Work Text:
The name usually appeared during the teenage years. Etched in black ink that no scientist had yet been able to explain and in the handwriting of the soulmate in question, the name appeared when the youngest member of the pair went through puberty. Often, soulmates were around the same age. Sometimes they weren't, but no matter what the age difference had never in history exceeded ten years among humans.
Inoue Sora was one of the few in the world to pass his twenty-fifth birthday without his soulmate's name appearing on his left wrist. There was a part of Orihime that always wondered if she too would be the same.
When Inoue Orihime passed puberty without a name appearing, her brother patted her on the head and called her budding cougar.
"You've got a younger soulmate, eh?" Sora said. "Better not grow up too quickly then."
Orihime smiled and agreed, because she knew her brother, her amazing brother who'd devoted his whole life for her, couldn't believe that she also would never find her soulmate. For him, Orihime believed too.
The first thing Orihime did after the loss of her brother truly sank in was to pull up the sleeve of her shirt and check her left wrist. Maybe, she thought, a name would be there. Some proof that she wasn't alone in the world anymore.
Her pale skin was as unmarked as ever and she slowly rolled her sleeve down without letting any tears fall on it.
When she was younger, Orihime had imagined that Kurosaki Ichigo was her soulmate. By the time they were both fifteen, she knew they weren't, but that didn't prevent her from having fond feelings for him—feelings that only grew stronger when they all went to Soul Society together to rescue Rukia.
Ichigo was a precious person to Orihime and she knew he felt the same. After all, she was the only one he told the name of his soulmate to, at least at that time. Sitting in the Shiba house, waiting for the dawn so they could enter into Kukaku's canon, Orihime sat down next to Ichigo and he let her roll up his left sleeve.
"It's only there when I'm in this form," he told her. "When I'm in my human body, my wrist is blank."
"Oh," Orihime murmured, staring at elegantly scrawled Kuchiki Byakuya.
"You?" Ichigo asked, glancing at her covered wrist.
Orihime shook her head. Ichigo casually reached over and patted her hair.
"Don't worry," he said. "They're out there."
Orihime smiled and agreed, because like for her brother she couldn't let Ichigo know that she wasn't so sure they were.
She didn't think about soulmates again until after the man, Aizen was his name, and two other captains disappeared within the large pillars of light. It wasn't until after Byakuya explained himself to Rukia, after Orihime healed Ichigo to the best of her ability, that she saw him glancing at his covered wrist and she remembered that conversation that seemed so long ago but had really only been a couple days before.
Ichigo attempted to get up. Orihime just sighed and helped him stand.
"Wait, shouldn't you be resting more?" Uryuu asked, pushing up his glasses. "Inoue, why are you—?"
Orihime smiled at Uryuu and guided the stumbling Ichigo over to where Byakuya lay. "Hisana wasn't your soulmate, was she?" Ichigo said.
Byakuya stared up at Ichigo. "I have no soulmate."
"Have you checked recently?" Ichigo asked and without allowing Byakuya to answer, he grasped the captain's left wrist and easily unwrapped the white bandages around it.
Orihime allowed herself enough time to quickly see the scrawled Kurosaki Ichigo, before she turned away. The other Shinigami were staring at the pair with various degrees of shock on their faces and if Orihime were anyone else, she might have laughed at them.
It didn't change too much though. Byakuya was still recovering from the death of his wife, even though it was fifty-something years ago, and Ichigo wasn't ready to give up the human world yet. He told Orihime later that they'd vowed to revisit the subject again in a couple years—after his sisters had graduated high school. She supposed for a Shinigami that wasn't too long to wait and Ichigo had other things to worry about then his strange soulmate situation.
Training for the war started in earnest. Orihime ask Rukia to help her become stronger, so that she could be useful her precious friends. It all backfired on her, though.
It was as she was running back through the gateway, trying to return to the human world to help her friends against the Espada, that she first saw him.
"I'll allow you to say goodbye to one person," he said.
Orihime found Ichigo and healed him and then left without looking back.
She found out later that the creature, another Espada, was to be her caretaker in this strange world Aizen ruled. Ulquiorra was his name.
"Do Arrancar have soulmates?" she asked him a week after she'd been taken, a week of his almost constant company.
"No," Ulquiorra said. "We are born with no heart."
It was sad, Orihime thought, that Ulquiorra believed he had no heart. She thought maybe he did. Why else would he tell her that her friends had come to save her? Why else would he protect her against the two female Arrancar that were always glaring her way? Why else would he sit with her at night when she asked and stare up at the moon with her?
So sad, she thought again much later —as Ichigo stared Ulquiorra down. Ulquiorra threatened to tear out her heart, as if to see if such a thing existed. If she could live through it, she'd gladly let Ulquiorra see it.
And then one of her most precious friends and the being that had become another were fighting each other brutally. Fighting to the death.
All Orihime could do was cry.
"Are you scared?" Ulquiorra asked, his body half gone. He stretched out one arm toward her.
Orihime reached back. The sleeve of the dress she'd been given fell away from her wrist. "No," she said. "I'm not scared of you."
Ulquiorra smiled and closed his eyes and in that moment Orihime felt her wrist burn. She watched, elated and horrified both, as the name Cifer Ulquiorra etched itself onto her skin.
"I REJECT!"
Later, Orihime woke from her coma to learn she'd been sleeping for a month. The war with Aizen was over. The man had been defeated by Ichigo and locked away for the next twenty thousand years.
"Where is he?" Orihime asked fearfully as Ichigo stepped up to her bedside. "Ichigo, where is he?"
He smiled and helped her unwrap the bandages on her left wrist. Ulquiorra's name was still there, not faded out like it would have been if he were dead. Orihime let out a relieved sob.
"We don't know," Ichigo answered. "Ishida said he disappeared after you healed him and collapsed."
"But don't worry," Ichigo added later after Unohana declared her healthy enough to get up. "I'll help you find you." He scratched his head. "It's my fault for almost killing him, anyway."
Orihime just smiled.
Two months later, she found him sitting on a large slab of quartz looking up at an endless night sky. He didn't move as she sat down beside him.
"Have you found your heart?" Orihime asked.
Ulquiorra glanced at her, at the name on her wrist and then at the name on his own. "It seems she found me," he said.
Later, Ulquiorra would understand why she'd blushed and laughed, but at that moment he was only glad he could finally see what she looked like truly happy.