Chapter Text
Orihime's face throbbed, and her pride stung. She held cool fingers to the swelling under her eye, wishing that her tears would stop soaking her palm.
She held out for a commendable length of time before the pain and humiliation wrought by the two Hollow girls was too much to withstand. She remained silent throughout the beating and could not even make a noise when Loly delivered a swift kick to her ribs that sent the wind from her lungs and a crack through the bones there.
She would have to heal that.
After the girls departed, bored with their plaything, she crumbled to her side in a ball and sobbed silently. She was framed by the light streaming into the dark cell through the still open doorway. The bars over the window had long since witnessed the departure of the forever waning moon into the perpetual night sky.
Orihime sobbed and wondered.
Now, here, in the throes of her pain and self-pity, she was despondent. Her aches had no meaning.
She felt pointless.
Forced into a corner, she had selflessly—and thoughtlessly—sacrificed her freedom to Ulquiorra at the threat of her loved ones' safety. She could not bear to think, though, that she had served her purpose. Surely her chapter had not ended with her incarceration. Why, after all, did Aizen truly order her detainment? Her doubts mounted.
Certainly, she couldn’t be here as a single-woman nurse corps for his army of Arrancar. Orihime recalled Grimmjow's mad laughter with a shudder and curled tighter into herself on the floor. She could almost feel the electric tingle of his oppressive reiatsu.
She missed the tall shadow that the new figure in the doorway cast on her.
Calculating blue eyes narrowed on her defeated form, taking in her torn dress and the hint of blood and bruising peeking through the fingers still covering her shame. His expression was indecipherable.
When Orihime finally pulled her hands from her face, the doorway was empty again, and there was no trace of her fleeting third visitor.
She fell asleep there on the floor.