The bombs came that evening.
Orihime stood on the roof, her hair billowing in the wind, reaching out to shelter the palace as they fell. The shinigami that Soul Society had sent in were all unseated officers skilled in kido, blasting the palace from a safe distance. Low-level arrancar had been sent out to dispatch them, and she watched the ant-like shapes of them fall and rise, both sides.
Ulquiorra stood beside her.
"Left," he said.
She threw up a shield. Kido exploded against it loudly. She shut her eyes against the shattering light and waited for the light to fade before opening her eyes again. She took down the shield, waiting for another command.
"Ahead."
The noise was enough to rattle her bones. She remembered this part of war deeply. In the future she still heard explosions and screams in the night, so loud they woke her from her dreams. It was almost easier, somehow, to see the scenes replayed before her in real time now. She could face it head-on.
"Right."
Her window of time to find the hogyoku was rapidly closing. If she didn't locate and destroy it soon, then more people would die. She searched for its spirit ribbon often, but she wasn't adept in the craft, especially when she wasn't in the land of the living. It would be dangerous to meet with Ichimaru again, but she was beginning to suspect she had no choice in the matter.
Something in her warred at the idea of it. She wanted this… this standstill to last. Training with Ulquiorra, tea with Tia, drinks with Grimmjow. She wanted to stay. If she did end the war, would she ever see them again?
Well, Ichigo had seen Grimmjow, she was pretty sure. Maybe she could set something up, too.
The thought of taking up her ex husband's old hold-on habits made her stomach clench. For once in my life, please, let me just live honestly.
Oh, there was no honesty in war.
"Left."
At least her friends hadn't come yet.
But that would be soon to change, she knew.
~(o0o)~
Grimmjow crept into her room that night. Exhausted as she was from a day of playing bomb squad, she didn't even hear him come in. She woke suddenly to a shift on the bed, and found two luminous blue eyes hovering above her.
"Fuck!"
She kicked up without thinking, landing a blow right in his groin. There was a deep groan and then a thud as he fell off the bed. Orihime called up her shields and then noticed who it was holding their dick on the floor next to her.
"Grimmjow?"
"What the fuck Princessa?" he groaned. "Friends my ass!"
"Why were you hovering over me?" She hissed.
"Heal my dick."
"Talk, then heal."
He groaned, rolling onto his side. "Didn't see you today."
She sighed at his admission. Summoning her fairies, she sent a shield up for a few seconds, if only to get him to stop his whining. He popped up like nothing had happened as soon as her shun shun rika deactivated, hopping back up onto the bed with a grin. "Wanna get drunk with me?"
"There's a war going on, you know."
"Hollows have to sleep, Shinigami have to sleep," he said. "No one's out fighting right now."
"Repeat that first part for me. Slowly."
"Not us, bitch! Sleep is for those other weak fools. You don't see Ulquiorra sleeping, do you?"
She sighed. "The attacks will start off again early tomorrow morning. You know it, I know it. The difference between us is that you're not allowed to go out and do anything so you'll sleep all day, and I'm forced to go out and do everything so I only have a few hours to get any sort of sleep."
"If you have time to suck Ulquiorra's dick," he said, "Then you have time to drink with me."
She glared.
"What? He hasn't thrown me through a wall in three days. Something good must've happened to the guy, and as far as I'm aware, no one else is going around pawing at his pants."
"Shut up," she muttered, falling back into bed. "I'm not getting up."
"That's fine," he said, and swiped his jacket aside. "I brought the party to you!" There was a bottle of sake smushed awkwardly into his hollow hole. She felt strangely nauseous at the sight.
Grimmjow pulled the bottle free and uncapped it, sliding up next to her in bed, tucking himself homily under the covers.
"No, no, by all means," Orihime grumbled. "Make yourself at home."
"I don't need your permission to do that. This is my house before yours."
She held her hand out in waiting for the bottle, which was passed over to her after Grimmjow took a swig. The top and bottom were body-warm, and so she held the middle in order not to squirm.
"What have you been up to all day?" She finally asked.
"Stalking Ichimaru."
Her brow furrowed. "Why?"
"He knows things." Grimmjow said. "Probably knows where Kurosaki is." He scratched rabidly at the side of his neck. "Still haven't paid him back for blowing my fuckin' arm off."
"Right." She sighed, leaning into Grimmjow's side. "Cuz it was Ichigo that blew your arm off, not Tousen." She sighed. "...I'm glad you came to see me, though."
He grinned at her. "So… you gonna make me as happy as Bat-shit, or–"
"Remember how I kicked your nuts in a second ago?"
"Right," he said. "Got it."
She put her head on his shoulder. Her hand searched out his, and without a thought to it, she parted his claws to put her hand in his. He watched her do it, confused, it seemed. She clenched his hand tightly. He held back.
"What are you doing?" he muttered.
"Loving you," she said. "Can you feel my heartbeat?"
He held a little tighter. "Yeah," he said, sounding surprised. "I can."
They drank in silence for a while.
"If I die," Grimmjow said, suddenly. "Will you bring me back to life?"
Orihime was quiet.
"You probably can't do that, huh? Just like arms and legs and dicks and stuff."
"I don't know," she said, honestly. She hadn't tried to heal Ulquiorra last time, after all. She had no idea if she could bring a hollow back from death. "But I can try. Do you think you're going to die?"
"No fuckin' way I die," he said. "Just wanted to know if you were on my side."
"We're friends, aren't we?"
"You see, that's what I don't get. At first, it was just so that Ulquiorra wouldn't off you. But now it looks like he won't. So what? Who are we friends against?"
She felt her brow furrow. "Against?"
"Yeah. Who are we like. On a team to defeat?"
She thought about it for a minute. "... The world, I guess."
"Even Aizen?"
She frowned. "Especially Aizen."
"Even… Kurosaki?"
She smiled and laughed. "Oh Grimmjow," she said. "No one's friends against Ichigo."
He seemed to find that an acceptable answer, and settled back warmly into her side. It amazed her how a dead creature could exude warmth, and she allowed herself to curl her legs up against him. The sake burned hot and acrid in her throat, and as Orihime had gone to bed without eating dinner, struck her head quickly.
"What will you do if Aizen loses?" She asked.
He shrugged the shoulder she wasn't leaning on. "Go back to the way things were, I guess." He grinned, then. "Pop into the world of the living to stir things up. Find stronger people. Beat them. Maybe I'll go to soul society. Beat all them, too."
"Doesn't sound like much of a plan."
"Well, what, like you'd do better? If Aizen loses you'll probably be dead."
Well. It was always a possibility.
Another drink between the both of them. Grimmjow let out a growl which may have been a sigh in disguise. "What will you do if you. You know. Live and stuff?"
"I don't know," she said. "... Not go back to the way things were. Nothing like that." Her face felt flushed from the alcohol. She took another long sip. "Would you fuck my husband, Grimmjow?"
"What?"
"If I got married and my husband wanted to cheat on me, would you fuck him?"
"Uh. Yeah?"
She sighed. "Damn. I thought it might have been you. Son of a bitch."
"What in the hell are you bablin' about?"
"Nothing," she said. She realized, suddenly. She'd come to the past. She could change things. Sitting bolt-upright, she turned, grabbing his face. He hissed in alarm and tried to pull back, but she held fast, narrowing her eyes at him to show him how serious she was. "Promise me you won't fuck my husband, Grimmjow."
"What?!"
"Promise me you won't fuck him!"
"Okay, okay, I won't! Let go you crazy human!"
She did, leaning back against the wall. She reached blindly for his hand and smiled when he allowed her to take it. "Ha," she said, nonsensically. "Friends against Ichigo this time, huh? He thought. Ha, ha, ha."
"No wonder your friends think you're a traitor. You're bonkers."
She remembered a meme from the future and giggled. "Bonkers the cat…"
Grimmjow stiffened at her side. Drunk as she might have been, she noticed and sobered up a little, sitting straight up with him. "What is it?" She whispered. She realized it came out loud and tried again. "What is it?"
He made to pull away from her but the door slid open.
Ulquiorra regarded them cooly.
Oh fuck , Orihime thought. Except, she heard it. So she probably said it out loud. "Oh fuck," she said out loud. Yeah, that's what it sounded like. She'd probably said it out loud the first time, too.
"Sexta," Ulquiorra said. "These are not your chambers."
"Must have gotten lost," he drawled. Popping the sake bottle back into his hollow hole with a gross scooching sort of noise, he slipped out of the bed. "Just keeping it warm for ya', cuarto."
Grimmjow was gone, then, leaving Ulquiorra to stare Orihime down with icy green eyes and a disappointed line of a mouth.
She realized what he must have been thinking. "I'm not fucking Grimmjow," she slurred.
"I realize this," he said primly, "As Grimmjow has no sense of self-preservation and has not yet bragged to me about such a thing, it is safe to assume no such thing has occurred."
"But you're all mad and stuff at me." She paused. "At me and stuff."
"I am not mad," he said.
"You sound like my husband," she pouted. "Oh, no, no, no, I'm not mad! I'm just going to ignore you and scoot away when you try to spoon me. Say I'm too hot when it's freezing in our bedroom like all the time."
Ulquiorra blinked. "You were married?"
She blinked, too. "Oh no," she said. "I let the beans slip."
Ulquiorra sat on the side of the bed, head tilted to the side. "I have studied you," he said. "You seem loyal. Yet you use your body to please me. Have you no loyalty to your future spouse?"
"What do you know of marriage?" She asked, grumpy.
"I thoroughly studied human relationships in order to manipulate you," he said. "It has been going smoothly thus far, though it seems I may have miscalculated. Have you returned in order to secure your husband's future?"
"I already told… told you all there is about knowing." She shook her head. "Ugh, stop being drunk! I already told you all you need to know. And now the letters are jumbled in my head…"
"Perhaps," he said, "That is why you are so open to my advances. You are lonely."
She felt like he'd slapped her.
"Yes," he said, slowly. "That is it, then. You miss him."
"Miss him?" A hysterical laugh bubbled up her throat. "He's the reason I was lonely in the first place!" She reigned herself in, shaking her head. "I don't blame him. I don't. I loved him, I really did, and I understood. I mean, I understand. I know why he couldn't… why we never… that, uh. Closeness wasn't…" She swallowed and leaned back in the pillows, staring up at the ceiling. There was a lump in her throat. Why did drinking always inspire her to cry?
"How strange," he said. "To be lonely amongst one of your own kind. How can you feel such a way when there was another one with you?"
"You feel it," she said, hopelessly. "Don't you?"
He tilted his head to the side.
"Lonely even when you're in a room full of people. Of other arrancar. You're different from them."
He turned sharply away and stood. "Sleep," he said. "You will need your energy for the morning. I have no time to argue semantics with you."
"Nail on the head then, huh?" She let out a sad little giggle and dug deeper under the covers. She reached up to pull the pin from her hair and fumbled, the crown getting stuck. She growled in frustration and yanked hard, tears coming to her eyes as her hair pulled with it.
Hands were suddenly on her own. She looked up through teary eyes at Ulquiorra, and felt her frustration fade away as she watched him calmly untangle the crown from her hair. He set it gently on the night stand and turned away from her without another word.
Sleep , his voice repeated in her mind.
She closed her eyes, and she did.
~(o0o)~
Bombs fell all the next day. The shinigami troops moved closer. She knew it couldn't go on, that her time was running out, but Aizen had been keeping her busy and she'd been unable to find the hogyoku. She's given herself a very strict timeline. The day before, the war started. That day, it was ongoing. And the next day…
Threes. All good things come in threes. If she didn't find it by then, she'd go to Ichimaru, no matter how dangerous it may have been, and ask where to find it. Then, she'd destroy it. And the war would end.
She knew it wouldn't be so simple. But she could hope.
Lower level arancar brought her the wounded throughout the day. Ulquiorra worked on the missiles, then, throwing glowing lances of concentrated cero from the dome to explode them while they were far enough away to not do any damage to the palace. She worked tirelessly, feeling her age in this young body of hers, and swears at the blood that marred her dress. No one should be bleeding. What happened to her plan? Why was she allowing this to happen?
She knew that the other side would have more luck in the beginning. They're on the offensive, and they have healers in spades. The shinigami hadn't been ordered to die. Not like the people defending Los Noches.
Sometimes she imagined herself as a little fairy. Sitting on a flower and crying, crying, crying; tears bigger than her little body, until there was a pond around her flower, and then a sea, and then an ocean. Tears and tears for miles, and she was all alone, flickering her useless little wings while her flower drooped in cold, white sand.
And other times she saw herself as a terrible angel, built only to smite, an uncaring god as terrible as her creator. But in these visions she was blind-folded and her shields looked like eyes, and she wasn't sure if she was supposed to be justice or malice or everything and nothing or if these were more delusions like her ideas of being a pro-wrestling robot when she got older, or her ideas of opening up a caterpillar themed ice cream shop, or living to the ripe old age of 30 before completely rewriting the timeline.
Right.
The war.
She focused herself and pushed all imaginings to the back of her head where they belonged.
But as she worked with Ulquiorra some slipped out.
Some say that if she reached for his hand he wouldn't pull away.
Some say that if she kissed his cheek in thanks, he'd let her do it.
Some tell her that she knows he has a heart and that if she can find it, maybe, maybe just maybe, she can find herself in it, too.
One even dares to suggest that if she opened up her caterpillar themed ice cream shop, he could work in the back, doing finances and business things, and that at the end of the day he'd lock up so she wouldn't lose the keys, and they'd walk home together, hand in sticky ice cream hand, and that he might lo…
She must still be a little buzzed from the night before.
There's no way any of that will be real.
… He'd hate sticky hands, anyway.
An explosion went off closer than expected and her right ear rang. She reached up to check it, snapping. She could still hear. It sent her pulse rocketing, but after that she's more careful. She had the awful thought that maybe she can't change anything, and she's going to end up just as fucked up as before.
The universe's ultimate fuck you .
The shinigami tired themselves out, eventually, and camp was erected. Night guards were set on watch on both sides, and tired, Orihime allowed herself to be escorted back below by Ulquiorra, who placed a hand on her lower back when she swayed.
"I will return with dinner," he said as soon as they entered their room.
She shook her head and turned to fall into his front. He let her.
"You must eat," he insisted.
"No hungry," she grumbled.
"You have been working–"
"I can't eat," she promised him. "This happens to humans when they're upset, sometimes. You can force me, but it won't stay down."
He watched her for a minute.
"You can tell when I'm lying," she reminded him.
He narrowed his eyes at her, like that alone could force some unspoken truth out of her. There was nothing to say, though, and so she leveled her chin at him with defiance. His eyes narrowed further, til they were mere slits, but he did not say anything further before he turned away from her.
"I am going to change," he said.
The thought had never occurred to her. Somehow, she'd thought… maybe the clothes came with the whole espada thing? Like with the shinigami robes. But she'd seen him naked. It wasn't like a magical girl transformation where he suddenly had the outfit.
But his outfit changed when he entered his release form. So. Maybe it was kind of like a magical girl transformation. Her fingers suddenly itched for her sketchbook. She could see him as a magic girl, and the thought wasn't even funny. It was just… cool.
"Magic girl," she whispered to his retreating back. He even got the cute wings that came with it.
Shaking herself of the thought, she realized she could do for a change too. There was soot and sand in her hair, and sweat had stiffened her uniform to her lower back and sides. She breezed into the bedroom and past Ulquiorra, who had not yet begun changing, and made her way into the bathroom.
A hot shower was exactly what she'd needed. She let out a sigh as steam began to fill the room, stripping down quickly. Her hand stopped just short of entering the water. The thought occurred to her-if Ulquiorra needed to change, surely he needed to shower, too. Otherwise they wouldn't even have a shower attatched to his room, right? Was he putting it off because he knew she wanted to?
She turned back to the bathroom door, mouth turned at the corners.
When she'd first turned twenty, she'd had this reoccurring fantasy about sharing a shower with someone. It tugged at her-the intimacy and trust of it, even outside of all the sexy funtimes implied. She bit at her bottom lip, wondering if it would be too much a show of her hand to invite him in.
Who was she kidding? He would see through her if she never looked at him again. Might as well go all in.
She opened the door a crack. Ulquiorra had discarded his top.
"Ulquiorra," she said, softly.
He turned his head towards her, waiting. Credit where it was due; his eyes did not stray from her face to the strip of nudity he was able to see through the crack in the door.
"Do you want to shower, too?"
He seemed to consider it. That was one of the things she liked about him. It was very rare to meet anyone who really did think before they spoke. She didn't have the self control for it, almost always too excited to get out what she wanted to say. Ulquiorra, though, always considered what he was saying.
"You wish to share?" He asked, finally.
She nodded.
Without another word, he divested himself of the rest of his uniform. He stepped from the fallen clothing, easy in his nakedness, and moved towards the door. Orihime could not take the same credit that Ulquiorra had by keeping his gaze locked with hers. Her eyes skipped first to his hollow hole, and then to his tattoo. Lower, then, to the sparse hair adoring his stomach, and then to his flaccid member, which moved with his gate. She quickly tore her eyes back up but knew without checking to look that she was blushing. She opened the door fully and turned away from him to hide the stain on her cheeks.
With her back to Ulquiorra, Orihime reached out to test the temperature of the water. As hot as the steam implied, but not too hot. She stepped under the spray and didn't startle when a second later Ulquiorra stepped in behind her. She turned, soaking her hair, and leaned her head back slightly to get the water into her roots.
His green eyes were settled intensely upon her face.
"Hi," she said, nonsensically.
"Hello," he returned.
She remembered suddenly how careful he'd been the other night, removing her crown from her tangled hair. Boldness filled her and she grabbed a bottle of shampoo from the rack, pressing it into his hands. "Wash my hair?"
She half expected him to refuse. It was a ridiculous request, after all. She was plenty capable of washing her own hair. Surely he would tell her as much.
But he didn't.
Strong, sure fingers carded through her hair. Orihime's eyes fluttered softly shut at the sensation. He worked against her scalp, diligent, and then down towards the ends. When he'd lathered her hair he placed a hand on her chin and guided her head back under the spray, using his hands to sooth the water through her hair.
She swallowed hard. She had made a grave miscalculation. This meant far more to her than she had anticipated.
"How do you wash underneath your helmet?" She asked him. She opened her eyes to find him right in front of her.
In lieu of an answer, he kissed her.
She laughed a little into the kiss, bringing her hands up to link around the back of his neck. "Let me wash your hair," she said against his mouth. She drew back and poured some shampoo into her hands, lathering it between her palms before she set to work on him.
He had been far more stringent in his application. She found within seconds that she was simply playing with his soapy hair, pushing her hands through the silken strands, running her fingers along the edges of his helmet. The soap and water slipped beneath the rim, washing out sand and the like. She rubbed the back of his scalp. He leaned forward, resting his forehead carefully on his shoulder, so that the bone ridge of his helmet pointed away from her.
The water poured over them. It ran down his back in rivulets. It gathered around the edges of his hollow hole and formed droplets which clung to the edges before dropping inside and sliding out the front. She traced the path of a droplet on his back as his hands settled on her hips.
"When humans are born," she said, drawing shapes on his shoulder blades, "We have to be touched. All the time. If you don't, they can actually die. Of touch starvation."
He said nothing.
"I wonder if it hurts hollows, too. Never being touched like this." She set her chin on his shoulder.
"Nonsense," he muttered into her skin. But it was a weak objection.
There was a pressure at her throat. He was kissing her again, sucking faint hickeys into the column of her neck. She sighed and reached past him to grab the body wash, forgoing conditioner because she feared they'd forget to rinse it out.
She washed his back. His arms. She wedged a hand between them, soaping his chest. Her hands played over the slight contour of his pecks, and then lower, and lower.
"I didn't intend to pounce on you," she laughed, softly, and stroked at his member, which was beginning to take interest in their proceedings. "I thought I was tired."
He nipped at the corner of her jaw. She rested her back against the shower wall and pulled his face back up to meet hers, tonguing at the seam of his mouth. He kissed her slowly, hungry. She made a small noise in the back of her mouth as his hand splayed over the curve of her stomach.
She laughed a little. "Hi," she said.
"You have already greeted me," he said, and brought his hand down to greet her sex in turn.
Her head thudded gently back against the wall of the shower as she bit her lip. She put a hand on his chest and was momentarily stunned by the lack of a beating pulse before she remembered. Hollow. Heartless. Oh, but she didn't believe it for a second.
"Oh…"
He was a good study. His fingers circled her clit with just the right amount of pressure; not too hard, but not teasingly, either. She hummed happily as he sank to his knees, urging her legs wider apart with a hand on the side of her knees. She readjusted herself and sank her fingers into his hair as his mouth sealed over her.
He took his time, alternating between suction and laving at her with his tongue. She felt herself growing wetter and jerked a little in surprise when his fingers pressed to her, almost in asking.
"That's good," she told him. A second passed. "Really good," she amended breathily.
He did not press in all at once. Little bit little, circling and testing, as though he was afraid to injure her. She felt herself shaking and steadied herself with a hand around the horn of his helmet. His index and ring finally pressed inside, curling and pumping slowly. She was keyed up enough to know it wouldn't be long.
She looked down and met his eyes. He stared back up at her without stopping, mouth buried against her sex. He was unperturbed by her lack of grooming, which made her stomach swoop, and as he thrust up into her at a particular angle she let out a cry.
He found it again, again, again, wringing small noises from her with deft precision. She felt heat curling low in her gut as her legs began to shake.
"Ulquiorra," she warned with a groan, and then was coming, body jerking as he held her up with a strong hand on her hip. "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you…" She blinked, long and heavy, her limbs like jelly as he rose to his full height.
He wiped his glistening mouth off with the back of his hand.
That did it. She attacked him with her mouth, kissing and holding to him, heart pounding hard in her chest. He was stunned by her vigor for a moment before he returned her affront, hands holding tight to the small of her waste.
"Thank you," she told him again, drawing back.
"Do not thank me," he said, gruffly.
"Oh, I'll do more than thank you," she said, and with an impish smile, dropped to her knees.
Water ran over her back and into her eyes, but she was loath to close them. She blinked the water away, scooting forward a bit, until he was pressed into the opposite wall. His cock was hard and bobbing in the air, flushed with that odd purple tinge. She licked her lips and then grasped him in her hand, finally letting her eyes slide shut as she took him into her mouth.
This time wasn't merely to treat him before getting to the main event. She wanted to make a production of it. She went slow, bobbing her head down as far as she could without gagging, working her way up to taking him completely. She giggled a little when the suction failed for a moment and made an obscene sort of noise, but was quickly back to her task. She would go down, sucking hard, and then let up as she pulled back, holding the tip of him in her mouth as she twirled her tongue around the head of his dick. He groaned, his own hand finding purchase in her hair.
Any noise she could wring out of him was a small victory. She took anything he had to offer her.
She ran out of breath and pulled off for a moment, spit linking her bottom lip to the head of his erection. She used it to stroke him, twisting on the upstroke, and looked up to smile at him. His expression was more intense than she had anticipated. Mouth agape, pupils blown wide, staring down at her like she was some impossible miracle he never would have anticipated.
She kissed his hip. And then the side of his cock. She laughed when he blinked in confusion, and then took him in again.
It was not long before she felt him throbbing in her mouth. His hand tightened almost painfully in her hair as a strangled moan fled his mouth. She braced herself and then swallowed all of him, careful of her teeth, her nose touching flush with his skin. She swallowed and then drew back as she felt him shudder and come in her mouth, swallowing some, but leaning over to spit what remained in her mouth when she drew off of him. She took a moment to breathe and then found he was crouching in front of her, leaning forward to kiss her.
"See?" She said, dreamily, when he finally drew away. "That was a nice thank you, too." She'd meant the kiss he'd given her, but laughed when his brow quirked up.
"Indeed," he said, likely referring to the blow job.
The water had grown cold by then. They were quick to clean themselves and hop out, Orihime wrapping herself in a towel and skipping out into the bedroom. Ulquiorra toweled down before he even left the bathroom.
Orihime fell back into bed, rolling out of the towel. She slipped under the covers and then motioned him over, holding the sheet up for him to get under. He did, laying on his side and watching her as she splayed out on her back, arms above her head.
She smiled up at the ceiling.
For a moment it was quiet. She looked over at him and found he was watching her with a peculiar expression on his face. She couldn't place it, but it warmed her.
"Masterful manipulation," she told him. "You could ask me to do anything right now and I'd jump to it. Swear my loyalty to Lord Aizen? You betcha. Should've tried this approach last time."
To her surprise, he didn't say anything.
She turned on her side, laughing again at the way he was looking at her. "What?"
His eyes turned away from her. "This is not manipulation."
His serious tone brought her down from her high a little. "What is it, then?" She asked, quietly. She couldn't lose her smile, though.
He seemed to think about it. Whatever conclusion he reached, though, he failed to share it with her.
She turned onto her back again. "Well," she said. "Whatever it is. I'm happy with it."
A touch made her turn her head to look at him again, though she didn't move her body. His hand was resting on her chest, and he was staring at her with an intense look of concentration.
"What is it?"
"I can feel it beating," he said. "Do you feel it yourself?"
She blinked. "Ah. Sometimes." When she thought about it, she could. It was still racing from their showertime activities.
"The heart pumps blood through the body, delivering oxygen through the veins," he said. "You are reacting this way because more blood was needed at your sex in order to encurage copulation."
"Mmhmm," she said. "And because I'm happy. Excited." In love , she thought, but she didn't say anything.
"What does emotion have to do with it?" He sounded… frustrated.
The realization made her freeze. "Ulquiorra…" she let out a sigh. "Are you asking me what the heart is?"
He was quiet, staring at her with an intensity she was unused to.
She turned on her side to look at him. A strand of wet hair had fallen in his face and she pushed it back behind the pointed tip of his ear. "You'll know," she told him, certainly. She reached out and put her hand on his chest. "You may not have the organ. But everyone has a heart, Ulquiorra."
"Hollows do not."
"They do." She said, certainly.
He pulled his hand away from her, but she caught it before he could retract it completely. Holding it, she placed it back on her chest. "You might find it somewhere you don't expect." Then, with a small smile, said, "Just don't go cracking open my skull to see it. Some things exist outside of the eye's perception."
"If my eye cannot see it then it does not exist," he said, certainly.
"But you can feel it," she said. "Bum-bum. Bum-bum. Bum-bum. My heart's beating for you. And you can feel it in your hand." She let him go, then, feeling sleepy. "It's no big mystery. Just hard to understand."
"You confuse me," he said.
"I know." She smiled, eyes falling closed. "I'm sorry, Ulquiorra."
He didn't leave the bed. She wasn't sure if she'd expected him to.
"Goodnight," she said at length.
And there was the heart, in the fact that he replied. "Goodnight… Orihime."
~(o0o)~
She woke suddenly sometime just before morning. She turned with wide eyes to Ulquiorra, who had awakened next to her. They'd both been disturbed by the same thing; a sudden influx of intensely powerful spiritual pressure entering Hueco Mundo.
His eyes were cold as marble. "It seems," he said, "That your friends have arrived."
She swallowed hard. "So it seems."
He got up and began to get dressed. She pulled her legs up beneath the covers, sitting up to rest her chin on her knees. She knew they would come eventually. And this was the deadline she'd set. Three days from the start of the war. Maybe this was the distraction she needed in order to find the hogyoku.
The idea sent something churning in her gut, and the feeling made her angry at herself. Had she really thought she could just sit in Hueco Mundo playing house with Ulquiorra for the rest of her life? It had been stupid to engage with him in the first place. He knew too much, and he was still a villain when she got down to the heart of the issue, and if he knew what she was planning, he would probably not hesitate to kill her.
She rubbed a hand over her throat, willing away the lump there. Now was no time to get emotional.
"I assume that by now you can fetch your own breakfast," Ulquiorra said.
She looked up and found him in the doorway, ready to leave. "Yes."
"Good." He made to leave, but then paused. "They were foolish to come here," he said, after a moment. He looked at her, as if waiting for her to second his comment.
"They probably didn't feel like they had much of a choice," she said weakly.
"Nevertheless, they will fall here. They have chosen a premature end to their already miserably short lives," he said. "You asked me before why it did not bother me to think I might die. I wonder if you should not have asked them the same."
She could feel his gaze on her face as though ice had formed on her skin. "You're cruel, Ulquiorra." She looked up at him and held his gaze, steady, mouth turned down in a tight frown. "But I know why. Because you feel something for me."
"Nonsense," he said, and was gone.
For a time, Orihime remained in bed, her knees drawn up to her chest. Ulquiorra had unknowingly done just as she needed him to-he'd left her alone. There would be some time before anyone would expect to see her anywhere.
She had to find the hogyoku.
Quickly, Orihime dressed herself and pulled back her hair, uncomfortably aware this could be the last time she donned the uniform left out for her. Today everything would change. The time before, the invasion had lasted three days. This time, she knew things would be different, and it was possible everything could come to a head in a matter of hours.
Was Gin still planning to kill Aizen? Had Soul Society successfully created the fake Karakura town? Would Ulquiorra kill Ichigo again? Would Grimmjow still kidnap her?
She'd been working out the signature of the hogyoku since she'd first arrived. Aizen hadn't taunted her with it like he had the timeline previous. Did that mean he was more aware of her capability? It didn't matter.
She made her way out of her rooms and began towards the section of the palace she was reasonably sure the hogyoku was located in. Her palms were clammy and she felt slightly nauseous. It was somewhere near the throne room. If she could just pinpoint exactly where, then sometime in the chaos she could slip back and destroy it, and the war would be as good as over.
The climb to the throne room wasn't a short one. She passed several arrancar and tried to appear inconspicuous. She was a fracion. She had things to attend to. No one stopped her.
"All espada, report to the war room." Gin's voice slid over her shoulders, projected via kido from somewhere in the castle. " Immediately ."
They were having a meeting. Orihime swallowed, almost in disbelief of her good luck. With everyone distracted, she might be able to destroy it here and now. She slipped into the throne room when there was no one about and closed the door behind her, bracing against it.
Empty. The room was bigger without Aizen's parade to fill it. She swallowed heavily and padded out across the marble, feeling smaller than usual. The throne towered before her. Could it be there?
Her footsteps echoed in the empty room; an unnerving sound that quickened her pace. She took the stairs to the throne two at a time and before she knew it stood before the seat. A bead of sweat rolled down her temple and fell off of her jaw.
Gingerly, she put herself on the throne. She braced herself, waiting for some alarm, but nothing came. Carefully the pried at the arms, under the seat, but her investigation didn't produce any results. No hidden caches or compartments.
She noticed, then, a mirror angled on the ceiling. Her brows furrowed for a moment before she realized why it was there and scoffed. It was to view behind the throne while still facing forward. No surprise attacks for his Lordship.
She might have passed it off as that and nothing more, but something made her pause and look a little harder. It was the wall behind the throne, but there was a small crack which she'd never noticed before. It was too small to be seen from the floor. In fact, she was amazed she had noticed it at all.
She stood and turned.
Even from the side of the middle throne, she couldn't see the crack. But a glance back up at the mirror confirmed what she had seen. It wasn't because of the angle… Kido, then? Sometimes illusion spells didn't translate onto mirrors.
She approached the wall, which still appeared seamless, and ran her fingers over it. There; she could feel it. The smallest dip in the marble. She felt further, running her hands up and down the wall on either side of the part, and then felt her finger catch on another crack. She traced it, finding the outline of a square. She pressed the center, gasping as the square gave beneath her fingers. She felt a rush of air, and though she still didn't see anything different about the wall, reached forward.
There was nothing there.
Blindly holding out her arms, Orihime walked into the wall, and with a blink was plunged into darkness. It took her a moment to adjust, but after blinking into the dim light soon found herself staring in awe at the room around her.
It was some sort of tower, with stairs spiraling up the walls. She could see some sort of light towards the bottom of the chamber and took to the stairs, descending.
Her hand traced the wall as she went, wary of the railing-less staircase and her habit of ill-timed clumsiness. Wouldn't that be the way to end this? Orihime finds the hogyoku and trips on the stairs to it, falling to her gruesome death. That would so be her.
She shook her head to dispel the thought and doubled her pace. She wasn't sure how long the meeting would last, and she was pretty sure that Ulquiorra would come looking for her as soon as it was over.
She reached the bottom. The obsidian walls were lit by a dim aqua glow. Orihime stepped off of the staircase and wrapped her arms around herself. It was colder here.
There was a long room before her, the floor made of black glass. Columns rose ominously in two rows, outlining a walk-way, down which she could see the source of light she'd come chasing. A cold sweat broke out over her back and neck, and she felt quite suddenly dizzy.
The hogyoku, she realized. She was reacting to its proximity.
She moved uneasily down the corridor and towards the gem. As she got closer, her head swam a little more, and she could see that what was left of this hogyoku was smaller than Kisuke's. Expended, she realized. It was no bigger than a marble.
She stopped before the pedestal it sat upon, swallowing hard. Shakily, she removed the glass box covering it, and then was forced to see it with naked eyes. She felt sick, feverish and dry-mouthed.
She hadn't felt like this with Kisuke's. Aizen's, though…
It felt evil.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered. Her voice rebounded in the empty room. Sorry, sorry, sorry. "He should never have been allowed to do this." Do this, do this, do this.
There was nothing left but to heal it.
Breath stuttered out of her lungs as she reached forward, hands trembling. She felt more and more ill, and thought she might collapse. She pushed through. She had to do this. No turning back, oh, I'm sorry, this will never happen again, let me heal you…
Her skin touched the surface.
A lance of white fire shot through her shoulder. She screamed, falling to her knees, hands still wrapped around the hogyoku. There was the smell of burning, and Orihime turned to see her right sleeve dissolve into ash around her shoulder. The shun-shun-rika tattoo burned bright and red, burning the skin around it.
She clenched her teeth. "No," she managed. No, no, no, no, it echoed.
Her body betrayed her. It pushed up on shaky legs to stand, and with mechanical hands, she drew the hogyoku into her grip and raised it before her. She couldn't speak, couldn't scream, couldn't move. She felt as though she were trapped in a nightmare.
Gold light erupted at her neck.
My fairies! She thought in a panic. But I didn't summon them!
Gold light turned red. They moved as though they were windup toys, jerky and slow as they began to circle the hogyoku. Slowly to begin, but faster and faster, until they were a single ring of red light orbiting the gem floating above her palms. Pins and needles broke out over her body as she began to tremble, a sudden fatigue setting over her. Reite from the room began to spin around her as the pillars around the room degraded, eaten and turned to power. Everything in Orihime screamed to stop, to move, to do something, but it were as though she were watching herself from a distance, unable to do anything but observe.
"I must say," his voice came from behind her, slimy as it was pleased. "It took you longer than expected. But, well, all according to plan, in the end."
Aizen , she cursed. What did he do to me?
His footsteps echoed over the floor as he came to stand by her. She could see his grin out of the corner of her eye. He reached forward, and her gut heaved with disgust as he caressed her face. "Oh, Orihime. You foolish girl. Did you think I didn't know what you'd done?"
No! It's not possible!
"Memories are such fickle things. What Kisuke doesn't know he knows, well, he fails to guard. Imagine my surprise when I found you were behind this. It seemed almost too easy." He laughed. "But playing you into my hands turned out to be a little more complicated than I thought it would be. Good thing you have a soft-spot for our fourth espada."
Her vision was beginning to go black around the edges. Her hands were bleeding.
"Thank you for fixing this for me," he said, "I couldn't have done it without you, after all."
No!
"Goodnight. Orihime."