Winter War - Orihime: Into First Gear
Title: Winter War - Orihime: Into First Gear
Authors: incandescens
Characters: Orihime, Hisagi, Ikkaku, Ichigo, Nanao, lots of others
Rating/Warning: PG-13.
Notes: This is a dark AU co-plotted with sophiap and liralen. The war against Aizen's forces went very badly. Nothing is sacred and no one is safe.
Summary: Lies are lies, belief is belief, and it is a bad idea to stand around arguing while in enemy territory.
Index of Links
[...]
26. Ensemble: Mad Science In Motion
27. Momo, Isane: We Have Met the Enemy
28. Iba: Defense
29. Ensemble: Retaking Seireitei
30. Ensemble: Who Are You?
ORIHIME: INTO FIRST GEAR
There had been no night, because there was never night inside these walls, and therefore there was no morning either. And that meant no eggs and bacon, or hot miso soup, or coffee, or orange juice with chocolate cereal, or maybe peppered smoked mackerel with avocado and scrambled egg, and possibly stuffed peppers on the side with homous and black treacle.
Orihime had nothing against tea, but it was so boring with nothing else to go with it. There had been one brief, glorious, fascinating episode a couple of days ago when she’d managed to get her own meal from the servants. Ulquiorra had been looking into Grimmjow’s disappearance again, and he’d left her to take care of herself for the morning.
Even ordering her own choice of food had been a rebellion of sorts.
At the moment it seemed as far away as everything else - as far away as Karakura, as Soul Society, as everything outside these walls - as she sat here, staring at Ulquiorra as he stared at the wall, and failing to think of any topics of conversation that he would answer. It was like being in a very boring class at school, something where you had to stay alert and listen to what the teacher was saying in case they suddenly asked you a question about it, so you couldn’t think about other things or plot stuff in the margin of your exercise book or even stare at the blackboard while working out details of -
“Woman,” Ulquiorra said.
“Yes?” Orihime said politely. “Is there anything?”
He looked at her with those depthless green eyes, and she knew, she absolutely knew that he was trying to decide why she was suddenly more cheerful. She hadn’t meant to give it away. She tried to look depressed but at the same time meaningfully loyal.
Someone knocked on the door. It was a fairly timid knock, but determined to make itself heard. Ulquiorra clearly paused his train of thought to stare at the door for a moment, before saying, “Come in.”
The door inched open, and a young female Arrancar inched into the room after it. She looked dishevelled and battered: her crest of hair was flattened, her clothing torn, and she had long scrapes along her arms and her left leg. She was also soaking wet. “Ulquiorra-sama, I beg pardon for disturbing you --“
“Get on with it,” Ulquiorra said, monotone, with a barely hidden and it would not take more than a moment for me to kill you, so kindly do not waste my time.
“Harribel-sama’s gone mad!” the Arrancar blurted out. “She attacked Hisagi-sama - he’s really badly hurt, I came to ask for the honoured guest’s help in healing him. We’ve got someone from Fourth Division, but he’s not very useful and Hisagi-sama needs help now and I’m sure Aizen-sama wouldn’t want Hisagi-sama to die and -“
“Quiet,” Ulquiorra said. His brows drew together in a frown. “You say that Harribel attacked him?”
The little Arrancar nodded. Drops of water splashed to the floor as her head bobbed up and down. “She came smashing in through his door. She wasn’t making any sense, she said that she wasn’t going to wait any longer, that she was going to kill all the other Espada and then Aizen-sama, but I think she thought he was dead after she hit him, because then she turned around and went -“
“Stop babbling,” Ulquiorra cut in. “The other Espada. Indeed.” He didn’t quite smile, but there was a subtle air of satisfaction about him. “That explains Grimmjow’s disappearance. Which direction did she go in?”
The Arrancar frowned. “I think she was heading towards the west quarters, Ulquiorra-sama. Please, Hisagi-sama is very badly hurt . . .”
Ulquiorra rose to his feet. “Woman.” Both Orihime and the Arrancar looked at him. He indicated Orihime. “You will accompany this servitor and preserve Hisagi’s life. If you are attacked, you have permission to defend yourself. If Aizen-sama comes out of seclusion and speaks to you, inform him of what has happened and tell him that I am locating Harribel. Is that understood?”
Orihime nodded, getting to her feet. “Yes,” she said, with mingled emotions. She didn’t like Hisagi - well, how could she, after he’d betrayed Soul Society? - but it still depressed her to think of him hurt like that. She hardly knew Harribel either. The female Espada had always swept past her, or looked at her with an assessing and despising eye, but never actually bothered to speak to her, with Ayasegawa-san following behind her and not even noticing that Orihime existed. That raised a thought. “Was - was Ayasegawa-san with her?”
Ulquiorra gave her the faint nod which indicated that she had done something intelligent. He turned to the Arrancar. “Well, was he?”
The little Arrancar gulped. She looked nervous. “I didn’t see him . . . there was all this water, and Harribel-sama’s reiatsu was so strong that I couldn’t really tell anything else or anyone else, but I suppose he might have been there. I don’t know . . .”
Ulquiorra looked at her disapprovingly. “Pitiful.”
Before he could say (or do) any more, Orihime quickly raised a hand for his attention. “Please may I go to Hisagi at once? If he’s that badly hurt, then I need to see to him as fast as possible. I’m sure Aizen-sama doesn’t want him dead.” Well, she didn’t think he did. Hisagi had still been alive up to this morning, after all.
“You are probably correct,” Ulquiorra agreed, with a scornfully dismissive sneer. “Humans are weak. See to it.” Having neatly turned her request into an order from him, he strode to the door, his reiatsu already gathering in a cold prickle around him like winter fog.
“This way, honoured guest,” the little Arrancar said, venturing to tug at Orihime’s sleeve. “Please hurry.”
Orihime ran after the Arrancar along the white corridors. “What’s your name?” she gasped.
“Pagally,” the Arrancar called, fretting from foot to foot, clearly wanting to go faster. “Please, honoured guest, Hisagi-sama was so badly hurt, he was bleeding all over!”
“But you’ve got someone from Fourth Division there -“
“Yes, but he said he could only just keep him alive! That Harribel-sama had done horrible damage to him! That all his organs were going to fail!”
Orihime frowned. Harribel must have a really nasty Resurrecion. “I’ll do what I can,” she promised.
As they approached Hisagi’s office, she began to see damage. There were cracks in the walls and ceiling, and water pooled in slow ripples along the floor. It somehow stole the perfect sheen from the glossy ivory of Hueco Mundo, leaving it looking shabby and faded. Orihime was panting now from trying to keep up with Pagally, but she couldn’t let herself fall behind. A few seconds might be the difference between life and death for Hisagi.
She gasped in shock when she came into the corridor that opened on Hisagi’s office. There was barely anything of it left. Walls had been shattered and doorways smashed open, and the whole area looked like a hollowed-out eggshell, with only the ceiling and floor whole.
“We moved him into the back room of his office,” Pagally said, eyeing Orihime as if she didn’t quite believe in her, or believe that she was here. “He said -“
“He can talk!” Orihime broke in. That took a weight off her mind. If he was still able to speak, then she probably could save him. “You didn’t say that! Quick, take me through to him!”
“I was just about to do that,” Pagally grumbled. She grabbed Orihime’s hand and towed her round mounds of rubble and wide puddles. “Through here . . .” She rapped several times, oddly rhythmically, on the battered door in front of them. “It’s Pagally! And I’ve got Inoue-san!”
The door swung open so fast that Orihime thought it must have been yanked open. Hisagi was standing there! He grabbed Pagally by one shoulder and Orihime by the other, and tugged them both into the room, as Yadomaru Lisa slammed the door shut again.
There were other people standing around the room, but Orihime’s first concern was for the one who ought to be lying on the ground and bleeding. “Hisagi-san, are you sure you’re all right? If you’re badly hurt -“
“Not now,” Hisagi said, and though he was clearly battered and untidy and soaked through, and a cut along the side of his head was still raw and unhealed, he was smiling. “Inoue-san, there’s someone here who needs to see you. Inoue-san . . .” He turned her to face to her right. “Inoue-san.”
Orihime felt her mouth dropping open as though it belonged to someone else as she took in who it was standing there. He was in black shinigami clothing, and like everyone else in the room he was wet and bruised, but she would have known him out of a thousand others, no, out of a million others.
He took her in his arms and held her against his shoulder. “Orihime-chan, it’s all right, it’s all right,” he was saying, and she was crying, all the great hurting tears that she would never have cried in front of Ulquiorra or Aizen, for in the shelter of his arms it was all right to be weak, it was understood, it was forgiven. Her big brother was here at last and she was safe.
With an effort she pulled away from him - a little, just enough so that she could turn around and look at the others - and saw who was there. Hisagi. That Ise woman who followed Kyouraku-taichou around. Ikkaku from Eleventh, and Yumichika looking much more alert and awake than he had been for ages now. Hanatarou. The Yadomaru Lisa woman. Grimmjow. (Grimmjow? Well, there must be some reason for it being Grimmjow. Perhaps he was being a rebel?) Some other people she didn’t know. “How do we get out of here?” she asked. “I may be able to get us past the gates, I don’t have any real authority but only the Espada would actually contradict me nowadays -“
Her brother squeezed her shoulder. “Orihime-chan, we’re not going quite yet.”
“We’re... not?” Her lower lip trembled. She knew that she should be brave, should have been brave, but it was very difficult. She bit the inside of her cheek. “No, I understand. We have to do something about this place.” Maybe that sounded adult and mature and not wanting to cry. She hoped so.
“You’ve been very strong,” her brother said. “We just need you to hold on a little longer . . .”
That did start her crying again. She turned back against him, trying to hide her face from the world. “I haven’t,” she sobbed into his chest. “I haven’t done anything, I came here because he said that they would kill you all if I didn’t, and then everyone came here because of me and it was all my fault that they were killed or hurt, and everything I do helps them, and -“
“Fuck that,” a familiar voice snarled. Someone grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her round, dragging her away from Sora and making her squeak. It was Grimmjow. “Look, girl, I did not come here to hear you bitch about Aizen. If I wanted to hear people bitch about Aizen, I could just sit down with this load of morons and have my ears full of it.”
“Yeah, we all know what his ears are full of,” Ikkaku remarked aside to Yumichika.
“Right now I need some healing. Look at me.” Grimmjow shook her by the shoulder he was holding. “I mean, what the fuck, that bitch managed to cut me before she went down, and I want some patching up before I get some of my own back against Kurosaki or Aizen.”
Orihime blinked at his wide chest. It was streaked with blood from a long shallow slash. But there was something missing. “You haven’t got a hole,” she said in wonder.
Grimmjow made a noise between his teeth like a tiger exploding if it had been coupled up with a steam boiler. Probably the nozzle would have to go in at the mouth. “No. I. Have. Not. FUCKING. GOT. A HOLE. And you know why, girl? It’s because you fucking did it to me!”
“I cleansed you?” she said slowly.
“You did this to me!” He slammed his free hand against his stomach in a way that reminded her of how the boys at school used to punch each other in the stomach to show how manly they were. “Just look at it!”
“You let go of my sister!” Sora declared angrily.
“Not till she’s fixed me,” Grimmjow snarled back.
“Fixed you how?” Orihime said timidly. She scrubbed at her eyes with one white sleeve. “I mean, I’m not sure I can un-cleanse you, and even if you want me to, wouldn’t that mean you’d just go and try to kill us all over again? I don’t think it would be very sensible of me to do that?”
Grimmjow’s face twisted into an even more ferocious scowl. Pointy teeth showed. Finally, he said, “Fix this fucking wound, of course. What did you think I meant?”
“Oh!” Orihime was greatly relieved. “I had completely the wrong impression, I’m so very sorry. Please just stand there a moment while I fix it, and then I’ll see to everyone else. I’m very sorry, you should have said that you wanted me to help.”
Small tasks. Little steps. If she looked at it that way, then perhaps she could make herself walk along the path back into danger without actually thinking about it.
“Orihime-chan, it’ll only be for a little while -“ Sora began, but then Ikkaku said something to him and the two of them began to talk quietly in the corner (Ikkaku had pulled Sora over there) and Orihime was too busy concentrating on rejecting Grimmjow’s wound to listen.
She couldn’t help being very proud of how her brother had become a shinigami and was on this mission. She’d tell him so, once they had a moment to themselves.
“I don’t mind her healing me,” said Pagally, looking rather smug. “It’s not as if she’s a shinigami, after all.” She bit back an so she won’t do anything horrible to me but Orihime couldn’t help hearing it.
“Keep on working while I brief you,” Ise said. She looked at Orihime assessingly. “You can heal while listening to me, I think?”
Orihime nodded. “For something like this, certainly. I mean, it’s nothing too serious. For serious stuff I would have to focus harder. What - what are we going to do next?”
“What we’re going to ‘do’ is Aizen, right?” Grimmjow snarled.
“Technically yes,” Ise said. “In practice, by degrees. First we need to enter his private laboratories.” She must have seen Orihime’s face go pale. Orihime was sure that everyone in the room could see it. “We think some Captains are prisoners there,” she went on. “If we can free them, we will be that much stronger.”
Orihime moved her hand parallel to the wound on Grimmjow’s chest, and watched as it slowly sealed up, rather than have to look at Ise. “He’s never taken me in there,” she said, keeping her voice as calm and mature as she could. “I can’t tell you anything about what’s in there or who might be a prisoner. I only knew that Sado was a prisoner and Kuchiki-san had been killed and Ishida-kun . . .” She had to bite back tears again.
“I’m sorry,” Ise said gently. “We would have come earlier if we could.”
Orihime stopped herself from saying Why didn’t you? but it hung in the air between them.
“Done,” Grimmjow announced. He stepped away from her, grabbed Hisagi by the shoulder, and pulled him over. “Here, finish this guy off while you’re at it, girl. It’s not like he’s got my strength.”
Hisagi glared at Grimmjow. Grimmjow smirked back at him, then began to prowl round the room, kicking idly at chunks of rubble.
But his interruption had broken the mood. Orihime was in control of herself again. “But how do you plan to get into his laboratories?” she asked. Maybe it was a deep secret plan involving disguising themselves as a new set of Espada who were going to fight to the death for Aizen’s approval.
Ise fiddled with her glasses. “Have you ever tried reversing kidou with your powers, Inoue-san?”
Orihime pursed her lips, and thought about it, and mended some of Hisagi’s bruises. “I don’t think so,” she said. “But I suppose technically it’s like refusing anything else, isn’t it? I mean, if I can reject damage to people, and shield people from being attacked, then I suppose I can reject kidou in general. I was able to shield myself when Kuchiki-san threw practice blasts at me. So I suppose yes, I have.”
“Excellent,” Ise said, and a gleam of satisfaction flashed across her glasses. “Then you should be able to undo the kidou locks on the laboratory.”
Orihime bit her lip uncertainly. “Are you sure?”
“Of course!” Hisagi said. There was a glow to him that Orihime hadn’t seen in a long time. She’d come across him now and again through the months - or was it years? - that she’d been here, but she hadn’t seen him like this before. Not . . . happy. “And that explains why Aizen wanted to keep you here, Inoue-san. Yamamoto-soutaichou said so.”
“Said what?” Ise demanded.
“His pattern,” Hisagi explained. “Whenever Aizen came across something that might be a potential threat to him, he always tried to get it under his control. He was always very -“
“Thrifty?” Ise suggested.
“Paranoid,” Hisagi said with a sigh. ”And not was. Is. We should be moving.”
“Something of a control obsessive,” Ise said. She settled her glasses precisely on her nose and neatened her sleeves. “The sort of person who has to have everything exactly as planned, precisely as organised, every detail under their control . . . why are you looking at me like that, Ayasegawa?”
“You’d really be very pretty if you did something with your hair, Ise-fukutaichou,” Yumichika said a little too quickly.
“But what about everyone else?” Orihime asked. “And you haven’t told me what happened to all the other shinigami who I saw earlier . . . I mean . . .” She looked from Hisagi to Ise, her pulse hammering in her ears. She’d liked all those other people. Rangiku. Ukitake. Hitsugaya. “Please?”
“Ukitake-taichou’s taking out Ichimaru while Soifon-taichou leads the attack on Seireitei,” her brother said, turning away from Ikkaku. “It’s all been planned out, Orihime-chan. These people are professional shinigami.”
“Like you, dumbass,” Ikkaku said, and hit her brother on the shoulder in his playful way. “But yeah. We’ve got a plan. And rescue operations which have got a plan have it ten to one over rescue operations that don’t have any plan. Zaraki-taichou always had a plan.”
“The man’s idea of a plan was to charge in screaming with his sword drawn,” one of the shinigami that Orihime didn’t know said frostily.
“So? That’s still a plan, right?” Ikkaku said.
“So what is the anti-Aizen plan?” Orihime asked hopefully.
The room was suddenly quiet as everyone paused their conversations to listen.
“We’re gonna kill him,” Grimmjow said. “See, it’s nice and simple. First we get everyone together. Then we kill him.”
Unfortunate honesty made Orihime speak her thoughts aloud. “But if you got hurt just fighting Harribel now, Grimmjow-san, and she wasn’t as powerful as Aizen, then how are you -“
Grimmjow surged forward and grabbed her shoulder. His fingers bit into her. “You are not gonna talk to me like that,” he spat in her face. “It was you who got me into this in the first place -“
“Hey!” Ikkaku punched Grimmjow. He stumbled back, dragging Orihime with him. “Let go of the girl -“
“Watch the door,” Hisagi said briefly to Pagally, who nodded, eyes wide and nervous, and hurried over to lean beside it, her ear to the wall.
“This is ridiculous,” Ise snapped. “Would you kindly -“
The back wall didn’t blow apart, it shredded apart, fragmenting into dust and tiny pieces that blew through the room like hail. Kurosaki-kun was standing there, his mask smiling and his sword drawn. “Cool,” he said. “It’s a party and I finally got an invitation.”
“The universe hates us,” Yadomaru Lisa said, rolling her eyes. “Why does this keep on happening?”
Orihime thought very hard. Grimmjow had let go of her shoulder, which helped. There were several possible courses of action.
Option one: tell Kurosaki-kun everything and hope that he would spontaneously revert to the proper Kurosaki Ichigo he’d always been before. Problem: this might not work.
Option two: tell Kurosaki-kun it was a fancy dress party. Problem: this might not work either.
Option three: play on Kurosaki-kun’s current over-excited state and try and get him to fight Aizen. Problem: it might not work and she didn’t think that it was good to encourage that sort of attitude anyhow.
Option four: let the shinigami sort Kurosaki-kun out. That was probably safer anyhow, the last few months had only proven how useless she was, she’d just mess things up if she interfered, it would be better to stand back and just heal people or shield people when she was told to . . .
But what if that didn’t work?
“Right,” Yadomaru Lisa said, stepping forward. She spun her weapon - surely she hadn’t been holding it a moment ago - carelessly in her hand, ignoring the pike’s weight. “Remember last time, Kurosaki? When we were teaching you how to control that side of you that’s in control? We locked you up and thrashed you till you could handle it. Now I’m not saying that we can’t do it again -“
“You know you can’t, bitch,” Kurosaki-kun sneered.
“- but is this really what you want, right here, right now?” She gestured round at the others. “I’ll be honest with you, Kurosaki. None of us ever went as far as you’ve done and came out the other side. But whoever you are now, you can at least think, so chew on this one. Who are you really in this to fight?”
Kurosaki-kun pointed his sword at her. It was as big and imposing as usual. If anything, it was bigger. “I’m here to fight whoever’s strongest. You claiming that honour?”
“Don’t be fucking ridiculous.” Grimmjow came crowding forward, strutting like a tomcat about to lift his tail and show his hindquarters. “Kurosaki - if it’s really Kurosaki behind that crap on your face -“
“More Kurosaki than you’ve ever really known, you piece of trash,” Kurosaki-kun snapped back.
“Yeah, fine, shove it up your ass and piss on it.” Grimmjow wasn’t bothering to draw his sword. He settled his fists on his hips. “See, kid, there’s something that you’re not getting here. I may have served Aizen, but I was never his fucking lapdog, and right now, that’s what you are. And if you want me to be honest about it . . .” He gave a shrug. “I’d rather fight you like you used to be. You were more of a challenge that way. Go on. Rip that mask off and give me some shit about how you’re going to protect someone. You want me to threaten your pretty redhead here? Would that make you hot for a real fight?”
“I’ll take you apart and grind what’s left into the dust,” Kurosaki-kun promised. His eyes burned lambent yellow. “Nobody takes what’s mine.”
“Now when the hell did you start talking like that?” Ikkaku strolled forward, almost lazily, his spear naked in his hand. “I was the one you met first in Soul Society, Kurosaki. You remember that? And you were a stupid kid, and you’re still a stupid kid, but you had one thing right then. A man stands by his friends. And they’re not your property, asswipe. You don’t stick by them because you own them. You stick by them because they’re your people. Now maybe a Hollow doesn’t understand that, but Kurosaki Ichigo would. But the person I’m looking at right now, he has been sitting here in Hueco Mundo and living the high life while his friends got hurt and tortured and fucking killed.” The muscles in his arm stood out as he gripped his zanpakutou. “You sat by, you asshole, and you let Inoue and Sado and all the rest of them get broken, and you did nothing. So I’m going to talk to you like a big brother should. Get your head in order. Or I am going to fucking break it for you.”
Kurosaki-kun threw his head back and laughed, a high cackling screech. “You all try and try, but you don’t get it. He’s gone. He’s lost. He gave up. I’m the only one here to talk to.”
“No,” a new voice said, and Orihime turned to see her own brother stepping forward. “I was a Hollow once.” He was shivering with the force of Kurosaki-kun’s reiatsu, barely able to stand in the face of it. “I was. And now I’m myself again. I don’t care what you’re saying. You lie.”
“And you’re dead,” Kurosaki-kun said, and swung his sword, and black fire leaped out from it in a hideous wave of force, driving directly at Sora.
Time moved slowly. It moved so slowly that Orihime could see the crackling darkness burn through the air as it blasted towards Sora, could count each jumping heartbeat in the pulse in Sora’s throat as he opened his mouth to say something more. The world narrowed to her, and Sora, and Kurosaki-kun.
Twice she had lost her brother.
There was not going to be a third time.
She was not going to lose anyone else.
Her shields spread round Sora as she rejected the bolt of force. The impact made her stagger, but she kept her balance. “No,” she said. “No, Kurosaki-kun.”
“No, what?” he demanded. The others were silent.
“No to you.” She spread her hands towards him. “I want the real Kurosaki-kun back.”
“Fool girl.” He was sneering again. “I am the real Kurosaki-kun.”
Hollows lied. And shinigami lied. And living people lied, and dead people lied, and she herself had lied. What mattered now was what she believed. She didn’t believe this was the real Kurosaki-kun, even if he spoke with Kurosaki-kun’s voice and wielded his sword. Kurosaki-kun was more than this. People had to be more than the worst that they could be, or what was the point?
The real Kurosaki-kun was the one who had protected her and Kuchiki Rukia and Sado and Ishida and his sisters and his father and everyone else. The real Kurosaki-kun was her friend. Once before she had left him because she wanted to save him, and that had failed.
Well then, she’d just have to keep on saving him until she got it right.
“I reject,” she said, and her shields wrapped him tight in their bonds of light as she brought her will to bear on him.
She was afraid for Sora, and for all her friends here, and most of all for Kurosaki-kun himself, and that fear gave her strength. But sometimes the princess had to save the dragon, and sometimes she had to save the prince as well, and sometimes the princess and the dragon and the knight all teamed up together and went to argue with the person who’d written the story and complain about how they never got anything interesting and new to do.
Kurosaki-kun was screaming at her. He was screaming so hard that she couldn’t hear what he was saying.
“I’m sorry, Kurosaki-kun,” she whispered. She walked closer to him. The ground shivered under her feet. “We’re just going to have to keep on doing this until we manage to get it right. Don’t you remember what you told Kuchiki-kun -“
He screamed at her again.
“-the person being saved doesn’t get any say in the matter . . .”
“You can’t do this! Bitch! Bitch! He’s mine! This doesn’t count! I’m the one in charge! I’m the king now! I’ll kill you and I’ll make you pay! Orihime!” The voice that came through the mask’s lips dropped to a sly wheedle. “He let me ride him, he doesn’t want to be in charge any more - you’ll only hurt him if you bring him back. You’ll just hurt him. Let me go and I’ll leave you alone, I’ll let you go, he’d thank you for it if he knew . . .”
“You really don’t know Kurosaki-kun if you believe that about him,” Orihime said. She could feel sorry for the thing now as it begged her. Another step brought her close enough to touch him. “Come back, Kurosaki-kun. Your friends need you.”
“Weak pitiful fools . . .” The words drooled out of his mouth like acid. “Worthless creatures, and he’s the worst of them . . . You’ll regret this . . . I’ll rule him again, and when I do . . .”
Orihime laid her hands on his shoulders and focused her will to a blinding intensity. Kurosaki-kun was trembling, and for a moment, for one brief second, she knew that she was strong and he was weak, and that she could choose for him.
So she chose.
“I reject.”
The mask flaked from him and blew away in dust, leaving his face naked to them all. His eyes were brown again, as they should be, and he was weeping.
“You shouldn’t cry, Kurosaki-kun,” Orihime murmured. She was astonished at how weak and thin her voice suddenly seemed to be. She’d felt so strong just a few seconds ago! There was a great empty pounding in her head, and she really wanted to lie down for a few minutes. Ise and Yadomaru Lisa were helping her sit down in a chair that had appeared out of nowhere - maybe she had a new magical power now, she could summon chairs - and she wanted to tell them that she would be absolutely fine in just a moment, or had she already told them that? - and everything would be fine, everything would be wonderful, but Kurosaki-kun shouldn’t be crying like that. Kurosaki-kun didn’t cry.
Kurosaki-kun scrubbed his arm across his eyes, then glared around him furiously. “Crap,” he said, his voice hoarse and rusty. “I don’t . . . listen, I’m sorry, I know it’s not enough . . .”
“Then don’t try saying it,” Ikkaku said. “That’s not why we’re here, kid.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Ise asked Orihime, very nicely. She waved her hand in front of Orihime.
“Lots and lots,” Orihime said. She kept on trying to add two and two together and getting the wrong answer. “But it’s very pretty,” she added, in case she’d hurt Ise’s feelings.
“But I . . .” Kurosaki-kun ran his fingers through his hair.
“He doesn’t seem to be able to finish his sentences,” Orihime confided to Ise. “Perhaps I wasn’t able to heal him enough for that. Do you think I should give it another try?”
“Absolutely not!” Ise snapped. Her glasses were scary. “Inoue-san, for the moment I need you to just sit down and breathe deeply and try to relax. You’re showing all the signs of someone who’s overextended their personal power and is on the brink of collapse and . . . can you understand a word I’m saying?”
“Could you say it again more slowly?” Orihime asked hopefully.
Ise and Lisa exchanged glances. Lisa shrugged. “Just because she’s not fitted with handles doesn’t mean she can’t be carried.”
“It was Zaraki,” Kurosaki-kun said. He was talking with Ikkaku and Yumichika, and their conversation seemed to have skipped several paragraphs while Orihime wasn’t looking. It was very sneaky of the universe to turn the pages while her attention was elsewhere. “He’d killed this big Espada who’d been fighting me -“
“The Captain would never break in on someone else’s fight,” Yumichika said disapprovingly.
“Well, yeah. See, I was going to go on and find Inoue-san. He told me to. And he killed the Espada. But then he looked at me and he started calling me Aizen.” Kurosaki-kun hunched his shoulders defensively. “And I looked round and I saw Aizen standing over to one side and I said look, he’s there, but Zaraki didn’t even hear what he was saying. He started attacking me. I had to fight back. I had to.”
“And that’s when that thing took control?” Ikkaku asked.
Kurosaki-kun sighed. “Yeah.”
“So it saved your life?”
“Well . . .” Kurosaki-kun didn’t seem to know where to look. “I don’t know. I was trying to get through to Zaraki, but he kept on calling me Aizen, and Yachiru didn’t even seem to see that there was a fight going on, and . . .” He trailed off again. “I killed him,” he finally said. “I killed him.”
Ikkaku and Yumichika looked at each other. Ikkaku slowly nodded, as though a suspicion had been confirmed, but he really didn’t look surprised.
Yumichika tossed his head. “I suppose I did know, but I didn’t think to care,” he said. “I make no excuses. The bitch had me in her masterful grip and I was weak.”
“I’d say that shows just how bad she did have you,” Ikkaku said. Then he punched Kurosaki-kun in the shoulder. “It’s the way he’d have wanted to go.”
“Madarame is quite right,” Yumichika said, though he didn’t punch Kurosaki-kun. “You were strong enough to beat the Captain. He went down in a proper fight. He wouldn’t have asked for anything better. Aizen was the one responsible.”
“Yeah,” Ikkaku said. “You want to be a dumbass and blame yourself, do it on your own time. Right now we’ve got something to do. You in?”
“What is it?” Kurosaki-kun asked numbly.
“Kill Aizen.”
“Oh.” Kurosaki-kun raised his head again, and his eyes were suddenly focused, his posture firm and ready. “Oh yes. I’m in.”
He looked so intense, so determined. Orihime wanted to believe in him. But at the same time, he looked so fragile, so barely in control, like cracked glass scarcely holding together over an inner core of fire.
“Inoue-san?” It was Ise again, checking her pulse. “Are you feeling any better?”
“I knew about Zaraki-taichou,” she said sleepily. She was very tired. Perhaps she’d feel better in a few minutes. “Ulquiorra took me to see the body. He wanted to make sure that he was dead. But it’s true, he was happy. He was smiling.”
Ise didn’t say anything, though her mouth tightened a little in what might have been disapproval, or dry understanding. Her hand tightened on Orihime’s wrist. “And Yachiru?”
“I don’t know about what happened to her,” Orihime said. A prickle of conscience speared her, not for the first time. “I asked, I did ask, but -“ It was suddenly very important to her that they all believe that she had at least tried.
“It’s all right,” Ise said, and released her wrist, standing up. “But we need to be moving, Inoue-san. We want to get out of here and into Aizen’s private laboratories before Ulquiorra thinks to come looking for you again.”
The thought of that made Orihime look over her shoulder nervously. “Shouldn’t we be going, then?”
Hisagi turned to the little Arrancar. “Pagally . . .”
“I can go on ahead first and check the corridors are clear,” Pagally said firmly, hands locked together behind her back. “I won’t - I can’t go in there again with you, but I can make sure that the way is clear for you to get there - I’ll do what I can -“
Hisagi nodded. “Thank you, Pagally. That is a great deal. People? Are we ready?”
“Ready and fucking bored with waiting,” Grimmjow said.
“Let’s go,” Kurosaki-kun said, and there were nods around the room.
---
Authors: incandescens
Characters: Orihime, Hisagi, Ikkaku, Ichigo, Nanao, lots of others
Rating/Warning: PG-13.
Notes: This is a dark AU co-plotted with sophiap and liralen. The war against Aizen's forces went very badly. Nothing is sacred and no one is safe.
Summary: Lies are lies, belief is belief, and it is a bad idea to stand around arguing while in enemy territory.
Index of Links
[...]
26. Ensemble: Mad Science In Motion
27. Momo, Isane: We Have Met the Enemy
28. Iba: Defense
29. Ensemble: Retaking Seireitei
30. Ensemble: Who Are You?
ORIHIME: INTO FIRST GEAR
There had been no night, because there was never night inside these walls, and therefore there was no morning either. And that meant no eggs and bacon, or hot miso soup, or coffee, or orange juice with chocolate cereal, or maybe peppered smoked mackerel with avocado and scrambled egg, and possibly stuffed peppers on the side with homous and black treacle.
Orihime had nothing against tea, but it was so boring with nothing else to go with it. There had been one brief, glorious, fascinating episode a couple of days ago when she’d managed to get her own meal from the servants. Ulquiorra had been looking into Grimmjow’s disappearance again, and he’d left her to take care of herself for the morning.
Even ordering her own choice of food had been a rebellion of sorts.
At the moment it seemed as far away as everything else - as far away as Karakura, as Soul Society, as everything outside these walls - as she sat here, staring at Ulquiorra as he stared at the wall, and failing to think of any topics of conversation that he would answer. It was like being in a very boring class at school, something where you had to stay alert and listen to what the teacher was saying in case they suddenly asked you a question about it, so you couldn’t think about other things or plot stuff in the margin of your exercise book or even stare at the blackboard while working out details of -
“Woman,” Ulquiorra said.
“Yes?” Orihime said politely. “Is there anything?”
He looked at her with those depthless green eyes, and she knew, she absolutely knew that he was trying to decide why she was suddenly more cheerful. She hadn’t meant to give it away. She tried to look depressed but at the same time meaningfully loyal.
Someone knocked on the door. It was a fairly timid knock, but determined to make itself heard. Ulquiorra clearly paused his train of thought to stare at the door for a moment, before saying, “Come in.”
The door inched open, and a young female Arrancar inched into the room after it. She looked dishevelled and battered: her crest of hair was flattened, her clothing torn, and she had long scrapes along her arms and her left leg. She was also soaking wet. “Ulquiorra-sama, I beg pardon for disturbing you --“
“Get on with it,” Ulquiorra said, monotone, with a barely hidden and it would not take more than a moment for me to kill you, so kindly do not waste my time.
“Harribel-sama’s gone mad!” the Arrancar blurted out. “She attacked Hisagi-sama - he’s really badly hurt, I came to ask for the honoured guest’s help in healing him. We’ve got someone from Fourth Division, but he’s not very useful and Hisagi-sama needs help now and I’m sure Aizen-sama wouldn’t want Hisagi-sama to die and -“
“Quiet,” Ulquiorra said. His brows drew together in a frown. “You say that Harribel attacked him?”
The little Arrancar nodded. Drops of water splashed to the floor as her head bobbed up and down. “She came smashing in through his door. She wasn’t making any sense, she said that she wasn’t going to wait any longer, that she was going to kill all the other Espada and then Aizen-sama, but I think she thought he was dead after she hit him, because then she turned around and went -“
“Stop babbling,” Ulquiorra cut in. “The other Espada. Indeed.” He didn’t quite smile, but there was a subtle air of satisfaction about him. “That explains Grimmjow’s disappearance. Which direction did she go in?”
The Arrancar frowned. “I think she was heading towards the west quarters, Ulquiorra-sama. Please, Hisagi-sama is very badly hurt . . .”
Ulquiorra rose to his feet. “Woman.” Both Orihime and the Arrancar looked at him. He indicated Orihime. “You will accompany this servitor and preserve Hisagi’s life. If you are attacked, you have permission to defend yourself. If Aizen-sama comes out of seclusion and speaks to you, inform him of what has happened and tell him that I am locating Harribel. Is that understood?”
Orihime nodded, getting to her feet. “Yes,” she said, with mingled emotions. She didn’t like Hisagi - well, how could she, after he’d betrayed Soul Society? - but it still depressed her to think of him hurt like that. She hardly knew Harribel either. The female Espada had always swept past her, or looked at her with an assessing and despising eye, but never actually bothered to speak to her, with Ayasegawa-san following behind her and not even noticing that Orihime existed. That raised a thought. “Was - was Ayasegawa-san with her?”
Ulquiorra gave her the faint nod which indicated that she had done something intelligent. He turned to the Arrancar. “Well, was he?”
The little Arrancar gulped. She looked nervous. “I didn’t see him . . . there was all this water, and Harribel-sama’s reiatsu was so strong that I couldn’t really tell anything else or anyone else, but I suppose he might have been there. I don’t know . . .”
Ulquiorra looked at her disapprovingly. “Pitiful.”
Before he could say (or do) any more, Orihime quickly raised a hand for his attention. “Please may I go to Hisagi at once? If he’s that badly hurt, then I need to see to him as fast as possible. I’m sure Aizen-sama doesn’t want him dead.” Well, she didn’t think he did. Hisagi had still been alive up to this morning, after all.
“You are probably correct,” Ulquiorra agreed, with a scornfully dismissive sneer. “Humans are weak. See to it.” Having neatly turned her request into an order from him, he strode to the door, his reiatsu already gathering in a cold prickle around him like winter fog.
“This way, honoured guest,” the little Arrancar said, venturing to tug at Orihime’s sleeve. “Please hurry.”
Orihime ran after the Arrancar along the white corridors. “What’s your name?” she gasped.
“Pagally,” the Arrancar called, fretting from foot to foot, clearly wanting to go faster. “Please, honoured guest, Hisagi-sama was so badly hurt, he was bleeding all over!”
“But you’ve got someone from Fourth Division there -“
“Yes, but he said he could only just keep him alive! That Harribel-sama had done horrible damage to him! That all his organs were going to fail!”
Orihime frowned. Harribel must have a really nasty Resurrecion. “I’ll do what I can,” she promised.
As they approached Hisagi’s office, she began to see damage. There were cracks in the walls and ceiling, and water pooled in slow ripples along the floor. It somehow stole the perfect sheen from the glossy ivory of Hueco Mundo, leaving it looking shabby and faded. Orihime was panting now from trying to keep up with Pagally, but she couldn’t let herself fall behind. A few seconds might be the difference between life and death for Hisagi.
She gasped in shock when she came into the corridor that opened on Hisagi’s office. There was barely anything of it left. Walls had been shattered and doorways smashed open, and the whole area looked like a hollowed-out eggshell, with only the ceiling and floor whole.
“We moved him into the back room of his office,” Pagally said, eyeing Orihime as if she didn’t quite believe in her, or believe that she was here. “He said -“
“He can talk!” Orihime broke in. That took a weight off her mind. If he was still able to speak, then she probably could save him. “You didn’t say that! Quick, take me through to him!”
“I was just about to do that,” Pagally grumbled. She grabbed Orihime’s hand and towed her round mounds of rubble and wide puddles. “Through here . . .” She rapped several times, oddly rhythmically, on the battered door in front of them. “It’s Pagally! And I’ve got Inoue-san!”
The door swung open so fast that Orihime thought it must have been yanked open. Hisagi was standing there! He grabbed Pagally by one shoulder and Orihime by the other, and tugged them both into the room, as Yadomaru Lisa slammed the door shut again.
There were other people standing around the room, but Orihime’s first concern was for the one who ought to be lying on the ground and bleeding. “Hisagi-san, are you sure you’re all right? If you’re badly hurt -“
“Not now,” Hisagi said, and though he was clearly battered and untidy and soaked through, and a cut along the side of his head was still raw and unhealed, he was smiling. “Inoue-san, there’s someone here who needs to see you. Inoue-san . . .” He turned her to face to her right. “Inoue-san.”
Orihime felt her mouth dropping open as though it belonged to someone else as she took in who it was standing there. He was in black shinigami clothing, and like everyone else in the room he was wet and bruised, but she would have known him out of a thousand others, no, out of a million others.
He took her in his arms and held her against his shoulder. “Orihime-chan, it’s all right, it’s all right,” he was saying, and she was crying, all the great hurting tears that she would never have cried in front of Ulquiorra or Aizen, for in the shelter of his arms it was all right to be weak, it was understood, it was forgiven. Her big brother was here at last and she was safe.
With an effort she pulled away from him - a little, just enough so that she could turn around and look at the others - and saw who was there. Hisagi. That Ise woman who followed Kyouraku-taichou around. Ikkaku from Eleventh, and Yumichika looking much more alert and awake than he had been for ages now. Hanatarou. The Yadomaru Lisa woman. Grimmjow. (Grimmjow? Well, there must be some reason for it being Grimmjow. Perhaps he was being a rebel?) Some other people she didn’t know. “How do we get out of here?” she asked. “I may be able to get us past the gates, I don’t have any real authority but only the Espada would actually contradict me nowadays -“
Her brother squeezed her shoulder. “Orihime-chan, we’re not going quite yet.”
“We’re... not?” Her lower lip trembled. She knew that she should be brave, should have been brave, but it was very difficult. She bit the inside of her cheek. “No, I understand. We have to do something about this place.” Maybe that sounded adult and mature and not wanting to cry. She hoped so.
“You’ve been very strong,” her brother said. “We just need you to hold on a little longer . . .”
That did start her crying again. She turned back against him, trying to hide her face from the world. “I haven’t,” she sobbed into his chest. “I haven’t done anything, I came here because he said that they would kill you all if I didn’t, and then everyone came here because of me and it was all my fault that they were killed or hurt, and everything I do helps them, and -“
“Fuck that,” a familiar voice snarled. Someone grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her round, dragging her away from Sora and making her squeak. It was Grimmjow. “Look, girl, I did not come here to hear you bitch about Aizen. If I wanted to hear people bitch about Aizen, I could just sit down with this load of morons and have my ears full of it.”
“Yeah, we all know what his ears are full of,” Ikkaku remarked aside to Yumichika.
“Right now I need some healing. Look at me.” Grimmjow shook her by the shoulder he was holding. “I mean, what the fuck, that bitch managed to cut me before she went down, and I want some patching up before I get some of my own back against Kurosaki or Aizen.”
Orihime blinked at his wide chest. It was streaked with blood from a long shallow slash. But there was something missing. “You haven’t got a hole,” she said in wonder.
Grimmjow made a noise between his teeth like a tiger exploding if it had been coupled up with a steam boiler. Probably the nozzle would have to go in at the mouth. “No. I. Have. Not. FUCKING. GOT. A HOLE. And you know why, girl? It’s because you fucking did it to me!”
“I cleansed you?” she said slowly.
“You did this to me!” He slammed his free hand against his stomach in a way that reminded her of how the boys at school used to punch each other in the stomach to show how manly they were. “Just look at it!”
“You let go of my sister!” Sora declared angrily.
“Not till she’s fixed me,” Grimmjow snarled back.
“Fixed you how?” Orihime said timidly. She scrubbed at her eyes with one white sleeve. “I mean, I’m not sure I can un-cleanse you, and even if you want me to, wouldn’t that mean you’d just go and try to kill us all over again? I don’t think it would be very sensible of me to do that?”
Grimmjow’s face twisted into an even more ferocious scowl. Pointy teeth showed. Finally, he said, “Fix this fucking wound, of course. What did you think I meant?”
“Oh!” Orihime was greatly relieved. “I had completely the wrong impression, I’m so very sorry. Please just stand there a moment while I fix it, and then I’ll see to everyone else. I’m very sorry, you should have said that you wanted me to help.”
Small tasks. Little steps. If she looked at it that way, then perhaps she could make herself walk along the path back into danger without actually thinking about it.
“Orihime-chan, it’ll only be for a little while -“ Sora began, but then Ikkaku said something to him and the two of them began to talk quietly in the corner (Ikkaku had pulled Sora over there) and Orihime was too busy concentrating on rejecting Grimmjow’s wound to listen.
She couldn’t help being very proud of how her brother had become a shinigami and was on this mission. She’d tell him so, once they had a moment to themselves.
“I don’t mind her healing me,” said Pagally, looking rather smug. “It’s not as if she’s a shinigami, after all.” She bit back an so she won’t do anything horrible to me but Orihime couldn’t help hearing it.
“Keep on working while I brief you,” Ise said. She looked at Orihime assessingly. “You can heal while listening to me, I think?”
Orihime nodded. “For something like this, certainly. I mean, it’s nothing too serious. For serious stuff I would have to focus harder. What - what are we going to do next?”
“What we’re going to ‘do’ is Aizen, right?” Grimmjow snarled.
“Technically yes,” Ise said. “In practice, by degrees. First we need to enter his private laboratories.” She must have seen Orihime’s face go pale. Orihime was sure that everyone in the room could see it. “We think some Captains are prisoners there,” she went on. “If we can free them, we will be that much stronger.”
Orihime moved her hand parallel to the wound on Grimmjow’s chest, and watched as it slowly sealed up, rather than have to look at Ise. “He’s never taken me in there,” she said, keeping her voice as calm and mature as she could. “I can’t tell you anything about what’s in there or who might be a prisoner. I only knew that Sado was a prisoner and Kuchiki-san had been killed and Ishida-kun . . .” She had to bite back tears again.
“I’m sorry,” Ise said gently. “We would have come earlier if we could.”
Orihime stopped herself from saying Why didn’t you? but it hung in the air between them.
“Done,” Grimmjow announced. He stepped away from her, grabbed Hisagi by the shoulder, and pulled him over. “Here, finish this guy off while you’re at it, girl. It’s not like he’s got my strength.”
Hisagi glared at Grimmjow. Grimmjow smirked back at him, then began to prowl round the room, kicking idly at chunks of rubble.
But his interruption had broken the mood. Orihime was in control of herself again. “But how do you plan to get into his laboratories?” she asked. Maybe it was a deep secret plan involving disguising themselves as a new set of Espada who were going to fight to the death for Aizen’s approval.
Ise fiddled with her glasses. “Have you ever tried reversing kidou with your powers, Inoue-san?”
Orihime pursed her lips, and thought about it, and mended some of Hisagi’s bruises. “I don’t think so,” she said. “But I suppose technically it’s like refusing anything else, isn’t it? I mean, if I can reject damage to people, and shield people from being attacked, then I suppose I can reject kidou in general. I was able to shield myself when Kuchiki-san threw practice blasts at me. So I suppose yes, I have.”
“Excellent,” Ise said, and a gleam of satisfaction flashed across her glasses. “Then you should be able to undo the kidou locks on the laboratory.”
Orihime bit her lip uncertainly. “Are you sure?”
“Of course!” Hisagi said. There was a glow to him that Orihime hadn’t seen in a long time. She’d come across him now and again through the months - or was it years? - that she’d been here, but she hadn’t seen him like this before. Not . . . happy. “And that explains why Aizen wanted to keep you here, Inoue-san. Yamamoto-soutaichou said so.”
“Said what?” Ise demanded.
“His pattern,” Hisagi explained. “Whenever Aizen came across something that might be a potential threat to him, he always tried to get it under his control. He was always very -“
“Thrifty?” Ise suggested.
“Paranoid,” Hisagi said with a sigh. ”And not was. Is. We should be moving.”
“Something of a control obsessive,” Ise said. She settled her glasses precisely on her nose and neatened her sleeves. “The sort of person who has to have everything exactly as planned, precisely as organised, every detail under their control . . . why are you looking at me like that, Ayasegawa?”
“You’d really be very pretty if you did something with your hair, Ise-fukutaichou,” Yumichika said a little too quickly.
“But what about everyone else?” Orihime asked. “And you haven’t told me what happened to all the other shinigami who I saw earlier . . . I mean . . .” She looked from Hisagi to Ise, her pulse hammering in her ears. She’d liked all those other people. Rangiku. Ukitake. Hitsugaya. “Please?”
“Ukitake-taichou’s taking out Ichimaru while Soifon-taichou leads the attack on Seireitei,” her brother said, turning away from Ikkaku. “It’s all been planned out, Orihime-chan. These people are professional shinigami.”
“Like you, dumbass,” Ikkaku said, and hit her brother on the shoulder in his playful way. “But yeah. We’ve got a plan. And rescue operations which have got a plan have it ten to one over rescue operations that don’t have any plan. Zaraki-taichou always had a plan.”
“The man’s idea of a plan was to charge in screaming with his sword drawn,” one of the shinigami that Orihime didn’t know said frostily.
“So? That’s still a plan, right?” Ikkaku said.
“So what is the anti-Aizen plan?” Orihime asked hopefully.
The room was suddenly quiet as everyone paused their conversations to listen.
“We’re gonna kill him,” Grimmjow said. “See, it’s nice and simple. First we get everyone together. Then we kill him.”
Unfortunate honesty made Orihime speak her thoughts aloud. “But if you got hurt just fighting Harribel now, Grimmjow-san, and she wasn’t as powerful as Aizen, then how are you -“
Grimmjow surged forward and grabbed her shoulder. His fingers bit into her. “You are not gonna talk to me like that,” he spat in her face. “It was you who got me into this in the first place -“
“Hey!” Ikkaku punched Grimmjow. He stumbled back, dragging Orihime with him. “Let go of the girl -“
“Watch the door,” Hisagi said briefly to Pagally, who nodded, eyes wide and nervous, and hurried over to lean beside it, her ear to the wall.
“This is ridiculous,” Ise snapped. “Would you kindly -“
The back wall didn’t blow apart, it shredded apart, fragmenting into dust and tiny pieces that blew through the room like hail. Kurosaki-kun was standing there, his mask smiling and his sword drawn. “Cool,” he said. “It’s a party and I finally got an invitation.”
“The universe hates us,” Yadomaru Lisa said, rolling her eyes. “Why does this keep on happening?”
Orihime thought very hard. Grimmjow had let go of her shoulder, which helped. There were several possible courses of action.
Option one: tell Kurosaki-kun everything and hope that he would spontaneously revert to the proper Kurosaki Ichigo he’d always been before. Problem: this might not work.
Option two: tell Kurosaki-kun it was a fancy dress party. Problem: this might not work either.
Option three: play on Kurosaki-kun’s current over-excited state and try and get him to fight Aizen. Problem: it might not work and she didn’t think that it was good to encourage that sort of attitude anyhow.
Option four: let the shinigami sort Kurosaki-kun out. That was probably safer anyhow, the last few months had only proven how useless she was, she’d just mess things up if she interfered, it would be better to stand back and just heal people or shield people when she was told to . . .
But what if that didn’t work?
“Right,” Yadomaru Lisa said, stepping forward. She spun her weapon - surely she hadn’t been holding it a moment ago - carelessly in her hand, ignoring the pike’s weight. “Remember last time, Kurosaki? When we were teaching you how to control that side of you that’s in control? We locked you up and thrashed you till you could handle it. Now I’m not saying that we can’t do it again -“
“You know you can’t, bitch,” Kurosaki-kun sneered.
“- but is this really what you want, right here, right now?” She gestured round at the others. “I’ll be honest with you, Kurosaki. None of us ever went as far as you’ve done and came out the other side. But whoever you are now, you can at least think, so chew on this one. Who are you really in this to fight?”
Kurosaki-kun pointed his sword at her. It was as big and imposing as usual. If anything, it was bigger. “I’m here to fight whoever’s strongest. You claiming that honour?”
“Don’t be fucking ridiculous.” Grimmjow came crowding forward, strutting like a tomcat about to lift his tail and show his hindquarters. “Kurosaki - if it’s really Kurosaki behind that crap on your face -“
“More Kurosaki than you’ve ever really known, you piece of trash,” Kurosaki-kun snapped back.
“Yeah, fine, shove it up your ass and piss on it.” Grimmjow wasn’t bothering to draw his sword. He settled his fists on his hips. “See, kid, there’s something that you’re not getting here. I may have served Aizen, but I was never his fucking lapdog, and right now, that’s what you are. And if you want me to be honest about it . . .” He gave a shrug. “I’d rather fight you like you used to be. You were more of a challenge that way. Go on. Rip that mask off and give me some shit about how you’re going to protect someone. You want me to threaten your pretty redhead here? Would that make you hot for a real fight?”
“I’ll take you apart and grind what’s left into the dust,” Kurosaki-kun promised. His eyes burned lambent yellow. “Nobody takes what’s mine.”
“Now when the hell did you start talking like that?” Ikkaku strolled forward, almost lazily, his spear naked in his hand. “I was the one you met first in Soul Society, Kurosaki. You remember that? And you were a stupid kid, and you’re still a stupid kid, but you had one thing right then. A man stands by his friends. And they’re not your property, asswipe. You don’t stick by them because you own them. You stick by them because they’re your people. Now maybe a Hollow doesn’t understand that, but Kurosaki Ichigo would. But the person I’m looking at right now, he has been sitting here in Hueco Mundo and living the high life while his friends got hurt and tortured and fucking killed.” The muscles in his arm stood out as he gripped his zanpakutou. “You sat by, you asshole, and you let Inoue and Sado and all the rest of them get broken, and you did nothing. So I’m going to talk to you like a big brother should. Get your head in order. Or I am going to fucking break it for you.”
Kurosaki-kun threw his head back and laughed, a high cackling screech. “You all try and try, but you don’t get it. He’s gone. He’s lost. He gave up. I’m the only one here to talk to.”
“No,” a new voice said, and Orihime turned to see her own brother stepping forward. “I was a Hollow once.” He was shivering with the force of Kurosaki-kun’s reiatsu, barely able to stand in the face of it. “I was. And now I’m myself again. I don’t care what you’re saying. You lie.”
“And you’re dead,” Kurosaki-kun said, and swung his sword, and black fire leaped out from it in a hideous wave of force, driving directly at Sora.
Time moved slowly. It moved so slowly that Orihime could see the crackling darkness burn through the air as it blasted towards Sora, could count each jumping heartbeat in the pulse in Sora’s throat as he opened his mouth to say something more. The world narrowed to her, and Sora, and Kurosaki-kun.
Twice she had lost her brother.
There was not going to be a third time.
She was not going to lose anyone else.
Her shields spread round Sora as she rejected the bolt of force. The impact made her stagger, but she kept her balance. “No,” she said. “No, Kurosaki-kun.”
“No, what?” he demanded. The others were silent.
“No to you.” She spread her hands towards him. “I want the real Kurosaki-kun back.”
“Fool girl.” He was sneering again. “I am the real Kurosaki-kun.”
Hollows lied. And shinigami lied. And living people lied, and dead people lied, and she herself had lied. What mattered now was what she believed. She didn’t believe this was the real Kurosaki-kun, even if he spoke with Kurosaki-kun’s voice and wielded his sword. Kurosaki-kun was more than this. People had to be more than the worst that they could be, or what was the point?
The real Kurosaki-kun was the one who had protected her and Kuchiki Rukia and Sado and Ishida and his sisters and his father and everyone else. The real Kurosaki-kun was her friend. Once before she had left him because she wanted to save him, and that had failed.
Well then, she’d just have to keep on saving him until she got it right.
“I reject,” she said, and her shields wrapped him tight in their bonds of light as she brought her will to bear on him.
She was afraid for Sora, and for all her friends here, and most of all for Kurosaki-kun himself, and that fear gave her strength. But sometimes the princess had to save the dragon, and sometimes she had to save the prince as well, and sometimes the princess and the dragon and the knight all teamed up together and went to argue with the person who’d written the story and complain about how they never got anything interesting and new to do.
Kurosaki-kun was screaming at her. He was screaming so hard that she couldn’t hear what he was saying.
“I’m sorry, Kurosaki-kun,” she whispered. She walked closer to him. The ground shivered under her feet. “We’re just going to have to keep on doing this until we manage to get it right. Don’t you remember what you told Kuchiki-kun -“
He screamed at her again.
“-the person being saved doesn’t get any say in the matter . . .”
“You can’t do this! Bitch! Bitch! He’s mine! This doesn’t count! I’m the one in charge! I’m the king now! I’ll kill you and I’ll make you pay! Orihime!” The voice that came through the mask’s lips dropped to a sly wheedle. “He let me ride him, he doesn’t want to be in charge any more - you’ll only hurt him if you bring him back. You’ll just hurt him. Let me go and I’ll leave you alone, I’ll let you go, he’d thank you for it if he knew . . .”
“You really don’t know Kurosaki-kun if you believe that about him,” Orihime said. She could feel sorry for the thing now as it begged her. Another step brought her close enough to touch him. “Come back, Kurosaki-kun. Your friends need you.”
“Weak pitiful fools . . .” The words drooled out of his mouth like acid. “Worthless creatures, and he’s the worst of them . . . You’ll regret this . . . I’ll rule him again, and when I do . . .”
Orihime laid her hands on his shoulders and focused her will to a blinding intensity. Kurosaki-kun was trembling, and for a moment, for one brief second, she knew that she was strong and he was weak, and that she could choose for him.
So she chose.
“I reject.”
The mask flaked from him and blew away in dust, leaving his face naked to them all. His eyes were brown again, as they should be, and he was weeping.
“You shouldn’t cry, Kurosaki-kun,” Orihime murmured. She was astonished at how weak and thin her voice suddenly seemed to be. She’d felt so strong just a few seconds ago! There was a great empty pounding in her head, and she really wanted to lie down for a few minutes. Ise and Yadomaru Lisa were helping her sit down in a chair that had appeared out of nowhere - maybe she had a new magical power now, she could summon chairs - and she wanted to tell them that she would be absolutely fine in just a moment, or had she already told them that? - and everything would be fine, everything would be wonderful, but Kurosaki-kun shouldn’t be crying like that. Kurosaki-kun didn’t cry.
Kurosaki-kun scrubbed his arm across his eyes, then glared around him furiously. “Crap,” he said, his voice hoarse and rusty. “I don’t . . . listen, I’m sorry, I know it’s not enough . . .”
“Then don’t try saying it,” Ikkaku said. “That’s not why we’re here, kid.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Ise asked Orihime, very nicely. She waved her hand in front of Orihime.
“Lots and lots,” Orihime said. She kept on trying to add two and two together and getting the wrong answer. “But it’s very pretty,” she added, in case she’d hurt Ise’s feelings.
“But I . . .” Kurosaki-kun ran his fingers through his hair.
“He doesn’t seem to be able to finish his sentences,” Orihime confided to Ise. “Perhaps I wasn’t able to heal him enough for that. Do you think I should give it another try?”
“Absolutely not!” Ise snapped. Her glasses were scary. “Inoue-san, for the moment I need you to just sit down and breathe deeply and try to relax. You’re showing all the signs of someone who’s overextended their personal power and is on the brink of collapse and . . . can you understand a word I’m saying?”
“Could you say it again more slowly?” Orihime asked hopefully.
Ise and Lisa exchanged glances. Lisa shrugged. “Just because she’s not fitted with handles doesn’t mean she can’t be carried.”
“It was Zaraki,” Kurosaki-kun said. He was talking with Ikkaku and Yumichika, and their conversation seemed to have skipped several paragraphs while Orihime wasn’t looking. It was very sneaky of the universe to turn the pages while her attention was elsewhere. “He’d killed this big Espada who’d been fighting me -“
“The Captain would never break in on someone else’s fight,” Yumichika said disapprovingly.
“Well, yeah. See, I was going to go on and find Inoue-san. He told me to. And he killed the Espada. But then he looked at me and he started calling me Aizen.” Kurosaki-kun hunched his shoulders defensively. “And I looked round and I saw Aizen standing over to one side and I said look, he’s there, but Zaraki didn’t even hear what he was saying. He started attacking me. I had to fight back. I had to.”
“And that’s when that thing took control?” Ikkaku asked.
Kurosaki-kun sighed. “Yeah.”
“So it saved your life?”
“Well . . .” Kurosaki-kun didn’t seem to know where to look. “I don’t know. I was trying to get through to Zaraki, but he kept on calling me Aizen, and Yachiru didn’t even seem to see that there was a fight going on, and . . .” He trailed off again. “I killed him,” he finally said. “I killed him.”
Ikkaku and Yumichika looked at each other. Ikkaku slowly nodded, as though a suspicion had been confirmed, but he really didn’t look surprised.
Yumichika tossed his head. “I suppose I did know, but I didn’t think to care,” he said. “I make no excuses. The bitch had me in her masterful grip and I was weak.”
“I’d say that shows just how bad she did have you,” Ikkaku said. Then he punched Kurosaki-kun in the shoulder. “It’s the way he’d have wanted to go.”
“Madarame is quite right,” Yumichika said, though he didn’t punch Kurosaki-kun. “You were strong enough to beat the Captain. He went down in a proper fight. He wouldn’t have asked for anything better. Aizen was the one responsible.”
“Yeah,” Ikkaku said. “You want to be a dumbass and blame yourself, do it on your own time. Right now we’ve got something to do. You in?”
“What is it?” Kurosaki-kun asked numbly.
“Kill Aizen.”
“Oh.” Kurosaki-kun raised his head again, and his eyes were suddenly focused, his posture firm and ready. “Oh yes. I’m in.”
He looked so intense, so determined. Orihime wanted to believe in him. But at the same time, he looked so fragile, so barely in control, like cracked glass scarcely holding together over an inner core of fire.
“Inoue-san?” It was Ise again, checking her pulse. “Are you feeling any better?”
“I knew about Zaraki-taichou,” she said sleepily. She was very tired. Perhaps she’d feel better in a few minutes. “Ulquiorra took me to see the body. He wanted to make sure that he was dead. But it’s true, he was happy. He was smiling.”
Ise didn’t say anything, though her mouth tightened a little in what might have been disapproval, or dry understanding. Her hand tightened on Orihime’s wrist. “And Yachiru?”
“I don’t know about what happened to her,” Orihime said. A prickle of conscience speared her, not for the first time. “I asked, I did ask, but -“ It was suddenly very important to her that they all believe that she had at least tried.
“It’s all right,” Ise said, and released her wrist, standing up. “But we need to be moving, Inoue-san. We want to get out of here and into Aizen’s private laboratories before Ulquiorra thinks to come looking for you again.”
The thought of that made Orihime look over her shoulder nervously. “Shouldn’t we be going, then?”
Hisagi turned to the little Arrancar. “Pagally . . .”
“I can go on ahead first and check the corridors are clear,” Pagally said firmly, hands locked together behind her back. “I won’t - I can’t go in there again with you, but I can make sure that the way is clear for you to get there - I’ll do what I can -“
Hisagi nodded. “Thank you, Pagally. That is a great deal. People? Are we ready?”
“Ready and fucking bored with waiting,” Grimmjow said.
“Let’s go,” Kurosaki-kun said, and there were nods around the room.
---