A/N: Alright Bleach fans, I've got to say this is not my favourite fandom but I've decided to pay a tribute to it since I collect the series and like its style (though the plot is non-existent). This one is quite the complicated but I'll explain everything in the footnotes. (This is an old fic. I'm keeping it here because of reasons. Please enjoy.)
We can hear your anguish and smell your airborne odour of sweat. You're afraid and the reason lies inside your heart - the one which shows in your eyes.
Ochre eyes with a Hollow's mask and casks of blood delivered from the upside down city. The trade is good, or so they say. The mountains are far away and the beast walks elegantly around its home. You're the one who prowls in the shadows and is ashamed of the unknown. It intones to your bemused face as the hem of its hakama slides against the city's many trees, that your desultory thoughts and ponderings do not help, and it obligingly ambles to you before it is southbound to the mountains again.
Ichigo finds himself a waif in the middle of an accession in a weird land of which king he is. But he quits the shadows only after the eddy of the other has doused him thoroughly, finding himself in possession again - safe, but glowering morosely in the face of a sword.
There's no salvation; there is no death.
Death does not cry - it is known. But it is en route to you in the form of a bird of swirling flames and Ichigo finds himself speechless; the other, more pronounced one, nestling against his consciousness, its wanderlust gone for a moment and Ichigo can safely just think for once.
"Instinct!" Zangetsu shouts from the clique of implements and spatters Ichigo with a trifle of ambivalence. The other is more sure of its purpose and shields their body from burning to ash. Its arms are as strong as his own but whereas Ichigo's shake, and he tries to stop them from doing so, the other secures him, holding him steady with a trained arm against his back, his dwindling form next to his own. He has no choice but to lean against the touch for now as it is balsam to his wounds and aching muscles.
We see the Fireborn - the old and scarred man, with Ryuujinjakka burning his flesh. The ochre burns in your eyes, burned embers and black ash in the man's. Ichigo realizes that he's going to die and imagines Zangetsu melting in his grip.
There's a quiet snort in the back of his head and it does not come from the white nuisance. Nevertheless, the blade in his hand burns his fingers as it absorbs the heat that engulfs the sky, the rampants that they can see inside the flames and the demon whose back is molten gold and bleeding red. He's going to die.
You kill. You conquer. You are the One and only King.
Yet you are going to die.
The white beside you laughs.
Understanding means nothing when you have to mean it.
.
Ichigo has stopped in his tracks. He has to move but he has stopped and has turned around to see what lies in the past, what goes behind his back. He sees a battle of prowess between it and his trusty old man. There's balance and the 'cling' 'clang' noises made by their swords interest him. The oversized butter knives seem comical now that he looks at them.
The burns on his arms and face heal here among the skyscrapers and memories filter through the windows. The nuisance hasn't declared an attack since then and Ichigo has had plenty of time to think of a way to outwit the flames, defeat a few menageries that try to wrest justice through thick and thin here and there, and ponder on the mountains that lie in the south of his mind. It never rains there and yellow desert stretches in derelict lands that are not titular but only to the renegade who retains a valet called misery and calls him a bitch. Ichigo lies supine in the sand and wakes up moments later beside Rukia, feeling weak.
But really; a handful of those whites and Soul Society is to lie on the brink of destruction?
Ichigo feels like he has dispensed the hollow - or whatever it is - and is not sure if the lukewarm grousing that he now does is for the other, who apparently is one very great at jack-in-the-box imitation and a horrible stick in the mud afterwards, as Grimmjow so helpfully shows him after kicking Ichigo halfway across the town, laughing in his face and jeering the living shits out of everything Ichigo has managed to call control in the past few months.
The mask and crown are heavy upon your head and Ryuujinjakka burns bright like a pyre.
He remembers what death feels like and brazenly, drunk on defeat, smothers the lounging beast, beats him down and watches Rukia almost die.
.
You fear of burning to dust - your ashes scattered to the skies and the skies are not your own endless blue inside yourself but those of a strange world. Soul Society.
You're so hollow.
Your ochre craves the fire, the challenge and power.
.
The bottomless pit is the one going through his chest as Ulquiorra lets go. It's the one that's there after every defeat and after every Cero shot through him. The mask breaks and for some reason that makes Ichigo more afraid than anything. Ichigo doesn't think bartering will do any good now - and he doesn't even try - as his forced fixation sits above him, cleaning its teeth with a stick and crossed leg tapping the air as they exist in the surprisingly stable highway. Its being is incumbent to Ichigo's victory as it calmly observes him from its tree pot.
"I'm going to help you and you can cry about it later," the thing says and Ichigo tries to hear Inoue's cries so he can reclaim some ounce of control and, eschewing the more violent tendencies of his quintessence, intercede his gaudy will to protect to the amassed creature of pure bloodlust that seems to thrive from ripping Ulquiorra's limbs off and blasting his curved horns into oblivion along with his black (debauchery, the other calls it) that seems to irritate the other to no end.
A King should not weep, he should not feel fear nor feel a need to explain himself nor bow down to some witty morales that man made for himself so that he would not hurt another.
Feel apprehension for the future and feel victory! You are no merciless conqueror after all.
.
The white takes over as the cross goes over your chest and you're reborn after the war. You are no death after all. You are not your own power nor the sideways city of endless blue; your are not the sharp tang of the desert, though Zangetsu's cape may be telling that your moods still affect at least the wind. But there's grudging respect for the imp and the nuisance that in a mocking show of gallant gait follows a thread of ash to the mountains and warless lands.
The obvious differences between you two start to stand out even more. You would never grow your hair as long as the nuisance has done. You do not feel the need to wake up with a tuft in your nose and a face next to your own and sword between you. At dawn, you shall fight again. You have yet to lose but, then again, you feel like you have yet to truly win also. Grimmjow and Aizen have showed you what true victory feels like and you can still wake up in the morning in your own bed and have a dense, bad after taste in your mouth as Aizen had deigned it fit.
It is scary. Your body's withering by blooming away like an ardent autumn
Ryuujinjakka burns brighter than any man alive. You feel its heat and flames lick your face. Your mask has long crumbled and you stand down.
The Hollow's cries reach the skies.
You're not afraid of the fire after all but your own shadow. You feel the horned creature inside. What is it that makes you so horrified if not the color of blinding white, be it its overly long locks, its different blade and Quincy uprising.
The white is brighter than Ryuujinjakka. It's more distinct and brazen than the shadows.
And Ichigo remembers waking up on a battlefield, in the midst of a great combat. His vision is tilted and copper blood is attacking his senses - his body feels hot, the red going down from his chest to his feet and face. He feels dead but lifts his sword. Zangetsu is a gulf that rips the sky open and divides the eternal heaven in two. The jagged edges disappear as the blade falls to the ground with Ichigo's battered hand.
"I am your blade. You never figured that out did you." The hollow is sitting again.
You're hanging from a window sill and wonder if now is the time to lay everything bare and tell that you know more than you let on.
His ochre is warning and waning. Ichigo can feel the white gazing at him.
.
He shouts and prays to his own god but hears no answer. There's only blood and gore and the battlefield and Ryuujinjakka is dead, gone with its owner. There's no more fire but something sinister and deadlier lurking behind the veil of the world. He whispers to his sword and it answers. Zangetsu always does.
But it doesn't. The mask evades him and crumbles as if made from plaster of paris.
The colour chart ends with white. White is all the colours together and black is where the colours come from. The light portrays this but it is betrayed by human eye. You see colours yet no white and claim it is empty, it is nothing. But white is everything.
You begin with black but he exists as white.
"My King." It bows deeply and puts its hand to its chest. Yet you feel you are anything but royalty. "What shall we do now?"
"Are you taking over again?" Ichigo asks, his hand on no sword's handle. Zangetsu has disappeared, the younger boy/man gone somewhere blue and where it does not rain. Juha Bach seems to have taken a lot out of him as of late and Ichigo feels sad.
You had a home here, old man. Come back.
The fire isn't.
There's no shaking throne in this world that can hold power without being consumed. Aizen has proven that, Soul Society's king has proven that, the Quincies, the Hollows and Japanese economy has proven that. Nevertheless, this can hardly be called a putsch. He was the one who always dreamed of usurping the king, long before the Spirit Key was made popular knowledge by almost destroying half of his hometown.
But this kind is garbed in white. And in truth, Ichigo really has no problem with this arrangement.
"You reap what you sow," the Hollow says, his garb entitling him the King and not the Horse. It rights its back and stands tall, looking for the hilt of itself, for the hardened blade with a sharp edge.
There's no Ryuujinjakka nor Aizen but only white Zangetsu, which is swung down with force laced with bitterness and victory. You close your eyes.
The throne turns around.
At first he's afraid and doesn't even know what the hell that white thing is (his unnamed Hollow. I refuse to call him with ridiculous names like Shirosaki or Ogichi) but then he gradually gets to know it and realizes that it's just a manifestation of his own power. Yet he fears that power too because it's not directly under his control. That Hollow is someone you have to dominate; it's not nice and doesn't bend its will like Zangetsu does, when you promise it something nice. You have to drive it to the ground, make it see you're its superior - In other words the King and the Conqueror. But Ichigo is not a true King and definitely doesn't have the traits of a conqueror so his hold over the hollow dwindles and dissipates over time.
Ryuujinjakka and Yamamoto refer to the outside power that is superior to the Hollow, so it stays back and is fascinated with them. They're kind of like holding the hollow back and giving Ichigo courage but also reminding him that everything has to end. The flames also have a symbolic meaning but I think you can figure that out on your own.
But then again, the Hollow does have some respect for Ichigo and that's why Ichigo's loss of the throne and the conclusion of their personal Jihad disappoints it. That explains the bitterness at the end because through all their time together Ichigo has been the King and for it to lose its King like this is a disgrace.
Ichigo is also afraid of losing the favour of his hollow because he's wise enough to know that he needs the other.
Long ass explanation is long.
AND BY THE WAY, I REWROTE THIS AGAIN DURING EARTH HOUR (I'LL CLOSE EVERYTHING IN A MINUTE) SO IT'S STILL NOT QUITE READY BUT I'LL PUBLISH IT REGARDLESS. IT IS STILL BETTER THAN THE PREVIOUS ONE.
