Disclaimer: No, none of the characters/situations/themes etc illuminated in the following are mine – except for Hara. I'm particularly proud of him; I'll download the image a friend whipped up just as soon as someone glares very firmly in the distance downloads it. You know who you are. Feel free to play with Hara; he needs to get out and about more. Just drop me a line beforehand, please.
The Bone Yard
Shirosaki scowled, head tilted backwards as he stared at the mottled sky.
He'd managed to subdue Ichigo for a few precious moments of pain and promise that day, felt his king's resolve shudder into nothing beneath the full force of his inhuman will. He'd roared his triumph, systematically seizing every part of his counterpart's system for his own, sought and swung and struck in devastating efficiency. They'd moved as one, darting and flashing in the instinctual patterns of the fight, revealing in the bloodshed as their foe fell before them with a shriek of pain.
It had felt – Shiro's eyes half-closed in remembrance, a bitter smile gracing his face – right. Two halves drawn together, finally, for a single instant, whole; he'd been momentarily free of the gnawing emptiness continuously echoing beneath his skin.
It hadn't lasted, of course. Nothing did, in this strange realm of ever-day. Shiro kicked a window petulantly. He'd felt the fragile connection shatter beneath the sudden surge of Ichigo's will, screamed in helpless rage as he'd been forced back into a realm utterly antithesis to his being, a realm he'd grudgingly accepted as a temporary home. Shiro paused, frame tense. Hollows weren't meant to be caged. He knew that much to the core of his being. There had to be more. There was a world there, just beyond the fragile fabric of the sky… his eyes narrowed as he leaned forward, hands absently snaring the air before him as be probed cautiously. It was so close that he could taste it…
Shiro drew back, a snarled profanity bursting from his lips as the full force of Ichigo's resolve slammed down on him. Pale hands fisted at his sides as the hollow clenched his teeth together and snarled at the air, shaking in helpless hunger, the need so intense he could feel it ringing in his veins. He slammed his mouth shut, absently biting a lip as he glared at the horizon.
"Now, now, Shiro-kun," sudden laughter echoed through canyons of glass and steel. "Temper, temper…"
Shirosaki whirled on his heel, pale eyes wide in an uncharacteristic gesture of fear before narrowing in utter rage. "You." Frantic eyes darted from side to side, belatedly noting the wisps of shadow that darkened the perpetual day into twilight. He'd have welcomed the change to his surroundings under any other circumstances.
"Me, Shiro-kun!" The voice positively sparkled with unrestrained mirth, giggling almost as if in response to a private joke. There was something decidedly odd about that double-toned voice. While the perpetual laughter lacing the words was unmistakably genuine, it nonetheless seemed –hollow. It was as if all true mirth was coated in a thick layer of shadow, a dark veil echoing back a crude facsimile thereof. That voice was empty; merciless in its application, and made all the more horrible by the lazy trace of twisted amusement that permeating its tone.
One pale hand clenched tightly around Zangetsu's cloth-wrapped hilt as Shiro's eyes flickered back and forth between the shadows. His response was ground out from between clenched teeth. "Wha' the hell d'ya want, you mangy-haired bastard?!"
"Language, Shiro-kun!" The voice bounced from yet another direction, filled with that same insubstantial humor. Shiro whirled on his heel, features intent as he traced the sound, pale hair wafting with the force of his movement.
The hollow's teeth ground together with a crack of chipping enamel. "Tha' fucking laughter ain't fooling no-one, ya moron. Jus' answer the damn question, will ya?"
Eerie laughter echoed in a peal of merciless glee before a gust of warm air whispered across Shiro's ear, the soft baritone of the other vibrating against his skin. "I missed you of course, Shiro-kun." Cold lips pressed into the nape of Shiro's neck; the hollow could feel their soft indentations curl into a smug grin. Soft heat enveloped him as wiry arms wrapped around his torso in a mocking gesture of affection. Shiro stiffened, eyes wide as those clever, agile hands explored his frame with a ruthless abandon.
Ichigo's pale reflection was still in utter shock for precisely three seconds before he exploded. "WHAT THE HELL D'YA THINK YOU'RE DOING, YOU MOP-HEADED BASTARD!?" Power roared in a flurry of pale flame as Shiro's reisatu flared in utter rage, snarling through the air with an audible hiss of fury. Shiro whirled, murder in his eyes as his power soared. One white fist whistled through empty air as the hollow struck out; he staggered slightly, overbalancing as the press of cool flesh dissolved into shadow.
The other's frame faded into view, coalescing out of dim traces of shadow. Hara's grin was downright perverted as his pale eyes peered intently at the other hollow. It was an expression Shiro was all too familiar with, both from his own experiences and Ichigo's memories.
Hara's face bore a striking resemblance to that of a certain ex-shinigami, precisely mimicking the shopkeeper's features down to the perverted grin. It was Urahara's face, Urahara's frame, that stood before the pale hollow, but dipped in shadow; darkness pooled across the lean, wiry muscles accentuating the hollow's form. It was a polar negative of the ex-captain who raised his head to the sky, laughing in a mockery of humor as Shiro shivered involuntarily. Hara's ebony skin stretched tight against angular features, highlighting the pale glimmers of ghostfire constantly wavering across his flesh. Balefire burned brightly in midnight hair, illuminating the strands with a sickly glow that paled before the cold intensity of his eyes. Hara wore a strangely inverted form of shinigami robes; white hakama topped by a long black coat in an obvious mockery of a captain's uniform. ("It's not as if he's using it, is he?" was all his response the one time Shiro has asked.)
"I was hugging you." The voice was matter of fact, eyes like pitted craters of moonlight widening in a twisted parody of innocence. "Wasn't it obvious?" Two dark lips quirked in a jagged facsimile of a smile. "There there, Shiro-kun, are you feeling well? I've told you before, all this can't be good for your blood pressure." Hara's tone was mockingly playful.
Shiro spluttered, eyes bright with incoherent rage. "We're hollows, ya moron! We don't ha' hearts, much less blood pressure!"
"You used a big word!" Two hands came together as the other clapped eagerly like an exuberant child. "Good to see my influence is exerting a positive effect on you, Shiro-kun!"
"Wha?!" Shiro's rage-glazed eyes narrowed dangerously. "Are not!" A vein twitched at his temple.
"Are too!" The other's voice was playfully petulant, Hara's grin deliberately inflammatory.
"Are not!"
"Are too!"
"ARE NOT!"
"ARE TOO!"
"ARE NOT TIMES INFINITY!"
"ARE NOT TIMES INFINITY PLUS ONE!"
"DUMBASS! AIN'T NO SUCH THING!"
"That was an example of fairly complex analytical reasoning!" Hara beamed brightly, his voice instantaneously reassuming a more comfortable volume. "I knew I was having a good influence on you, Shiro-kun!"
The bleached figure gaped, mouth open in shock. "You – you MORON!" Shiro exploded once more, hands gesticulating wildly in the air as his eyes widened in helpless rage. "Jus' what the hell d'ya want from me?!" The trepidation in his eyes was poorly concealed beneath his fury.
Frost-touched lips widened in response to the faint undertones of fear lacing the other's voice. "Why, Shiro-kun, I haven't the slightest idea what you're implying." Ghost-tinged hair rustled as Hara's white-nailed hand casually paged through his mottled locks. "I'm truly offended that you would even think me capable of such base actions!" Hara's mouth quirked briefly; the wet shine of jet-black teeth was faintly visible between the curves of his lips.
"Tch." Shiro scowled, eyes intent as he stepped cautiously to the side, carefully maneuvering into a more defensible position. The other hollow watched with a faintly indulgent smile; Shiro's eyes narrowed in irritation as his hand hovered over the hilt of his sword. "I know exactly wha' yer capable of, bastard. Don't pull the act; it ain't fooling anyone." Golden eyes betrayed a certain cocky caution as they surveyed the still form of the shadowed figure. "Know ya too well for that; you an' yer other. All you fucking need is a fucking fan to wave around to complete the damn image -"
Shiro barely had time to blink before he was slammed into the ground, a hand at his throat. The wall of mirrored windows buckled beneath the force of his impact; a wave of glass and steel rippling down the sides of the never-ending walls in a scream of twisted metal and spraying shards. Shiro paid little attention to the torrent of destruction, all his desperate attention focused on the relentless fingers slowly working their way into his flesh.
"Never." The voice was stark and cold, stripped of all its faux joviality to reveal a yawning abyss burning darkly terrible as the night sky stripped of stars. "Compare. Me. To. Him. Again." Each word was soft, precisely enunciated as Hara's face lowered to Shiro's own.
White-blue eyes lit with a frightening intensity, burning into widened gold as Hara, deliberately, tightened his grip. His power snarled around him, ghostfire as brilliantly cold as the heart of a star. Shiro gasped hoarsely, eyes rolling back in his head as that terrible power snaked along the edges of his skin. Unconstrained fury tamed by the narrowest of margins thrilled through his veins, the gentle touch of jagged edges promising an agony laced with the sweetest touches of a bittersweet pleasure.
"I will take him" The ebony hollow's voice was inexorable, terrible in its utter assurance. "I will wear his skin, and seize his name for my own. I'll break him, and I will not let him die." Shiro shuddered back from the smile that blazed across the other's lips. "I'll leave just a bit of him, a tiny scrap, to sit in the far corners of my mind and scream. And you know what I'll do then?" One long-fingered hand idly traced the pale expanse of the hollow's throat. "I'll laugh."
"Moron." Shiro wheezed from behind blue-tinged lips. "You'll never beat him," He hissed at the sudden lurch of pain as the other's nails tightened in warning. A sloppy grin danced along the corners of his mouth as he peered into the heart of the shadow. "'S part of you, after all. We ain't never gonna beat 'em" the knowledge danced dark and horrible in his eyes, reflecting the ghostfire that seethed in a brilliant torrent above the shadowed form.
Hara's face was still and cold. Shiro's answering smirk was smeared in blood as dark as the other's skin as he rasped on. "Doesn't mean we can't try." The pale-skinned hollow swallowed, eyes closing briefly before meeting the other's savage stare. Slowly, deliberately, he tilted his head backwards, exposing the pale column of his throat, eyes half-lidded beneath white-fringed eyelashes.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the fingers clenched around his windpipe gentled, releasing Shiro from their grip. Hara's grin was coldly feral. "True, Shiro-kun." His voice was deceptively soft, still lacking his usual absurd mask of joviality; Shiro shivered at the sound. Hara's smile widened in response, one elegant finger absently tracing the series of mottled bruises blooming dully on the other's pale skin. "I like you wearing my marks." Hara's grin was decidedly lavicous.
Shiro coughed, tilting his head to the side, black blood smearing the unblemished skin of his face. "Sick bastard."
Hara's grin was vicious as he knelt above the other. "You love it." He leaned forward, ghostfire eyes blazing into Shiro's gold. "Admit it."
Shiro glanced to the side. "…yeah." His voice was uncharacteristically soft, desperate hands almost shaking in need as he wound them about the other's shoulders.
"Shiro." Hara's voice was husky as he ran one long-fingered hand along the curve of the other's face; Shiro moaned, head reluctantly turning into the touch. Hara smirked, lowing his face until he could taste the other's breath. Shiro's eyes rolled up into his head; his hips bucked involuntarily as Hara's teeth pressed ever so gently against the pulse point in his throat.
"Don't you fret, Shiro." Hara's voice was full of dark promise. Cool lips pressed softly into the pale skin of the other's forehead, drawing a helpless shiver in response. "Once I win my freedom – I'll be sure to secure yours."