for this question, but when the moment came I still found the words difficult, "I said he didn't touch me, not that he didn't force me," I'd been sure to ruffle my clothing, to alter the way it laid across my body. As if removed and then put on hastily. And I pulled the neck of my shirt closer together.

Cuyler watched the movement and his fingers clenched and then released, "Tell me what he did."

Meeting his eyes, I willed a fire I knew he would expect into my gaze, "Will you make me say it?"

His jaw was as solid as his voice, "Yes,"

I stood quickly, shooting to my feet, Vladimir falling from my lap onto the floor. And though he towered over me, Cuyler took a step back, planting his feet solidly.

I didn't let myself grin.

I paced to the far side of the tent, holding my shoulders taunt, pausing just long enough for him to relax slightly.

I shuttered out a breath, "He just wanted to look." When I wrapped my arms around myself securely, I'd done it to complete the act, but it held me together as the disgust threatened to overpower my steel resolve. And when I repeated the words again, there was a flutter in my throat that would have been impossible to forge, "He just wanted to look."

I held my breath while Cuyler processed it. This was the moment that would decide the course of my plans, a defining moment. A life altering moment of silence.

I heard him take a step forward, and I felt nothing at all but the pounding of my heart. I prayed he couldn't hear it in the silence. When he didn't say anything for several minutes, I turned half towards him, keeping my arms secured around me.

"Why didn't they kill us?" I asked before he could.

"I don't know." Came his growled response, but some of that small suspicion faded from his eyes as he took me in.

I also took the moment to look over him. The right half of his face was beet red, looking almost burned over his cheek bone. And the front of him was dripping wet, the shaking of his hands the only indication he felt the cold. And moving up from those shaking hands, I could see blood peeking through the white of his long shirt that circled his wrists, the skin left unconfined by his sleeves was pink and scratched with friction.

I met his eyes as the scene was painted behind my eyes. It must have taken him all night to break free from his restraints.

His handsome face was hard and as cold as he no doubt felt, but his eyes, looking black from this distance, were warm, "I should have been able to stop it but I'm glad- I'm glad that your modesty was all the man took."

I knew precisely what he meant. And I could only nod passed the lump in my throat. Cuyler, of course, couldn't have known that my maidenhood had been stolen long before this day. And I would fall onto my own sword before I ever let him in on that knowledge.

Cuyler stood there, awkwardly, for three heartbeats. And then his posture shifted and he was all soldier once more. "We need to get the men into their tents before they wake up."

I nodded silently, again. And I took the time to throw on a thick cloak before following him out.

We made quick work of the bodies. Cuyler, looking as if he could haul a man over each shoulder, did most of the heavy lifting while I focused on smoothing away any footsteps left by our unwanted visitors.

We both carried Ryley into his tent, being more careful with him than the others. I told Cuyler what the man had said about the dosage- being careful not to accidentally give him the man's true name. I didn't need to have to worry about Cuyler asking around once we reached the northern capital.

"He'll probably be out for the rest of the day… best to let him think himself hung over. And the others too."

Cuyler nodded, "My father was already in his own tent, sleeping like the dead. They must have gotten to him before the rest of us."

I scolded myself for never even considering his father. I should have had the mind to ask Wilibau about him.

I stared down at Ryley for a moment, took a deep breath and then turned to his brother, "So we agree to never speak of this again."

Cuyler didn't take his eyes from his smallest brother, and the look in those eyes was not kind. But he nodded and it was enough.

We both went back to our own quarters. 'Get a few hours sleep, we leave once the men wake.' Cuyler had demanded. I wasn't going to argue.

Though, I knew I would never be able to sleep. So, while I laid in my cot, I thought. Attempting to clear away some of my doubts about what I had learned through the night.

And I couldn't get Cuyler out of my head.

I've always known that the feelings we develop when we are young stay with us. The keen like and dislike of things that follow us for many years to come. Opinions on food, music and people.

Yes, people most of all.

For while I had many reasons as of late to mistrust Cuyler, to suspect and doubt him, I could not forget the kindness he had shown me in my youth. Granted I had still been healing then, still sore and broken where no eyes could see. And I had accepted his kindness eagerly, not knowing when I would ever see such a thing again, from anyone.

Cuyler had treated me as his equal, in rank as Heir, and skill as a soldier. And he had been handsome and interesting, smart in unspoken ways.

And when I looked at him now, with eyes that might appear the same but had altered over the years since they'd first seen him, I still saw the man I used to know.

But the time apart had taught me how to see things people wanted hidden about themselves. And so, now, I could see the way he prowled through the tents with a hand on his dagger, searching, nearly desperate for a threat to appear. I could detect the hitch in his breath and the tension in his jaw when Ryley spoke. It reminded me of the hostility I was always shown in the presence of the politicians back home. And the haunting way his eyes stalked his father... I had looked at my own father in such a way many times, and I knew the thoughts that came with such a slumbering resentment.

Perhaps Cuyler was still the man who sheltered me in times of war. Who fought beside me and who I had watched weep for his fallen soldiers, but perhaps these years apart had altered him as well. And I was not foolish or desperate enough to believe it was all for the better.

I listened carefully, stretching my hearing past my tent and out into the world. When I heard nothing but my own breathing, I got up and got to my knees before my cot.

I found the papers easily, having only hid them there a few hours prior. Wilibau had said much, but it wasn't until these letters that I believed a word of it.

I would know Sam's scrambled writing anywhere:

Be sure to watch your back with the Northerners. And don't worry about a thing, I've got everything under control here. Come back alive Orihime, or I'll come to the underworld and beat your sorry ass.

Sam

He always had a way of getting straight to the point. The letter was dated from six days prior, so written five days after my departure, and I was sure he'd only written it to appease my suspicion of Wilibau. And he was right.

I wonder if Sam knew any of what the rebel had ventured into crisp winter to tell me. What couldn't wait until my return to the West.

I didn't let myself dwell on it.

Instead, I placed Sam's letter back into the safely hidden slit in the side of my mattress. I ran my fingers over the second letter, and the script on the front I had easily recognized from his previous notes. And in that script Ichigo had requested I read this alone, to not allow another person to see my response to the beautiful words no doubt written within.

I debated for a moment if I should read them now, or if I should wait for a time when I needed his calming reassurance… I banished the idea nearly immediately.

I broke the seal and read:

There was always a silence to you
A creeping echo of forgotten words
Every step, every look always steady; sure
But there was a softness too
A firm, breathless sighing
You wove together a web of whispers and screams so flawlessly
You proved that a woman can be both
A soft wind and the raging hurricane
With tear filled eyes and fingers dripped in gore
I watched you with eyes closed, heart as secure as the sword in your grip
I know one day I will realize
One day I will see
You are a heaven sent, come to set my slumbering monster free

So do not expect me to tremble

To cry for you to stop

I was always destined to watch you swallow the world whole

Softly, tenderly, I smiled. And just as carefully, I placed those words right next to Sam's.

But I felt them, thumbing and straining, through all the hours I laid there, they rose and fell right along with my traitorous heart.

.

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