all fall down

Afterwards, Orihime will cry, and Ulquiorra will not be surprised in the slightest. He knows that humans – girls especially – waste a lot of sentimentality on things like virginity. Her tears are completely predictable, but the ferocity at which they come is a little off-putting to the Cuatro Espada. He’s disturbed by the blubbering mess she’s quickly becoming, her face red and splotchy as the salty tears come in a torrential flow.

Ulquiorra merely stares at her mutely while she visibly breaks down in front of them. He can’t help but contemplate the absurdity of the situation – Ulquiorra is still nude from the waist-up, and Orihime’s shoulders are swollen and pink from the laving from his mouth. Everything about this scene is so ugly at the moment, and right as Orihime begins to whimper, he can hold his silence no longer.

“Stop.”

And his voice is so eloquent of disgust that she actually does, just like that. Orihime appears faintly surprised as she fixes him with a misty gaze.

“Don’t give me that look.”

Her expression, already wavering, falters completely. She looks confused.

“You have absolutely no reason to be acting like this,” Ulquiorra tells her blandly. “You said yourself that you wanted this. I told you I’m not Kurosaki, and you told me that you didn’t want me to be. But that’s what this is about, isn’t it? And yet I did not instigate this affair; you brought it fully upon yourself. So why invest so much useless energy in mourning when this is the relief that you wanted?”

Orihime looks horrified. Ulquiorra turns his head as fresh tears begin to well in her eyes; he cannot bear to look at her.

“You’re pathetic,” he tells her. “This is the willful spirit that Aizen-sama praised so extensively? That even I foolishly regarded in high esteem? So fallible, so utterly grotesque. I was wrong; you’re nothing but human trash.”

Orihime swallows. Ulquiorra turns in time to see her use the edge of the bed sheet to wipe away the glittering tear-tracks that mar her features. She’s lost some of that mottled pink color that Ulquiorra found so unattractive earlier, and is evidently on her way to fully regaining her composure.

“You’re right. I’m a mess, aren’t I? I’m sorry.”

Ulquiorra lifts one eyebrow, but says nothing.

“I… I never knew you thought that way about me,” she adds, a little uncertainly.

“I am not trying to assuage your fragile ego, woman,” Ulquiorra points out curtly. “Before, I merely found your spirit… commendable. Now, I’m not so sure.”

For a while, neither of them say anything. Orihime is watching his face critically, very obviously trying to read in-between the lines. Ulquiorra doesn’t know why she bothers: she’s looking for a vapor of nuance that doesn’t really exist. Ulquiorra has nothing to hide; there is no secret meaning behind his words. What is simply is.

“Stop, Orihime,” he says, shaking his head resolutely. “Don’t think you can reach me. There’s nothing to reach.”

But she’s smiling at him like she knows something he doesn’t. “Kiss me again, Ulquiorra,” she says, suddenly smoothing out the wrinkled blankets between them. “And I’ll show that I’m not grieving anymore.”

And Ulquiorra, against his better judgment, does exactly that.

--

“…And what exactly happened here?”

The two arrancar break apart from one another and flatten themselves against the wall directly across from Ulquiorra as he enters. Even in the dim light of the room, the Cuatro Espada can make out the horrified expressions on their face, the glossy sheen of sweat that mats their hair to their foreheads.

Loly and Menoly don’t speak, don’t dare trade looks – they remain frozen in their respective positions, staring resolutely ahead, at a place just above Ulquiorra’s mask. Ulquiorra is no fool – he knows something happened here, and that these two idiots were involved.

“I believe,” he says, before sonido carries him over to where Menoly stands, ram-rod straight. He’s so close now that he can see very pore on her face, the little tick of her eyebrow when he breathes into her ear. “I asked you a question.”

She startles like a spooked horse. “It was Grimmjow!” She blurts out suddenly, jumping as Loly gives her a worried look.

Ulquiorra takes a step back, takes in the twin horrified expressions.

“Oh?”

A likely perpetrator, if the state of the room was any indicator. Grimmjow always liked to make a big mess, after all.

“And am I to assume you had nothing to do with this?”

He watches the muscles in Menoly’s throat work as she swallows. “N-no, of course n-not,” she croaks, fidgeting uncomfortably beneath the scrutiny of his gaze.

Ulquiorra merely inclines his head, and immediately the other two occupants in the room know that he doesn’t believe this for a second. Ulquiorra would like nothing more than to probe the matter further, perhaps a little more intravenously, but he has other things to attend to first, and a missing captive to retrieve.

“I see,” he says, turning away from them. He can hear their sighs of relief, instinctively knows that Menoly has slumped against the wall behind her without having to turn around and actually see it. “We will discuss the matters more fully when I return. But until then…”

He doesn’t waste any more words on them. He’s already gone.

--



Things go much more smoothly after that, and Ulquiorra will soon become a regular nighttime visitor. In the end, Aizen-sama’s captive seems to have rekindled some of Ulquiorra’s more basic desires. He’s not sure what he sees in her: she’s weak and she’s fragile and so wretchedly human, and yet Ulquiorra can’t help but be drawn to her, at least in a very primitive sense.

Hollows, as a rule, cannot reproduce. And yet this woman sets the biological gears into motion to do exactly that. Why Ulquiorra finds himself putting so much effort in indulging something that achieves nothing baffles even him. There is no life being created: their copulating services no real purpose. And yet he can’t help but keep indulging her every seductive whim – whims that are quickly becoming his own.



--

Ulquiorra warps behind Grimmjow just as Kurosaki gets weakly to his knees. His gaze flicks between the occupants of the room briefly, before at last settling on Grimmjow. Although his green optics remain locked with the Sexta Espada’s own, his first words are for Orihime.

“Come here, woman.”

Orihime hesitates. She glances back worriedly at Kurosaki, and Ulquiorra knows immediately that she’s weighing her options. The orange-haired shinigami is in no condition to fight, they both know; Ulquiorra could easily cut him down again where he stands, if provoked. And although Ulquiorra has never divulged his rank within the Espada, the tattooed ‘4’ on his chest makes it obvious enough. Clearly, Grimmjow is no match.

She lifts Nel from her shoulder, settling the tiny arrancar delicately on the floor beside her. Just as she begins to move forward, however, Grimmjow throws out his arm to halt her.

“She isn’t going anywhere, Ulquiorra!”

“What are you doing, Grimmjow?” Ulquiorra asks evenly, completely nonplussed by his reaction. Grimmjow does not immediately answer, although he does not allow Orihime to leave his side, either. It doesn’t really matter. Grimmjow doesn’t have to explicitly state his intentions for them to be plainly obvious.

“What do you think you’re doing, going out of your way to heal the injuries of an enemy that I defeated?”

He looks to Orihime standing beside Grimmjow. When their eyes meet, she immediately looks away and at the floor. The exhausted shinigami on the floor looks between the two uncertainly – he doesn’t seem to know whether the question is directed at Grimmjow or Orihime.

“Not going to answer? Very well.” Ulquiorra takes a step forward, and Orihime instinctively takes a step back. Grimmjow, however, stubbornly holds his stance.

“Regardless of what you’re doing, that woman has been entrusted in my care by Aizen-sama,” Ulquiorra says patiently. “So hand her over.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Orihime bites her lip. Nel shrinks away, drawing closer to Ichigo on the floor.

“What did you say?”

Grimmjow laughs darkly. “What’s up with you, anyway? You know, you’re awfully chatty today… Ulquiorra!”

He throws out his fist, but Ulquiorra deflects it with a wrist. Grimmjow is already breathing heavy out of exhilaration. “I get it, Ulquiorra!” He cries jubilantly, as he wrenches his arm away. “You’re afraid to fight me! Afraid that we’ll crush one another!”

There is a blur of motion, and suddenly Ulquiorra is in the air. Just as he’s about to launch a cero at his opponent, however, Grimmjow seizes Orihime by the wrist and throws her in front of him as a shield. “Go ahead, do it!”

Ulquiorra takes in Orihime’s terrified expression and lifts his hand just in time – the cero blasts into pillars overhead, causing the pieces of the structure above them to explode and buckle from the force of it. Great pieces of the ceiling break off and fall away, and in the chaos that follows, Ulquiorra loses sight of Grimmjow entirely.

A hand comes out of the dust swirling around them, and Ulquiorra turns just in time for the Sexta Espada to slip a Negacion cube inside of his Hollow hole.