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Inoue Orihime finally understood, and wished she didn't because of how she'd had to learn it.
She was in love (madly, desperately, endlessly) with Kurosaki Ichigo, who was mildly (sort of, almost, not quite) in love with her.
Oh, she got it now. She'd had nothing but time — time to think, time to wonder — since she'd arrived in Hueco Mundo. She hadn't wasted it, being the sort of person who found it offensive to waste anything at all, let alone something so precious as time. Every second in that white, silent cell had been spent thoughtfully.
It was true that he loved her.
However, there was a difference between loving and being in love with that she had not understood before. She did now. Ichigo loved her, but was not in love with her, and there was really very little she could do to change that. All she could do was be herself and hope it was enough.
On the coldest nights, surrounded by freezing white sand and stone, she dreamed that he would come.
The mornings after those dreams, she prayed he wouldn't, that he would stay safely at home and just let her live out her destiny; even if it hurt, even if she died.
Then he came, and she sang quiet hallelujahs into her pillow despite herself. They were harmony to the melody of tears that followed shortly after. If he died, could she forgive herself for hoping he would come?
Oh, but it was Ichigo, and he never lost.
This was Inoue Orihime's prayer to the gods she only half-believed in: let him live.
He had come for her, and that was enough. He didn't need to die for her.
That courage was its own form of love. She was thankful for it just as it was.
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