#the actual first draft version didnt work bc apparently the entire hueco mundo arc is just one day?

[violetnaps]

second first draft - hueco mundo timeloop fic. basically just The Scene.

It’s not working.

She knows what the problem is. There’s only ever been one problem. Aizen, Matsuri says.

Me, Orihime thinks.

It’s funny, almost. Matsuri doesn’t even talk about her adoptive captain anymore. In every other attempt, he’d been at the forefront of her focus, right next to Fujimaru. (She’d promised, over and over, as many times as it took – she’ll never let him die. Half for the sake of this boy she’s never met, because she’d had a brother too, once, and half for the sake of the girl next to her who’d die with him in more ways than one. So, really, it’s not for him at all, and she almost feels sorry for it.)

Nowadays, she just lingers by Orihime’s side, nervous as the day they met. There is power thrumming under her hands that Orihime cannot touch. That Orihime does not want to touch. Matsuri is stronger than her, but not much else. They can’t rely on such unstable power. They shouldn’t have to. It’s Orihime that’s the problem.

She’s starting to lose track of how many times it’s been.

It’s always around here that she loses her nerve. The first time, she’d only gone back just far enough to undo that gaping hole. This can’t be, is what she’d thought. I reject, I reject, I reject!

And so it had been undone.

Only to happen again.

She’d watched, then, horrorstruck, wondering if the reversal had been a trick of her mind. A vain, pointless hope. It’s always going to be this way. You’re not strong enough, Ulquiorra says.

But still–

She can’t just sit here and watch.

The thing wearing Kurosaki-kun’s body stabs Ishida-kun and she screams.

I reject!

And then she’s in her room, on the dawn of that terrible day, listening to the blonde shinigami explain the importance of the white clothes. “Matsuri-san,” she says, forgetting that she hadn’t introduced herself yet, “Matsuri-san, you have to help me.”

Matsuri hadn’t liked her much, in that one. Not much else changed besides that.

Or the next, or the next, or the next.

But something’s gone wrong, now. So terribly, completely, utterly wrong. Even more so than before. Even more so than Kurosaki-kun’s walking corpse that she can never truly unwind out of existence – oh, she hates this part, she truly does – and she prepares herself for the impact, for Ulquiorra and Kurosaki-kun and Ishida-kun, and there’s Loly and Menoly behind her, and then–

Matsuri’s flower bursts into flames.

“Hold on to this for me, won’t you?” she'd said. “It was a gift from Konoka-sama.”

Orihime had felt the weight of her hairpins very keenly as she’d accepted, gingerly tucking it away. She’d accepted the explanations so easily – “I’m such a messy fighter, you know, and Gin always aims where it hurts, the jerk. And… I don’t think Seigen-sama likes looking at it very much.”

Seigen-sama has barely looked at her in all the time Orihime’s known her. It wasn’t always like that, she knows, and she’d thought that explained it.

But then Matsuri’s flower bursts into flames, and a tiger emerges.

It shakes its mane, fends off Loly and Menoly with frustrating ease, and hisses. The voice that emerges from it rings distantly familiar, almost like– “Kotomaru,” she recognises suddenly, except… that can’t be right. Can zanpakuto even exist outside their blades like this? And if Kotomaru is here–

What is Matsuri fighting with?

“You still don’t get it? She went off to die.”

That can’t be.

She’d handed her the flower and smiled. Tucked the red rope into it so lovingly, like she meant every word. Just for safekeeping, truly. She’d thought– she’d thought she finally got it right this time, finally convinced Matsuri from the start–

“As long as either one survives, so too will I. She left me here to protect you.”

“No,” Orihime says, “no, no, you can’t, you’re– you’re her sword! You have to go to her!”

Kotomaru sniffs. “I cannot. I have been excised, cast out from the whole. I am no longer the part of the entity that calls itself both Kotomaru and Ryujomaru. I am only Kotomaru, and my only vessel is in your hands.”

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

She’d known– of course, Ichimaru had been planning something, and this time around Matsuri had acted first, but–

Not like this.

Even if it takes another dozen tries, not like this.

Orihime is the problem. This whole thing – Kurosaki-kun’s corpse, Ulquiorra, Matsuri – if she hadn’t been here… there must be another way.

Another path, beyond Hueco Mundo. Before Matsuri had to raise her sword on her brother. Before anything started at all.

Kotomaru flinches, eyes glassy and distant. A gut-wrenching scream echoes from outside the tower, in that same hauntingly familiar voice that Kotomaru used. Orihime clutches the flower, red rope wrapped around her hands.

First, she thinks, I’ll come find you. Wherever you are. If Aizen could do it, Urahara-san can, too. She’ll make sure of it.

Then, with Kotomaru’s warmth wrapped around her–

I reject.