Disclaimer: Bleach isn't mine.

This started out as more of an Aizen x Orihime thing, but somewhere along the way Orihime took herself in hand and kind of turned all self-sufficient on me. :/ She seems to like doing that when it's most inconvenient.

Published as my entry for the 4/15/11 P.U.L.L. post.

-Carpathia-

It takes Orihime three months after the day Aizen was sealed away to realize she's being followed. At first, it's nothing more than an uneasy feeling squirming up from the small of her back, a creeping sensation that begins as a tiny shiver and grows to a full-body shudder, as if she's just walked through a ghost.

Then she starts to see things. Flashes of white in the blurred corners of her vision, earthen brown at her side, a haze of pale skin, gone before she can even blink it out of her mind. Still, lots of people see things that aren't there, especially if they have the same kinds of "gifts" she has. She doesn't worry.

Not until she starts to feel hands on her shoulders when she's alone, and icy, billowing breath against her neck when the air is still.

"Brr," she says one sunny day at lunch, rubbing anxiously at her bare arms and wishing she'd worn something with sleeves. At her side, Tatsuki looks up from her food and wrinkles her nose in confusion.

"You're cold, Orihime? I'm freaking dying out here!"

"It's not that," Orihime says distractedly. She rolls a quick glance at the other students around them, but just as she suspected, none of them are close enough even to whisper to. Definitely not close enough to run their freezing fingers down her forearm, though she can't think of a single person who would want to do that.

"I just got a really weird feeling, that's all," she elaborates, and giggles when Tatsuki looks concerned. "Really, it's nothing. Don't look so worried, Tatsuki-chan! Always so serious."

But maybe it is something to worry about. Maybe all those strange little sensations have a more sinister meaning (she was just rescued from the world of the dead, after all), maybe it's not normal to wake up at 3:00 a.m. every morning with her heart racing in her chest and her fingertips feeling as if they've been coated in frost.

Maybe she should talk to someone.

Oh, but they're all so busy; Ichigo is just trying to catch up on his normal life with his powers gone, and Uryu has been leading the double life to an entirely new level as the sole "caretaker" of Karakura's Hollows. Rukia has disappeared again, Tatsuki's not supposed to know anything about this stuff anyway, and Chad…well, lately he's been off on his own a lot. Besides, she doesn't want to bother anyone. Not when they've all just survived a war.

So, Orihime thinks, mentally scribbling out the "talk to somebody" option on her to-do list, that's a no-go. It's alright. I can deal with this on my own.

She's so sure of it she almost manages to convince herself. Until she wakes up one day at three o'clock in the morning, and Aizen Sosuke is standing at the foot of her bed.

Orihime does not notice him at first. He blends in with the empty black of her lightless bedroom, and only the pale gleam of his skin catches her eye as she sweeps her frantic, panicking gaze across the space in front of her. Orihime jerks back with a strangled shriek. "Who are you?" she squeaks.

He stands there, silent, motionless. Her eyes begin to adjust, and slowly, she reaches out and pulls back the curtains from her bedside window. Moonlight spills into the room, illuminating all. Orihime's frantically beating heart stops in her throat.

"Aizen-sama," she breathes before she can stop herself. He's not Aizen-sama anymore; she would think that weeks away from that place would cure her of this shameful habit. She doesn't belong to him anymore. He can't touch her. Not from the dank confines in whatever spirit-prison he's been locked away in.

The specter in front of her smiles gently; in the silver moonlight, Aizen's face is something from her loneliest nightmares, a ghoul, a monstrosity. Once upon a time, he might have garbed himself in fine white fabric and declared himself a god, but tonight he appears to her bound in black straps, like an inmate from an asylum. Aizen is a shade of memories she would rather forget, and his lips are icy, dead worms as he leans forward and presses them against her forehead.

Indecipherable words slip past his mouth even as she scrambles backward, away. His lips form the shapes, and for a moment she thinks she understands him—but then she blinks, a split second of darkness, and when her lashes lift he's gone.

xx

"Tatsuki, do you ever feel like you're being…watched?"

Orihime realizes it's a stupid question the instant it leaves her tongue. Her friend stares at her in alarm, brown eyes wide and questioning. "No…do you?"

"I…I don't know," Orihime fumbles. She worries at the straps of her school bag and bites her lip, looking away, trying to focus on a bird pecking at a stray scrap on the ground, a woman walking her child home from school, anything, anything except those big, worried eyes right in front of her.

"Is someone giving you trouble?" Tatsuki asks fiercely. "'Cuz you know I'll kick their ass if they are."

Orihime giggles nervously. "No, no, it's nothing like that. Forget what I said, it was silly. Silly me! I just need more sleep, that's all."

"I thought you were feeling better. I thought you said it was a cold."

A leaf floundering against the sidewalk catches Orihime's drooping eye. She watches it twist and fall against the concrete, like a cripple, before the wind snatches it up in its claws and drags it into the pale sky.

"I am cold. I'm cold all the time."

xx

When Aizen appears again, Orihime is out wandering the streets, alone and sleepless. She checks the blinking watch around her wrist—three in the morning, exactly—and when she brings her head back up, Aizen stands at the corner of the street, his arms bound in black once more.

"You," she whispers, and sends up a silent prayer of thanks that the word didn't come out Aizen-sama again.

The only visible parts of the Lord of Las Noches' face are his mouth and one of his smirking eyes. Something malignant stirs in that single, dark orb, and Orihime's thoughts jump immediately to her friends; Aizen's presence is impossible, he's locked away, but as long as this specter appears, her friends are in danger. She has to protect them.

"Go away," Orihime says sternly. Her hands come up and cross over one another, forming an attack stance. "Leave! We won, you can't—you can't be here!"

The ghost's mouth turns up in a kind, pitying smile. Poor, stupid child, says the curve of those colorless, cruel lips. Do not try to tell me what can and cannot be done. You belong to me.

"I don't!" Orihime shouts. The denial comes out desperate and panicked, the whine of an injured dog. Aizen's smile widens and he steps closer, pinning her to the sidewalk with his unblinking stare.

He can't touch her. His arms are bound to his sides, completely useless, but he doesn't need them to step close, stiflingly close, so close she is barely an inch from his motionless chest. Cold emanates from him in creeping tendrils, stealing over her with all the stealth of a lover slipping through her window to greet her.

Belatedly, Orihime realizes Aizen is speaking again. At first it seems the gibberish of a madman, as unintelligible as when he spoke in her bedroom, but as she listens the words unstick themselves from each other and form reason.

"Damn you," he is whispering, and his tone belongs to a man murmuring sweet nothings to his wife in bed. "Damn you, damn you, damn you."

Orihime sucks a deep breath through her teeth, and the smell of him, the stench of something long dead fills her lungs, choking her. "Leave me alone," she repeats. And Aizen is gone.

xx

Her ghost comes back every night for so long that she begins to lose track of the days. The rising and setting of the sun and moon blur together like the purple-blue marks beneath her eyes. Everyone who cares to notice is worried for her, that much is obvious by their probing questions, but she reveals nothing of the monster who comes to visit her when the world is most quiet.

No one can help her. He is always here, always with her. He is present in a freezing gust of wind against her legs, the caresses along her lips and neck, the misstep that would have sent her crashing down a flight of stairs if Tatsuki hadn't been there.

That last is the breaking point. She can't do this anymore. She's sleepless and fearful and her friends are wondering where her smile has gone.

No more.

That night, he appears again in the dark of her room. But this time, he is dressed in his familiar white uniform and unbound, free to move as he pleases. Orihime's voice twists itself in her throat and she gapes, wordless with terror as he approaches her unhindered. "Damn you," he says again. She flinches when he raises his hands, expecting him to strike her, but his fingers thread through her sleep-tangled hair instead.

Orihime winces when his hands catch on snarls. "What are you afraid of?" Aizen asks. His voice rumbles through her like a death knoll, and vaguely, she realizes that he has her against the cold wall of her bedroom. She is a trophy and he is going to put her on the wall where everyone can see.

"What are you so afraid of?" Aizen repeats. "Did I mistreat you while you were under my care? Did I ever terrorize you?"

Orihime swallows. Her throat is as dry as a liar's. "Every day," she answers, and the hands in her hair grow still. His mouth is amused.

"Ah," he says. His fingers fist, making her gasp, but the pain in her scalp in nothing compared to the fear that strikes her as he pulls her head back and up, drawing her lips too close to his.

"Is this what you mean?" Aizen asks. His breath brushes over her cheeks, icy and dead. "Did I frighten you when I did this?"

Orihime can't look at his eyes. She can't meet his eyes because as much as he terrifies her, something about him draws her in. She is a stupefied storm-chaser watching the tornado come closer with nothing but eager anticipation in her racing heart.

"I did," Aizen says distantly. He studies her face, and something in his gaze tells her he knows every helpless thought that passes through her head. "I'm sorry," he lies with an unkind smile. "I meant no disrespect."

"What do you want?"

The question seems to take him off guard as much as it does her. His grip on her hair is suddenly painful, and she gasps as he releases her and takes a step back.

"Hell is lonely," Aizen replies. He smiles, flashing white teeth at her in a shark's grin. "Perhaps I simply missed your company."

Orihime steels herself. "I'm not afraid of you. I'm not," she says, and her voice rises as the smile on his face turns sour and folds into a frown. "I'm not! You're just a ghost. A mirage. You're trapped right now in whatever prison the shinigami locked you away in, and I'm telling you, I'm not going to help you. I'm not going to give you this escape. I don't belong to you anymore!"

She squeezes her eyes shut and covers her ears with her hands as he opens his mouth to speak. "I reject!" she shouts, and the hairpins are gone from her hands, locked in her bedside drawer, but she doesn't need them. She has everything she needs right here. "I reject, I reject!"

Orihime feels it the instant Aizen leaves the room. Warmth floods her body, finally, and when she opens her eyes she sees nothing but blessed darkness.

He isn't coming back.

"I'm cold," she whispers to herself, and the dishonesty of it makes her smile.

A/N: Review, please.

-Kimsa