Orihime woke in Aizen's arms, still in the fireplace room. She was sitting up, her back cradled against Aizen's chest, and he was leaning against the circular fireplace, breathing hard. He coughed, making Orihime lurch against his chest, and blood splattered her shoulder. There were voices—loud, angry, confused voices—outside.
"—gone far enough, let us in—"
"If Lord Aizen is well, he should—"
"All the Espada except for you have been accounted for at the time of the disturbance—"
Ulquiorra spoke quietly, commanding attention, but his words were impossible to make out. He was interrupted by another soft voice, and then a heavy rumbling blast shook the mirrored doors, and a shockwave rippled beyond and into the room. Aizen coughed again, but moved Orihime aside and stood slowly up as the doors buckled inward, and black, acrid smoke puffed and leaked through the seams. He limped a few paces ahead as the unmistakable surge of a Cero built on the other side of the door, putting himself between Orihime and whoever was breaking in. The doors flexed inward again, and the sound of breaking glass—the mirror—reached Orihime's ringing ears.
"What's happening—"
"Don't speak," Aizen whispered, voice popping wetly, and he choked. "Don't move." Orihime flinched as he put his hand to his waist, to his zanpakuto. "Shatter, Kyoka Suigetsu."
The doors burst inward.
A tall blonde woman, the third Espada, Halibel, strode into the room, wreathed in flame and smoke, pushing Ulquiorra ahead of her like a captive of war. Several other Espada and their numerous Fracciones filed into the room behind her, casting suspicious glances here and there. Starrk and Barragan, numbers one and two, were nowhere to be seen, and neither was Grimmjow.
"Lord Aizen," Halibel said in a soft, somber voice, and bowed, still holding Ulquiorra by the nape of his neck. Ulquiorra bore this without expression, but Orihime's heart clenched in her chest when she saw that his entire left side had been burned to the bone. What she'd thought had been soot was really blood, black blood, and it was dripping down his white skin, shoulder to arm to fingertips from a horrific gash across his neck and shoulder. She could see his number four tattoo clearly, for the first time, and the Hollow in his throat. "We felt a surge of—something from your location. Are you well?"
"Do I look unwell?" Aizen asked, and Orihime blinked as her eyes crossed. She could hear two voices, see two images, laid over each other. The illusion stood tall, hands behind his back, a smirk on his lips. His voice was cool, mocking. The other—the truth—was stooped in pain, holding his ribs, barely standing behind the cardboard cut-out of the illusion. His voice was thick, asthsmatic, and popping with the blood gathering on his lips.
"I—of course not, my lord," Halibel said, and dropped her eyes. Orihime thought Halibel was looking at her, at first, but her eyes were unfocused, deferential, when they landed on Orihime. She couldn't see her at all, she realized. She held absolutely still.
"Well, then," Aizen said. Orihime heard his voice wheeze painfully in his chest, but the echo of his voice practically chuckled in amusement.
"Is there—" Halibel's keen gaze swept the room one last time, and Orihime held her breath instinctively. "Is anything amiss, my lord?" Halibel asked carefully. "The surge was not one that could be read by our Pesquisa—"
Aizen cut her off with a mild gesture. Blood dripped to the ground at his feet.
"I conduct many experiments in my spare time, Halibel. What little I have of it. I would prefer not to be interrupted again."
A tense moment hung in the air as Ulquiorra cut Halibel a look. Halibel ignored it.
"My lord—"
"Halibel," Aizen said, and for a moment his illusion-voice was not so different from his truth-voice. Tired, weary. Losing patience. "We are very much alike in some ways. Neither of us particularly relish repeating ourselves."
Halibel ducked her head as Aizen went on.
"You may go. And please refrain from damaging my private quarters in the future. No matter how…eager you are to see me."
Halibel took a deep breath, but nodded and let Ulquiorra go with a small shove. He staggered—Orihime fought the urge to rush at him, to catch him—but he kept his feet as Halibel stepped backward to bow. All the others did, as well, and slowly, reluctantly, filed out. One of the Fracciones had the good manners to heave the door back into its frame, and then silence fell.
Aizen and Ulquiorra both hit the floor at the same time, and Orihime scrambled forward, calling up a rejection field as Aizen's zanpakuto rematerialized and clanged against the hard floor. Completely without thought, she dashed to Ulquiorra first, but he pushed her away. Hard enough that she practically flew.
"What are you doing?" he hissed, eyes wide, and Orihime staggered under the weight of his glare. "Tend to Lord Aizen at once!"
"But—"
"You must!"
Orihime's eyes lost focus—not for the first time, lately, she was at war with her own body. Part of her was fixated on the obviously horrible wound Ulquiorra had suffered in the attack on the door. She wanted to go to him first, because he was her friend, and she barely knew Aizen. Aizen had stolen her, locked her away, threatened her friends, he was threatening her whole hometown, thousands of lives—and he was fine, anyway, wasn't he? He had no visible wounds other than a bloody lip, and his body was—
She looked at Aizen as he lay on his back on the floor, completely still. His eyes were open, but unseeing, glazing over. His reiatsu was present, but fading. It was…unraveling, she realized. Unmaking. Something—she didn't know what—had done what not even the concerted efforts of the Gotei 13 had managed to do. Something was killing Aizen Sosuke, leeching away his very essence, and she had a feeling it was her.
In a cold, dire moment of clarity, Orihime realized it. This could all be over. It could all end: the threat of the Hogyoku, her imprisonment, Ulquiorra's enslavement. And all she had to do…was nothing.
She stood over Aizen, hands frozen over her Santen Kesshun. Just nothing. Ironically enough, doing nothing was what she'd been training for her whole life up until a few months ago. It was all she'd been good for, and maybe it was all she needed now—
But then a scream rose from her chest like something was punching its way out—and Orihime knew at once that she was in danger of going mad. She grabbed at her head, fingers clutching her clips and knotting in her hair, but the scream was swelling up against her skin, writhing, fighting her for control. Its hands were slipping against the inside of her body, grasping and tearing as it climbed out of wherever it had been lurking to wear her like too-small clothes. It was powerful—alive—vibrating with intent. Her whole body shook, convulsing, as she fell to her knees beside Aizen. Even if the scream couldn't find its grip on control, she could hear it, and it could still tear her apart.
The scream was screaming that Aizen was dying, dying, dying, what are you doing, you horrible creature, you thief, you monster—
Something hit her across the face, and Orihime's eyes snapped back open. It was Grimmjow—he'd slapped her, but only hard enough that she was seeing spots. It cleared her head, gave her something to hang on to as she caught her breath.
"Get your shit together, princess," Grimmjow snapped, inches from her face, teeth bared. "Why the fuck did I drag to the edge of the world and back if you're just going to panic now?"
His hand was hot, searing, on her arm as he dragged her roughly toward Aizen.
"Do the thing," he said. "Now."
"I told you I wasn't his ally—"
Grimmjow spun on her, seething. "If he dies, everything dies with him," he said. "Including you. Do it."
Orihime was about to argue, but the scream was still in her chest, and it was stronger than Grimmjow's threats. It was finally taking over, guiding her hands, and a bright golden halo encased Aizen where he lay staring at the ceiling. She felt for it automatically, falling into a trance as she sought the change—the damage—to reel it back. But it was nebulous, she felt, slippery and uncertain, and the worst was hard to find. Like a deep, permeating bruise—or no—his whole body, whole being, was eroding from the inside out. For no reason at all.
"I can't find the epicenter," she murmured, and the field fuzzed and cracked.
"Just do all of it, damn you," Grimmjow said.
"That's not how it works—"
"Then figure it out."
He wasn't beside her anymore. He was leaning over Ulquiorra a few feet away, hands shaking as they hovered over his wounds.
"Do not touch me," Ulquiorra rasped, without feeling.
"Shut the fuck up, Four," Grimmjow said, jaw tight, and began to gather Ulquiorra up into his arms. Ulquiorra cried out as Grimmjow lifted him, and his bloodied hand twitched and grasped at Grimmjow's loose waistcoat and left a black handprint on his bare chest. Something about the scene almost broke Orihime's heart, and she felt Ulquiorra's reiatsu flex and destabilize—
"Out of time," Grimmjow said, suddenly beside her again, and grunted as he maneuvered Ulquiorra under the halo. "Stretch your legs, kid, you can get 'em both at once."
"But I can't find the source," Orihime gasped, desperate to make him understand. "It's—without a cause, I can't find anything to reject—"
"It was you," Ulquiorra said suddenly, eyes fluttering open to fix on her. "It happened again—"
"What?" Orihime gasped, but Grimmjow cut them both off—he was all action, always, but Orihime didn't know how much good it was going to do in this case.
"Focus on Uli, then," Grimmjow said, catching her hand to steady her, but his was shaking, too. His eyes were wide, pupils narrow with panic. "Work the field for him, and maybe it'll work on Aizen, too."
"Do not listen to him," Ulquiorra said, eyes flashing. "He is only trying to save me—"
"Stop. Talking. Now." Grimmjow ground the words out between his teeth. "If you don't have any ideas, stop talking. You," he looked at Orihime. "Try it."
Orihime forced herself to focus, leaning on Grimmjow for strength, and bent her will toward Ulquiorra's wounds. Unlike Aizen's wounds, the cause of Uliquorra's were glaringly obvious, from the deep burns down to his bones to the rapidly blackening handprint on the back of his neck. The fire wasn't done—it was still eating him away, spreading like a virus. Orihime grasped at Halibel's lingering essence—the threads of reality she had imposed on Ulquiorra—and rejected them with all her might. The burns rewound, and his skin paled and thickened and knit together, and the strain in his always-placid features lessened.
Beside him, Aizen began to breathe again, but the progress was slower. Too slow. The entropy was still in play, she felt, and it would shortly outstrip the healing. The scream in Orihime's chest continued to push her—it was pushing her past her limit—pushing against entropy of all kinds—
"Stop," Ulquiorra gasped suddenly, thrashing. His hands rose to claw at his throat, and his mask—the half-mask of his helmet, suddenly began to flex and spread across his face. The black blood on his exposed forearm rippled and spread into a pattern until it covered his skin like a glove—it looked almost like feathers. "Stop—you must not—"
"Keep going," Grimmjow growled, but stuck his hands under the field, just briefly, and dragged Ulquiorra out. For the second his hands were under the field, Orihime could have sworn she saw claws at the end of his fingers.
Ulquiorra was whole again, but still dazed as he put his hands over his spreading mask and forced it back to into its usual shape, breathing hard. He batted Grimmjow's hands—paws?—away, and stood up shakily.
"Focus," he told her, staggering back over, and shoved Grimmjow away again when he tried to steady him. "What did you do?"
"What?" Orihime asked again. "I didn't do anything—I passed out—I—"
Ulquiorra's eyes were hard, searching hers, and suddenly she wondered if he was about to kill her. She'd never seen him like this. Even Grimmjow was unnerved by him—he kept reaching for him, only to flinch away before making contact.
"What," Ulquiorra said again, "did you do?"
"Stop it, Uli, she's trying—"
Ulquiorra finally lost his patience with Grimmjow, and hit him with a palmstrike that sent him flying across the room. Orihime screamed in horror as he hit the wall, and it cracked under his weight.
"Grimm!"
Ulquiorra grabbed her before she could run for Grimmjow, before the field over Aizen could wink out. He had entered a terrible calm, and the storm of his reiatsu increased beyond anything she'd ever felt, pressing her into the ground, pinning her in place like a moth on a board.
"This is the last time I will ask," he said, and Orihime faltered under the crush. "What did you do?"
"I—"
You must choose, the river had said.
"I made a choice." The words left her mouth before the thought had fully formed.
"What choice?"
"To stay here. In this world." In this reality.
"Reject it," Ulquiorra said at once.
Orihime blinked at him. "I can't."
"You will."
"What if I—what if I disappear?"
"Then you disappear," Ulquiorra said, and a horrible pit formed in Orihime's stomach. "We still need him more than you."
Orihime searched Ulquiorra's eyes for the feeling she had seen there before—what could only have been a few minutes ago, she realized. Out in front of the mirror, when he'd held her hand, and comforted her in terms so inexpressibly human and gentle she thought she might fall apart even as he held her up. But it was gone. It was like it had never been there. In its place was a yawning static void.
Tears filled Orihime's eyes. Maybe nothing had changed after all, she thought. Maybe she hadn't changed. Maybe she wasn't really tired of crying. Maybe it really was all she was good for—
I knew there was more to you than tears and good intentions…
The scream came back, full force, and Orihime searched herself for the choice she'd made.
Walk, don't run.
She couldn't reject her own reality—not again, not so soon after she'd tapped into that river, that wellspring of power and time, and chosen to stay. She knew it instinctively even as she grasped for it—it didn't respond to her calls. The time—or the timing—wasn't right.
A small want, then?
What else had she decided, in that between place? Between times, or realities. She'd decided that she would stay, but—but that she wouldn't be Aizen's Ori. She reached tentatively for that choice, hands shaking as she focused on it as a cause, a source of entropy to push against.
The scream resisted her now, but not with its full will, she felt. It was…reluctant, she realized. Not with the outcome, but with the means. There was something…possessive, or maybe protective, in it. Now it held her back, even as it pushed her forward.
"What the hell do you want from me?" Orihime hissed through her teeth. Ulquiorra seemed to realize she wasn't speaking to him, and he stayed quiet beside her.
The scream went quiet, too…but then she felt it lend itself to her, after all, and she pushed against her vow to not be—
Ori
Aizen's hands were in her hair, and aches like hunger pains were ratcheting through her entire body.
"Tell me," he whispered, moving against her, and her nails dug into his back.
"No," she said, through gritted teeth, and cried out as her back hit the stone wall—
Orihime jolted, eyes fluttering, where she knelt on the cold stone floor of the fireplace room, and a deep, aching moan left her lips. Her hands fell against the rejection field—it thickened and held her up—and Aizen took a deep breath below the amber light.
"Orihime," he murmured, blinking dazedly, and his hand reached for her knee. She flinched away, but Ulquiorra's gaze pierced her down to the bone.
"Again," he said, and his grip on her arm tightened like a vice.
"No," Orihime gasped. What had she just seen—felt—remembered? Had Aizen really—why was it so hard to believe? She'd spent days, weeks, after her arrival in Hueco Mundo wondering when she'd be raped. "I can't watch—"
"Again," Ulquiorra commanded. "Or I will kill you myself."
Orihime grit her teeth against a sob, and her power flared as the scream's voice resolved in her head: Again, it said, or I'll torture you like you've tortured me. I'll take from you until there's nothing left—I will rob you—
"Then help me," Orihime whispered, and the scream laughed bitterly.
Very well, it said, and another memory hit her, engulfed her like a wave.
Aizen's hands were on her thighs, pressing them apart. He was so strong, too strong to resist, and she tore at the bed, thrashing, as she felt his breath, then his lips, then his tongue between her legs—
"No more," Orihime gasped, and the field blinked out. That's plenty, agreed the scream, and subsided.
"What—" Aizen sat up, breathing heavily. He was stable, but she could feel he was still weak. Faint. "Ori, what happened—"
"You must rest, my lord," Ulquiorra cut in, and pushed Orihime away, slowly but firmly. She knew that touch. It was how Chad had held her back that day at the crater. Like there was nothing she could do but make things worse. She began to shake with cold, hard anger. With regret and confusion and loss. With the knowledge of the mounting violations she'd suffered and never even known.
Ulquiorra reached for Aizen to tug him into a sitting position, then looped Aizen's arm over his shoulders and hauled him to his feet.
"Wait—" Aizen said, but his head lolled to one side.
"She will heal you again soon, Lord Aizen," Ulquiorra assured him, with a cutting glance at Orihime that made clear she had no choice in the matter. "But she must rest, too, before she can dependably do so."
Orihime turned her back on both of them, but the look on Aizen's face haunted her. She wanted to loathe him, to despise him for what she'd just seen him do to her, but she felt next to nothing as she stalked away to where Grimmjow lay groaning, face down on the cold floor. Blood was coursing down across his eyes from a deep gash on the back of his head.
"Come on," she said to him, and opened another rejection field as his hand rose, trembling, to touch the wound, but then made a warding gesture to push her away. "What," she demanded, jaw tight. Furious tears were welling up, quivering, but unable to fall. "You want to keep this scar, too?"
Her voice was sharp enough to cut. Sharp enough to get even Grimmjow's attention. He looked up at her weakly, addled, but his eyes cleared as they met hers.
"Hasn't he hurt you enough?" she asked, and her voice broke.
A long moment passed as they looked at each other. Orihime couldn't guess what she must look like to him, and her eyes would barely focus on his face. She was too conscious of Ulquiorra standing perfectly still behind her, Aizen groaning weakly as he hung from his bare shoulder, but she caught Grimmjow's slight nod. He dropped his hand and she went to work, patching him for the moment, but the damage would need more concentration than she was capable of just then, and she knew they couldn't stay where they were. She stopped the bleeding, then pulled him to his feet. He leaned heavily against her, and together they looked over the fireplace at Ulquiorra and Aizen. It was like looking across a great rift and realizing there was no bridge. No way back, or forward, for either party. Just a long fall down. She suspected Grimmjow felt the same way.
"Can you use your flash step?" she asked. Grimmjow nodded groggily, and his head sagged against her shoulder. She looked up at Ulquiorra again—but his eyes were on Grimmjow. She couldn't look at Aizen. "Then get us out of here."
Orihime wanted the desert. Wanted the clean simplicity of the sand and wind. Wanted to stand in it until it wore away her foreign, sullied body and dried up her foolish tears, once and for all.
But Grimmjow took them somewhere she'd never been before. He took her to his tower. Sometimes she forgot he was one of the Espada at all. He refused to engage in the court, other than to get surly and start flipping the others off, and he was always alone. She'd never seen any of his underlings, and unless he was bragging, he never talked about himself. It was strange to be reminded now that he had a life, a home, outside of the desert. But she knew next to nothing about that life, and his home was completely empty.
"Your friends killed my Fracciones," he explained when she looked around. "But at least no one will bother us, or go spreading rumors."
Orihime nodded and helped him over to a low, long couch. The revelation that her friends had killed his couldn't even land. He felt like all she had to hang on to, and she refused to let anything, even such a horrible thing to know, wedge itself between them now.
They both collapsed, breathing hard, and she automatically moved to call up a rejection field, but he pushed her hands down. But not harshly, or angrily. Softly. Even his touch was cooler than it had been.
"Give yourself a minute," he said, panting. "Even I can see something's got you fucked up."
"I'm fine," she said, and he laughed weakly.
"Don't be such a chick," he said, but without any force. He didn't let go of her hand. "I don't want you slipping up and wiping my memory or something."
"I—" Orihime paused, frowning as her brain chewed this idea over. "I don't think I could do that."
"You could," he said, and sagged down to his side, wincing. "Probably. I think you can probably do anything."
She helped him roll onto his stomach, and his scarred hand fell over the edge of the couch to trail listlessly against the carpet. She tried to pull off his waistcoat to examine the damage to his back, but he couldn't lift his arms. She called out Tsubaki to slice it away with barely a thought, and she grimaced as she looked at him. His whole body was a wreck, with broken ribs sticking up at unnatural angles beneath the skin of his back. His breath hitched painfully as he breathed.
"God," Orihime whispered. "How could he do this to you?"
Grimmjow huffed through his teeth. "Very, very easily," he said. The words barely made it out, but he kept talking. "He's Four, I'm Six. With Espada, that's a sizable gap. But don't tell anyone I said that."
"Is he really that much stronger?" Orihime asked, shaking her head in disbelief. "Or do you just—"
"Let him?"
"Yeah."
Grimmjow sighed and closed his eyes. "Both."
Orihime's hand found his again, and she leaned her forehead against his shoulder. "Do you want me to try again?"
"If you're ready, yeah," Grimmjow said. "This sucks pretty bad, I gotta say."
Orihime smiled sadly, and a golden field formed over Grimmjow. It was difficult to find the cause, nebulous like Aizen's all-over, soul-deep wound had been. It wasn't a Cero, or any particular special ability of Ulquiorra's that had caused it. Just force, powered by some raw emotion she couldn't parse. She grasped at it, any of it, and Grimmjow spoke again as the healing took hold.
"There's no real reason for him to be even as low as Four, though," he said. "I know he's got something else, some kind of reserve he's never tapped. At least not so as anyone would notice it."
"Then how do you know?" Orihime asked automatically, eyes closed in concentration. The wounds didn't want to heal. They were fighting her, hanging on. She didn't know if it was Grimmjow's stubbornness or Ulquiorra's influence that was resisting her, but it was like the damage itself was refusing to leave without being understood first. Grimmjow was quiet for a minute as she worked, but slowly, slowly…breathed easier.
"I can feel it," he said at last. "I can feel how much he's holding back. That's why I push him. I want to see what he's capable of."
Orihime opened her eyes to watch the bones shifting back into place in Grimmjow's back.
"Why?"
"Because I know it'll be—beautiful," Grimmjow said. Orihime's hand clenched around his, and he gripped her fingers lightly. The scarred flesh from Ulquiorra's Cero all those months ago, at the start of their desert journey, tightened and pulled like paper. She ran her thumb along it gently. "But I'm not strong enough to push him that far. I don't know if anyone is…maybe your friend will manage what I can't, though. Someday."
"My friend?" Orihime asked, eyebrows cinching.
"Kurosaki."
"Oh." She should have been able to feel something at the mention of Ichigo's name, but she couldn't. She couldn't even hope it wouldn't come to that. An hour ago, she'd had a role she was going to play. She was going to save her friends. All of them, even if they couldn't conceive of peace between each other enough to even want it. Now she had nothing. "Maybe."
Grimm laughed, and winced as the rush of air shook him. "I mean, if he can do it, push Uli that far, I'll even forgive him for getting my arm chopped off, if he'll just let me watch." He paused, considering, and tilted his head to cut Orihime a look. "That sounds dirty, doesn't it?"
Orihime smiled fondly. Always indomitable, Grimm was, she thought. Relief—strong and heady and blooming—filled the emptiness inside her, and she leaned down to kiss his cheek.
Grimmjow's skin flushed hot as she touched him. It was like tipping back a fresh cup of coffee too far, too fast—it burned enough to make her gasp and pull away in shock. He stared at her, unmoving, rigidly still. The amber glow above him flared, and Orihime looked down to see his flesh rippling, its color balancing, faster than before, as the damage rewound. She touched him again, and let her fingers drift down his ribs. He quivered—was he seriously ticklish?—and the healing sped up again. He had been fighting her after all, she realized. He couldn't let Ulquiorra's touch go, even the painful remnants of it. Not without something to replace it.
She leaned down again, bracing her hand against his back, and pressed her lips against his. He inhaled, hard, and the field flared again, so bright Orihime had to close her eyes, so bright it left afterimages in her retinas. She almost didn't feel the heat of his mouth, like a furnace, as he rolled onto his side and reached for her—and pulled her up onto the couch, and then on top of him.
Grimmjow's tongue was soft against hers, and his hands were steady and—surprisingly gentle. He kept them over her clothing, but she could feel the heat pulsing through his fingers, almost unbearable even through the dense layers of fabric.
The field flickered and broke an instant later as Grimmjow returned suddenly to full health, but Orihime didn't pull back, and he didn't push her away. Even just that felt good, and she was so grateful to him in that moment for not pushing her away that she felt tears gathering in her eyes.
"What are we doing?" Grimmjow asked, voice strained, against her mouth.
"I don't know," Orihime answered, shaking her head, and kissed him again. His skin was burning her, chapping her lips, drying her tears before they could fall, but she pushed her hands through his wild blue hair and groaned. She felt like she was falling—not into him, but into herself. She clung to him like she was this close to sailing off a cliff. "Maybe we don't need to know."
Grimmjow's breath rushed out of him like he'd been struck, and his hand gripped the fabric of her dress so hard it tore. His knuckles burned where they touched the skin of her back. "Neither of us is who the other wants," he said, but Orihime shook her head.
"I don't want anyone," she said, because it was true. She'd thought—so briefly, there in the fireplace room—that she wanted Aizen. She hadn't understood why, but she'd wanted him to look at her like that, to hold her, and kiss her and comfort her. But it had to have been an illusion. The scenes that the scream in her chest had showed her—that other self that was under her skin, the self that had called her a monster, a thief—the memories she was rediscovering, even now, as Grimmjow's hands coasted over her body, couldn't have lied.
She could still feel Aizen's hands on her—that touch that should have been foreign, but wasn't. He had used her before, and she'd never even known. She'd told him no in that first memory, and he hadn't stopped. "Ori" was a lie, an illusion, she knew it—or at least she couldn't conceive of anything else, and the scream wasn't speaking up right now. It had left her alone. It was hanging back, lurking again. She'd only ever felt it in Aizen's presence, she realized. It had forced her to comply, to heal him when she knew she shouldn't. It had shown her horrible things, and laughed at her pain.
She let it go. If the scream was Ori, she was an illusion. A plant put there by Aizen to tie her to him. To manipulate her. She wouldn't indulge it again.
But the image of Aizen's face came back to her as he hung weakly from Ulquiorra's shoulder. The raw longing and confusion and regret in his eyes as she'd turned away from him and gone to Grimmjow's side. He'd looked alone—as alone as she'd felt in that moment—
"It's okay, Hime," Grimmjow whispered, voice shuddering, and the old nickname made her rock against him with longing for who she used to be. She'd been alone, then, too—but at least she'd been—what, free? Simple? God, she didn't even know anymore. She hated Hime as much as she hated Ori. As much as Ori hated her. "I know I look like him."
Orihime almost asked—but she knew. She'd always known how much Grimm resembled Ichigo, in face and body and attitude. It was why she'd been so much easier in his presence than the other Espada's. But that wasn't why she was doing this now: she hadn't wanted Ichigo for a long time. She'd wanted someone else, wanted Aizen, even if she hadn't wanted to admit it to herself. She'd wanted to believe he was good and kind and capable of redemption, like he'd been in the dream, and he'd betrayed her. Just like Grimmjow wanted Ulquiorra, and had been hurt and punished over and over for that want.
Grimm wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight against him in his lap. His searing mouth dropped to the hollow of her throat—but he seemed to catch himself, and groaned with frustration and need, and the heat swelled.
"That's one reason I hate him so much," Grimmjow went on. "I hate how much Uli thinks about him. I hate it that Uli protected him, even after his friends killed mine. I hate it that they're both so strong, and that it's just a game to them, when it's everything to me."
Even now the heat was making her sweat and writhe in pain, but she held herself against him desperately as the emptiness threatened to consume her.
"I'm sorry," she said, and her palms singed against his face as he looked up at her. His always-narrow pupils were dilated, with barely any blue left. He heaved a sigh, and his arms relaxed against her as the tension flowed out of him, and heat began to fade.
She did want Grimmjow at that moment, but not truly him—she wanted what he could do for her. She wanted him to wear her away, to cauterize the wounds her Santen Kesshun couldn't touch, to burn away what everyone else—especially Aizen—had done to her. Everyone except him.
"I don't want anyone anymore," Orihime said again. "You're just the last person who's never hurt me." A tear fell from her eyes and sizzled on his cheek like a frying pan.
"And I don't want to," he said, and this time when he kissed her, it was gentle, and comforting, and rueful, and she knew it was the last one. He wouldn't do it again. "You're apparently the only friend I have left."
The moment passed, and the scalding heat subsided to a dull, warm ache, and Grimmjow stroked her hair as she wept against his shoulder, and she ran her thumb across the scar on the back of his hand.