#It’s the way he looks at her#idk if she’s scared or confused how to answer him lmao#I dont think she’s scared tho
I see this as an important moment of connection between them.
Ulquiorra doesn't understand, but he wants to, so he asks her.
Inoue listens to him and i see her expression as a kind of unsettled revelation. A "oh" moment of getting him. She understands now. Ulquiorra has ZERO concept of the heart and connections - not because he's incapable of it (he wouldn't be asking, wouldn't be curious, wouldn't burn with so much focus on the topic if he were incapable) but because he's never had a frame of reference for such things.
Inoue lived in a darkness just like that for a long time after her brother died - friendless and all-but abandoned by her family and completely alone in the world until Tatsuki burst into her life and fought off her bullies and showed her care and love again.
She's seen echoes of this darkness before in her brother.
Sora lived the first 18 years of his life knowing no real love at all and only learned it caring for her.
Ulquiorra WANTS love and connection, he just doesn't have enough of a concept of those things to understand that want, but he knows Inoue understands it. She represents it in his mind. So he picks at it, he picks at and puzzles over her, and he ASKS her these strange impossible questions.
Notice he's reaching out, but not threatening.
He's demonstrating his question: is it a physical thing?
He understands a physical heart as a muscle that pumps blood, and Inoue has been speaking of the metaphorical heart as a very real thing. Ulquiorra is trapped in a maze of logic that makes non-literal concepts hard to grasp, but he DOES understand she keeps touching her chest. So he does the same and asks if what she's talking about can be physically found there.
And she clearly is understanding these words of tearing open chests and crushing skulls isn't a threat on his part, but an honest question.
It's a similar sort of to-the-left kind of thinking she engages in.
I see them as very much on the same wavelength here.
There's a deep sort of trust and faith on his part, that she can answer in a way he'll understand.
And she CAN. She understands what he's asking and is disturbed by the implications inherent in the fact he needs to and I think this is her going through that realization and then moving on to how on earth to explain it to him.
But these are VERY difficult questions, hard concepts to describe to someone from a place of knowing - as hard as describing the color red to someone colorblind.
With Ulquiorra is the only time she gets posed difficult questions and then given time to think about her answers, then comes up with answers that are profound and insightful and fundamentally alter the both of them subtly until a real, deep connection is born between them.
