Chapter Forty Seven:
Heartless
Ulquiorra realized with a small surprise that Seren had fallen asleep on him. He stirred and turned to see her closed eyes and peaceful expression.
She was asleep.
Oh, but it couldn't be helped. He sighed softly as he lifted her up surely in his arms, gently so as not to wake her up. He strode over and set her down on the bed, where she then replied in her sleep by rolling over and taking up almost all of it.
He felt a burst of bright, sparkling joy bubble up in his throat, and he suddenly found it hard to breathe.
Ulquiorra started. What?
What was this?
Was this… was this happiness? His fingers touched his throat. What was this… this feeling? It was amazing, it was beautiful, wonderful, choking- it was joy, he realized. Joy, in all its myth and fable- the thing that Seren had talked about so much.
It was so much more than she had said.
It was so much more than could ever be said.
For the first time in his bleak life, he felt as if, well, he was moving. Finally aware of life itself. His heart- did he have one?- quickened. His pulse flowed with liquid energy. He could feel his pulse. He could finally feel at all.
I want to feel like this forever, he realized. He never wanted to leave. He could just stay here with Seren and be happy. Aizen, his missions, Grimmjow, Nnoitra, Hueco Mundo, Las Noches, death, all seemed to be left behind in some other world, with some other Ulquiorra. That Ulquiorra was loyal, strong, and dead on the inside.But not he. Now he was alive.
The twanging and plucking at his heart now intensified dramatically into a sharp squeeze of agony.
"Hl-" Ulquiorra groaned and clutched at his hole and dropped to his knees. His hand scrabbled at the bed sheets by Seren. Any lesser man would have screamed for the pain. But he held his cry in as the agony fought to make its way past the block in his throat. He gasped and scratched at his chest as the hurt escalated into a climax of breathless, nameless pain.
There was no name for this kind of pain.
There could be no name.
Then… it stopped.
The pain left, like it had never been there at all, already racing away into the blissful ignorance of the past.
Ulquiorra took a deep breath to steady himself. He looked down and-
It must be just his imagination.
Just his imagination, just his mind and the dark playing tricks on him.
But oh, he could have sworn that the bleak hole in his chest, where his heart should have been, had just shrunk from it had been a minute ago.
Just his imagination.
