City of Emptiness Chapter 6

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Bleach AU
Chapter Summary: One minute they're walking and nothing is happening.  The next...
Word Count: 1,158
Rating: K

               It’s almost relaxing walking alongside Ichigo.  Like he’s a brother, like he belongs.  Once they’d gotten away from the area with the destruction, people had stopped worrying about the swords.  He could feel King’s eyes on him, sometimes.  Cataloguing the differences, it seemed.
               Of course he looks different than inside Kurosaki’s head.  He’s real.
               He’s slightly lighter in skin tone, and even in eye color (which is annoying, since he has to either use sunglasses or use his reiatsu if it’s too bright outside), but he’s hardly the complete albino that the strawberry protector had met.
               Yeah, okay, so the outfit’s different, but he doesn’t have to worry about school.
               Not that he’d complain.  All he’d wanted was power.  There were other things, of course.  Hollows weren’t that all-devouring menace that Shinigami liked to say.  But he wasn’t always awake, or aware.  It was easy to read his landlord when he was just renting out a place in the idiot’s soul, plotting for the day when he’d get in charge, but when that day finally came he was unprepared.  Panicking, even.
               Like those he’d mocked, he wasn’t ready for things to change.  Attachments remained.  People died.
               It’s obvious this isn’t his Ichigo.  Not the one that’d kept him enslaved.  It was easy enough to tell, after all—his harsh overlord was dead.  And had left him a crap legacy.
               It was hard, as someone that should’ve been just a Hollow, to realize that he cared, to watch King’s friends die one by one.
               But then, he’d known from the beginning that he wasn’t an ordinary Hollow, any more than King was a normal human, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise, any more than when he popped into existence, real and proper, he began to long for more normal things.  To be treated as a person, not a thing.
               Occasionally the bloodlust will overcome.  Occasionally he can be cruel.  But the same is true of King, only no one sees.  Only he saw, and King would rather blame someone else, rather claim that his Hollow is the source because it scares him, and he doesn’t want that power.  Never mind that he’s strong enough, he could control it all.  He could be King if he chose, wear the crown with pride.  Never mind that his power might be necessary to save his friends.
               “You’re quiet.”  Ichi speaks up, and it’s a shock.  The tone is unreadable.  It could be suspicious, or neutral, or worried.  He glances up and blinks.
               Something’s wrong.
               He staggers a little, in a world thrown off balance.
               He brings a hand to his face, and feels the pieces of soul ceramic merging, forming together, only he hadn’t called them.  What good was a power that you couldn’t control?
               And then he understands, if not the fact that King was wrong, completely and utterly wrong, then, at least, the fear.  He commands the shards to leave.  They’re part of him, but it’s a face he doesn’t need to wear, not when he’s not in battle.
               He blinks and then sees Orihime.
               “Princess?” he asks quietly, trying to remember what’s going on and why it’s wrong.
               “Y-you’re polite for a Hollow,” she stammers, and he smiles, as soft and reassuring as he can, because the last thing they need is to have someone else run off and get themselves in danger.
               “Hey, just ‘cause I enjoy fighting doesn’t make me an uncivilized beast,” he attempts to joke, and earns back a friendly, if somewhat worried, smile.
               Before she hooks fingers that suddenly feel like claws underneath the mask, and suddenly he can’t breathe.
               “W-wha—”  he gasps.
               “Politeness is a useless skill for a Hollow.  But then, it would fit someone worthless like you, who can’t protect anyone they care about.”  She pulls, and he lets out a ragged cry, falling to his knees.  It suddenly feels like he and the mask are connected, like she holds his fate in her hands.  And by the way she’s staring at him with a sadistic grin that doesn’t fit Orihime, he’s guessing she’s not going to be kind.
               She breaks off a shard of the mask, and he screams.  If she crushes the mask all at once, it would be an agony he would’ve never felt—and this is for a guy who doesn’t mind pain.  This, though, this is different.  There’s no sense of the fight for survival, no grinning at the pain, nothing as a badge of honor.
               He struggles to rise.
               “Is this how you treat royalty?” she snarls, and suddenly there’s something pinning him in place, kneeling before her.  It’s burning through him, but there’s no breath left to scream.
               “You’ll answer my questions, you lowly lizard,” she spits.  “What are you?”
               “I…don’t know,” he manages, and she breaks off another piece.  He nearly bites through his lip, feeling his teeth get sharper at the pain.  His body’s trying to react instinctively, trying to get to the Hollow form where he can regenerate, but he can feel that’s tied to the mask.  He’s not touching those powers.
               “Bad answer,” she tuts, mock-concerned.
               “Shiro,” he manages, feeling traces of his usual attitude come back.  “Shinigami.  Hollow.  Something else.”  His sword’s more like a zanpukto, considering it’s Zangetsu, or at least something really close.  But it’s clearly a sonido that he uses, and if he’s in Full Hollow form he’d been able to use Cero to litter the battleground with corpses.  The few (basic) spells he knows are all Kido, but considering it’s not King’s strong suit, he hadn’t learned too much of it either.
               “Human?” she suggests, and a touch of uncertainty enters his heart.  That’s the most unfamiliar part, but maybe the part he wants the most.  Now.
               He shrugs as best he can.
               “Why are you here?” she asks.
               “If you think we’re just gonna let our friends disappear, ya don’t know us.  You’re not Orihime, are ya?” he guesses with increasing certainty, letting one of his smirks appear.
               Apparently, the Shadow Princess doesn’t care for that, because she breaks a large piece off his mask, crumbling it in her hands, and he falls forward, supporting himself on a single, trembling hand, coughing.  Red, human blood drips from his mouth, and if the other arm wasn’t too busy being stabbed, he’d use it to wipe away the liquid.  Instead, he gets what he can with his tongue.
               There’s a light and she screams in fury.  It’s not that of a Hollow, but it’s definitely not human.  She raises up his mask and smashes it on the ground, and the pain hits him like a thousand shards of glass, going through his skin, in his veins and organs and even brain.  He feels himself fracturing, losing himself and any shard of consciousness.
               But the light calls his name, and instinctually, he answers.  There’s still a fragment of light inside him, and it reaches back.