Author's Note: I found this fic hanging around on my computer from about 10 years ago that for some reason I never uploaded. But here we are!
Gosh I wish they'd ended up together.
Winter was truly beautiful, Orihime thought as she walked through the bustling streets on New Year's Eve. Parents tugged excited children away from glittering shop windows, urging them to hurry home out of the cold. Couples walked hand-in-hand and groups of friends tottered through the streets, holding bottles of sake and laughing loudly.
Orihime pulled her pink scarf closer around her neck as a particularly cold wind swept through the streets. She had gone to visit the shrines but they were so crowded she could barely move, and so had reluctantly turned home.
Her friends were busy tonight with their own families. Tatsuki and Ichigo had offered for her to join them but she had declined; for tonight, she wanted to be on her own.
She wandered aimlessly along the street, reaching the end of the shopping district and stepping onto the long pathway that hugged the canal winding through Karakura Town.
Orihime looked out over the water, shimmering gently under the faint glow of the crescent moon. She blinked and suddenly she was back in that room again, staring through bars above her head at the eternal inverted crescent moon. The light of that moon was very different from the light of the one in the World of the Living. This was lit by the sun; an eternal glow of pale blue that sent hope to those below at night. The one that forever sat above the bleak world of the hollows was ominous, as callous and empty as those that ran along the blank grey sands, forever searching.
She had understood their yearning for something, anything, in their never-changing world. She, too, had longed for an escape, for a release from her fate. And yet, returning to this world, she had felt something pulling her back. Something constantly tugging at her memory.
Orihime shivered as a cold, white flake touched her nose, melting instantly on contact with the warm skin. She looked up as the flurries began to fall. Finally, it was snowing.
She smiled and tilted her head back, shutting her grey eyes and allowing the flakes to cover her with their white sheen.
And that was how he found her, standing on the edge of the canal, hands clasped behind her back; a picture of pure bliss.
"You will get cold if you stay like that, woman," he said.
Orihime opened her eyes and turned. There he was, wearing the same white uniform and standing beside her as if he had always been there.
She smiled at him, "How long have you been here, Ulquiorra?"
"I never left," Ulquiorra stated simply.
She turned her gaze back to the snowing sky, "It's beautiful, isn't it?"
"I've never truly understood that term," he replied stoically.
"Hmm, you always were a stranger to human emotions. How long has it been now?"
"Five years, two months, three days, nine hours and ten and a half minutes; but you already knew that."
Her smile widened, "I knew, though perhaps not in the same detail as you. Gosh, it sounds like a long time doesn't it?"
"I do not have the same sense of time as you," Ulquiorra said, his face unreadable as he stared out at the moon dancing on the water. "But yes … it has been a long time," he added softly.
"A very long time," Orihime murmured, closing her eyes again and taking a deep breath of the crisp, frozen air.
"You're getting married," he stated suddenly.
She opened her grey eyes and looked at him, surprised to find him staring at her with vivid intensity, "Yes, I am."
"Why?" he questioned. To anyone else he would have sounded uninterested, bored even, but she knew it was more than that.
"I thought you didn't understand the notion of love and the heart?"
He turned away, "I don't, not fully. But I have come to consider it more closely since … that moment."
"Ah, that moment," she smiled at the memory. Hands reaching for each other. Two hands that never met. "I suppose it's because I love him. I cannot say that I don't because that would be a lie. But I cannot say that it is the same kind of love you see in movies or read in books." He raised his eyebrow quizzically and she smiled, "I guess I'm trying to say that I will never feel for him the way I feel for you."
He stared at her, "And what, exactly, is the way you feel for me?"
She turned away, staring back up at the moon with her hands clasped behind her back, "I think you already know."
He matched her gaze up at the moon, staying silent.
"I can't stay in love with a memory, Ulquiorra," she said softly, her voice shaking slightly. "I have to move on. It's been five years. Five very long, very confusing years, and I need to escape. He's going to get me out of this town and take me to see the world. You don't know how I've longed for that!"
He sighed, the sound barely more than a whisper, "I do know. I wish for it too. For you to escape, to let me go. If you do not, then I can't move on either."
"Do … do you want me to let you go?" Orihime whispered.
He was silent for a moment, then, "No." She stared at him in surprise. "No. But I do want you to move on, live your life as you were supposed to before I interrupted your carefree existence."
"Do you really think I lived so freely before you?" she interrupted, her voice taking a waspish tone. He raised as eyebrow at her. "If anything, I think I was more trapped by my own and others' expectations. People called me weak and useless. But you found a strength in me that no one, not even I could see. I thank you for that."
He made a noncommittal noise, "You have nothing to thank me for."
She shrugged, "Even so … thank you."
An eruption sounded over the town, as loud and deep as thunder, and suddenly the clear night sky was lit by thousands of glittering fireworks. They turned away from each other and stared up at the display before them, reminiscent of an artist splattering paint on their easel.
"They're so beautiful," Orihime murmured, eyes shining with the multitude of lights. "Happy New Year, Ulquiorra."
He watched her, uninterested in the spectacular kaleidoscope before him, finding himself fascinated with her instead. She looked so alive, so much more radiant than the lights above.
She turned to him, smiling widely, "Ulquiorra, I'm ready to move on now."
He nodded curtly, "That's good."
"Do you suppose we'll ever see each other again?" she asked, neither of them missing the small sound of desperation in her cheerful tone.
"Perhaps," he replied, his empty voice mirroring her own attempts at appearing nonchalant.
"Hmm, well I hope so at least." She pushed a flyaway strand of orange hair behind her ear.
He looked at her expectantly as she took a deep breath.
"Gosh this is hard." Orihime wrapped her arms tightly around her frame and took another breath. "Alright then," she smiled at him, all traces of fear and trepidation gone. "Goodbye … Ulquiorra."
She drank in one last look of the figure standing before her, at his emerald green eyes that captured hers with a gaze that held hints of longing and desperation, before, finally, closing her eyes.
"Goodbye … Orihime," Ulquiorra murmured, his voice ghosting past her ears.
When she opened her eyes, he was gone.
She had lost count of the minutes. Of the hours. Of the days. Even the years. She could no longer remember those she had once called friends in her youth. Nor could she remember the adventures she had shared with them. She could not even recognise the faces of her children, or the picture of her long-dead husband.
But one thing constantly pervaded her memory: cool green that calmed her even in her most frantic moments, a calm voice that was music to her deaf ears, a longing to hold something, but what she could not remember.
Everything was dark. Or perhaps it was white. She could not tell, only that it was very different from life. It was nothing.
She treaded forward on worn feet that had seen so many years. Tired hands reaching forward in the empty nothingness before her, scratching the air for something. Anything.
And something they did find.
A warm, smooth, achingly familiar hand held her own.
So that was what it felt like.
Her misty eyes opened and suddenly she could see. The beautiful green – of course it was him. The calm voice – of course it was his.
"Ulquiorra," she breathed. Her own voice that had become cracked and unused was as clear and sweet as angels singing.
He stared at her with a passionate intensity, squeezing her hand so as to never let go.
The white faded away to reveal long auburn hair and sparkling grey eyes that shone with renewed life and happiness.
"Orihime," he answered, the sound so warm she felt as if she were being bathed in the warmest beam of sunshine. "Come with me."
"Where are we going?"
"Wherever you want to go."
"With you."
"That's where I want to go too."
They walked together, hand-in-hand, and never let go again.
So that was where the heart was.
It had been in their hands the whole time.