Human Anatomy

Author's Notes: This is finally the last chapter! I may write a short epilogue, but otherwise this will be the main conclusion to the story. It totally sucks that the manga is just now entering the Ichigo/Ulquiorra phase and this story is drawing to a close – but how cool was it when Ichigo told Ulquiorra he had become more human!?

Thank you for sticking with this to the end and for all the kind and encouraging comments!

XI. Insanity

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Seconds and minutes ticked incessantly toward infinity while she replayed the last scenes of the fight in her mind. Suffocating darkness, the way Ichigo's decapitated body had done a comical muscle-jerk of a dance that almost resembled life. The way his staring eyes stained the ground crimson as the blood poured out of his severed neck, rolling so ungracefully. Ichigo never danced. Ichigo was never so awkward with his body.

Once, in another lifetime, she would have wondered why it was called the 5th tower. Such a number implied the presence of at least four others, although there was never anything else on the horizon. It was nothing to her now. There was a masochistic conductor in her brain who continued to switch a multitude of images in her head, the images of her life, of her brother, of everyone at school, Ichigo's smile, their fight in Soul Society, interspersed always with the image of Ichigo's dead body and Ulquiorra's transformation, Ichigo's dead body, Ulquiorra's transformation, Ichigo's dead body, Ulquiorra's transformation, Ichigo's dea—Ulquiorra's transfor—Ichigo—Ulquiorra—

She clutches her head and screams to dispel these thoughts.

He is always nearby when she does, and he enters the room with his usual nonchalance, looking down on her curled form with a mixture of pity and disdain. He never speaks but somehow his presence manages to stop her screams. It is a routine they repeat over a hundredfold.

Orihime holds tight to her sanity. Ulquiorra tells her it would be less painful to do otherwise.

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He visits her now only for shrieks and tantrums. When it has been a full week without incident, he swings open the gate to her cage with a hint of annoyance and apprehension.

She is sitting by the farthest curve of the wall with her hands over her ears, both customary gestures. His footsteps echo softly on the unpolished stone but it doesn't stir her attention.

"Woman." He has once again decried the use of her name. Still she does not hear, and he takes another step forward, reaching out to shake her shoulder.

A prickling in Orihime's consciousness alerts her to look up, but what she sees is the long black claw of a black-winged monster. She cannot recall where, but she has seen this monster before and something in her mind screams danger. She opens her mouth to let that scream out. The face is wrong, though, familiar in a better way, two deep green eyes and two everlasting tearstains that somehow did not belong. She closes her eyes, trying to comprehend, but her thoughts are overwhelmed by chaos.

At the unexpected sound, Ulquiorra moves one pace back. He cannot see through her eyes to know the extent of her malady, the degradation of her illness. When she rushes at him, clawing with her all might at his mask, her erraticism begins to alarm him. He clutches both of her hands with his own while she continues to scream, hoping to lull her into calmness. Instead she fights to pry free from his grasp and he shoves her roughly to the ground in protest, earning a brief respite of silence.

She regards him intently in that moment of stillness.

Orihime regains her footing quietly, demurely even. She is breathing heavily but stands perfectly still, never taking her eyes off him. First she takes one step back, then two, inching herself toward the space between the stones. He had never realized until now how skinny she'd gotten. She takes the final step back, ever graceful, slipping easily through the slit in the wall to begin the descent to her death. Without thinking, without realizing, Ulquiorra has reached out his hand to her and feels himself falling, too.

Cold air pulls angrily at his skin as gravity drags him down, down, down. She smiles up at him as her body hurtles ever downward and somehow it is this that makes his blood run cold. The gap between them closes and he is within reach of her at last, within reach as he pulls her arms tight around him and the tears falling up from her crying eyes land haphazardly on his cheeks. The proximity of the tower's stones, with their special ability to suppress reiatsu, have robbed him of his powers. Ulquiorra looks about for someplace to grab onto, someplace to land, but there is nothing but desert sand around them for miles. Her hair whips furiously into his face, long deprived of its scent of flowers and innocence. Her screams have long been silenced. The ground comes up to catch them as, too late, she presses her lips to his ear with a whisper.

"Save me."

Seconds and minutes ticked incessantly toward infinity and he wants to say he can, he wants to say to her every thought that has crossed his troubled mind since she came into this world.

He holds her head tightly on his shoulder and closes his own eyes, swallowed by the depths of her insanity, waiting endlessly for impact.

end

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