Reflection

Chapter 1

Orihime had become strangely philosophical ever since the Winter War. She had started to look at life from a different darker perspective. On the outside she would pretend cheerfulness and encourage others to do the same, but in the inside she had been dying for a long time. It had just taken her a while to realize that she was lonely with no pets, older brother, or boyfriend… She had to wake up out of her conscious sleeping state and know that she desperately needed someone to need her.

She was tired of being deemed as useless and weak. It was time for her to be needed and wanted.

Nonetheless, there she was pretending to be alive, bathing in her bathtub, hearing the distant noises of television sets, laughter, and running children’s feet from the other apartments.

Laying the back of her head on the rim of the bathtub, surrounded by speedily cooling water that had once been boiling hot, she closed her eyes to relax her tense muscles and for once… her riddled mind.

After school Tatsuki had convinced her to watch her at the dojo and like a good friend, Orihime had gone and happily cheered her on, much to the annoyance of other fighters at the practice. She hadn’t cared that her shouts were too loud or that she had jumped and bounced wildly in her seat, all that had mattered was that she felt good in acting like her old self. For a brief moment she had completely erased the image of Ichigo and Rukia kissing one another before connecting their hands together to walk to the Kurosaki Clinic.

“Stop thinking about them!” she snapped to no one in particular, slapping both hands on the water, splashing the cheap already chipping wallpaper of her bathroom wall. Her face flushed at her outburst, even though she was alone as she cradled her hot face in her already pruning hands. Never in her life had she felt so much self-loathing for envying the happiness of her friends. As a matter of fact, she didn’t know if she was jealous of Ichigo loving Rukia or merely feeling loneliness and desire to have someone, anyone by her side to give her a purpose other than ‘healing’.

Unwilling to cry over Ichigo for the hundredth time that day, she finally got out of the bathtub, dripping water all over her already soaked floor. She didn’t care for the untidiness of the house anymore. At the moment she was just too tired.

Yawning, covering her mouth with a hand, she absentmindedly unhooked her turquoise color terry-bathrobe and donned it. Most of her clothes were dirty and all she had to sleep in was basically that, but since she lived alone, it shouldn’t matter what she wore as long as it was something. The thought of sleeping naked didn’t hold an interest to her. It made her feel funny feeling the soft cool sheets so closely to her skin and she enjoyed feeling snuggly, sort of like a child in a mother’s womb.

“Why do you over sleep with your head under the covers like that, Orihime?” Sora laughed as a little Orihime took hold of the covers to curl up in a ball, concealing her amber head.

Giggling, she answered, “Because it’s warm and safe.”

A soft expression flitted her face as well as some sadness at remembering when her brother had been alive. Forcing a bright smile, more for the sake of her brother’s memory rather than herself, she headed over to her closet to pull out her bed to later roll it in the middle of living room.

She had a fully functional bed, but for some reason the living room was a comfortable place for her. Not only would she know if someone broke into the apartment, she was also under the watchful eyes of her brother’s shrine with his gently smiling face looking down at her. It was nice… and it helped in not feeling so lonely, even though the noise from the neighbors always gave her a hard time in going to sleep.

Rolling down the bed and setting a three-foot stack of blankets beside it, she started to settle in. Using more than one blanket would keep out the coldness of early springtime and would also give her that ‘safe’ sensation she so needed during those times of dark thoughts that raked her with guilt.

Laying down on the thin two-inch bedding and carefully gathering up the layers upon layers of blankets, she let her mind go in mute and slowly went to sleep. At least in her dreams, she wouldn’t have so much pain. Her dreams were always cheery and full of color, unlike her daily thoughts as of late.

It was after she had fallen into deep slumber, maybe three hours at least, that an intruder finally entered the darkness of her safe haven. Even the blankets couldn’t hide her from this fiend. In fact, those soft fuzzy blankets had been her undoing.

She didn’t have time to scream as the dark shadow wrapped itself around her, smothering out her frightened protests with those blankets whose fragrance was likened to that of baby powder. Whoever had grabbed her was strong and had skin as hard as stone. Her body was swaddled up in such a manner that she resembled more a cocoon than a eighteen year old being hauled off by a strange man.

Kurosaki…kun?

Though she couldn’t see, she could feel that her kidnapper was moving in remarkable speeds while carrying her. He was fast and no matter how much she wiggled under his arm, it was as if a metal bar was hooked around her waist.

This is not Kurosaki-kun.

At first she had mistaken the reiatsu, but now she recognized it for who, or what, it truly was. It was the exact same reiatsu she had felt in Hueco Mundo when Ichigo had fought the Sexta Espada. The reiatsu of his Hollow.

It would have relieved her to know that if it weren’t for the unusual silence of the Hollow and its even stranger actions in taking her out of the apartment. She was certain that they were out, since he had been moving for quite some time, taking them Kami knows where. If it had been an emergency, she would have sensed the danger. It just didn’t make any sense for the Hollow to act this way.

That is unless… Ichigo had lost control of him.

Her eyes widened to the size of saucers at the thought. She had seen Ichigo control the Hollow’s power before, but what if he couldn’t completely dominate him? What if there was something that Ichigo had missed regarding the evil side of his soul?

She felt the Hollow landing gracefully on his feet. He took a couple of steps and the loud sound of metal wheels moving overhead, similar to those of a metal garage door reached her ears. There were no other sounds other than his steps and that distinctive ‘clinking’ noise of the door reaching the top of its wheels.

Even more steps were heard as he walked into whatever place he had taken her. Soon enough, he turned with her still casually under his arm to close that door that slid downwards. There was a thunderous sound as it touched the ground, locking her up with him.

Oh, no! Oh, no!

Tears began to fill her eyes as she began to scream and wiggle her body like a worm in his hold, but it served for nothing as he tossed her unceremoniously on a soft surface. She guessed that it more like an old mattress, due to how the bedsprings squeaked and her body bounced on impact.

“Knew I shoulda knocked you out before bringing you here.”

There were too many blankets for her to unravel herself as she started rocking side to side clumsily, her arms tight to her sides.

“Kurosaki-KUROSAKI-KUN!” she managed to let out a strangled yell.

Apparently hearing that name angered the Hollow as she felt a powerful blow over her head that had her slip to immediate unconsciousness.

***

“Good. Now I can tie and gag you so all you can do is scream for me, lil’ hime,” the Hollow chuckled as he began to unwrap the voluptuous virginal body, his eyes feasting on the shapely creamy legs peaking underneath the bathrobe.

“I’m gonna enjoy breaking you in, since that idiot Kurosaki is a dickless bastard that doesn’t know what’s good for him,” he snorted, opening the girl’s robe with a quick careless little pull of the robe’s belt. “But I know what’s good for me. He can bang that shinigami girl all he wants, while I have you. Aintcha a lucky one?!”

His laughter echoed throughout the abandoned storage as he left the unconscious girl on the mattress to go in search of some chains he had seen lying around a corner.

Time to play with my lil’ hime. He thought with a wide smile, finding the chains in the darkness, taking hold of them and dragging them over the floor slowly as his feet took him over to the girl.

Oh, the things he was going to do to her.

***

Author’s Note: