Thanks for reading this story!
This fic was done for the theme Life/Living for "Theme Of The Week" over at the UH FC on BA.
It's a future fic, happened after chapter 353/354.
Disclaimers: I do not own Bleach and their characters (definitely); they are all masterpieces from Kubo-sensei~
MEANING
"Ulquiorra-san, why is your aspect Nihilist?"
Inoue Orihime asked while stepping softly and steadily on the platform of the staircase.
And that took Ulquiorra Cifer a moment of surprise revealing in his eyes before they returned to his normal indifference. It was unsure whether Ulquiorra was surprised of her sudden question about his aspect of death or the fact that Orihime suddenly added the "-san" in his name that made him ponder her intention of calling his name in a polite and formal way like that.
"Because," he replied with a halt, "I found no meaning in it."
"It?" Orihime puzzled what Ulquiorra meant.
"The world that we existed in." He stated in his monotone voice.
The confusion still presented in her eyes. "You mean this world or Hueco Mundo?" Orihime questioned.
"All." Ulquiorra answered, fixing her gaze.
"That's not true." Orihime cut short. Her voice was usually soft, but there was firmness in her tone.
"Not true?" Ulquiorra glanced back at the girl curiously of what she meant.
Orihime looked deep into his eyes. While casting her eyes down, she whispered with her softer voice. "That's… just sad, Ulquiorra-san."
This time, he was perplexed at her statement, "Sad?" And he couldn't stop his curiosity to flow out from his mouth. His ability to control his pace and silence was weaken and worsen day by day.
"Do you find any meaning in our world?"
Ulquiorra's question seemed to make Orihime troubled, "I..."
As if she couldn't find the right answer for his question. Or maybe she already had answer, but refused to accept it.
"There's none."He continued his enlightenment, "You're saying that because you think that you're living. It's your illusion that you think that you would find any meaning."
"I'm not." Orihime replied. Unlike the last time that she was so unsure, this time, she was adamant in her words. "You're also living, Ulquiorra-san." And her confidence into something that he couldn't see it logical made him want to argue with her once more.
"Woman, you're wrong. I'm not living. I'm already dead."
From the beginning to the end, he was always dead to her. She had seen his death already, enough to accept it. Why did she still insist that he was living? Were there any meanings left to him for being alive in the dead world? What did she mean to him by "living"?
"Just your body on earth." Orihime came closer, gently placing her palm on the plane of his chest. The place where his hollow hole had been filled in with everything happened between them. "Your soul and your heart, however, are not."
"Hollows don't have heart, woman." Closing his eyes in contented, Ulquiorra placed his hand on hers that still lay on his chest.
He was being contradictory. He knew that. Even though in reality, seeing the heart to understand its form and having the heart to live with it are different matters.
As a Hollow… an ex-Hollow, Ulquiorra didn't know how to adjust with the new form that this heart had given to him.
As a Hollow, he had never thought anything about how he would live with this new life. Just as how he believed that Hollows didn't have heart before.
"I believe they do." Orihime smiled.
Ulquiorra reminded that it was the same smile when she talked about the heart she shared with her nakama.
Did she mean for hearts to beat as one? The heart of her and his?
Because of the heart, she's alive; that's why he's also living!
In the distant of Ulquiorra's mind, part of him acknowledged that it might be true while the other part shivered at such thought.
It took the next second for him to realize that he loose his hand on hers and Orihime retracted her hand from his chest.
"I've seen Hollows that had heart before; it's just they hadn't tried to see by their own." Orihime continued. She gazed at Ulquiorra and smiled very innocently, "You're not the first one."
"Who's the first?" Ulquiorra asked, out of his curiosity and perplex.
"My... My brother." Orihime replied. Since that moment, her eyes went sad, looking in distant, "To me, he was everything in my life. But then, he died on the day I had an argument with him. I thought that life had collapsed and turned its back on me back then."
Ulquiorra noticed that her small fingers had curled into fist in one hand while another held on.
"I had wondered why I couldn't save him on that day. Why couldn't I try to accept his feeling? Why did I make him sad and died in regret? So much that he turned into Hollow." Orihime said with the regretful tone he had heard so many time when she blaming herself.
While walking together step by step on the stairway, Orihime told Ulquiorra the past between her and her brother and how he ended up as Hollow. He had to omit all of irrelevant details such as bread's jam with peanut butter, jelly leek with red bean paste and tomato pasta with rainbow unicorn that she randomly inserted to get the story.
"He attacked you?" Ulquiorra interrupted her storytelling.
"Yes, he was angry with Kurosaki-kun, so he wanted me dead so that we could be together in afterlife. In that moment, I could only hug him tight. I thought it would be okay if he wanted to take me away from this world."
"It's foolish. You and your brother." While Ulquiorra somewhat could understand and relate what her brother would do, he still confused what Orihime had done with her brother. Setting himself in her shoes, he couldn't do the same thing like her. He thought it was foolish to humans for wanting to live and die for another. Yet, among those foolish things, he also did the same. That shinigami was right when he said he had become more human. Though all he felt at that time was more of anger than feeling of grateful that he changed.
"I know." Orihime said in a sad tone.
"So what happen to him in the end?" Ulquiorra asked.
"He's gone. He broke his Hollow mask with Kurosaki-kun's sword and then faded away. I don't know where he went. Maybe Soul Society. Maybe not. But, at last, he gave me his smile. He's not sad anymore. I think he had found the meaning of his life so he accepted his death peacefully."
Thoughtfully, Ulquiorra stared at Orihime, "You think that I will be end up like your brother?" He said in his sarcasm and dry humorous tone, "Finding life meaningful because I accepted death? Having the heart because I'm the hollow that takes interest in you?"
Occuring along with his words, Ulquiorra reached his hand and lightly touched her chest, the place where her soul chain placed, the same place as his hollow hole.
"I... I don't mean that way." Orihime flushed, shaking her head and her hands all together. Meanwhile, Ulquiorra was obvious of her embarrassing.
"Just as I thought, even if I spent another life with you, I understand you less. Even so..." Ulquiorra paused. His voice trailed off. "I don't want to part with you." Ulquiorra said with his tone softer than any tone Orihime had ever heard from him.
Far in her mind, she wondered if he was embarrassed. She didn't have time to smirk at his shyness before her faced was also slowly heated from peachy to reddish color when she understood his words.
"In the end, between death and life, I chose this path." Ulquiorra gripped one hand on his chest, eyes casting down, "This hopeless path so that I could see you once more." Then he moved his hand to brush her cheek gently.
Ulquiorra had never cared anything about life or death. All he desired was just to understand how she lightened up his meaningless life and how he would have her by his side. In the end, he chose to let her go. And as the result of his choice, he ended up to be by her side instead. It's probably the irony of life that the new heart had gotten him into.
Smiling gentle, Orihime reached her hand to hold his which was lazily sliding on his side. She entwined their fingers together and squeezed it softly. The action that they failed to do when they were at the dome.
"I'm glad that you're alive, Ulquiorra."
"Orihime, you're the only one that felt that way. To see me alive and living, that is."
"Then how do you feel?" Orihime asked and again Ulquiorra had to wonder the meaning of her strange question in regard of his feeling to something he wasn't aware of.
"How do you feel when you realize that you're alive and living?" She repeated.
"How does living mean to you, Orihime?" Ulquiorra asked back. For one reason, he didn't understand her term of "life" and "living" as much as he told her that he had been dead already.
"Living is hard, Ulquiorra." Orihime said, "We experienced both happy things and painful things. That's why everybody tried their best to be alive. We don't want to see any more of death and sadness."
"Thinking of life when we're already dead is so ridiculous." Ulquiorra shrugged off, talking in his different tone.
"Isn't that life all about?" Orihime laughed, feeling silly at Ulquiorra's words. "We meet, connect and separate. We reunite, reminisce our past and think about our next life." Isn't it amazing? She wanted to add, but she felt that Ulquiorra would be annoyed at her silly and optimistic ideas of life.
"I see. You have too many lifetimes to live, woman." Ulquiorra sighed, turned his feet and made his way upstairs.
Glancing back at Orihime over his shoulder, she was standing still, not showing any reaction to move forward.
"I'm not sure that I would follow till your last one. So you'd better…" Ulquiorra's deep and low voice regained Orihime's attention. Leisurely with his standing stance, he reached his hand out. "Come with me, woman."
"Please accompany me, Ulquiorra-san." Orihime smiled, quickly caught up in step with Ulquiorra.
They continued to walk to the end of the staircase to see where it would lead their life up to.
Hand in hand.
Together.
JinxJen's note:
Because of the theme, there's a vagueness in the fic that I'm not sure if everyone get it or not.
When I read it again, it does sound like a heated debate of death and life between Orihime and Ulquiorra. And of course, we all know who was the winner.
