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The silence is the worst part.
It isn't something he had ever thought about, in those weeks—months?—he spent locked inside his own head. He had never really talked to Zangetsu or the hollow before, not outside extraneous circumstances, but they had always been there at the back of his head, and he hadn't noticed how loud they were.
Until they were gone.
(Until they were ripped out of him by his own hand, and by all the other hands moving the chess pieces in a way that Ichigo could barely comprehend sometimes.)
There used to be a hum in the background of his mind; maybe it was his own power, maybe the two presences inside him, maybe just his weird physiology. Whatever it was, Ichigo had lived with it for only a few months, and it shouldn't bother him that it's gone now.
It shouldn't, but it does. He wouldn't go as far as say that the silence is loud because that's ridiculous, but the absence is...
It's a thing. It isn't empty, but it doesn't have anything there, either. A hole full of nothing.
He wonders, sometimes, if this is like losing a limb. If he's going to keep feeling it there for the rest of his life. A pain that has no path. A place that can't be touched, can't be healed, can't be soothed, because it's simply not there.
There isn't any explanation for it. Ichigo has tried asking around, but people seem uninterested in answering him.
Actually, people seem uninterested in him, as a whole. No more a weapon to be wielded, or a curiosity to be gawked over, or a trump card to be pulled out in the enemy's face at the last moment possible.
Ichigo has no value to them anymore.
It shouldn't sting. He barely knows these people.
(Never mind that he invaded another realm for them, fought people who could have squashed him under their foot if he had been a smidge less lucky, almost died several times, did die at the bottom of a well, and then again at the hands of an Arrancar, saw friends hurt and at the brink of death themselves, and ultimately gave up part of who he is for them.)
It shouldn't hurt.
And yet.
--
The first few weeks are tough. He knows he lost days to a coma that some people thought he wouldn't wake up from, but he has no feeling of time passing for those days. One minute he was slicing Aizen in half while the same power seemed to slice him in half as well, and then he was blinking his eyes open at the shouten.
Urahara hadn't wasted any time in kicking him out, the pretense of being worried for him lasting only long enough to not seem horrendously rude.
His questions had been left hanging in the air as Urahara had shooed him out the door, excuses of being busy and Ichigo's family being worried, and that he should hurry home.
Ichigo had been confused and tired, angry at being ignored, but home had sounded nice at that point, in a way that home rarely did.
He was greeted as if he had been at school for a few hours, and not lying in a bed for days, at risk of not waking up.
He had been so bemused at everything that he hadn't questioned it, but soon it became apparent that the girls barely knew what had happened, because no one had bothered to explain to them. Goat Face would not answer anything Ichigo asked, playing his usual game of being a dumbass who barely had two brain cells to rub together.
The frustration had settled inside his chest, in a place where he kept all the anger towards his father. Not for the first time, Ichigo had wondered what he was going to do when that particular hole filled up and spilled.
But he had kept quiet.
Even if Goat Face deemed to answer him, he wasn't going to give him satisfactory answers.
So Ichigo had learned to keep quiet after being rebuffed the first few times, and as soon as he had some free hours that weren't filled to the brim with catching up with school, he had tried Urahara again.
The first time, he had been let inside, but Urahara had dodged his most pressing questions like he dodged everything else, and after that he was always kept at the door, with excuse after excuse.
"I just don't get what you're trying to hide from me. It's not like I haven't died once or twice for this already," Ichigo had muttered, starting to go from frustrated to actively hurt, and hoping that it wasn’t showing on his face.
Urahara had paused for a second, almost too fast to catch it. Ichigo doesn't know what the look he got means, but then the moment was over and Urahara was closing the door, and at that point mysterious looks didn't really matter.
He had gone home disappointed, holding back a round of shameful tears.
He hasn't cried in years, and he wasn't going to start suddenly crying for people who didn't care.
--
He's walking home from school when it happens for the first time.
Something itches at the back of his head, a scratch, a chill, something he can’t quite explain, and he's stepping to the side before even realizing he's moving, the familiar whiz of a knife past his ear seemingly the only sound in the world at that moment.
The knife clatters on the ground just as hurried footsteps come behind him, but Ichigo dodges automatically, a single step to the side and then spinning around to grab whoever this dumbass is by the scruff of their shirt. The person lets out a choking sound of surprise.
Ichigo pivots on his right foot and throws them, watching unblinkingly as they smack into a wall with a satisfying thud and slide to the floor. It’s a guy, looking dazed, unsure of what happened.
Listen. Ichigo is good at fighting. He's had to be, since he was little, because he lives in the kind of world where people will try to beat him up for the color of his hair, or the way he walks, or because his face is stuck in resting bitch mode, or just because he was walking past the wrong alley at the wrong time.
(He's had to be good at protecting himself from the moment the only person who ever did wasn't here anymore.)
He has always had good instincts, has always known how to move, where to strike, when to dodge and when to take it head on. It makes him a good fighter, and he quit the dojo after he realized it was incredibly difficult not to hurt his classmates while practicing.
He's always been good at this.
But he was only ever this good during those months that he had his spiritual powers at levels he hadn't even imagined were possible.
The guy he threw at the wall struggles to get up, and Ichigo has a spark of recognition before someone else comes out of the alley with a fist raised, with another guy right behind him. In twenty seconds he has all three of them on the ground and a knife in his hand. He isn’t even sweating.
He takes a good look at the man who had bumped into him four days ago and demanded Ichigo apologize for the slight. Ichigo had naturally left him with a broken nose after the guy tried to pull this exact same knife on him.
"I'm taking this one with me, this time," Ichigo says, brandishing the knife for a second, before using it to point at the man, "and if you come at me again, I'm gonna break more than your nose."
For a moment, the man looks like he wouldn’t mind testing that, but then he grimaces, seeming to remember his still-healing nose and the takedown that just happened. He glares at Ichigo from the ground.
"I'm gonna get you one day, brat. We'll see who's gonna break who." His voice is wet and stuffed, almost garbling his words, but Ichigo understands him well enough. It’s not the first time he’s had someone say that to him.
"Yes," Ichigo answers, pocketing the knife, "we'll see."
He turns around and starts walking away, ignoring the groans and spoken threats behind him.
Ichigo has always been good at this.
But it's been a while since he's been this good. Since his awareness was so honed that he could feel intentions behind thoughts, could almost feel someone’s intent to hurt him even before they themselves realized it.
Hope is a painful thing. He should know better. Still, he mentally pokes his own head, listening attentively for any sound, any whisper, any stray thought that might not be fully his own.
All he gets is silence.
Empty, full, itching silence.
He walks home with numb steps, brain automatically leading him the right way as his mind wanders away to past, better times.
--
Home is the same weird affair it's been for months.
Yuzu is tentative, treating him like fragile glass. Karin is nowhere to be seen, and Goat Face is working and probably won't be here for dinner.
The house is dark and quiet and foreboding, and as Ichigo walks towards his room, he needs to squash the urge to turn around and walk out. It's a familiar urge by now, something he's always felt to some degree, and it only seems to get stronger as time goes by.
When he's in the safety of his room, he throws his backpack on the floor and falls on his bed without ceremony.
He stares at the ceiling while going through the failed attack.
It felt different, the way he noticed what was happening. That first itch on the back of his head is something he hadn’t felt in months. The automatic way he reacted to being attacked, barely registering what was happening before noticing the first guy already on the ground, had been as easy as breathing.
Was he imagining it? Was it wishful thinking?
He pokes at his mind again, unsure of how to go about this, wondering if there’s a method that he might not be aware of, wondering if the meditation his father had taught him would do any good now. Not for the first time, Ichigo regrets not asking more. He also regrets not insisting when people dismissed his questions as unimportant, perhaps judging him incapable of comprehending... or maybe they just thought he wouldn’t live long enough for the answers to matter.
That thought really hurts.
It’s not like he hadn’t understood the seriousness of the situation, the danger Aizen had posed, the swiftness with which they had needed to act.
It’s just that he had thought he was worth a little more than that.
More than just a convenient weapon to be disposed of when everything was said and done.
Part of him wants to be grateful that he at least left the battlefield with his life, that the Gotei let him go; another part of him wishes they had struck him down instead of letting him in this limbo.
Another part of him is so, so angry.
But the only way to expunge his anger these days is by beating up the mortal assholes who can’t seem to leave him alone.
Something scratches at his mind, like a clawed hand trying to get his attention instead of ripping off some of his flesh, and Ichigo sits up in surprise. He tries to reach for it, focus on it like he’s focusing on a random thought that passed through his mind, and the scratching grows more insistent before fading away again. Then, silence.
Ichigo looks down at his hands and is not really surprised to see they’re shaking.
He’s not imagining it.
He’s not.
Taking a deep breath, he closes his eyes and tries to reach that place where it seems the scratching was coming from, but nothing jumps out at him from the normal jumble of his thoughts.
Frustration wants to take a hold of him, but Ichigo is too excited to be truly frustrated.
The last few months have been, quite frankly, horrible, and he would like not to waste his limited energy on useless frustration. This is the first glimpse he’s gotten that maybe not everything is lost, and he would like to bask in the hope a little bit longer.
He has a sudden urge to go talk to someone about this, someone who knows that ghosts and monsters are real, someone who could maybe answer a few questions and perhaps even assuage his worries.
But there’s no one like that who would be willing to spend that time with him.
He knows. He’s tried.
So he’s on his own.
Well... Ichigo is used to being on his own. He will deal with this alone, and if he manages to heal himself a little, then he can be satisfied in doing this by himself and not needing the help of people who barely look at him, if they see him at all.
He sighs and flops back on the bed, wondering if maybe the meditation might help after all. It was a sort of meditation that he did to reach his inner soulscape in the first place, so it stands to reason the same method should work again.
It’s, thankfully, a Friday, so he decides to test it out after dinner. Not needing to worry about staying up too late will make it easier for him to concentrate. Suddenly excited for the night ahead, Ichigo decides to do some of his homework before dinner, to get some of his commitments out of the way.
In the back of his mind, he’s already planning his next steps.
--
Dinner is a quiet moment. Well, most of the house is quiet when Goat Face isn’t around, which is usually a blessing... but recently the house has been quiet in other ways. There’s not much point in trying to keep conversation going, which is a little sad, when Ichigo considers how well he used to be able to talk to his sisters.
But Karin spends most of her time either at school or at the shouten, and as much as Ichigo doesn’t want to be bitter about it, or to feel betrayed, the feelings are still there.
He doesn’t want to feel those things when he looks at Karin’s face, but it’s harder than he thought to control them, so it’s just as well that she isn’t home yet. (He doesn’t ever want Karin—or Yuzu, for that matter—to feel like they need to stay away from him. They might be at odds with each other right now, but he doesn’t want to be someone they actively avoid.)
Yuzu, on the other hand, was the only one who actually tried talking to him on those first few weeks when everything had felt like hell, but Ichigo can admit that he wasn’t in the best frame of mind to talk to her at all, and he has always felt a little weird unloading his troubles on his little sisters, so all he had done was smile and tell her he was okay.
Which was a blatant lie and they both knew it—it was hard to hide the type of eyebags Ichigo was sporting, or how much less he ate in general, or how she never saw him with his friends anymore—but Yuzu also didn’t quite have the tools to manage their stilted conversations, so she always smiled and backed off.
Ichigo kind of regrets it, but then again, what is he supposed to say to her?
A piece of me is gone forever? They used me and discarded me like an old dog and, even though we weren’t exactly friends, I expected to be treated with a little more respect? I’m very hurt and very angry at them and at myself? I’m useless now?
No, of course not. All those things are true, sure, but that’s not something he intends to tell to eleven year olds, no matter how mature they think they are. No matter how sad Yuzu looks when she talks to him, or how Karin pretends nothing’s wrong, as if the problems will magically disappear.
So dinner comes and goes with useless, small talk, and even though Ichigo is grateful for being able to sit down and talk to Yuzu for a while, he can’t help the relief that washes through him when dinner is done.
He helps Yuzu with cleaning up, and soon he’s back in his room.
Suddenly the excitement is back, along with a bunch of nerves, and the crippling doubt about it all, that maybe he’s setting himself up for disappointment. But if he doesn’t do it, he will just spend his days and weeks wondering what if what if, and Ichigo really doesn’t need any more what ifs in his life.
The ones that dominate his thoughts late at night, when he can’t sleep, are more than enough.
He sits down on his bed, leans against the wall, and takes a deep breath. The light is off, but he still closes his eyes, making sure nothing will take his attention away from this.
Don’t screw this up, he says to himself.
At first everything is a jumble of thoughts and images, but that’s quite normal. He concentrates on his own breathing, letting it in and out slowly, methodically, feeling his chest expand and deflate in a hypnotic rhythm.
His thoughts keep interfering, but Ichigo is nothing if not stubborn.
At some point he loses track of time. He may have been sitting there for ten minutes or ten hours and it wouldn’t make a difference to his perception.
Here.
The whisper is so clear that it takes him by surprise, making him open his eyes before he can tell himself not to. He huffs at himself and closes his eyes again, determined not to be spooked out of concentration again.
It takes longer than he would like to get back into that calm state of mind, but when he does, he hears it again.
Here. Come here. Slowly.
He wants to ask where here is, or how he might get there, but he can’t move his mouth.
And he can’t open his eyes.
And he can’t move any of his muscles.
And instead of being afraid, Ichigo feels the excitement grow.
He lets himself fall deeper into it, into the space that’s empty and full and dark, the hole that was torn open inside him.
Took you long enough, someone says.
He huffs at the voice. It’s still just a whisper, so it’s hard to make out who it belongs to, though he reasons his hollow wouldn’t be talking so calmly to him.
You could have tried to communicate sooner, you know, he says, trying to sound miffed and surely failing. He’s still too excited to be angry right now.
I did. You weren’t paying attention.
Oh. Well.
(He wants to say that he has been paying attention, maybe too much attention, too focused on his pain to do anything else, but he’s also been so distracted, always trying to get his mind off of things that are better left unthought.)
Properly chastised, Ichigo shuts up and just keeps falling, letting himself relax, becoming heavy, mind sinking sinking sinking deeper.
The hole feels all encompassing, like the entirety of his being is a giant black pit, devoid of all the energy that sustained him.
It’s a scary thought. He could have died there, on that battlefield, putting all of himself into a suicide mission only to watch the monster not even have the grace to die, while Ichigo himself was being eaten from the inside out.
It had been one of the most terrifying things that ever happened to him, and even now, if Ichigo thinks about it, he might start sweating, his hands might start shaking.
Stop, the voice says, but Ichigo is barely listening.
He takes a deep breath as he unwillingly pulls himself out of meditation, opening his eyes to a dark room barely illuminated by the moon outside. The window is open and a slight breeze flows into the room, ruffling his hair.
Ichigo leans his head against the windowsill.
“Shit,” he says to the empty room.
His hands are still shaking, and there’s some sweat on his forehead and on his back.
He thought he was over it. He wants to be over it, wants to stop seeing Aizen’s distorted face every time he closes his eyes, wants to stop having nightmares of Aizen dangling his sisters from his hands by their neck, wants to stop feeling like he may see Aizen in the street every time he walks out of the house.
He wants this to be over already, this trauma or PTSD or whatever it’s called, this thing that keeps dogging his heels.
And yet, it keeps haunting him.
He debates whether he should try again tonight, but he’s too shaken up now. He rather doubts he will be able to calm down enough to meditate, and he also doubts he will be able to calm down enough to actually sleep.
Moving to his desk, he turns the lamp on and decides to immerse himself in more homework. Hopefully it will be boring enough to put him to sleep at some point tonight.
And if not, at least he’s getting rid of one of his responsibilities, freeing up his time.
He will try again tomorrow.
--
Tomorrow comes and goes and Ichigo doesn’t get any closer than he did on Friday night.
He takes out his frustration on a group of bullies that thought insulting his sisters was the way to get to him.
They were right, it was. Just not in the way they had thought.
--
During the next week, Ichigo tries to meditate every night, even when he should be asleep because he needs to be extra early to school. But he never gets any closer to his soulscape, and he still can only hear whispers, nothing concrete. It’s like grasping at something invisible, a thin spider web flowing in the wind.
Zangetsu—he’s pretty sure it’s Zangetsu talking to him—sounds awfully calm, considering Ichigo’s failed attempts, and he doesn’t want to admit that not being hurried helps quiet some of the constant anxiety swirling inside of him.
He spends most of his time in school either paying attention and doing the work he’s supposed to do, or daydreaming about what he might find once he manages to enter his soulscape again, whatever’s left of it.
He knows he seems distracted, but his work doesn’t fall in quality, so the teacher has no reason to call him out on it, even though he can see her looking at him sometimes. He knows she worries, and he kind of appreciates it, but it would be impossible to explain what’s going on with him.
The people who would most likely understand are either far away, or ignoring him.
He catches, out of the corner of his eyes, Inoue and Chad looking at him sometimes, while Ishida basically pretends he doesn’t exist. At first it had all been grating, then depressing, but now Ichigo has learned not to care too much. If they don’t want to spend the energy to talk to him, he will do them the same courtesy.
Maybe their renewed interest is because Ichigo probably doesn't look as down as he was in the beginning. There’s nothing quite like having a difficult task to distract from sad things, after all.
--
It takes some work, some patience, a few more weeks, and dodging some apparently innocent questions from too curious classmates, but eventually Ichigo breaks through.
He’s doing the same thing he’s been doing lately, meditating after dinner and hoping for any kind of progress. Falling into a meditative state goes surprisingly quick and smooth this time, but he tries not to get his hopes up too much. He mostly fails.
Ah, I can see you.
He keeps his breathing calm only by habit, weeks of doing this every day making sure that he doesn’t stumble out of his meditation whenever something unexpected happens, like loud noises.
A white hand with black nails comes out of the darkness, appearing under him, as if to pull him down, and it takes everything in Ichigo not to recoil from it.
Relax. Otherwise you’re gonna get punted out again.
Yeah, but isn’t that the hollow’s hand? Why is it reaching for me?
Ah.
‘Ah’? What kinda response is that?
I forgot to explain. Welp, you’re gonna see soon enough. C’mon.
And then the hand grabs his metaphorical foot and pulls.
It’s hard to explain the sensation of falling when you know you’re perfectly still back in your bed, and if pressed, Ichigo wouldn’t be able to properly express the amount of confusion and horror that comes with it. His stomach gets stuck somewhere in his throat and he can’t even bring himself to scream as he falls.
And falls.
And falls.
And keeps falling.
He’s contemplating the merits of cursing the hollow or even Zangetsu, when he breaks through the darkness.
For a moment, all he sees is a muted, cloudy sky, the clouds around him moving away in ripples, as if Ichigo’s presence interfered physically with them, as if he opened up a hole in the sky. And then gravity seems to rearrange itself and Ichigo is falling sideways, the buildings he’s seen in his mind a few times flying past him. He’s falling fast, but not fast enough not to register what he’s seeing.
The buildings are all falling apart, structures damaged by what could have been bombs, given the size of some of the holes. Shattered glass, rusted steel, crumbling concrete.
No rain. No water.
Or so he thinks, until he splashes into a lake thousands of meters below where he first dropped. He splashes into the water with so much force that it seems to shake the buildings around him.
Ichigo flails for a moment, a brief panic trying to overtake him, before he remembers that he can’t drown inside his own mind. He opens eyes that he didn’t realize were closed and watches the surface wobble over him.
The water is calm despite his thrashing, cool instead of freezing, like he had feared. He swims to the surface, breathing as if there isn’t a whole ocean around him.
He breaks the surface of the water and finds his hollow standing there, arms crossed, looking down at him.
“You’re getting better at not drowning. Good. That would be embarrassing for both of us.”
Ichigo feels a scowl instinctively form on his brow, not only from the words and the remembered embarrassment of last time, but also because he was expecting Zangetsu, and not... him.
“Where’s Zangetsu?” he asks, swimming to the shore.
And by shore, he means the open window of a building, just enough above the water to serve as a safe spot.
It’s also a little ways away from the hollow staring at him from a sideways street light.
The hollow gestures at himself. “I’m right here.”
What?
“What?”
The hollow sighs, sounding incredibly disappointed. “Would be nice if you had asked questions way earlier than this.”
Ichigo’s scowl turns into a glare. “I tried to, but you were a little too focused on taking over me instead of answering them. Or are you gonna tell me you don’t remember the problems you’ve caused?”
The hollow glares back. “If you had bothered to try and understand what was happening to you, we wouldn’t have had those problems in the first place.”
They glare at each other for a few seconds, and as much as it bothers him, Ichigo is the one to look away first.
It’s not like the hollow is wrong. Some people ignored his questions, true, but there were times when he simply... didn’t want to know.
(Too afraid to find out what was happening to him, too afraid to hear that he was too lost, too different, too changed to ever have his normal life back.)
The hollow sighs heavily, and the sound makes Ichigo bring his eyes back to him.
There’s none of the usual madness clinging to the hollow right now; his facial expression is one of frustration, sure, but under it there’s a calmness that wasn’t there before, a serenity that always seemed to be beyond the hollow’s capabilities.
In fact, he looks remarkably how Ichigo normally looks, except for the gold and black eyes, and the white everything else.
“Don’t panic,” the hollow says right before jumping and landing beside Ichigo.
Ichigo doesn’t panic, but he does start a little at the sudden movement. The hollow sits beside him and gestures for Ichigo to do the same.
Ichigo follows the invitation, finding all this way too strange, but having no way of putting it into words. And, well... he’s also very, very curious.
“I wasn’t gonna panic,” he says, crossing his arms.
The hollow looks at him with a mocking tilt on his mouth. “Sure, because you never panic or run away screaming every time anything remotely hollow-y is mentioned.”
Ichigo splutters. “I never run away screaming!”
“Metaphorically.”
And again, he can’t really argue, and being wrong while his hollow is right leaves a sour taste in his mouth, so Ichigo turns his face away, not caring how childish he looks right now.
The hollow chuckles, catching Ichigo by surprise. It’s leagues away from the unhinged cackle he has heard even in his nightmares.
“So.”
“So,” the hollow parrots.
“Are you gonna tell me what’s going on?”
“You asked where Zangetsu was. And I told you that I’m here.”
“But you’re not Zangetsu.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“How can you be Zangetsu when Zangetsu is the dude with a scraggly beard and glasses? Aren’t you the hollow part? By the way, how come you’re not acting all crazy right now?”
“Okay, one question at a time.” The hollow turns toward the water. The lake is calm, not a single ripple in sight, and not even a measly wind to disturb the waters.
“Fine. Why do you say you’re Zangetsu?”
“Because I am.”
Oh, this is frustrating, but he tells himself to calm down. Just the fact that he’s here at all is a feat in itself, and the excitement hasn’t settled down, even if it doesn’t show on his face.
“Then who the fuck is the old man, then?”
“You’re gonna have to ask him about that.”
Ichigo groans. “What’s the point of being all haughty about me not asking questions and then not answering when I do ask them? Do you realize the ridiculousness here?”
The hollow sighs. “I know, I know. I’ll answer things pertaining to me, but if you want to know about him, you’re gonna have to ask him. It’s not like I have all the answers pertaining to him anyway.”
“Okay, fine. Then if you’re Zangetsu, why didn’t you show yourself first?”
“Because I had just been hollowfied by you dying, I wasn’t in any shape to help you.”
“What... do you mean?”
The hollow—Zangetsu?—turns to him, something unhappy on his face. “You remember dying, right? At the bottom of that damned well?”
Yes, of course he does. How is he ever going to forget that?
“Yes.”
“I died with you, Ichigo. I’m part of you, and I died when you did. And then we became a hollow.” He looks down at his hands, tight fists in his lap. “From the moment you died, it was too late for me. When you triumphed over the hollowfication—congrats by the way—I was already irrevocably changed.”
Oh, that’s...
Guilt, strong and potent, blooms in Ichigo’s chest like a dark flower. He had never stopped to think how that first death might have affected his soul aside from planting a hollow inside him. And even that wasn’t true, because there was never any hollow at all, just his zanpakutou being warped beyond recognition by outside forces.
Not for the first time, Ichigo has to swallow some of the anger he feels toward Urahara and all the secrets that shouldn’t have been secrets, because Ichigo had a right to know, and no one had said a fucking thing.
(He can almost understand Urahara not wanting to explain, shifty as the dude is, but the Visoreds knew exactly what Ichigo was going through and no one bothered to help him. The only ‘help’ he got was a brutal training that was more for them than for him.)
Anger flares up again, and it’s so hard to keep it down. Ichigo feels his face contort with it.
Zangetsu—fuck, this is his zanpakutou, isn’t it, fuck everything and everyone—smiles at him. A real smile that Ichigo isn’t sure he himself can make.
“Anger is all nice and good, but what’s done is done.”
“So, like... were you mad at me? Is that why you were acting all murder-y?”
“Oh, no no no. I wasn’t mad at you.” Zangetsu glares at something only he can see. “I was mad at Urahara for not being more careful with you.”
“He did warn me, though.”
“Not enough.” Zangetsu’s voice is low, anger coloring his words, and something in Ichigo stills.
It’s nice, having someone angry on his behalf, even if it’s only a piece of himself.
“So the whole ‘I’m gonna take over you’ thing...”
“Was the hollow part running the show for a while.”
“What exactly do you mean by hollow part?”
“It means that we were hollowfied, so now we’re part hollow. And with that came all the anger and hunger and pure instinct most hollows have. And I—”
“...You?”
Ichigo can see Zangetsu's jaw clenching and unclenching.
“It hurt, you know? Being hollowfied.” His eyes flit to Ichigo before turning back to the water. “Do you remember the pain?”
“Yes.”
“After you came back to yourself, your pain was gone. Mine wasn’t.”
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
“What?” Ichigo asks, voice faint as the realization falls upon him.
Zangetsu smiles, a sad, small thing at the corner of his lips. “I was in so much pain I barely knew what was happening. I suppose that opened the way for the hollow part to take over me.”
Ichigo looks over at the water as well, imagining all the months that Zangetsu was in agony somewhere inside his mind, while Ichigo pranced around without knowing.
“I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have known, should have tried harder. I’m sorry I left you to suffer.”
A beat of silence.
“Apology accepted.”
They stay quiet for a while, Ichigo digesting this new information, something that puts other moments in a new light for him.
“So, it was really a hollow all that time?”
“Well, it was me being unable to take control of my body, basically.”
“That’s... weird.”
“You’re weird.”
“Hey!”
Zangetsu chuckles. It’s subdued, like most of him seem to be right now, but Ichigo it’s glad it’s something he can do.
“So,” Ichigo says, leaning back on his hands, “you’re still here.”
Zagetsu raises an eyebrow. “You’d rather I’d be somewhere else?”
“No, I mean... I thought Mugetsu was supposed to... erase you.”
“It was.”
“So then...?”
“It didn’t.”
“Okay, but why?”
“How should I know? I told you, you’re weird.”
Ichigo huffs. “Asshole.”
“I’m being serious, though. Whatever’s going on with us is weird, Ichigo. I shouldn’t be here; the old man shouldn’t be here either. I’m not sure why we’re not cosmic dust somewhere.”
“The old man’s here?” Ichigo takes a look around, trying to spot the familiar flowy cape and long hair.
“Not here here. Here as in, inside you.”
“Ah.”
“I wonder if being hollowfied has something to do with it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m not taunting you and trying to take over, am I?”
“No. I must admit I enjoy the peace.”
“So do I. I’m thinking... maybe the hollow part was numbed down by the lack of power? No power, no energy to go batshit insane.”
“So if we get our powers back... what? Is it back to being crazy?”
Zangetsu flinches.
“Sorry, I—” Ichigo starts, but Zangetsu interrupts.
“No, you’re right. I was crazy; I really couldn’t control myself.” Zangetsu looks at his hands again, this time not as fists, but simply resting on his lap. He brings them up to inspect more closely. “But I think that if we heal, things might be different. I have... a better grasp of myself now. I know what it feels to be me, and what it feels when the instincts take over instead.”
He looks at Ichigo with something that might be hope on his face, and it’s almost weird seeing a face so similar to his with that look, except that it’s not weird at all.
“If—no, when we heal, I’ll be able to hold it off. Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
Zangetsu smiles, and the hairs on the back of Ichigo’s neck all raise in alert. But he feels no urge to run.
“Yeah, mostly. It’s not like the bastard part won’t exist at all, it’s just that I’ll be able to control it better. As long as we don’t lose ourselves to it, it should be fine.”
“...Okay.”
“Tsk, have some confidence.”
The incredulity must show on his face, because Zangetsu averts his eyes with an awkward laugh.
“Okay, okay, I see the irony here.”
“So what about the old man?”
“What about him?”
“Why wasn’t he affected by the hollowfication?”
Zangetsu hums.
Ichigo scowls at him. “No, seriously, tell me.”
“I told you, you’re gonna have to ask him.”
“But you know, don’t you?”
“Not everything.” Zangetsu grins, suddenly, looking gleeful in a way that doesn’t bode well. “But I know he lied to you about some serious stuff. I don’t envy his position right now.”
“You’re letting your hollow show.”
“Shut up.”
They share another silence, not as heavy. Ichigo wonders if he should ask what he wants to ask.
“Just ask.”
“Are you... reading my mind?”
Zangetsu looks at him like he’s dumb. “I’m in your mind, dumbass. I’m part of you. I can’t actually read your thoughts while you're here too, but I can feel the intention behind it.” He shrugs. “So, you know, just ask.”
“Okay. Why do you look like me? Why don’t you have your own appearance?”
“I’m not sure. I think, well, since I hadn’t really awoken before the hollowfication, I think it changed my appearance too. You were the only thing I could reliably count on when I awoke to so much pain, so I guess I automatically picked your appearance as my own? Or maybe it’s not that I picked, maybe it’s just that there wasn’t anything else to pick from. This is all just a guess, of course.”
“Do you think—erm, like—do you think, with time, you could find your own appearance?”
“...Maybe? Maybe not. Like I said, you’re weird.”
“You’re part of me. We’re weird.”
“Nah, it’s just you. I’m perfectly normal.”
Ichigo punches him in the arm and gets a strangled little laugh in return. It’s almost like Zangetsu is unused to showing emotions that are not anger, bloodthirst or indifference. Which, yeah, considering everything they’ve gone through, laughter hasn’t really been on the menu lately.
“So what do we do now?”
“I’m not sure. The old man and I are still here, clearly, but we have no power anymore.”
“But since you’re here, it means nothing’s actually broken, right? If it’s just raw power missing, it can be fixed.”
“I suppose. But letting a soul heal itself takes time, and your physical body needs to recuperate a lot of reiryoku. A lot of it. I’m not sure if that’s possible.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like a car with a dying battery. Sometimes it needs a little shock from another battery to restart. Or something like that, I don’t know anything about cars.” Zangetsu coughs. “Anyway, what I mean is... if you don’t get another big surge of reiryoku, like you got from Rukia, our powers might never come back.”
Ichigo scowls. “I’m not asking a shinigami for help.”
“Hell no, that’s not what I’m suggesting.”
“I’m not asking the Visoreds either.”
“Good. It’s not like I want to see them either.”
“And I’m not asking Urahara.”
“Wasn’t expecting you to.”
They look at each other for a second.
“We’re fucked, aren’t we?” Ichigo asks.
“No. The old man and I are here, and we’ll figure something out. There’s no need to be alone in this. I... I’m sorry I left you alone for so long.”
“I mean, it wasn’t your fault.”
“I still should have been here to protect my wielder.”
“You did. You protected me, even when you were barely coherent. You even tried to stop me from ripping myself apart. There’s no need to think you were useless.”
Zangetsu doesn’t answer, and the tension doesn’t really leave his shoulder, but he smiles at Ichigo.
There are more things Ichigo wants to ask. Were you conscious all the time, then? What happened when Ulquiorra killed us? Did it hurt you again? Do you really think we can solve this on our own?
But before he can utter any of those things, his vision flashes black, once, twice.
“What’s happening?” Ichigo asks as the buildings around them seem to melt like butter in a pan. For a moment he’s so, so afraid that something’s wrong with him, that maybe they shouldn’t have met, that maybe his mind can’t handle the strain. But then Zangetsu’s words put him at ease.
“I think you’re fading. It’s hard to maintain the connection; I’m surprised we lasted this long.”
“Will I be able to come here again?” His vision flashes again, and darkness starts creeping at the corners of his eyes.
“I think so. Just give it a couple of days for you to recharge. This is probably taking a mental toll.”
Everything swirls around him, and Zangetsu becomes a white blob in front of him.
“Okay, wait for me, I’ll be b—”
--
Ichigo jumps out of his meditative state like someone coming up for air after holding their breath for too long. His nightstand clock tells him it’s been twenty minutes since he sat down.
It feels like he stayed in his soulscape for hours.
Only twenty minutes in the outside world, but his limbs are incredibly stiff when he tries to move. He slowly gets up and gets ready for bed, being able to enjoy the silence of the room for the first time in months.
The hum of power is still absent, of course, but just knowing that he hasn’t lost half of himself, that he hasn’t sacrificed a literal piece of his soul to a bunch of ungrateful bastards, and that the power loss is reversible, puts him at ease in a way Ichigo has been very few times in his life.
Not everything has been lost, and what has been can be gained back.
He still needs to have a serious talk with the old man and figure out what’s going on with having two distinct pieces inside his soul, and he still needs to work out his anger and his resentment toward the shinigami, lest they fester and turn him into a bitter asshole. (There is no way Ichigo is letting them turn him into something he’s not. Not again. Not ever again.)
But those things can wait for tomorrow, and the days to come.
He’s not alone anymore.
He never really was.