Yes, I know it.

In the darkness of my dark-beating heart, I know.

You see?

Even death has a heart.

-the Narrator, Death from The Book Thief

/

Don't Speak Against the Sun

Odsum

I am here.

I stared up at the sun in the world that detested my very existence. Yes, you heard me,thisplace wants meout.Or rather the King does. No, I'm not some outlaw in some lameass fairytale story or some shit like that. Fairytales ain't real. The good guy doesn't always save the day in the end and run off into some lamely-placed sunset and disappear into the horizon. The bad guy doesn't always lose and say, 'Well, that shit sucked, I'm gonna give up and call it a day.' Things don' work like that here. The good guys can loose a million an' one times over till they actually win. The bad guy ain't some pushover with a shitty laugh that'll give up as soon as he's been put down once. And their main evil intentions ain't at all lame.

At least real life and fairy tales have one thing in common. There ain't no room for the color grey. There's a black an' there's a white. No grey. No one likes grey marring their sense of perspective. To them grey's an ugly color.

I live in that grey, I was born in that grey. But no one likes someone skipping the line of black an' white and doin' something new.

And for that reason I don't live here, I'm just here.

And if all goes to plan, I shouldn't be here for very long. The power of the Moonless Sky has been activated and fired outside to end the bad guy and the good guys will have their day of victory, but not without its losses. The same goes for the King and me.

He will lose his power. And me. Me, I'll more than likely cease to exist in this place as it crumbles to nonexistence in the absence of its sole inhabitance.

I don't bother turning toward Zangetsu-san when I ask my question, "So, this is it, huh? The King goes out with a bang while we just sit here and wait ta be nothin'. Ah, what a fine existence, Zangetsu-san. We served our purposes right ta the very end. And we'll be gone and no one but the King will know it. You were the more appreciated of course out of the two of us, I was just a bother. I ain't gonna be missed."

It's silent for a few moments over on his end of the crumbling office building that is steadily losing its shape. Pieces of plaster and insulation crumble off its structure and fall into the watery oblivion below us to bare its steel frame bones and electrical wire veins and arteries; we're standing on the foundation of a dying world. And we'll soon be the next to go.

Finally, in a moment that takes an eternity, Zangetsu-san speaks, "Perhaps," his voice is still light with all the youth represented in the King's manifestation of the spirit of his Zanpakutou in full Bankai but it's still weighted in tome upon tome of Shikai Zangetsu's wisdom of his age. It's pitifully sad to hear him speak of our downfall in his own voice, it makes the whole damn thing seem so final. He continues, "But you speak as if it's the end of everything there is."

I'm quite honestly taken aback at this. Hope? What kind of hope can be pulled out of this? I know Zangetsu-san has more of a plan than me and the King put together, but even Zangetsu can't pull a solution for even this! Me, being me, has to beg the question for this. "What th' 'ell you talkin' about Zangetsu-san! Did being apart of each other's mind mess you up somehow! Listen to yerself!"

Zangetsu continues as if I had never spoken at all, "Mugetsu, the Moonless Sky. The Moon has its time to shine its light upon the world, it is weak at first when it first appears but steadily grows in strength till it reaches its full power. It has its time at its strength until it wanes, piece by piece, night by night it disappears from the sky. A new moon."

I listen impatiently to Zangetsu's rambling, what the hell is he talking about? I finally cannot take any more of his poetry and turn angrily on my heel to face him; he still faces away from me staring at gods knew what.

"The fuck you talking about Zangetsu-san! We're talkn' about the King's remainin' power, not stargazing!"

"To talk about one is to talk about the other. The moon rises, grows, stays in its prime, fades, dies, and grows again. It's a cycle. The same goes for your shinigami power. The state and unleashed power of Mugetsu, the power of the moonless sky, is merely the stage of the new moon in the night sky. It will vanish for some time but will return eventually."

He has me there. ". . . I see. But where does that leave us now?"

Zangetsu-san turns toward me with something I've never seen on his face, young or old. The ghost of a smile flickers across his features. "Us? No, you, Ichigo. I am Zangetsu, 'The Cutting Moon'. I go with the Cycle. I am a part of it. You however are a part of this original soul, you stay here. You never shall be a part of this change. Until I return you will be the sole inhabitant of this dormant soul. The interior guardian to keep the exterior well guarded in my leave. But you've always done that, haven't you?"

My eyes widen in surprise when he addresses me by the name I rejected. I haven't answered to that name in gods knew how long, why should I be associated with a name I did not deserve as a fallen soul? Didn't Hollows hide their identities with the formation of their mask? But... I wasn't out there. I'm in here, separate but still whole, a Hollow with a name. A grey in the black and white world.

"The- I, I won't accept that."

"You have before."

"That was a different time, I wasn't aware of the consequences."

"But will you change you?"

"Change what I was taught to believe out there of what's in here? That's insanity."

"It can be done. Worlds have turned in the favor of actions and words. Is this world any different?"

A shrug of my shoulders, "Maybe. Who knows. It won't be that easy."

"Then let that difference be known, Ichigo. When the moon comes again the two will become one, the way it should have always been. The Soul Society has looked in one direction for far too long when it has come to the dual souls of Shinigami and Hollow."

I give him my best shit-eatting grin, "Speaking against the sun? Cause chaos in the ideals of their so-called 'morality'? And just cause full-out anarchy? You got it Zangetsu-san! 'Till we meet again then?"

He nods solemnly as his form begins to fade, "Until the moon rises again, Ichigo."

I give a nod in return, albeit less curtly, and a sloppy salute as a thought reaches my mind again. Grey does not exist in fairy tales, it's only black and white.

I am that grey and this ain't a fairy tale.

Edit 6/11: Chapters one and two edited by the wonderful Miku Alli :)