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The first time Orihime sees Ishida-kun do anything close to trembling, the two of them are hurtling towards the seireitei— like stars, like meteors, like lurching awake from an absurd dream— and she feels the overwhelming pressure of this strange new world go through his body next to hers like a shockwave.
The impact is unmistakable. Through the fluttering white fabric she's clutching onto, it goes through her hand like it's a lightning rod, and Orihime stretches her free arm out toward the rapidly oncoming pavement. She yells.
Don’t worry!
Her shield rushes forward. The air prickles with spirit. Light disperses everywhere on impact.
Don’t worry, Ishida-kun!
She buys him enough time to land on his feet and blacks out. When she wakes up chasing the tail-end of a vague thought that must’ve been Kurosaki, it’s Ishida-kun, with reishi sticking to him like water, who’s bandaging her shoulder, flustered and apologetic.
It’s all my fault. He shakes his head. If you hadn’t been protecting me, you would never have been hurt—
Orihime blinks. For a second, she feels like some kind of superhero—some kind of magical girl with her hair barrettes and her shields and her sweatpants. She smiles so hard that she forgets about her shoulder. She tells him it’s alright, and thinks that she couldn’t possibly mean it more sincerely.
Ishida-kun’s concerned face seems to unknit into a small smile. Earth is Venus just then—a planet spinning retrograde, tilting the other way, everything going topsy-turvy.
“Inoue-san.” He croaks under the golden curve. “Inoue-san, are you alright?”
The urgency in his voice should be touching, but it’s not. It’s ridiculous is what it is. It’s unbelievable. It’s ludicrous; asking her if she’s fine like his hand isn’t missing, like Kurosaki’s sword hadn’t driven clean through him only minutes ago—
“Inoue-san?”
“Shh.” She says, but the absurdity of his chivalry makes her want to laugh a little, and cry a little, and makes everything come out in an awful sort of choked up splutter that makes Ishida-kun’s eyes go open-blue. “Don’t talk, you can't bleed out any more.”
He settles back uneasily like he’s not completely convinced, and when his glasses slide off his face, Orihime thinks he looks even younger than she does.
“Don’t.” He mumbles. “Don’t worry, please.”
(She thinks that it's her. Not Ulquiorra, not the horrifying thing in Kurosaki's skin, but her, with her cowardice, and her selfishness, and her unbearable need to be loved, who is the true villain of this dome.)
Orihime pours light like a flood, like a deluge, like a grudge against her namesake. When he finally stops shaking, pale stars are melting along the fake, circular night, and if the stale air has started to taste like the sea, she forgets to notice.
He’s standing with his people, but he’s not, Orihime thinks, one of them. He may be on the other side of the battlefield, but he’s not the enemy. Her hands reach on their own. Kurosaki-kun screams next to her. He screams like the world is ending.
What the fuck are you doing, Ishida?
There’s no answer. No answer but the beautiful, cold, lethal barrage of light that hits all of them like a torrential onslaught, and it’s the déjà vu, really, that almost knocks her out; the sharp air, gravity in her face, the rush of the pavement.
Orihime's shield dissipates this time even before impact, and she thinks that she’ll believe in him still. She’ll believe in him even if he shoots Yoruichi-san, and she’ll believe in him even if he occupies every rumor that flies around the Shinigami camp, and she’ll believe in him, even if—
(Ishida-kun throws them a lifeline. An eject button. An exit.)
Even if his self-sacrificial tendencies toe the line of suicide, she’ll believe in him. Orihime remembers that she’d promised, when they were 15, and playing at being big damn heroes, that she'd wait for him if he were ever to change his mind. She meant it. She was good at waiting. Orihime could wait again, even if it was in the middle of a war—
Don’t die, Ishida-kun.
Relief and worry keep slamming into her ribcage. Her shoulders shake and tremble. She feels like a tall child, who can’t stop crying.