#ulquiorra/orihime

[jkrobertson]

Oh hi, I bet you forgot about me. So did I. I wrote a new chapter of By Mutual Agreement. Here it is on Ao3. Here it is on FFN.

[tuliharja]

Fandom: BLEACH

Rating: General

Genres: General/Romance

Chapters: 1/1

Summary:  It's a peaceful evening in a small coffee shop and I'm drinking coffee with you. Sipping your tea silently, time seems to have stopped and there is just you and I.

Characters: Inoue Orihime and Cifer Ulquiorra

Relationships: Cifer Ulquiorra/Inoue Orihime

Note: Also posted in fanfiction.net under the same name.

[g-on-ef]

Sneak preview to chpt 1 of Broken Embraces

Orihime stared at the crescent moon. Its soft light caressing her body in a gentle embrace, illuminating her dark room.

Had it not been for the lasers of the moon's light as it traveled across the small space with graceful ease, her room that she resigned in would have been encased in darkness.

She couldn't help but relate to the moon, such a beautiful thing that is usually surrounded by a sea of stars to accompany it to give the impression that the moon was never alone so long as it had the stars, Orihime felt a kinship to it, for jer she was never truly alone so long as she had her friends so long as their bright light surrounded her she was never lost or alone in the Darkness that surrounded her world.

But here in this world, devoid of colors and surrounded by a canvas of black and white, the moon was alone with no one to keep it company all alone in an empty sky.

She couldn't help but let a bitter laugh out as she looked to the ground. Should anything happen to her, the empty sky would be her only witness. The sad thing is no one would know of her death...or her disappearance... memories of the last 24 hours resurfaced as the event that took place began to ran through her mind.

☾~☆~❀~☆~☽

Orihime stared at the Espada as he threatened her friends.

He gave her a choice either go with him or her friends will die.

The lives of her friends will depend on her answer and yet...

"How do I know you're telling the truth?"

The Espada raised an eyebrow.

"What do you mean?"

Orihime swallowed her fear and asked again.

"How do I know you're telling the truth? How do I know once I agree to go with you, you won't kill my friends? The-the blue haired one he already hurt Rukia and, and he wants to hurt Ichigo so how do I know-"

"I can kill everyone now or you come with me, whether you trust me or not is not of my concern but if the safety of your friends means that little to you..."

Orihime stared at the Espada contemplating on whether or not to listen to him.

She wanted to fight back to stop being afraid, she trained with Rukia for this very moment and yet...and yet she knew deep down she wasn't strong enough to defeat him, that she wasn't strong enough to fight back.

If she tried to defend herself he would knock her out and kill her friends. Their deaths would be on her hands.

Orihime closed her eyes unable to look at the Espada when she replied.

"I'll go with you,"

☾~☆~❀~☆~☽

A/N: full update will be posted on 6/1 ^^

[distinguishedshoeduckdonut]

久保帯人公式ファンクラブ #KlubOutside 会員限定イベント

「BLACK HOLE DISCO CLUB」

[maldito-junajo]

Bleach x Studio Ghibli

[green-apple-juice]

[lu-t-ik]

The lust

[niuniente]

UlquihimeWeek2024 Day 1 - Regency

I swear this would work as a fic, too, don't make me write it....!

[keitoz]

[arymiyu]

They heal me🫶🫶

[cindytranart]

"Now I've got something I want to protect: It's you."

-Howl's Moving Castle x UlquiHime (Bleach) crossover (Art Print)

[jkrobertson]

TELL YO FRIENDS! (Also the @ is for Twitter only!!)

[kaibutsushidousha]

What are your thoughts on orihime?

Ichigo's little group of friends exist to be basis of Bleach's arcs. The Soul Society arc is envisioned as Rukia's arc, which is a no-brainer because Rukia is a Shinigami. The Lost Agent is envisioned as Chad's arc, and even if it fails that role, the choice is understandable due to Chad being a Fullbringer. The Blood War is envisioned as Uryuu's arc, obvious again because Uryuu is a Quincy. But Orihime is a Fullbringer, so realizing what makes her fit at the center of the Arrancar arc requires a little more thought.

Well, I'd say the answer can be found about as early as possible. Orihime simply isn't like any other character in the good side. A whole lot of characters in Bleach have tragic pasts, but only Orihime is shown having a tragic present. The other Karakura people have comfortable houses with providing families. The Seireitei is a high class place directly contrasted with the poor Rukongai. The Visored and Xcution are united communities. Unclear about the Quincies in Silbern because we never the status quo there before the times of war.

Meanwhile, Orihime lives alone thanks to cutting ties with her parents at age 4 and losing her brother at age 12. She survives out of part-time jobs and financial support from distant relatives who determine how much money she gets based on her grades. The status quo of Bleach is pretty rough on her, and if I'm not forgetting anyone, her alone. She's doing what she can to survive under a constant threat of hunger, which is something Bleach otherwise only portrays as the lifestyle of a Hollow. I'll get back to this later.

The point here is that Orihime's life sucks. But that's not a thing that ever shows. Orihime in public is just a silly airhead constantly presented as the most cheerful person around. Her screentime in normal school situations is marked by her filtering her unpleasant reality with outlandish imagination. Her antics make her look really stupid, but we're shown that she isn't as she has 3rd best grades in their school. Intentional as her silliness is, she can't afford to be a bad student because that affects how much bread she gets to every month, as mentioned above.

And Bleach wastes no time explaining why she's like that. Still in volume 1, it's already established that Orihime spent her whole life being protected by others. First Sora, then Tatsuki, and now Ichigo. And because she grew up like this, her greatest wish is to not be a problem.

She let Sora bite her because life going on without him was being a problem to him and having to protect her was being a problem to Ichigo. She puts on a smile at school and keeps her conditions a secret to avoid being a problem to anyone who could care about her living situation. She let Ulquiorra take her because she didn't want to be a problem to anyone willing to fight Aizen for her sake. Her experience in Soul Society should have told her that this last one would backfire tremendously, but in her moment of weakness, she couldn't fight against her ingrained habit of avoiding being a burden.

Another key point of her early characterization is obviously her relationship with Ichigo. He was just a cool funny guy at first, until Sora's incident made him interesting, so she asked Tatsuki about him, and only really started caring after hearing about Masaki's death. This happens in a volume where she takes the cover and her opening poem is "If I were the rain [...] could I tie hearts together?". The rain is the symbol of Ichigo's grief, and Orihime falls for Ichigo by associating the lost of his mother with the loss of her brother. She connects best by relating to suffering, which shows later in the many, many, many times she's shown healing Arrancars after years practically living like a Hollow when in the world of the living.

This is kinda of a sudden change of topic, but things are sorta moving in chronological order here and the next big checkpoint is Orihime's first fight, so I'll conclude the talk about her position there and now talk about her powers.

Orihime gets Shun Shun Rikka, a Fullbring centered around rejection of events. Like Bleach abilities tend to do, this power goes incredibly well with Orihime's established characterization. Reality sucks for her but she keeps things by rejecting it through her filter of imagination. She can attack with this power, but it's best suited as a shield (preventing causing problems for others) or healing (making people forget their problems).

She then proceeds to not do much in Soul Society, then early into the Arrancar arc, she loses to Yammy and gets to negatively compare herself to Rukia, who did well in her first on-screen fight ever. Her feelings of uselessness pile up and compound into the 5 lives scenes, which as I already told you before, I consider the emotionally powerful dialogue Kubo has ever written. Not much to comment on it, the moment speaks for itself.

For Orihime, the bulk of the Arrancar arc is spent interacting with Ulquiorra. It's a really challenging experience for her because Ulquiorra has zero emotional depth. He was an ancient Hollow with no eyes, ears, nose, or mouth, being unable to perceive the outside world until Aizen broke his mask. Starrk, Barragan, and Grimmjow's backstories establish that Arrancars inherit experiences from their Hollow selves. Breaking their masks didn't change who they are. But Ulquiorra has no experiences because his Hollow life was spent entirely in the nothingness of himself.

Orihime has always been engaging with people through a smile-shaped web of lies, social conventions, and bravado, but Ulquiorra still haven't experienced humanity enough for that to work on him. He responds only to cold truths, so Orihime's typical conversation strategies are proven useless. It forces her to change her ways. She can only teach him about the heart by being honest and direct. Arrancars are about literal broken masks, but Orihime makes herself part of their story by having her metaphorical mask broken.

After that, we have the Lost Agent arc, which doesn't really take Orihime further (and doesn't really need to since Arrancar was her main focus arc) but does an amazing show of progress for post-Ulquiorra Orihime by introducing Riruka, a tsundere who hangs with Orihime a lot. While Riruka is as full of walls and bravado as Orihime originally was, this Orihime gets to be effortlessly vulnerable, recapping her horrible backstory to her new friend, being called creepy for her apparently fake smile, and clarifying that she actually can smile for real because she was already saved from her past.

The final arc doesn't do much with her aside from putting her in the final boss battle, so I guess I'll use this space to talk about how her progression in combat participation feels really well-paced. She goes from being squarely away from major action in Soul Society to not interfering with the fight but making a point to stay near the battle vs Grimmjow to start tactically throwing shields vs Ulquiorra to getting Ichigo actively ask for her help vs Ywhach.

Ok, that last is probably more about Ichigo himself having learned to ask for help 10 minutes ago after cringing at Uryuu's inability to rely on his friends and taking him as an antithesis model (pun intended).

But still, I love this kind of step-by-step character growth model, it reminds me of how Yugi and Atem's dynamic grew from Yugi unaware to Yugi aware to them starting to talk to them working together vs Pegasus to Yugi dueling alone to Yugi defeating Atem. Always great to see an author commit to a flowchart of development like that.

[himawariinee]

My favorites✨

I draw very messy and this was a quick doodle✨

[bulkawith]

[fzketch]

Hyperfixation strikes again so I thought about sketching a super rough cute thing of these two.