Hoshi

By: Princess Kitty1

It started on a whim.

She had been sitting at her desk without a task, windows open, idly fingering a strip of paper. While other members of the crafts club went about their projects, Orihime Inoue was lost in reverie, her ears filled with the crackling sound of television static.

It was such a nice day, she noticed at some point. The fresh and vibrant colors of the outside world made the classroom dull when she shifted her eyes between them. She wanted to bottle up that beauty and take it home with her.

Several derailments of her thought train later, she felt her nails biting into something hard – she'd made herself a paper star. How strange, she thought, smiling at the ornament in her palm. How powerful she felt! Without realizing what she was doing, she had given new life to a common piece of trash. This ability, combined with her desire to take the colorful world home with her, ended in a simple resolution:

She would decorate her apartment with tiny jars of paper stars.

…

Orihime felt strangely possessive of her new project. She ignored suggestions on the quantity of stars, the size of the jars and whether they should be plastic or glass. She turned down offers for help in folding the miniatures.

If it was quite alright with everyone else, this was her task, and only she would know what to do and when to stop.

She worked whenever she had free time. Unfortunately, with school and the demands of her job, it was a little hard to come by. This led to her setting goals for herself: ten stars a day, then fifteen, then twenty. On weekends she could make close to a hundred if she was sufficiently distracted.

What was strange to her friends – and strange to herself, if she had to admit it – was her refusal to buy star paper. She knew that strips were sold fairly cheap at convenience stores, in every color and print that could suit her fancy. It would save her time and trouble if she just used those instead of the paper she daily fished out of recycle bins.

She wrinkled her nose at the thought. Origami stars were the destiny of precut paper; she'd much rather give her rescued scraps a rekindled purpose of their own.

…

When tasked with something like the creation of paper stars, one would inevitably begin to count them. Orihime did this every night when she met her quota, but didn't really keep track until there were jars involved.

Fifty stars in this one, fifty more in that one. The laden glass containers began appearing on every surface of her apartment. There was no plan for them, either. She would fill a jar, look around, find the place that made her cry "Ah-hah!" and place it there with a triumphant smile.

So many down, this many to go… was she aiming for a goal? As she finished her five-hundredth star, she thought, why not a thousand? She could get a wish out of her crafty ordeal, and wishes were such difficult things to pass up.

A thousand stars it was.

…

What would she wish for, though?

Not for high marks on her next exam – that was all on her, and slacking off wasn't worth a wasted wish. She could afford new clothes with her bakery money, so that was out of the question.

A trip to Hawaii? A lifetime supply of donuts? The location of a lamp with a genie that could give her three wishes instead of one?

She thought of many absurd wishes and giggled over them as she worked. Then she chided herself for making a farce of the magic she was depending on to grant her… something. Her inability to come up with a proper wish vexed her, and even made her morose.

…

The best thing about all that repetitive work was that it left her brain free for thinking. She could recall things learned in class or read in textbooks, thus improving her understanding of the subject. She could plan her next crafting project, attempt to mix foods mentally, wonder when Tatsuki would get over her nerves and ask out the soccer player she was crushing on.

Orihime also thought about the actual stars: what she knew about them, what few constellations were visible from her window. There weren't many to be seen in the city. She remembered how, during her captive days in Hueco Mundo, she would pass the time by identifying the many constellations in its perpetual night.

Once she had forgotten her situation and exclaimed to Ulquiorra that she'd spotted Cygnus. He'd questioned her excitement, said nothing to her response of "Oh, umm, I don't know," and then unexpectedly gave her a brief history of the constellation and its discovery.

"Do you like the stars, Ulquiorra-kun?"

He'd given her a blander look than usual before resuming his study of the wall.

Later he would wake up from a doze on her couch and tell her to stop calling him Ulquiorra-kun; at the time, he hadn't minded.

…

Orihime realized that she hadn't thought much about Hueco Mundo. The few times she'd tried had led to an embarrassed blush crawling up her neck. All that promising, all that wanting to be stronger so that she could stand beside Kurosaki-kun without depending on him – no, it hadn't been her best moment, and thus it had been banished from her mind for the most part.

But the sudden memory had brought it front and center. As she worked on the stars, reminded of that quiet, moonlit desert, she reflected on her actions and their consequences.

She thought of her intentions, her reasons for leaving. She thought of nights gone by in her cell, missing the things and the people she'd abandoned, wondering if she would ever see them again. And while it had saddened her, she'd had the benefit of not being entirely alone.

No, she'd had Ulquiorra to talk to, even if many times he hadn't talked back. "Were you ordered to stay here watching me?" she'd asked him one day, having turned from her window to find him leaning against the stark white wall. "I have no intention of running away. Aizen-sama doesn't need to worry."

"We are aware of that."

She'd waited for him to answer her question. He'd ventured nothing further, and after some minutes of staring at a fixed point on the floor, he'd pocketed his hands and walked out of the room.

…

There had been color in Hueco Mundo too, albeit not as much. She saw it mostly when she left her room and came in contact with the other Espada. When they were all sitting together at a table, she'd been shocked by the array of color standing out against the pallor walls. And while they'd spoken amongst each other, she'd lost herself in the memory of home; of cotton candy, sunflowers, seawater, grass.

If she had asked them for star paper and jars, would they have brought her some? Could she have filled her cell with the life of a world she'd never see again? Now that she was back in that world, she supposed anything was possible.

Seven-hundred stars and counting. The jars were lined up on top of her refrigerator, nudging her elbow when she worked at her desk, greeting her in the morning, distracting her from the television. Stars in every color she could want. She had cherry blossoms and autumn leaves, tanned skin and apples, rainforests, clouds, outer space. Her intention had been to capture the world; she'd gathered the universe instead.

But hadn't she been bottling the universe from the beginning? Stars, celestial bodies – they were nothing of this earth, even if they were colored like it, even if intellects chained down by gravity had given clusters earthly shapes and names.

What if, instead of keeping them in bottles, she hanged them from her ceiling? What if she fashioned herself a night sky with the one-thousand stars she was creating?

It'd have made her cell much prettier, but she could see Ulquiorra disapproving. Why would she need recollections of her past life when she'd chosen to become one of them? He'd say something like that, she thought with a certain nod. He'd been that kind of straightforward guy.

…

And besides, a thousand stars were nowhere near enough to reproduce a night sky. Stars were uncountable, like blades of grass, grains of sand. She'd be at work for the rest of her life, but at least then, she'd have more wishes than she knew what to do with.

What could she possibly wish for, though? Eight-hundred and thirty-one stars and she hadn't the slightest clue. It all sounded so selfish. Still, she couldn't bring herself to ask anybody else. It was her project, her wish. They couldn't decide for her.

There were jars all over her apartment now. She didn't need anymore. But she couldn't stop; she was desperate to reach that goal, desperate for the right to make her wish, even if it wouldn't come true.

Wasn't it fallen stars that people usually wished on? Dandelions were common in the area. She knew of a tunnel short enough for her to hold her breath and wish through…

Why the origami stars? Why recycled paper? Why were her shaking hands the only ones that could contribute to this task? Why did she even want to make a wish in the first place?

…

The closer she came to a thousand, the sadder she grew.

She folded, she remembered, she cried.

Nine-hundred and sixty-two stars and all she could think about was how pointless this effort was. She was in her apartment, not some colorless prison with a jailer who stayed despite having no use of her company. She didn't need a thousand stars sitting around, collecting dust, when all she had to do to experience the world was walk out the front door. She didn't need wishes when she had the power to make things happen on her own.

Then why hadn't she made things happen? Why had it taken nine-hundred and eighty stars to start thinking of Hueco Mundo again? For her to wonder if perhaps her companion had kept himself in her room, had accompanied the lesser arrancar to make sure she wouldn't get hurt?

He'd had her in his thoughts. She hadn't bothered to keep him in hers.

Nine-hundred and eighty-eight stars, and she could hardly see them through her tears. They were coming out lopsided because her hands were shaking. Her heart was breaking with each completed star.

She could wish for the world, but she'd given it to herself in the form of colored paper ornaments. She could wish to stop crying, but how selfish was that? She could wish for her wrongs to be righted, but that was something she had to come to terms with; something she had to do on her own, the way she'd folded these nine-hundred and ninety-two stars without anybody's help.

And the magic, she knew, was not in the stars themselves, but in all of the heart it had taken to make them. If she made a wish – any wish – it would come true because she had poured life into unwanted paper.

She folded, she sobbed, she prayed. She appealed to her heart for the granting of a wish so complicated that she couldn't put it into words.

And the moment the thousandth star fell from her trembling hands, she found them clasped between two others; larger, steadier and paler than her own.

…

Over time, the one-thousand paper stars began to disappear from her apartment. She gave them to her friends, to the members of the crafts club, to her neighbors. She was convinced that they were full of magic, waiting to be used by worthier people.

Ulquiorra tried several times to convince her that there was nothing magical about the stars themselves. How could there be? It was just paper.

But he kept a tiny jar of green ones all the same.

The End

A/N: No idea what the hell this was, but here it is! Ulquihime feelings never truly die. Even if it hurt my arms to make the effort, I'm glad I was able to finish it. And thank you for reading it! Hope y'all enjoyed the story!

PK1