"I don't love you, onna," Ulquiorra says, staring into the emptiness outside the window of her cell. "I don't know how. I wouldn't, even if I could. Why do you persist with this foolishness?"

The woman does not answer, slumped out across the couch as she is, hair spilling around her body like so many little sparks. Of course she doesn't. She is asleep.

Ulquiorra is not entirely sure why he is here. Then again, it's not like that's particularly unusual when it comes to her. She is weak and soft and impossibly, impossibly kind; the sort of trash he usually doesn't even bother killing. She should hold interest only because Aizen-sama decrees it.

Nevertheless, here he is, in her cell, without reason, without purpose. He is here because he wants to be, not because he needs to be, and that is a feeling as alien as it is impossible. Ulquiorra does not want. He is an empty vessel for Aizen-sama's will and nothing more.

So why, then, did he feel the desire to come here and talk to her? Well. Not talk. Ulquiorra does not intend for the woman to speak a single word. He doesn't even intend for her to hear any of his.

Ulquiorra is not blind, and he is most certainly not stupid. He has seen the way she looks at him—the way her body foolishly relaxes when he is nearby—and he knows what it means. He can hear the flicker of her heartbeat when he lingers too close, too long. It is not entirely from fear.

He is a monster. More specifically, he is her monster. Aizen-sama, Ichimaru Gin, the other Arrancar – she has seen them, fought them, but none have come particularly close to breaking her. That is Ulquiorra's task, and even though she tries desperately not to show it, he is succeeding, bit by fractured bit.

Even so, there is part of her that seems to... care for him.

She will ask him what his day was like, though she must know his answer will never change, if he bothers to answer at all. She will shrug off his sharp, bladed words as if she has a hierro to match his own, though she must know he still speaks only the truth. It is almost like she is no longer afraid of him.

Oh, she still fears what he is capable of—the instinctive fear any living being has for a Hollow—but she no longer fears what he is going to do.

That should bother him a lot more than it does.

No, what bothers him is something else: Ulquiorra thinks there is a part of him that might be afraid of her.

Why else would he be here, now, in the darkness while she is sleeping? Surely what he has come to say—what he has already said—should be told to her while she is awake. Not because she deserves to hear it, but because he knows it would crush her, to learn that she is truly, truly alone.

He can picture her reaction now – a confused blush, initially—as is always her first response to embarrassment—before she realises exactly what it is that he has said, and exactly what it implies (that she has no secrets before his eyes, that she cannot hide from his mind, that he knows her dreams and would laugh in their face if he could even bring himself to care).

The tears would begin, then, forming constellations on her lashes as she tries to blink them away, and she would shy away from him, as though by ignoring his existence she can ignore his truth, too. But she would not be able to ignore him forever, and eventually she would turn and glare angrily at him—furious like a drowning star—trying to cast him from the room with just the force of her gaze.

"Now do you understand?" he would ask, entirely unmoved. "There is no truth but Aizen-sama's, no purpose but his will. We are not here to care, only to obey. This is the lesson you must learn. You will not redeem me any more than you will redeem yourself. Abandon your hope, onna – it has no use here."

Then he would leave, and the next time he returned, perhaps she would finally comprehend the reality of her existence.

But no. Instead, he has come before her now, while she is far away and lost in dreaming; while she cannot hear his words, but he can still claim to have spoken them. It is almost as if he is hiding from her. As if he does not wish her to cause her further pain.

It is a weakness, strange and inexplicable – when he could have her at his mercy, he instead shows it.

The woman is becoming restless; he is not particularly trying to conceal his reiatsu, and she is sensitive enough to know that there is something in her cell that does not belong. It should worry him that she is only waking up now, when part of her would have known he was there from the moment he stepped into the room. She should not be that comfortable with his presence.

And yet, he cannot quite bring himself to care.

Slowly, she returns to consciousness, arching her body in a loose, languid stretch; while Ulquiorra has never been particularly interested in the shapes of women (or anyone, for that matter), he cannot deny that there is something... intriguing about the way she curves.

It is not enough to draw his eyes for a moment longer than it takes to confirm she awoken, however, and he returns his stare to the sands of Hueco Mundo.

"Who's there?" she yawns, sleep roughing her voice into a strangely pleasant huskiness.

He does not answer.

Blinking the last of her sleep from her eyes, she sits up fully, and he can feel her gaze on his back.

"Ulquiorra! What are you doing here?" By the way her voice slowly heightens in pitch—and the way her heartbeat accelerates ever-so-slightly—she's probably blushing madly.

"It does not concern you. Go back to sleep."

"But Ulqui—"

"Sleep, onna."

Eventually, she does.

He is still there when she wakes up.

For those of you who don't know, a cipher is a code, an enigma, a cryptogram - something you cannot solve through observation alone.

Anyway. Word-play titles aside, apparently this is what I do when my final exams start three days from now. Did I mention the final assignment also due in three days that I haven't finished yet?

Oh well. Ulquihime is worth it. Hopefully this story was, too.