This update is kind of a tease since it's a very short chapter. Sorry! Chapters alternate between length and perspective like this until the finale. Next chapter, Earthly and Weak, should be posted in two weeks or so. Since I'm a slow writer I'm trying to juggle updates so I don't run ahead of my buffer of completed chapters.
Disclaimer: Only Bleach I own is NaOCl
Chapter Two: And No Birds Sing
"And I awoke and found me here on the cold hill side..."
Zangetsu opened his eyes warily. He could not explain what had woken him. Wrongness, he decided. An overwhelming, nauseating feeling that nothing was right. The feeling intensified, radiated outward until his skin was crawling with invisible horrors, as he looked at his surroundings.
It was even worse than before. Everything was tilted again, but the move had been too sudden. Many of the high blue buildings leaned or had fallen completely. The rain was freezing now, stinging where it struck him, and oh so cold. It bit deeply wherever it fell on him and had already begun to eat away at the buildings. Acid rain. Icy, acidic rain.
So much worse than before.
He stood up, slowly. He had done nothing but sleep for what must be weeks now, but he was still so tired. Zangetsu reached out, feeling for Ichigo, but there was nothing. The boy had closed him off completely. At first Zangetsu had tried to convince himself that this was like before, when he was sleeping beneath Ichigo's consciousness. He had accepted that Ichigo was upset, that he was pushing away the part of himself that had failed. He had slept, and waited. But this was too much.
"Ichigo!" He shouted into the rain. "You can't seal away part of your own soul!"
There was no reply save the sound of wind, the sound of rain.
Zangetsu took a step forward, ignoring the deep ache that ran through his whole body. Too long I slept, he thought. Too long. Ichigo doesn't understand what we are, that we are one. He thinks of this power in him as something new and strange. Something outside of himself that faltered when he trusted it, failed when he depended on it. Something that can be discarded.
He straightened his clothes as best he could. There were more tatters than before, places where the rain had eaten into the cloth. What had been bright vermilion was now the dull rust of dried blood. Zangetsu could feel the water weighing down his tangled hair. The rain was so cold.
I will find my way back to you, Ichigo, Zangetsu vowed. I will make you understand. I will mend this rift.
He started walking.
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.
-- John Keats; "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"