Days of Las Noches

Chap. 1: Night at the Movies

A/N: My first UlquiHime! Inspired, sort of, by the new Unmasked book. AU, humor.

In this story, the Winter War never happened. Instead, there was a peace treaty between Aizen and Yamamoto. Yamamoto refuses to include Orihime's return as part of the peace treaty, so Ichigo is going to break the treaty and come rescue her anyway. In order to keep the peace, Orihime insists that she wants to stay in Las Noches to be with Ulquiorra because she has fallen for the dour Espada. At some point, she realizes that her pretence has become truth.

Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach.

(Originally posted 6/7/2011.)

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Orihime was sitting at her desk in her room in Las Noches, staring out the window at the endless night. Her laptop was open in front of her, but she was no longer seeing the screen. She sighed. She had to admit Hueco Mundo was a pretty boring place. There wasn't anything to do, and some days she missed her friends.

It helped that she had convinced Aizen to introduce the Internet into Las Noches, and install wireless access points all over the fortress. At least she could chat with her friends now. Szayel had built a new site called EspadaBook that she could use to communicate with friends back home as well as her new friends in Hueco Mundo. Of course, Gin had already hacked it twice. The first time, he replaced everybody's photos with bunnies and tried to get them to believe that Rukia was the culprit. That hadn't lasted long. Now he had replaced everybody's photos with pictures of Aizen, except for Aizen's, which had been replaced with a picture of Orihime.

She pulled up the site, and stared, in some distress, at the picture of herself over the name "Aizen Sousuke." Surely Aizen-sama would be angry, and maybe he would blame her. Gin already kept teasing her whenever she was in Aizen's presence, saying that she was the real ruler of Hueco Mundo. Aizen always remained calm during these jibes, but they made Orihime a little nervous.

She knew Aizen didn't like rivals.

Of course, it had been written into the peace treaty that she would not be harmed, and Aizen had promised her he would keep all its terms. He had kept his promises. So far.

She sighed. It was kind of sad, after all, she thought as she shut down EspadaBook and browsed over to the news in Karakura Town, that the most excitement they ever had was Gin hacking their website. He was probably bored too. She certainly missed doing something a little more lively. With the truce, there was a lot less fighting, and a lot less noise. She noticed idly that a new movie was playing at the Karakura Town theater nearest her old apartment, and sighed again.

It could get to be really quiet in Las Noches.

There was a knock on the door and Ulquiorra entered. Orihime turned to watch him. His black hair was getting a little shaggy, she thought. Maybe it would be time to give him another haircut soon. Although he hadn't been too happy with the last one she gave him. She frowned. It wasn't her fault that she had gotten distracted in the middle of the cut and had started imagining that she was a gardener on Mars trimming hedges in the low gravity.

Ulquiorra hadn't shown any outward signs of anger about the buzz cut, but she hadn't been able to find the scissors for a week.

Maybe she was starting to be able to decipher his emotions.

"It will soon be time for dinner," said Ulquiorra. "Are you ready to go?"

She looked at him and sighed. "Sure."

The expression on his face did not change, but he said, "What is wrong? You were the one who suggested that we eat in the main Las Noches dining room rather than having me bring your meals to you each night."

She twisted a strand of hair around her finger. "Well, as soon as I stopped being a prisoner, it seemed really silly for you to keep doing all that work."

"So? What is the difficulty now?" His voice was neutral but she could sense a hint of exasperation behind it. He still found her moods confusing.

"Oh…" she said, "it's just that …" She paused, then gathered her courage and the words all came tumbling out. "Don't you think that it's kind of boring? Every night, we eat dinner together, and then you bring me back to my room. Nothing ever changes."

Ulquiorra looked at her. "I thought that peace was what you wanted."

"Well," she argued, "I didn't want all the fighting and killing going on. But that doesn't mean that I want nothing to ever happen."

Ulquiorra stared at her. "What do you want to happen, onna, uh, Orihime?" He was still not used to using a name for her, but she had asked him to call her by name, so he was complying since it seemed to matter to her.

"Well, since you're kind of my boyfriend now, maybe we should do something that boyfriends and girlfriends usually do."

If Ulquiorra could look thunderstruck, he would have. Instead, he stiffened and his eyes flicked to the door, as though he wanted to escape. His face remained expressionless. "What might you have in mind?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know…" she said. Then her eyes lit up, remembering what she had just seen on the web. "Oh! I know! Ulquiorra, let's go to the movies!"

His face went blank for a moment. "Movies?" he asked. "What is that?"

She clasped her hands together in eagerness. "Oh, it's like when you go to the theater, and there's a movie screen, and they play a film, you know, with actors, and it tells a story and it's a lot of fun!" She bounced off the couch and grinned at Ulquiorra. "I know a great place in Karakura Town. I just checked the web site and saw what they're playing."

Ulquiorra stared at her, completely bewildered. "Onna, what are you talking about? What is a theater? Or film? Or actors?"

"Oh," she said, stopping mid-bounce in dismay. "I forgot that you've never seen one." She cast about for a way to explain it that he would understand. "It's like a moving picture on the screen," she began, and then ground to a halt at his uncomprehending stare.

"Well…" she hesitated, not sure how to explain yet another cultural artifact that was completely new to him. Then it came to her. "Do you ever watch surveillance videos here?"

"Of course," Ulquiorra replied. "My duties for Aizen-sama require my presence in security. All security staff take turns checking the videos for intruders or suspicious activity."

"It's just like a security video on the screen, only it's not real."

"Not real?" he said, clearly puzzled.

"Yeah, it's a bunch of actors," she began in a breathless rush. "People who are playing a part, a part in a story. They film them, just like you'd take a picture with the security video, and then play it in a theater in front of a bunch of people who pay money to watch. And you get popcorn and soda and sit in the theater with your friends and watch the film." She grinned, pleased with herself for thinking of the explanation, but Ulquiorra was still staring at her in bewilderment.

"You take surveillance videos of people who are deceiving you? And then you pay money for this?"

Orihime scrunched up her face. Ulquiorra stopped trying to puzzle out her words for a moment just to enjoy the cute expression on her face. He still wasn't sure why it was so pleasing to look at the onna, but it was. He found that even though she was completely confusing, he still found in himself the odd desire to be around her, to talk with her, to listen to her. To try to understand her. If they hadn't been at peace, he would have been certain it was some type of enemy spell.

And yet… clearly she meant him no harm. She never meant anyone any harm.

She was finally living peacefully in Hueco Mundo. The Arrancar and Hollows had stopped trying to attack her (she thought it was just because she had talked to them about the benefits of peace, but Ulquiorra knew it was because he had destroyed three or four of the ones who had tried to attack her. After that, there had been no more disturbing the onna. There were benefits to being the fourth-ranked Espada) and he had thought that she was happy here.

Clearly, there was much he didn't yet know about her.

She was continuing her confusing explanation. "No, they're not deceiving us. They're actors. It's their job to play out scenes for movies."

"Their profession is presenting false images to surveillance videos?" He was still puzzled. Then he remembered a previous conversation with her where she had explained another new term to him. "Ah. I remember now. They are spies. Do they work for the government then?" He was proud of himself for remembering the lengthy explanation she had given him of the covert work done by government agents sneaking around the world of the living.

But Orihime was wrinkling her face now in a way that meant she was frustrated. He was slowly getting better at deciphering her complex facial expressions and translating them into a scale he had developed to measure whether she was feeling good or bad. This was about a negative three on that scale, he estimated.

"No!" she cried. "This is for fun! There aren't any spies, or secrets to discover here, because the movie is just fiction. It isn't true."

He looked at her again. "It's pleasurable to you to watch surveillance videos that have been deliberately constructed to deceive the watchers? Why is that fun? So that afterward you can punish these… 'actors'?"

Orihime sighed. "No. It's not deception. And nobody's getting punished!" Her voice rose alarmingly.

He shook his head. He still didn't understand, but he didn't want the onna getting unhappy. Maybe she could answer a different question. "Why are we supposed to watch this surveillance video? Is there a danger to the world of the living?"

She exhaled loudly. "No. No danger. We go out to enjoy ourselves, and eat popcorn."

Ulquiorra decided to placate her, even though he still had no clue what she was talking about. "Ah, I see. The popcorn plays an important part in keeping the humans in the world of the living safe from danger, so that you can enjoy yourselves."

She stared at him, and then started giggling. "I guess you could say the popcorn is important." She couldn't keep herself from laughing, bending over on the couch, unable to stop, while he simply watched her stoically, waiting to make sure that she wouldn't hurt herself. Finally she caught her breath. "Well, are you willing to go with me to a movie theater anyway, Ulquiorra?"

He looked at her, deadpan. "Yes, Orihime. If it makes you happy, I will go watch this surveillance video and eat popcorn in front of it to help you keep the human world safe from these spies."

Still bent over, and hiccupping with laughter, Orihime finally straightened and hooked her arm through his. "Good! I'll check to see what's playing, and then you can open a garganta to take us there."

"Of course." Life with the onna was certainly interesting, Ulquiorra thought. Peace was definitely much more complicated than war. But still, he considered, as it occurred to him that he found the warmth of her arm pressed against his strangely enjoyable, it wasn't that bad after all.