Reaching for the Sky

The direction of the cutting desert winds shifted and blew billowing clouds of ash past her. And everything... changed.
Time-travel. Orihime-centric. UlquiHime. Just because.

03-10-2013
by C.S.Y. Shadows
Not beta-ed

Prologue: The Taste of Failure [Just Bitter Ash]

...

It wasn't supposed to end this way. It wasn't supposed to end this way! It never should have... gone this far...

This is all my fault.

It was her fault that all her friends had rushed to Hueco Mundo. Her fault that they... Her fault that Ishida-kun was so horribly injured. Her fault that Kurosaki-kun had...

But what hurt the worst was-

This, this was her fault, too. Sad green eyes that softened with amazed realisation and weary resignation and the tiniest smidgen of regret met hers as she struggled to reach...

-what she had done to Him.

If she could just reach him... She should have stopped them, but she was useless and indecisive and couldn't bear to betray her friends - who died for you, a vicious thought hissed from the deepest, darkest pit of her heart - and couldn't bear to betray Him, either. Even if he was The Enemy, and her kidnapper and her warden and her protector and in another life, they could have been friends, she knew.

Please, please, I failed all my friends, don't let me fail Him at least

Please.

She hurled the words across the blood-stained battlefield, across the rubble (of crushed dreams, crushed innocence, crushed minds, crushed beauty), to reassure, to- to- she didn't know, she just didn't know and it was tearing at her, tearing her into tiny little pieces.

"I'm not afraid!"

There was something in his gaze and she saw him mouthing words that were cruelly torn away by the wind, even as black lips lifted in what-could-one-day-have-been-a-smile.

Just a little bit closer...

All her hand grasped was a fist-full of dust.
The heartless (something within her laughed at the irony) wind carried the floating ash of Ulquiorra Cifer away.

Maybe things could have gone on normally.
Inoue Orihime would have returned, and smiled and told silly little stories and never ever let anyone know of the black hole that had settled deep within her soul. Never ever shared the dreams, half nightmares, half not, of endless white sand under the reverse crescent moon, of piercing green eyes glinting in the shadows, of the bitter-ash-taste of failure on her tongue as she screamed and screamed and screamed (and sometimes she would have thought of a name and a number).

But something shifted.

And the sharp desert gale that was ripping the billowing clouds of dust/sand/ash/Him away reversed - it whipped at her skin with the echoes of harsh words and she could feel something-that-could-have-once-grown-into-love whispering over her face like silk and her own heart tightened with something-she-did-not-want-to-identify.

And instead of the quiet pain that very, very few ever caught a glimpse of, she let out a very, very real scream.

I wish I could have saved him.

I wish I hadn't been so weak.

I wish... I wish this had never happened...

And everything... changed.

A/N: So, to get a better grasp on Ulquiorra's and Orihime's characters, I decided to indulge a little - I've got no idea where this will go, but, hey, we'll see, right? Let's aim for an exiting journey.

Updates will be a little sporadic at best, and while I'll try to complete this, you never know.

To any UlquiHime bashers: I am well aware that shippers may read too much into things or rationalize the emotional attacks/mind-games away with but-he's-emotionally/socially-damaged(read: retarded)-so-it's-okay or he-did-it-to-make-her-stronger-subconciously. While I don't absolutely agree with them, these are valid views and, in my mind at least and ignoring any shipping, 'cause I don't care overly much anyway, UlquiHime makes more sense than, for example, the ever-popular IchiHime, because of its valid - if slightly shaky - basis. (IchiHime would need far more time to properly grow.)

So please refrain from complaining, because everything is stated in the summary, so what the fuck are you reading this for if you don't like it?