The hunger was the first thing he remembered about being a Hollow.
There was the emptiness, dark and cold and horrible, painful and eating away at him. A huge hole in his very being, literal and figurative, that left a space in him that was yawning and huge and like a black hole, eating at what was around it and leaving him just. So. Hungry.
So he ate. He ate and ate and ate and ate until it was the only thing he did and could ever remember doing, a haze of blood and flesh and bone and copper in his mouth and that horrible yawning emptiness fading for moments and then coming back almost worse, forcing him to eat again.
He had no conscious thought for a long time, really. It was just a blur of many, many voices.
EATEATEATEATEATEATEATEATEATE ATEATEATEATEATEATEATEATEATEA TEATEATEATEATEATEATEATEATEAT
It was a never-ending scream of hundreds of voices, clamoring and shouting and begging for an end to the horrible emptiness that consumed them.
And then one voice rose higher than the rest, more demanding and more forceful, and hungrier.
He went after bigger prey, bigger targets, hoping to fill that emptiness in him that the louder voice demanded to be filled.
And then.
He was conscious He was a thing, able to think and reason and speak and know his own name. Able to decide what he wanted to eat, what he wanted to do.
He didn't know how he knew he had to keep eating, but he knew he had to. Knew that the endless screaming and clamoring would be back if he didn't. He'd lose his him-ness and never get it back if he didn't.
So he ate and ate and ate, fighting and clawing and roaring in impotent fury at the hunger instead of just riding the pull of the hole in his soul.
He found a pack, which eased the ache and loneliness a small, almost insignificant amount, but to something like him even insignificant amounts were huge.
And then came the man and his powers, and he became something else agaain.
He knew he'd never lose his him-ness now, he was safe. He didn't have to eat.
The hunger had faded, even. The horrible pounding awful ache receding to a throb in the back of his head and a hollow in his stomach that no normal food could fill.
But it was still there, taking over his thoughts when there was nothing else in them and sending him into the desert to take his frustration out on those he used to consume.
He didn't have to eat them, didn't want to eat them, didn't need to eat them, but the throb in his head and the emptiness in his soul and the ache in his bones would be too much sometimes.
He'd leave their bodies torn apart and staining the desert bloody, refusing to touch lips to flesh and bone again, no matter what the ache and throb told him to do. He'd live with that ache, he could do it.
He didn't want to give in to that hunger again, to lose himself in the animal he'd been and still was, deep in his bones and in the mask and in the empty hole in his chest.
He was an animal and a monster, eternally hungry, but he would fight it now that he could, because he was nothing if not a rebel, and he refused to go back to what he had been.