Story Title: This Twisted Fate

Disclaimer: Sorry, but I still don't own bleach.

Warning: None.

Edit: 6/3/2019

A/N: Hello- I'm back! This is technically the first full chapter of the rewrite. It was a little delayed, but I hope you still like it! Again, thanks for your patience as I reorganize the chapters. Also I really appreciate the input you guys gave, and I genuinely take your feedback into consideration. So bear with me a little since I don't have the luxury of time to write whenever I want because university and work takes priority over this. But that being said - Enjoy!

Chapter 2: Life Sucks

Inoue Orihime began her pretend life as a vampire a little over three years ago in early September. The brisk autumn air felt crisp against her warm, delicate skin, and her hair was curled ever so slightly at the tips, giving her slow strides a light bounce with every step. She was starting her first day of freshman year, feeling all giddy and excited, day dreaming about all the other boys and girls she would soon meet. Unlike home school, where it was just her, Urharara-san, and Yoruichi-san, she would now have other vampires her age to talk to. She would now have friends to play with. And if she was lucky, she would maybe even find herself a boyfriend.

The thought alone made her heart rate accelerate and had blood rushing to face. She had to will her nerves to calm down, or else someone would pick up on her bodily warmth and get suspicious, and she of course couldn't run the risk of having that happen anytime soon.

But unfortunately, Karakura Academy was nothing like she had ever imagined, and the students here were not as nice as she had expected them to be.

Well, "not as nice" was actually a complete understatement. They were fiends. Dangerously clever, ridiculously wicked, irresistibly gorgeous, blood-sucking fiends.

There were the female vampires, who gave her this distant, icy glare that lacked any sort of warmth, compassion, or welcome, while there were the male vampires, who curled their lips ever so slightly to reveal sharp, pearly fangs in curious amusement.

Look what we have here.

To make matters even worse, she didn't even take into consideration that she might have been socially awkward and inept from all these years of being stuck underneath a roof, until she realized that she had absolutely no idea how to even interact with kids her age, unless they were interested in talking to her about the marvelous works of Shakespeare's sonnets and the beauty of iambic pentameter.

Yeah, um no. That's lame.

Orihime decided in the end to just keep silently to herself.

Every day became a race to see how fast she could get to school and then another race as to how fast she could get home. Once in a while, she would muster the courage to talk to her peers or even try to go out to the literature club meetings, but in the end, she eventually cowered away and pretended like the idea never even crossed her mind in the first place because the thought of interacting with them simply terrified her.

Like one small misstep, and they would see right through her little secret.

All she wanted were some nice friends to talk to, but instead, she was at a school full of posh elitists who probably didn't even care about who she was, just because she was a nobody from a no name family, at a prestigious Academy where everybody had a steep price tag to their family name.

And it sucked. No pun intended.

But little did she know, all the vampire boys and girls paid close attention to Inoue Orihime. They had their eye on her every move since day one, so when she got the second highest score on the fall semester benchmark exam, kicking mad genius Ishida Uryu from his rightful place underneath Kurosaki Ichigo — it got the entire Academy riled up and gossiping about the new mysterious girl, and Kuchiki Rukia basically had to force (more like threaten) Ichigo to go talk to the new girl.

"You should talk to her."

"What?"

"You know, that Inoue girl." the elite vampire stated like it was the most obvious thing ever, "The really cute and really smart new girl? C'mon Ichigo, you know exactly who I'm talking about, and don't even try to lie about it because I see you playing with the tips of her orange curls every morning whenever they fall back onto your desk."

The next almost words choked in this throat at Rukia's quick observation.

"Shut up. I don't, and hey, Rukia what —"

Just like that, the petite girl tip-toed ontop her small feet and threw a love note into Inoue Orihime's top locker, 'signed by,' the one and only, Kurosaki Ichigo.

"What the hell did you even write on that?!" the Kurosaki boy panicked in distress at what the raven haired girl had just done.

"Oh you know, one of those anonymous love letters professing your undying crush on her, dabbled in romantic Shakespearean poetry, since she's a die hard fan apparently."

"It's not anonymous, when it's written in my name!" his right hand slammed harshly against his forehead in protest, feeling all levels of doomed.

Rukia paused, taking a moment to think about that last thought, "You're right. Well, good luck!"

Ichigo forgot that the entire locker-love-note thing ever happened, until the next morning, when he was greeted with an unexpected and even more unpleasant surprise.

"What's your problem?"

Ichigo looked up from his desk to find a very angry Inoue Orihime scowling down at him with murderous intent swirling in her two hazel eyes.

The realization hit him all at once, but he instead kept his knowledge of the situation under wraps. However, Orihime was having none of that as she threw a slip of paper onto his desk that read in a familiar hand writing that was definitely not his own:

"We know what we are, but know not what we may be." (4.5.50-51) -Kurosaki Ichigo ;)

Ichigo reread the words, over and over and over again.

No fucking way.

Ichigo immediately paled.

This can't be happening.

He ignored Orihime's furious gaze and immediately shot his sharpest daggers at the midget who was responsible for this entire mess and was sitting against her chair a couple feet away, returning two thumbs up in show of support, knowing very little that she's royally fucked it up for him because Kuchiki Rukia didn't know shit about English poetry.

He wanted nothing more than for the ground below him to open up and swallow him whole.

Knowing his friend, she probably went to the Shakespeare section of the Academy's library, picked out a random book (which in this case happened to be Hamlet), found a short and simple line that sounded mysteriously suave and romantic, and just fucking ran with it.

Didn't bother to look up what it meant.

Didn't even think to reconsider context.

Nope. Knowing her, she probably thought it meant something along the lines of, "Hey, I'm interested in you, and maybe you are too. Do you wanna go on a date sometime to find out if we could maybe happen?"

Ichigo confirmed this theory with one last look at Rukia's big shit-eating grin and gross, heart-filled eyes, and he knew, she had to be the biggest idiot alive.

"How dare you mock me." Orihime hissed under her breathe.

Instead, he was going to look like the idiot.

Keeping his true rage concealed, he looked at the said girl as apologetically as he could, but instead, it wounded him to see how pained her expression seemed, despite all the anger she was emitting.

"What are you getting at?" Orihime questioned. Her voice filled with anger, but her tone was kept low, "That I'm like Ophelia? The girl who goes insane because of her murdered father and mother? The girl who is delusional and goes mad because she has no control over her own future?!"

You could practically feel her disgust, rage, and shock altogether, and it left Ichigo feeling guilty beyond belief.

"Look, I think—"

"How dare you say that to me, when you know nothing about me."

"—you're misunderstanding something."

"You like Hamlet that much, huh? Fine, play it that way!"

"Wait."

"God hath given you one face, Kurosaki Ichigo," Orihime stated, and the room fell dangerously silent at her next words, "and you make yourself another."

Gasps could be heard all around as students turned heads to stare at the two.

Even Rukia wasn't all smiles anymore.

The new girl.

The new girl with the pretty face.

The new girl who knew quotes to Shakespeare by heart and knew exactly when to use them.

The new girl who everybody thought was a mere nobody, just dissed the face of the esteemed Kurosaki family, calling him a two-faced jerk in front of everybody in the entire class.

The Academy was is flames now.

And the pureblood vampire had just enough of his patience.

No, Inoue Orihime. You're the one who knows nothing about me.

"Hey," Ichigo said with a stern edge to his voice, cutting the air in deathly strokes, clearly pissed at how this entire situation was misconstrued, "I said wait."

But Orihime was too hurt.

She was wounded beyond belief, didn't care what anybody else had to say, and ran out of the room, leaving Ichigo to dwell on her final words.

Orihime bursted into a sprint the moment she was out of the classroom and into the long marbled coordiors— her nimble movements did nothing to outweigh the heaviness in her heart.

Altogether, it felt like her body was going to combuste under the pressure of all the stress she's pent up until this point.

"We know what we are, but know not what we may be."

The words echoed wickedly through her mind, as if an evil spirit possessed her soul, and she couldn't get it out no matter how hard she tried.

Who the hell did he think he was to say something like that to her?

And she suddenly felt paranoid. Like somebody besides her knew exactly what the words meant. Like they knew she had the very line highlighted with a yellow Crayola marker in her own copy of Hamlet back at home.

She remembered struggling with the meaning the first time she read it when she was in grade school, and Urahara-san had to sit down and break it down for her, "My dear, we live in the present, and we react to what we know now because of that." he spoke gently, "That's why we make guesses and assumptions about what our future will hold. We do not know what we may become of, and sometimes... that uncertainty will drive us mad, just like it did for Ophelia."

Was he able to see right through her? Did he have it all figured out?

There was no way.

But before she had another second to think through it all, both her mind and her feet came to a screeching halt, as she felt two hot hands practically burn through the shoulders of her uniform, and they held her with a grip so unformidably strong, it shook her out of her reverie.

''Dammit," a male voice whispered in impatient frustration, but also breatheless, from chasing her all this way, "I said, wait up."

Kurosaki Ichigo was standing arms length away from her, staring down at her with a dark, unreadible expression that kept her captive under his gaze. It felt quite similar to the thrall vampires used when capturing their prey, and suddenly, Orihime had every urge to look away.

"Let go." Orihime demanded and began to struggle against his ironclad hold. Just when she thought she was able to break free, Ichigo grabbed both of her thin pale wrists instead and dragged her flesh against his taunt body, knocking the air out of her lungs as she stared wide-eyed at him, like a deer caught in headlights, speechless at how needlessly close they were now standing.

"Listen," Ichigo began in a low rasp, "Inoue, right?"

When the human girl said nothing in return, the vampire took her silence as permission to continue, loosening the grip on her wrists, but not by much, afraid that she would slip away from his fingertips before he even had a chance to explain himself.

"Look, you've... you've got it all wrong." He finally said, taking a deep breathe of air and closing his eyes momentarily, the sharp lines on his face slowly softening, as he gave her a look that meant every part of that statement.

He opened his eyes again, much softer this time and he began again.

"It's... hard for me to explain, and I'm not entirely expecting you to understand either, but just know that this..." he hesitated for a second, not knowing how to articulate the exact words he wanted to let out, "this entire situation is a misunderstanding and... I'm sorry."

Orihime could feel her burning rage within start to extinguish with every word she heard out of Kurosaki Ichigo. Although she could be unforgivably stubborn sometimes, it was hard not to hold a grudge on the entire situation when he was looking at her like that.

"I never meant to hurt you, I swear." He genuinely wanted her to believe him, from the bottom of his heart — with eyes lit with so much passion that it almost looked like it hurt him.

Once he was certain she wasn't going to run away anymore, he let go of her wrists, which ended up leaving red imprints of his large hands, and he looked away, a little sheepish at how possessive he was to a stranger, nonetheless.

Then he brought one hand up to scratch the nape of his neck in shy embarrassment, unsure of what to do in this situation, and Orihime had to admit, vulnerability was a sight that didn't exactly suit his usually stoic demeanor.

But it was a sight she didn't exactly mind.

"After the results of the fall semester benchmark exam came out, I was... I mean, all of us..." he exasperated, emphasizing that this wasn't just something he felt, "we were all, just completely speechless." he chuckled, more in awe and wonder, as his face sort of brightened up. "You don't know this, but Ishida... that guy has been trying to one up me for years, since we were practically kids, and you know what he's like... never been able to, but now someone has..."

And unexpectantly Ichigo gives Orihime a look that makes all the thoughts in her head short circuit, "and that someone was... you."

Orihime could feel the haze in her mind start to fade into a warm sensation.

"We're sorry we upset you." he apologized again, and his next words left Orihime at an absolute loss because she couldn't even comprehend it herself.

"You know, we just wanted to be your friend."

And then he smiled at her — inviting, radiant, genuine.

That's it.

That's all she's wanted.

She's been alone her entire life and didn't even realize that she's wanted nothing more than companions that she can call her friends.

His words seeped into the holes that Orihime thought she'd never fill, and it all started to make sense.

She could feel the tears burn in the back of her eyes, and she's realized she hasn't said a single word to him this entire time.

But she also didn't know what to say because she knew she'd start crying if she did.

So instead she gave him a soft smile, whole-hearted and tender, and just nodded — letting everything just soak in.

And once she felt like her voice found its way back to her again, she responded.

"Me too."

It was crazy to think that it had already been a little over three years since that fateful incident.

And as Orihime walked down the Academy's long arched hallways toward her class in Room 4A, receiving greetings of 'good morning' from her vampire peers that ironically sounded both forced and sincere at the same time, she couldn't help but laugh a little.

A lot has changed in the past three years.

But a lot has stayed the same.

You see, deep down, Orihime was still a bit fragile and insecure.

She was scared, terrified, and a nervous disaster all up on the inside — jumbled emotions constantly swirling within her as she's never sure of what to do with herself and what her purpose in this world was.

Even though she had a trusted group of friends now, who've accepted her into their lives and treated her as own of their own, the uncertainty of the future — the off chance that she'd get caught any moment — never ceased to exist.

She may pretend to be one of them, but she knows, better than anybody else, that she could never be one of them.

Afterall, she's only human.

That isn't to say that this Orihime was a little different from the one we first met.

This Orihime had experience. And three years of it to be exact.

She no longer allowed her personal emotions to physically get to the best of her. Very quickly, she's learned how to pick up on social cues and feign ignorance when necessary. She's taken advantage of her studious image, soft-spoken personality, and coy demeanor, in order to trick others into thinking that she was actually too naive, meek, and pure for her own good.

Call it weird, but all her peers found her innocence all strangely exquisite and sublime.

She's constantly forced smiles and empty compliments to keep up with the status quo, and she decided that it was better off this way — both for herself and for her reputation.

It let her blend in with the other vampires seamlessly, but it also kept her personal life private and mysterious, and soon enough, all the vampires at the Academy began to circulate gossip and conversations about her because of it.

There was no escaping it, especially when one of her best friends was Kurosaki Ichigo.

Speaking of which, was just a walk down the hall, taking off his Airpods, then proceeding to open his own locker to grab what looked like his World History textbook, and Orihime took a moment to just appreciate his side profile a little longer than what was considered welcome.

It was unfair Orihime thought.

Vampires had this natural gift of being dangerously clever.

And also ridiculously wicked.

But most importantly, irresistibly gorgeous.

And Kurosaki Ichigo was definitely no exception.

Yes, Ichigo had always been at top of the ranks in terms of looks and everything else, but he went from being a cute and boyish teenager to a hot and irresistble catch in less than what was acceptable, and Orihime (along with literally every girl at the Academy) couldn't help but develop an undying and one-sided crush on said vampire.

First of all, he was tall. Way taller than before, but not only that, his form and shoulders were now broad and built, while his arms were muscular and refined to perfection. No longer carrying the baby fats from when he was a tween, his jaw was slim cut and taunt, while the rest of his facial features matured into sharp, hard lines.

And Orihime knew... she knew she couldn't afford to crush on her best friend, who was a freaking pureblood vampire, since he sort of had the ability to destory her, given his title and everything, but she couldn't help that he —

"Oh my god, Orihime, can you be any more obvious."

Whatever train of thought the human girl had going on was instantly halted by the voice of her raven-haired best friend, who was standing right behind her the entire time.

She turned around to greet Rukia, who seemed elated to have ran into her best friend, first thing in the morning.

"About what?" Orihime pretended.

"Are you serious?" Rukia raised an eyebrow in disbelief, and then smiled in amusement, "Orihime, I could see you undressing him with your eyes."

"I was not." the taller girl replied a little too quickly.

"Yes, you were." She said slowly, putting emphasis on every word, "As a matter of fact, you have been... for I don't know... like the past THREE years."

Orihime could fool anybody else, but there was no way she could fool Rukia.

The petite girl just knew.

In fact, this girl had sixth sense sharper than a collection of knives, and that was a feat all in itself.

"Rukia, we went over this" she gave into the conversation, "I don't like him in that way."

"And why is that?" she challenged back.

"Because!" Orihime started, "This is Kurosaki Ichigo we're talking about." the human girl practically yell-whispered, knowing very well that they were still publicly standing in the hallways of the Academy.

"Rukia, out of any of us, you know he's not just any pureblood vampire." And before she could reconsider, the words were already spilling out of her mouth, fresh off the press, "His wealth. His status. His bloodline. His inheritance. His family." Then she paused for a moment to make sure she got her point across,

"Rukia, he'd ruin me!"

Silence fell between the two of them for a few ticks before Rukia curled her lips, and then her entire face lit up in fasincation.

"Oh, hush." she said playfully, "That hasn't stopped any of the other girls from trying, and besides..." Before she knew it, dark violet eyes glinted eagerly in muse and proceed to lean into the conversation with a cheeky grin on her face.

"He'd be into that."

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

Of course Kuchiki Rukia would say something snarky to —

"Be into what?"

Dammit.

Orihime whipped around so fast at the newcomer's voice, that she almost lost balance, until hands shot out on reflex to steady her fall.

She didn't even have time to process what just had happened because she was scrambling to search for excuses in her head, until she saw that his Airpods were back on his ears. Then realization dawn on her, hoping, that Ichigo didn't pick up on the bulk of their recent conversation.

"Woah, you good?" he asked, slightly caught off guard and completely forgetting about what he had just asked earlier.

Instinctively, Orihime distanced herself from his grasp, then awkwardly began rubbing the sides of her arms, somehow missing the warmth that held her a moment ago.

"Haha, yeah." Orihime responded.

The two orange heads made brief eye contact, unsure of what to do or say next, before Rukia decided to break the tension for them.

"Ugh." She could practically hear Rukia groan at the elephant in the room, and Orihime didn't have to turn around to physically see the roll of her eyes.

"Can you two just —"

"So," Orihime said innocently, purposely cutting off the raven-haired vampire. "How was your morning, Kurosaki-kun?" She turned around to nudge Rukia in the direction of their classroom, hoping that she wouldn't entertain the idea any further, before focusing her attention back to Ichigo.

The three of them were making their way to their first lecture, which was right down the hall and around the corner. Rukia decided to walk a stride faster, so the two of them could have their space.

"Nothing much." Ichigo replied with a bored look on his face, as he put both of his hands into his pants pocket.

"Woke up late." he said casually, "Got ready. Had breakfast."

All of a sudden, an image of Ichigo necking a faceless human girl came to mind and felt unwanted heat pulse through Orihime's system, and she had to immediately force her betrayed thoughts to settle, before turning back to the conversation.

"Also started reading this new book." He continued rambling, completely unaware of the inner turmoil of the human girl beside him, "I think you'd really like it." Then the vampire gave her a soft smile that was only meant her for eyes, but before Orihime could think anymore of it, he turned away as they rounded the corner, just where their classroom was.

"It's by an American journalist named Ernest Hemingway. He's a bit of a hopeless romantic at heart, and as I was reading, I just thought you might—"

She watched as Ichigo's next words immediately died in his mouth and stopped dead in his tracks right before stepping foot into into the classroom. She watched as his delicate brown eyes widened in utter shock, then immediately settled into something dangerously dark, as brows furrowed together and lips pressed into a hard line.

She's never seen such an uncomfortable look etched onto his face before.

But it was then, the auburn haired beauty realized that class was soon to begin, as all the other vampires around her started to file into the room and shuffle to their own seats, and Ochei-sensei's drowned out voice started to fill into Orihime's eardrums in low, soft, crescendoing waves.

"Class settle down. We're gonna get started..."

When Orihime turned away from Ichigo and directed her attention to the front of the classroom, it was now her turn to pale, cutting all previous thoughts, at the sight of two very familiar looking vampires, staring back at her deviously — small, mischievous, and knowing grins, bedeviled on both of their amused faces.

"Welcome our two guest lecturers for today, Urahara Kisuke and Yoruichi Shihouin."

A/N: I've always had this headcannon where Orihime was a HUGE book nerd and overanalyzed literature quotes for fun to make up for the fact that she was a hopeless romantic and welp... here she is. lol (Also I quote a bit of William Shakespeare's Hamlet in this chapter so credits to him).