Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach. It is the property of Tite Kubo; I merely borrow the characters for my own amusement.

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Halo Rust

The clash of swords, the ring of metal strikes as swords crossed, and the resulting chime was the death bell’s knell against her heart, her wavering soul.

The two of them – her Death angels – whirled in a halo about the white marble floors of the deadness of Las Noches. Sparks fly into the air, and fade, as spirits with nothing else to live for. (The same way she feels her soul pales sometimes, bleached as white and bleak as the stone beneath her feet, as the sands beyond her window, stretching into infinity.)

He is silent, composed, her guardian these many long days, with only the dark tracks on his cheeks hinting at some hidden emotion deep, deep within him. He is detached, and distant – a glacier at the end of the world – but she remembers his eyes are deep as an endless well (falling to the depths of hell). Again, those markings on his stark, cold face, like those of a god entombed, of a flightless angel-demon…

She calls him Ulquiorra. (She called him Evil.)

He is silent as well, but grim, and were there fuel to be had, his eyes would strike flame with the very air around him. He is a vibrant streak of color in this otherwise lifeless world—for the first time in what seems to be eternity, he is the color in her rapidly fading world. If his opponent is a god, then he is one incarnate in flesh, hot to the touch, painful to the sight.

She calls him Ichigo. (She called him Salvation.)

Their fight resounds like the clash of titans, she thinks, but briefly, for a feeling – both familiar and not – rises up to choke her, hobbling her breath, nauseating her senses.

For a moment, she classifies the emotion as worry, fear for the safety of the one in danger. In the next, she realizes that she knows not whom the fear is for—the guardian and savior of her past, or the guardian and executioner of her present. (Perhaps the first, perhaps the second, maybe even for herself.)

The battle continues, in the ring of metal (amongst Death’s tolling) and the terribly primal awe of it all. Orihime takes in a breath, and knows that he spoke truly: if Ichigo came and “saved” her, carried her away from here like the princess in her fairytales, it was hardly likely that her heart would be saved with her.

(Because her heart was already wandering, through twisted corridors and bleak staircases, and not towards its home in humanity.)

She is sick as she watches them, and there is bile in her throat. She should say something, should speak, but there was something morbidly fascinating—watching them – deities in their own rights – fight over her, a mortal, only elevated through her connection to them.

She stands there, with wide, innocent eyes, clothed in the purity of white—does not stop them. (For now, for a moment.)

She stands as an Angel—the truest devil of them all.