For UlquiHime Week 2021, Day 7: Fantasy AU
Thank you rosesforhands for the last minute beta!
Harsh winds whipped through the lone tower jutting up from a grey cliff overlooking the sea. Ulquiorra hated this place, and if he had a choice he would have never returned to its rotting walls. The woman shivering in the corner left him no options, though.
"Warm yourself," he ordered, tossing a tattered mass of coarse fabric in her direction. Ulquiorra paced around the room, trying to make sense of the thoughts racing through his brain. They were safe, for now, but they had no provisions or real shelter from the elements. While this was not much of a problem for him, he knew that Orihime would soon be hungry, if she wasn't already.
Orihime watched spellbound as the dark-winged creature that brought her here slowly morphed into a human-like creature wearing something that looked like white military vestments and a broken bone-like helmet with a horn. His hair was no longer flowing down his back, but hung in a feathery curtain just over his shoulders and across his severe brow, which now twitched in obvious turmoil.
She took the material that The Moonshield had given her - appearing to be a very weathered scrap of tapestry - and stood near the damp stone wall. Her fluttering heartbeat calmed into a steady rhythm as her body warmed under the cloth, and she watched him with growing concern.
"Are you alright, Moonshield?" she dared to ask.
His intense porcelain face snapped in the direction of the question, staring motionlessly when he found her eyes. He was silent for the better part of a minute before he said, "Do not address me as such."
Orihime's head tilted to the side, the long fringe shifting over her face catching the dim light like fire and distracting him from his thoughts for just a moment.
"I said, how shall I address you," Orihime repeated.
He had not heard her question the first time, so focused on the sight of her warm hair against the dreary background. His mouth opened to answer, hanging for a moment as his thoughts came together. "Ulquiorra. You shall call me Ulquiorra, and only that."
"Ulquiorra…" she repeated quietly. "Why Ulquiorra? What does it mean? Oh! Is that how you say Moonshield in your mother tongue?"
To say Ulquiorra was perturbed was an understatement. His face appeared almost startled as he replied, "No, it is my name. It is my name and nothing more."
"I have never heard such a name. It is not of the Sun languages. What is it from?" Orihime asked, her eyes wide in curiosity.
"It is- I have always had it. It comes from nowhere. It has no meaning. Nothing has any meaning, Woman; do not persist in asking useless questions," he said in a dismissive tone.
"Don't be ridiculous, Ulquiorra!" Orihime said, smiling gently. "Names have meaning. Everything has a meaning."
In an instant he was before her, his nose a hair away from her brow. "I will repeat this but once, Orihime, Sun Princess: Do. Not. Ask. Useless. Questions," he growled.
Orihime gasped and closed her eyes, holding her breath until she felt a cold draft over her face. She opened her eyes again to find herself alone in the tower.
"Keep looking!" Ichigo ordered his men as he circled higher around Mage Mountain. "The princess was nowhere near the charger's carcass."
Where is that idiot? He thought to himself. Usually Rukia of the Thirteenth Order sensed his approach and came out to greet him, often with one or more of her cohorts in tow, ready to throw insults and demands at him. Her absence made him wonder whether the mages were in the process of circling the wagons and potentially hiding a body.
Urging his charger faster, Ichigo made his way over the castletown's drawbridge, landing his steed directly before the gates of the Thirteenth's parapet walk. Dismounting his charger, he walked along the wall until he came to the familiar entrance of Rukia's solar meeting chamber.
"I haven't seen her, Ichigo," the woman's tired-sounding voice came from behind a chair back that obscured her from view.
"But you blasted her charger out of the sky!" Ichigo howled as he stomped his way to her and spun the chair she occupied around to face him.
Before the piece of furniture stopped rattling, the glowing white point of her sword was tipping the Sun King's chin up, precariously close to breaking the skin. Rukia was a skilled swordswoman, though, and she knew exactly how much pressure she could exert. "Be careful with your accusations, my liege. You have no evidence-"
"I saw it, Rukia. Don't try."
"Ha! You saw nothing. I know you were in the forest skirmishing with the Sternritters. You just can't resist poking your nose into their internal affairs, can you? How do you mean to rule the three kingdoms if you can't delegate?" the woman asked, lowering her sword and sitting easily back into her chair.
Ichigo scoffed and stepped back, turning to pace the floor between the chair and the window. "Fine, you may be correct, but you can't tell me that her charger wasn't killed by a kido blast! It's not just a mistake; the princess was riding it! I'm going to need her back. Now."
"I don't have her. No one here does. She never reached the ground," Rukia told him cooly, arms crossed over her chest.
Ichigo stopped his pacing and glared at her. "Do you expect me to believe she sprouted wings and flew away on her own? In broad daylight with no witnesses?"
Rukia sighed heavily and stood again. "Believe what you want, Ichigo, but do believe this: We don't have her."
The sovereign raised his hands to his head in frustration. "But you do not deny you shot down her charger? That's an act of war, Rukia. My people adore her; they'll demand it!"
"Then go find her!"
"Why… How does he want to make use of me?" The question, though quiet, sounded loud in the silence of the room.
Ulquiorra turned from his post at the window where he had been standing watch for the better part of an hour. He did not have anything better to do, or a plan, for that matter. "Aizen?" he asked, wanting to be sure.
Orihime nodded. "You said he'd make use of me."
Ulquiorra's expression darkened as he took a few steps towards where she huddled. "He would use you to increase his power. He desires to rule the day as well as the night. He would wed you and bed you and have you produce little Sun Children heirs to legitimize his claim to the Sun throne."
Orihime's brows lowered harshly. She stood up straight, allowing the tapestry to fall from her shoulders as she composed a commanding posture. "I would never allow it! I would-"
She never saw him coming. Her back was pressed against the damp cold stones behind her, lifted so high that her toes barely scraped the floor. He held her there, holding her wrists overhead against the wall with one hand. His face was so close that all she could see were his murky green eyes.
"As if you would have a choice, Woman," he said, the calm of his voice contrasting with the intensity of his gaze and posture.
Her shocked eyes narrowed and she puffed her chest defiantly, unwilling to show weakness. But the sensation of her soft flesh pressing against his impassive chest made her shiver, and she had to swallow before she challenged, "I would reject him."
"Ridiculous," he replied, his voice soft as supple leather as he pushed his front more deeply into hers, until they were nose to nose. "You are but a speck of trash to Lord Aizen. If he desires to breed you, then breed you he shall," he said, his breath floating over the skin on her face like a feather.
Her skin tingled and warmed. His closeness, his strength; all this talk of breeding… She had to push these sensations to the side. Forcing herself to smirk, she argued, "If that is so, then why is your body pressed against mine now, instead of his, Ulquiorra?"
He said nothing, although she saw the way his pupils dilated. She could tell he was affected by her words, and continued. "I would never accept him. You have a far higher chance at breeding me than Aizen ever would."
"I have watched you, Woman. I was ordered to watch and report. I have seen your body. I have seen how your servants bathe you. How they touch you," he growled, his free hand grasping her thigh and hooking it over his left hip. He raked his fingers up and over the muscle, and then splayed them open between their bodies, caging her belly. "Would you prefer to carry the spawn of a monster? Be nothing but a bitch for the Moonshield?"
He saw fear spark behind her eyes and smirked, then moved his lips to the shell of her ear and whispered, "Is that what you dreamt about in your beloved observatory? Clutching those books to your breast that told of lustful hollows that would fornicate with pure maidens under the new moon? Is that what you fantasized about as your servants bathed and oiled your secret places?"
He heard her gasp, and he knew he was at least partly right. "I saw it all, Orihime, Princess of the Sun Kingdom," he groaned, shifting his body just so that she could feel his hardening length through the rough fabric of his vestments against her vulnerable core.
Orihime had been oscillating between feeling spellbound and alarmed by Ulquiorra's words, but as soon as she felt that his body was backing them up, her survival instincts leapt to attention. "I reject!" she yelped.
Ulquiorra hissed and sprang back from the woman as a searing hot barrier materialized between them. He took stock of his body, and finding his limbs unscathed and in their proper places, observed the transparent gold shield glimmering before the woman. Orhime stood behind the shield with her arms crossed over her slightly caved-in body, glaring at him.
"How dare you," she panted.
His eyes narrowed. "What is this?" he asked. How dare she withhold this ability from him after all the time he had spent learning about her. "What manner of magick do you possess? You are not like the bastardized King. This is not hollow magick."
"I don't know!" Orihime spat. "That's besides the point, anyway. You touched me!"
He pulled his attention away from the shield for a moment and glared at her. "You invited me to breed you. What did you expect?"
Orihime threw her head back and groaned in an agonized way, "That's not what I meant!"
"And what do you mean, Sun Princess?" Ulquiorra asked in a rare show of pageantry. "And do be specific."
Orihime huffed and the shield between them instantly disappeared. "I meant that Aizen is evil and I would never marry him or bear him children."
There was a brief moment of silence while Ulquiorra digested this information. "And you believe I am less evil than Lord Aizen?" he finally asked.
"Obviously. You saved me from falling to my death. You brought me here so that Aizen couldn't have me," Orihime contested, raising her chin slightly.
Ulquiorra's enormous eyes closed for a moment as he sighed. "How you have managed to survive until now baffles me," he muttered before turning to the open window. "Cover up, Woman, and stay away from the window," was all he said before transforming back into his batlike Moonshield appearance and flying out of the room.
A/N: Sorry this was a bit rushed and insubstantial, but if you like this fic let me know and I may flesh it out a bit more.