As usual, she is waiting in a white castle's tall, white tower. There is a single window with three black bars from which she can watch the moon never set and the sun never rise. She is halfway certain that this is not how it always was.
Time passes slowly here, with increasing viscosity, and eventually her limbs turn to marble and her lips crack with want of conversation. Sometimes she feels cold fingers trace the contours of her spine, but she never turns and she never speaks. She is waiting.
"Why don't you smile?" a voice asks her from time to time, blowing breath over the nape of her neck. She never turns and she never speaks. She is waiting.
The moon never sets and the sun never rises.
"You know," the voice murmurs one day, lips near her ear, "maybe the thing you're waiting for is already here."
She doesn't turn and she doesn't speak, but her eyes waver downward and she sees him.
He's running, a flickering flame pushing closer and closer to the castle door. Countless faceless foes strike at him with their swords, and his mouth moves.
"Why don't you smile?" the voice asks. She doesn't turn and she doesn't speak. Instead, she watches from her vantage point as he falls, far down below.
His blood is a lovely crimson on the white sand.
"Smile, my dear," the voice says gently, running smooth hands from her jaw, lower, lower, lower, and nobody can hear her silent screams-
"Orihime!"
She wakes with a start, gasping for air as though rescued from drowning. "I'm here!" someone is saying, voice roughened and hair tousled with sleep. His face sharpens above her. Distantly, she realizes that there are incoherent sobbing noises dribbling from her lips.
"I'm here, I'm here!" he repeats, and she pulls him close.
Here, the sun rises and her knight lives.
one problem that I had with the Xcution arc was that we didn't get any insight into how the entire Hueco Mundo arc essentially traumatized Orihime. this is just a little look at one of the possible side effects.
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