A\N: I recently read A Fairytale For The Demon Lord, so, even though I have a draft of a fluffy one-shot for this prompt, I could only finish this angsty and confusing one. So I'll just make it a dark fantasy-ish AU.
You, a mere human, longed for the princess, but she lived in a different world than yours. The fate of Kuchiki Rukia, the heir of a distinct and ancient clan, was to live forever and conduct the lost souls to the afterlife. The fate of Kurosaki Ichigo, the ordinary high school student, was to grow old and die.
That is your destiny. That is your life and your fate.
Just like the moon and the sun during an eclipse, your destiny was to only meet her for a brief second, and then to be separated from her afterwards.
The princess knew about this, but the human refused to accept it. When Kuchiki Rukia was taken away, she told you not to follow her - she couldn't tell you her fate was actually to be sacrificed to save the world - and she bid you what she thought to be her last goodbye.
You, Kurosaki Ichigo, refused that as well.
You refused your fate and rejected your destiny. If being separated from her was the end for the human, you'd refuse to be a human as well.
You'd embrace the evil inside of you; you'd take the hollow's fate to change the world and save her life. You'd steal someone else's destiny and have her by your side.
You didn't mind losing yourself, as long as you could save her.
You fed that dream until it became a goal. You allowed the stories you heard as a kid to make you believe that you deserved a happy ending. You made a wish to the stars and climbed to the sky to make sure they would make it true.
And that's why shinigamis don't have fairy tales.
That's why only humans are allowed to dream and to have fantasies.
But when a human acquires the power of a shinigami, you end up with a trespasser who ignores all the rules. You end up becoming a paradox of a human with no humanity, a shinigami with no divinity, a hollow whose only purpose is to be whole again.
The shinigami kills the human. The hollow kills the shinigami. The hollow is already dead, so it keeps consuming itself until not even the hollow exists anymore.
Now you're slowly fading away, waiting until the hollow inside of you grows enough to swallow you whole. She's too far away. Kuchiki Rukia is now only a prisoner of a curse that you failed to break. Many other shinigami will come to take her away and finish the ceremony, and you'll keep fighting to keep them away until she wakes up.
But she will never wake up.
She will never open her eyes, and she'll never know what kind of power you gained for her sake.
She won't ever see the hollow you became, will she?
She won't ever see the desolation that this land became.
Meanwhile, you'll keep guarding her. You'll keep the fate of the human to meet her so you'll always be her friend, the fate of the god of death to not be separated from her so you'll always be her lover, the fate of the hollow to end the world so she won't ever have to be sacrificed.
You'll sustain the paradox - you'll carry the scars, the dread and the bloodstained fingernails - until the universe as a whole collapses.
That's why I ask, Kurosaki Ichigo, not the shinigami, and not the hollow. Don't you think that the one accursed here is you?
Don't you think it would be so much better to change the fate of the human from the very beginning, so both of you wouldn't spiral down this hole of madness? Wouldn't you like to know how to put things back the way they were before the moon and the sun were separated, so this mess that came upon you two never takes place from the start?
I know you want to break free from this curse.
After all, wasn't your goal to achieve the happy ever after you craved for, even as you descended into darkness?
Tell me, is it so wrong to want an ending like that for yourself?