Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Well, this is an older fic I found on my hard drive today…thought you people might like it.
Internal Weather
It drove him wild.
The old man hated the rain. So did he. It was boring. Boring, boring, boring. But what the Hollow truly hated was when their world was baked under hot sunlight and strong winds raged between the buildings.
It meant that his king was fighting. And the selfish bastard would never share.
The heat called to him. Insistently. He was that part of his king which took pleasure from violence. He was that part which loved power for its own sake. He was the part that belonged in battle. Belonged there, not like his weak-ass king, who could not kill, or maim, and felt a mystifying desire to heal some of his enemies.
The Hollow did not understand it. Killing was necessary. Maiming was fun. And enemies were enemies, and as such were not to be healed under any circumstances. And yet his king, who was almost completely ignorant of these facts, insisted on doing all the fighting.
He was born from battle, for battle. It rankled that his king denied him what he existed for.
It rankled even worse that his king sucked at it.
Sometimes the heat and the wind and the calling were too much, and the Hollow surfaced. Long enough to deflect a blow. Later, as the heat and his king's need grew greater, long enough to take control and strike a blow. But he was stopped before he could finish anything.
"It has nothing to do with you," his king had said.
It did, of course. The king was the king and the Hollow his subject, and subjects came when their kings called. The time he'd spent in the rain with the old man had given him quite some time for philosophy. It came much harder to the Hollow than the principles of battle did.
He was nothing but the king's horse, he realised. Something to be used for an advantage in battle, forced to lend his strength to his rider. He would not even be allowed to use his strength as he willed, but under direction.
After this realisation, he doubled his efforts to take over their body. Judging by the near-constant rain, his king was feeling the effects.
At last he succeeded in assuming control of their spiritual energy. He would hold it as a hostage. Let me take over when you are losing, and I will let you take care of the easier fights. After all, king or no king, their goals were essentially the same. To defeat the enemy in front of them.
But of course his king would have to be stubborn about it, and resist. Just for that, he refused access to their spiritual energy, and let that fat-ass in white beat him round for a bit. Served him right, too. Though of course the Hollow would have taken over completely had their body been in real danger.
It was scorchingly hot in the inner world again, and the call to fight was stronger than ever. Another one of those things in white. Still his king flatly denied him the opportunity to fight. After that tiny, ribbon-wielding Shinigami friend of his had been defeated, too. Did his king not even understand vengeance? More importantly, did his king not understand that if they switched, even for a minute, he could win? He could have won even against the fat-ass's friend, the titchy one, and smashed this mid-level hit man with the stupid fragment of mask along his jaw into the pavement.
The Hollow was forced to sit patiently through that heatwave too.
Not long afterwards, the Hollow suffered his first defeat. Someone forced the king to let him come out, and the instant he had, they had been pinned to the floor and surrounded by swords. The king was startled, but the Hollow was infuriated. He had never known defeat, and he didn't like it.
He was beaten for a second time in the days that followed. He had won, or so he had thought. He had not only control over their body, but he had made it take the form he was more comfortable with. None of this human body crap. That body had been engaged in its own fight with those who had defeated it earlier, while the Hollow himself fought with his king.
Somehow his king had won. The Hollow had taunted him about his lack of killer instinct- and why not? It was all embedded in the Hollow- but with a flash of another presence in the inner world, his king had reclaimed his throne. Reclaimed his throne, and sworn that the Hollow would not get another chance to fight him for it.
Maybe. Maybe not. His king would certainly have to work hard in borrowing the Hollow's powers. The arrangement was not one he was happy with. "Crush it to the very core of your soul," the lunatic had said. The Hollow was not crushed. This was his world too, and he wanted a say in how it was run. Or at least the occasional battle.
He would be damned if he sat through another heat wave.