Lamenting Enchantment (A Bleach/Ulquihime fic)

Chapter 6

This is not my story! All credits go to The. Teal. Rose. on Fanfiction.net. This story belongs solely to the author.
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Chapter VI

Moment of Acceptance

"There's release in knowing the truth no matter how anguishing it is. You come finally to the irreducible thing, and there's nothing left to do but pick it up and hold it. Then, at last, you can enter the severe mercy of acceptance."

― Sue Monk Kidd

Over the days that followed, Ulquiorra did not again offer to allow Inoue out of her cell and she wondered if it was because he wanted to avoid another situation with the other Espada. However, he continued to linger after her evening meal on most nights.

Most of the time he simply sat on the sofa and gazed absently at the wall, his mind and expression unreadable.

Inoue usually sat on the other side of couch, as far from him as possible, also lost in thought. It was somehow a comfortable calm within the silence, and though she was not reprieved from her inflicting mind, the mere presence of another person aided her ability to overcome it.

It was on one such night that Inoue ventured to ask something she had been wondering about. "Why don't you ever eat?"

"What?" He responded, looking to her.

"Well, it's just that you always stick around while I eat my meals but I never see you eat anything."

Ulquiorra regarded her curiously a moment and she wondered if her question actually had angered him after all.

"I feed on the reiatsu that comprises the whole of Hueco Mundo," he responded, "I have no need of the same conventional 'food' as you."

"Could you eat it though, if you wanted?" Inoue asked then.

Ulquiorra looked away, "I don't see why I would, it would not benefit me in any way."

"But there are so many different dishes and there are so many things you can do with hundreds and hundreds of ingredients," Inoue replied dreamily, imagining her favorite sweet bean bread. She missed eating lunch with Tatsuki-chan and Rukia-chan under their favorite tree in the school yard.

Ulquiorra looked to her almost incredulously before looking away and deciding against responding.

Inoue sighed and did not press the issue further; she supposed it wasn't his fault that he didn't know about all the many things of the human world, least of all the cuisine.

"You do as you must to survive," Ulquiorra unexpectedly began, "why the need for anything extra? Why the diversity? It only seems to complicate the essential nature of things."

Inoue looked to him and smiled, "well, it makes things more interesting. It would be so boring having to eat the same thing every day."

She then remembered that he had been feeding her the same thing every day and her eyes widened, "uhm, I mean, er, but not to me. I love eating the same thing every day." She laughed nervously and brought a hand to her head.

Ulquiorra simply regarded her without expression until her smile finally wore down and she simply gazed at him through a pair of bright eyes.