Ah, this inverted world again, he thinks. This off-kilter, off-center, slanted world. Ichigo watches as the clouds fall from the sky with the plaintive whistle of the wind. The end of the horizon is tainted dull.
"A storm is brewing," Zangetsu tells him from where he stands. Always so far from him, Ichigo distantly realizes. Always a space, between the both of them. Between Ichigo and his sword. Between Ichigo and himself.
A storm is brewing. Where do all the water go, Ichigo wonders, when it rains? In this world—"Nowhere," the Old Man answers. "The water stays. It floods," and then he says, "it sinks. It's cold."
"I'm sorry," says Ichigo, just when thunder rumbles low from faraway, like bitten-off whimpers. It starts to sprinkle. The rain defies gravity, too, crashing the horizon side to side, gentle as a gunshot.
"I'm sorry, too," Zangetsu says, before he lunges to kill him.
Ichigo parries the blade without any preparation. Zangetsu is heavy, everything is thick and heavy like it's underwater. The rain gets heavier. They fight.
"Why?" Ichigo asks him. "You're me."
"That's why."
They fight. Ichigo is losing. He's always losing. "What's the point? What do you fight for?"
He is sick of this slanted world. He is sick of the way it doesn't fit —sick of this vertigo of a self. Ichigo falls with the skyscrapers, arrogantly high, naively hopeful, reaching for the ground. The rain looks like shards of glass, piercing from the sideway sky. The sky whimpers.
The ground kisses him and Ichigo feels his bones shatter to bits. Violence—possessive and familiar. These violent delights have violent ends, the passage comes unbidden to his memory. And in their triumph die, like fire and powder.
He doesn't have it in him to scream.
And then the water comes and Ichigo is smothered under his own tears.
Everything is dark. He isn't sure if he's breathing. The ground seems so far above, and Ichigo is sinking. It's cold. Where is the Old Man? Where—?
"Miss me?" he hears his own voice says, clear and mean and cruel despite the lack of air. "Partner?"
You, Ichigo thinks, panic gripping his heart like steel, and fear, copper and tang, flooding his mouth like blood.
"Me," the Hollow agrees, a smile so wide it splits his face. And that's what disturbs Ichigo the most—not the eyes, not the garish, monotonous colors of his Hollow—the smile. Ichigo has no idea he could smile like that—he has no idea that he looks like that when he smiles. An open wound on a pale face. "Nice weather, ain't it, King?"
"Stop," Ichigo says, and he is so fucking tired he can't breathe. "Stop. Enough."
"Enough," the Hollow mocks, his Zangetsu violent against Ichigo's, stark white like lightning. He laughs, and it's the only time Ichigo has ever heard himself laugh like he means it: so thick with glee that it spills. "Enough? It ain't never gonna be enough, King."
Ichigo's temper flares. He hates him. So much. So much that his sword is heavy with it.
The Hollow could feel it, he thinks—Ichigo's hate. His eyes glimmer to slits, sclera black as tar, pupils gold as they come. "Ya know," he says, a coo, "if you're too pussy to drive, I could take the wheel from ya."
"Shut up."
"It'd be so easy , ya know," the Hollow says, his voice—Ichigo's voice—grating on his ears, slick and low and honest. Ichigo's sword is breaking. He is losing. He is always losing.
The Hollow knows. He's so white, the only brightness in the whole wide sea of Ichigo's tears. "So fucking easy," he repeats, an offer. "All you gotta do—"
"Shut the fuck up!"
"—is die a little."
The scream ripped out from his own throat as Ichigo pushes back—with the intent to kill, to destroy, to kiss violence in its open mouth—is nothing short of monstrous. He sounds so much, he thinks distantly, emptily, like a Hollow.
And his Hollow knows, because he laughs, laughs, laughs, even as Ichigo skewers him with his blade, right at the base of his sternum out in between his scapula—and then Ichigo's grip falters.
It feels so much like flesh—like real flesh. Ichigo could feel the warmth of his body, a whisper of breath.
It feels so much— too much—like killing a human being.
"That's how it's gonna feel, ya know," the Hollow tells him, all humor gone. "Exactly like that."
And then the Hollow grips Ichigo's Zangetsu—white fingers against the blackest of blade—and pulls, pushing it deeper in his chest. Ichigo stares at where the blade disappears in the white of the Hollow's shihakusho—and the blood that pours out of it.
The color is glaring red.
This above all, Ichigo thinks, a passage suddenly recalled to his mind, to thine own self be true, and it must follow —
"—as the night the day," the Hollow says, "thou canst not then be false to any man."
Oh, Ichigo thinks.
The Hollow smiles exactly like how Ichigo never knew he smiled. Vile and undeserving.
"Why?" Ichigo asks, even as his heart breaks and skyscrapers fall around them to the sea, like babel from the sky. "What's the point? What do you fight for?"
"What else?" says the Hollow. "There's only ever been us. Only you. Only me."
"I'm tired," Ichigo tells him. "Enough."
"It ain't never gonna be enough."
"I know," Ichigo says, and he could feel his bones breaking as he pushes the sword further. "That's why."
And then Ichigo is Zangetsu, Ichigo is the Hollow, Ichigo is the whimpering sky and the crumbling skyscrapers and a sadness too great it floods the whole world. The blood is wet and hot and real, dripping down his blade and his fingers, and Ichigo stares at himself in the eye.
"Why, Ichigo?" Zangetsu asks him, the Hollow asks him, Ichigo asks him. Blood pools at the corner of their—his—mouth. "Why do you want to kill yourself?"
Above the salted sea, the storm rages on. Ichigo's grip on Zangetsu does not falter, even with the slick of his blood.
"Violent fires soon burn out themselves," they say, in one familiar, grating voice. "Small showers last long—but sudden storms are short."
That's right, Ichigo thinks. There has only ever been them. Only him.
Him, and him alone. "I thought you wanted the rain to stop," Ichigo tells himself.
And then he buries his sword to the hilt.