FIC: The Twisted Tales Of Two Strangers [UlquiHime] [1.5.]

[shortitude.livejournal.com]

Title: The Twisted Tales Of Two Strangers: 1.5
Author: Cella [stereotype_vamp]
Fandom:Bleach
Ship: Orihime x Ulquiorra
Rating: Teen
Summary: She’s the brightest light in Hueco Mundo. He’d rather be blind to her the rest of his life. ORIHIME. ULQUIORRA. A tale of love, and the unlucky bastards that try to ignore it.
Spoilers: Up to where Orihime gets kidnapped. Afterwards, consider it AU.
Dedications: To angelshadows, my Orihime’s one and only Ulquiorra. Kun.
A/N: Thusly ends Arc 1 of this story. Yes, you heard me well. So, Ulquiorra’s not as adverse to friendship as I expected he would be. Might be because he wants to secretly fondle her boobies. Mmm, boobies. Anyway, yes. Is this rushed? Maybe. Do I care? No. Actually, I don’t think it’s rushed. Arc 2 will be more rushed and more in stills, with no determinate timeline. You’ll see.
Things to comment on: does Noitorra get punished? Fufufu, well. As soon as Ulquiorra’s possessive streak kicks in, yes. A lot, too. ^____^ Love him. Love him while you still can. Why is Aizen not in this as much? He’s irrelevant in this arc. This arc was about Orihime’s adaptation to Hueco Mundo, seen through the eyes of Ulquiorra. But Aizen will probably exist more, futurely. Along with Kaienkar and many more. Yes, Arrankar party is GO!
As for, if anyone is interested, my writing style: it’s weird. It’s a potpourri of Poe, Nabokov(Ulquiorra=Lolita??!), and dry humour, with serious inspiration from one fanfic author by the name of Sandra E(famous in InuYasha fandom, I think), and then some weird metaphors that I so love to use. But those are the inspirations and similitude. I like to think the writing style is all me. (If I ever manage to create a writing style that is all mine, I’ll die happy.) I invite you all to pick at it and try to find similarities with others. Go ahead. (Note: my author notes have to be shorter. No-one reads them anyway.)


{when in Rome}
[v. do like the Romans]

“Is there a moon in Hueco Mundo?” she asks one morning—or at least she thinks it’s morning.

“Probably.” He’s not sure of it himself, he never pays attention to these small things. Maybe there is. Maybe not. To him time passes on account of ‘mission, rest, mission, report, rest, obey’. As Arrankars, as Espadas, the need to eat or sleep is minimal. He can go on days without resting, though lately he’s finding himself sleeping more and more. Perhaps it’s his body, warning him of future fights.

Then again, perhaps it’s her mouth and blabbering that tire him.

“I’m forgetting how the sky looks like,” she says, then looks into her cup of tea.

Well. That’s…a subtle way of getting the point across. Unfortunately for her, Ulquiorra ignores the hint, waving as it passes by. “The window is big enough.”

Orihime rolls her eyes like one rolls through a field of posies—everything in quick, fluttering movements, as quick as a bird. And behold, her prim white cage. “Please? Not even for a little time? Just a walk…just a stretch of legs…”

“The outside is full of Hollows that are just waiting for a human soul upon which to feast,” he says, closing the discussion.

Something in the way her eyes shine tell him she’s just caught him in some sort of trap. “Well, not if you’re with me…” she says in a very sing-song voice.

Ulquiorra, if he could, would chose this particular moment to sigh with irritation and disdain—at the same time, over the fact that he just lost. Well, almost.

“Please?”

He considers her for a moment.

Weights the options, the pros the cons. She’s pale, distraught, her laughs aren’t many enough, she’s been awfully quiet these last days, she’s getting thinner, looking like a woman in a cage, or maybe it was a bird, or maybe it already died. And the cons. Well.

He can’t find any.

So with artful movement of his body, he raises and gives her a look, entailing that she should do the same. Ulquiorra might agree to let her go on a walk, but he will not say it out loud. It would be something like giving her a free way to ask for everything. And he doesn’t want to give her everything. Not today, nor any other day, night, morning or evening. Ever.

“Thank you, Ulquiorra-san,” she says, once they’re outside. She’s carefully at his side, not wanting to tempt any of the Hollows to come bite her ankles or something of the sort. (They’re not interesting ankles, anyway, Ulquiorra decides.)

But something doesn’t fit. There’s a misplaced piece in the puzzle. She should be giddy, and skipping in joy, and laughing. She isn’t. she’s walking, quiet, looking at the sky, the ground, the—“oh, so there is a moon—, her shoes, his, her hands, his zanpakuto, the white walls of the castle they’re walking alongside, the sky again. She sighs.

He, surprisingly, reluctantly, unwontedly worries.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, so quiet that she probably thinks she’s imagined it. He probably thinks the same.

“Nothing,” she answers, fiddling with the sleeves of her white dress—oh, if her human friends were to see her now, caged-woman-child, walking with the death, wearing a traitor’s clothes, shy and obedient and just not right.

“Orihime.”

She looks up at him, like a deer in the spotlight—if Ulquiorra knew what deer looked like, that is—blinking and blushing a bit, just a bit at the edge of her collar. Hm.

It’s a pretty colour.

Focus. “What’s wrong?” he demands.

She pauses. She stops. Biting at her lower lip, she stares at the walls, at her prison. And then to the horizon, escape, impossible and close. Then to him, and with a resigned sigh, answers: “Everything.”

“Start with the simple parts.”

“I…don’t like my room…”

“Hm. Why?”

“Because he knows where it is.”

Ulquiorra has a feeling he knows who this ‘he’ is. He has a feeling Noitorra will end up in a bloody pulp somewhere. Anywhere, really. Las Noches is big. And Ulquiorra is creative.

“And…I don’t know…I’m homesick, I miss the sun, the fresh air, the…just…everything. I’d give a year of my life for a day in the sun, near a tree. Near anything, really. Near anything alive, you know?”

He understands her. Marginally, he does. In a way, he supposes, Orihime’s treating him not only as her guard, but as some sort of confidant. A friend amongst enemies. Even if the only friend turns out to be the most dangerous of said enemies. It’s just as well, he is starting to minimally like her.

No use denying it.

He doesn’t feel like drowning in any proverbial river in Egypt.

If Inoue Orihime, the woman-child, the prisoner, the girl in a cage, is vulnerable to suffering a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome, then he, Ulquiorra, the Espada, the soulless statue, el Cuarto, the enemy, is probably going to suffer the same, only for the kidnapper. If there is such a syndrome.

It’s this prospect what makes him grab her wrist, and open up a portal. It’s this imminent fall what makes him not give a damn as he takes her into a green meadow, somewhere in a country named New Zeeland, far from her home, in the green, in the sun, so she can laugh. And she does. They stay there for a few hours, he informs her that no, he can’t get a sunburn, while she laughs—like bells, like bubbles, like everything around her—and runs through the grass, and rolls on the floor, and looks at the sun, until it almost blinds her.

Then he returns them to the dark, but her face doesn’t fall. She holds herself close to him, her hands brushing against his hakama every now and then. She looks up at him, and grin, and says thank you, and means it, and suddenly, Ulquiorra doesn’t want to sleep anymore. He wants to be awake for the next smiles.

Unfortunately, later, after he’s left her in her room, he exits and closes his eyes, because: Aizen-sama knows of this trip, unauthorized. He will want to talk to him. Now. So Ulquiorra concentrates, focuses on pushing all the important things, all those details that would get him stripped of his charge, potentially killed too, he puts them in the back of his head, away from his eye’s memory. Those will be for later, for him.

And an hour later, he walks back to his room—fate has it that it’s so close to hers—his eye, bleeding and gapping open, and missing. It stings, and burns, just like the wound near his stomach. The price of their little trip.

Orihime, apprarently, knows the sounds of his footsteps, because suddenly she’s in the hallways, fretting over him, looking guilty as she pulls him into her room, opens his shirt, and heals the wound up. Her shield is warm. Warm and orange.

He almost falls asleep there.

“Would you like me to heal the eye?” she asks, afterwards.

He wants to say ‘please’. He wants to say ‘yes’, because why should he suffer, when all he’s done is give this broken doll a few moments of happiness? “No,” he says instead, and she understands.

“I’m sorry,” she says as she walks him to her door.

“Don’t.” He turns to watch her for a moment, in the doorway. “Goodnight.”

“Wait,” she says, and holds his wrists as she lifts herself up, and does the queerest little thing.

This is what Ulquiorra thinks, they call a kiss. Hm. He’s seen girls doing this to boys in his missions to Earth, and wondered why the hell they got red when they did so. It’s only a press of her lips, against the skin of his cheek. Right on the tear-mark that glares a striking emerald there.

And.

Oh.

So this is why they blushed. “Thank you,” she whispers, lips brushing against his skin.

He pulls away, as if burned, but curious at the same time. “Goodnight, Orihime,” he says, and leaves.

He can’t decide if he wants more, or nothing else.