The Cold Is To Be Endured.

Thankyou, Orionshadow, for your kind review.

To the other's that looked over this story, a review, even a negative one, is appreciated. She would always like to know ways to better her own skills. Not meaning to whore herself out too much there.

This chapter is not BETAed, so you might expect an edit.

Chapter Two.

It was cold.

It was always cold here.

Her room was large, white and square, and it reminded her of the freezers where they hang dead animals- so cold and stark and white, like how she imagined death to be.

She hated it here.

A metal cart; as clinical as the rest of her surroundings stood untouched by her bedside. She had her back to it, choosing instead to face the wall and stare off into space. Her arm had gone numb long ago, and her hip ached from lying in one position, but she could not bring herself to shift.

How long had it been since they bought her back to this lifeless little room? Hours, days, months? It could have even been years, she couldn't tell. All she could see were four white walls and a window in which the moon slyly peeked in, winking at her with its solitary eye as if they shared some kind of secret nobody else was privy to.

She knew that there would most likely be repurcussions for the meals she had left uneaten until they were removed, but the mere thought of eating turned her stomach and left a sour taste in her mouth. She could not bring herself to even attempt it.

Kurosaki was...gone.

Just like that.

And For all she knew, the other's were too. How could she eat when she was responsible for someone's death? They had come here to save her, to save her, and she had led them to their own demise.

She had seen Kurosaki bleed to death like a stuck pig on the sand, and she had felt Rukia's and Chad's riatsu diminish to the point of no return. Of the other two, she had no clue, but she could no longer feel the flutter of their spirit against her's, and it terrified her, because what if they had met the same fate as Ichigo...?

She wouldn't cry anymore - couldn't cry anymore, but she could not muster the will to do more than just lay there. That was all she wanted, just to lay there forever in the cold hard bed.

She felt as if she were was stuck in limbo; hopelessness bending her backwards inexorably towards breaking.

She would only be kept alive until she had outgrown her usefulness to Aizen, she knew and in reality that wasn't so long. But in the end, things came as they came, no sooner and no later than they were supposed to, and when they did, then she could see his smile again, and she could finally go back home.

A grinding whine from the door broke the silence, announcing a visitor, but she did not bother to turn around to see who had entered. After all, it could only be one person, and that one person was the last one she wished to see.

Hopefully he would think she was asleep and just leave.

"You have not eaten," He said instead, and inwardly she sighed. Unsure whether he was making an observation or if he thought that she didn't know and was deigning to inform her, she kept quiet. If she said nothing he would either get annoyed and go away, or he would get annoyed, tell her off and then go away. Both of these options ended in his leaving, so she figured that she would win whether or not she got a lecture.

"Why haven't you eaten your meal?" She noticed absently that his tone didn't change at all. Still, she said nothing.

There was a long silence.

"Why have you not eaten?" He asked again, and to his credit his voice still hadn't changed, even though she knew that he was irritated.

Eventually; "I wasn't hungry," She said dully.

"I have been informed that you have not consumed anything for a few days, woman."

She didn't bother to reply.

"Is it because I killed the shinigami?" The way he asked it, he may as well have been asking about the weather.

She stiffened.

Kurosaki...

She could feel his cold green gaze on her. "I see," He said, "It is. Refusing to eat will change nothing."

Don't you think I know that! She thought, tears that she thought past prickling her eyelids.

Why could he always effect her like this?

"Please go away," Inoue whispered.

"Are you grieving?" He seemed mildly curious. Her fingers wound in thin snowy sheets and tightened. She felt sick, images of her dead saviour in her head and her ears ringing with cruel words that were not intended as cruel, but were born of ignorance and were making her insides broil and turn in a million directions.

"Do you wish the shinigami were still alive?" He asked.

"Please," She begged, desperate, "Just leave."

"I am under orders not to leave until you have eaten something."

Her gut protested that vigorously. "I'm not hungry," She repeated, defiance tightening her jaw.

"That is irrelevant," Orihime was informed. "It is your duty to care for yourself, as it is mine to kill those who defy Aizen."

He was needling her now, she knew, and it infuriated her. She sat up abruptly, whirling viciously around to glare at hm, but dizziness, borne of exhaustion and hunger forced her to close her eyes to ward herself against it.

"You have not bathed since your return," He continued relentlessly, "Nor have you eaten. You are weak, you look awful and you can be smelt from where I am standing. It is disgusting and it can no longer be allowed."

"I don't care!" She cried out suddenly, the loudness of her own voice making her jump. He looked at her impassively. "It doesn't matter anymore," She said, her voice softer, "Everyone is dead. Everyone except for me. Don't you see? I couldn't help them; they tried to save me and I couldn't even help them."

He said nothing, merely looked at her with his eyes like two shards of green agate as she tucked her knees to her ample chest and curled her slender arms around them, burying her face in the white pants she wore. They were still travel stained.

He said nothing for a very long time.

"Their deaths were their own fault," He eventually told her, "Do not grieve for their stupidity and be thankful that it was not you."

The words were like acid to her; bitter and scalding.

She couldn't stand them.

"Shutup."

He was silent.

Orihime wrenched her head up, her eyes like stormclouds, "Shut up! You always say thing like that! You don't know anything, you don't understand anything and you don't know anything about sadness or grief because you are a monster!"

Orihime was shocked at herself. She didn't think herself capable of such awful thoughts. The Fourth Espada seemed to bring out the worst in her.

She was panting with exertion from the force of her outburst, and she closed her eyes to stave off another dizzy spell.

He spoke against the darkness, and his voice was hard.

"You say these things as if they were bad. But these things you claim I need turn you into something weak and pathetic. I do not need, nor do I desire anything that will make me like you are. Now, eat."

A pale hand pushed the trolley towards her, and she finally looked down to what was resting there. A small plate with two pieces of bread and a glass of water graced the small surface.

"...Uh,"

Her anger seemed to falter somewhat: even it was not quite sure how to react to the unexpectedly sparse meal. She turned to look at him quizzically and he pursed his lips slightly.

She blinked. That was the first expression she had ever seen him make.

"Your stomach will be unable to handle anything more substantial," He said bluntly, and it was an explanation, and she was a little grateful for it.

It didn't make her any more inclined to eat it though.

Stubbornness decided that it was planning to run the show for a while, so she allowed it to take the reins: it wanted to give Ulquiorra the cold shoulder. She thought this was a good idea, so she turned her face away pointedly from him and rested her cheek on her knee.

His reaction was somewhat unexpected.

A sharp pain on her scalp made her cry out as her entire head was pulled back with a thick clump of her red hair. He took advantage of her wide open mouth to shove something soggy and wholly disgusting in there, and she choked in protest.

She tried to spit it out, but as quickly as he had grabbed the tangled tresses, Ulquiorra grabbed her jaw and forced it shut, pinching her nose closed in the process.

"Swallow," He told her coldly. Her shock and her utter fury shoved stubbornness brutally out of the way, warred with each other for dominance before coming to a truce and using their collective forces in equal measure.

The bread was cold and sludgy and it was breaking apart in her mouth and her stomach was informing her that if she tried to put that in it, she had another thing coming.

However, the need to breathe eventually overruled her stubbornness and her nausea, and she swallowed it, gagging as it slid down her throat and her insides did a few somersaults. He let her go and she drew air into her starving lungs in hoarse gasps, coughing and choking and trying desperately to keep that tiny morsel from making its way back up, if such a thing were possible.

Before she had entirely recovered, she found another slightly larger, but just as soggy piece of bread pushed into her mouth before a cool hand tried to suffocate her again. She didn't last very long during the scond round at all, gulping it down less than ten seconds after the Espada decided he wanted to see if humans really needed oxygen.

He let her settle down that time, until her wheezing had abated somewhat and the bile had settled. She looked at him through watery eyes, and coughed a little.

"We can continue to do this like that, or you can behave yourself."

She considered refusing. She very seriously considered it. She knew it would make his life difficult and she would like to do that very much.

She had never thought herself a vengeful person, but the things that he had done to her, regardless as to whether or not he did them of his own volition made her think that he deserved everything he got. She wondered how difficult it would be if she threw up on him.

But she couldn't quite bring herself to do it.

She would think about it as much as she liked, but in the end she knew that she just couldn't be so purposefully mean natured.

She watched him slowly tear another rough square of bread off of a slice, and dip it into the cup of water until it swelled and tiny pieces of it began to break off. He offered it to her, and resignedly, but not without resentment, she reached up to take it, gritting her teeth when he jerked it away from her fingers. The look he gave her told her that he did not trust her one iota, and he moved it closer to her mouth. He wanted her to take it from his hand like a dog! The nerve!

He waved it in front of her lips warningly, and with a baleful stare, she reluctantly opened her mouth. He deftly placed it on her tongue and the water trickled over it. The redhead shut her mouth and swallowed it without chewing, forcing herself to ignore the sick feeling that ensued. It had lessened a little anyway.

He offered her another small white square, and she allowed him to put it in her mouth, getting rid of it as quickly as she could.

"I have to feed you as if you are a child," He murmured, "Or an animal."

She did not bother responding, she just took the next piece, while he watched her with the same expression that he always wore, whether he was visiting her, or speaking to Aizen (or the other Espada) or fighting...or committing murder.

He had watched Kurosaki's blood stain the ground with that same bland expression, with those same dead eyes.

She hated those eyes. Eyes so devoid of life, of will, should not be so vibrant in colour, should not be a green of such breathtaking vividness that they were almost lurid. They should be black, or grey, something dark and dull and lifeless to reflect what was behind them.

The tracks that scarred his cheeks were so bitterly ironic that it made her want to tear out her own hair, because she knew that he couldn't cry. Monster's don't cry, and he was a monster - not because he was an Espada, but because he felt nothing.

She couldn't look at him anymore. She stared down at the bread he was handfeeding her, feeling his alien eyes on her as she mechanically opened her mouth and took what he gave her, watching her intently, as if she were a needlessly complicated movie that he feared not understanding if he missed one second of it. How could something so intense hold nothing inside of it? How could he recognise what he saw, what he sought in her if he were just a machine of flesh and blood?

He had to feel something, he just had to. He was once a Hollow, who was once a human, so that meant that he had to have felt something once, and maybe still did, even if it was buried under mountains of apathy. He had to! She couldn't bring herself to believe that he was always as heartless as he was now.

"What happened?" She blurted suddenly, unable to stop herself. "What happened to make you like this? What was so awful that you won't even let yourself feel good things?" She had to know - he was human once, and even the other Espada felt! She thought of Grimmjow, the evidence of his torment before his defeat.

He made a sudden movement, and for one crazy second she thought he was going to hit her, but he only straightened and distastefully brushed the hand he had fed her with on his thigh.

"I exist only to serve," His voice was cold...and, angry? "Your yammering, your ridiculous questions, your odour and your pathetic crying. All of these things offend me, and you will desist. Please remember that were it not for Aizen's orders, I would have killed you long ago," He paused. "You have eaten enough."

There was still half a piece of bread left.

He turned his back and walked evenly from the room, his heels clicking while she stared at the trolley. They stopped, and she turned her pale face to the door, in which he stood, his back to her but his head turned so that he could see her with one solitary eye.

"Stop looking for what isn't there. I am not what you are hoping I am."

And he left without another word, the sound of his footsteps lost in the bustle of the two female Arrancar in white robes that rushed in and took her meal, their broken masks shining dully in the light.

Confusion, weariness and perhaps a little regret weighed down her bones. His reaction was very unexpected. She watched the unfamiliar women manouvre the metal cart out of the doorway -one pushing, one pulling- and in to the hall. There were two different girls for every day: Aizen didn't trust her, even though he knew that even considering taking advantage of another was impossible.

Briefly her mind flashed back to the two that had snuck into her quarters when Ulquiorra had been distracted: the ones that Grimmjow had saved her from, before he had demanded she save Ichigo. Perhaps it was the other's that he didn't trust?

..Ichigo, who had died anyway by the same hand that but for her would have slain him the first time. Despite everything she had done, she had changed nothing.

The cold crept its sluggish way through her. It was the kind of cold that started from the inside, in the heart, and worked its way slowly through the rest of the system until it reached the very tips of her fingers and toes. It was cold that nothing could touch; not hot chocolate, or sake or even the most brilliant sun. It was the cold of the soul, and there was no true relief from it anywhere.

She lay back down, and images of fiery hair that matched hers and a smile of the most infinite sadness ran through her mind over and over, as if it were a broken CD that just kept skipping and replaying the same line over and over, but you couldn't quite change it to the next track.


The next day, when her meal of bread and water came, so did the pale man with the helmet of bone, and he stood by her door until she had finished what she could, but he didn't say a word.

Then again, neither did she.