I do not own Bleach, whatta shame!

A mother was a whisper, a whisper she'd never heard. She remembered her own mother in parts, a slap to the ear, a loud cry in the night, a desperate moan for her father. Orihime had decided long ago that she had no mother, but it was important that others did.

Yachiru likes to yell inappropriate nicknames at her (as she does for everyone), "Boobie-chan" she cried, and Orihime rememberes crying for her own mother, lying across the kitchen floor half naked and bloody. "Can she stay with us ken-chan?" she moans, and her big bloody guardian nods simply. It is the first gesture of kindness she experiences from him.

"So sleeping beauty can only be woken up by a prince?" Yachiru questions her. Orihime nods and squeezes her round pink cheeks. "Ken-chan must be a prince then, he woke me up from a nightmare," she replies. For a moment Orihime is shocked by her awareness, the depth in which she can understand her own mind. "Hime-chan must be a princess; your own name says so." It is easy to forget Yachiru is a competent shinigami, and a vice-caption at that. "I hope so, "she murmurs, more to the night breeze then the half sleeping child. "Maybe Orihime will stay" Yachiru whispers, and it is the first time she has said her whole first name. "I hope so," she tells the child, not unlike the promises her own mother made.

When Yachiru has fallen asleep Orihime walks the corridors of the eleventh division, quietly, calmly, and for no reason at all. "Girl," their caption calls out when she reaches the deck, "come sit and drink with me," and she obeys as usual.
"Why are you here?" he asks her bluntly, innocently as the question is it cuts her across the stomach, making her want to run to the nearest bathroom and throw up what she has eaten. "Yachiru" she answers, because there is no more of an honest answer and she has no real choice.

He grins, a wide grin, like he is about to slice somebody across the chest. "She has everything she needs right here!" He declares, smile wide with sharp teeth. She hesitantly stares at them as if they might eat her up, "she does not have a mother," she says right back, swallowing her own fear for the sake of another.

The silence is long, it is daunting, and he does not speak until he laughs. "If that is what you want girl" he crackles, and it is all she wants. "Now she has a father and a mother, what a perfect little family."

It is nothing like the family she dreamed of, with the pretty little house and white picket fence, but it is a family, with a mother and a father and more than Orihime ever had.

R&R it would make me quite happy