Bleach Fan Fiction / Samurai Champloo Fan Fiction ❯ 1st Kiss Meme ❯ The Difficulties of Spirit Travel ( Chapter 2 )

He doesn't understand the physics of being a shinigami. For instance, he doesn't know why, when he falls through his bedroom window - literally, through the window - he doesn't just fall through the floor, too, fall through the basement and the foundation and the earth. But he's glad that he doesn't fall any further than his floor.

 

And this gladness is the last feeling that he experiences alone, just Ichigo, because then there's a voice, gravelly and harsh and a little garbled right with him, swimming up out of a dark well to share his head with him, to try and shove him out.

 

It was a rough night on his own, a busy night. He missed Rukia - her harsh criticism and her steady backup. He missed Ishida's bow and the thrill of an arrow flashing by him, singeing the pale hairs on his arm. He was alone and he fought hard alone. As he tired, he felt the boundary between him and it grow thin, nearly insubstantial, until it felt like mere surface tension, like the skin on soup after it'd been in the pot for too long. It was all he could do just to make it home.

 

“I buck and bray and I throw you off,” it hisses in his ear and he curls into a ball on the floor, clenching his teeth, covering his ears.

 

“You can try to push me out, but you'll lose. You've already lost; I'm already here.”

 

The hollow clenches his muscles just to prove it, freezing Ichigo on the floor. He breathes in short pants, all he can get out of paralyzed lungs. He should really figure out how to control this thing that lives in him now, that never goes away - it waits or sleeps until moments like this. He would go to Urahara; he should go. The shopkeeper has helped him, has saved him enough times that Ichigo has reason to believe that he can do anything, that he knows everything there is to know about shinigami and hollow and death. But Urahara put this thing in him - or at least he made it come out. He both owes Urahara and he despises him for what he did, for what Ichigo hopes he had to do to save him. He hopes Urahara had no choice, because if this thing inside-

 

“Oh, there was a choice,” it purrs. “He could have let you live as a cripple; he could have let you die and buried your soul. Instead he gave you to me. And vice versa if you want to be a little more philosophical about it.”

 

“Ichigo? You back?” A sleep-roughened voice that's half familiar gives him a jolt, but he can't turn around to see Kon in his body sitting up in his bed.

 

“Gnn,” he manages. It was supposed to be “Run.” His heart sinks and his hollow chuckles as the mod soul springs out of bed and edges along the carpet, sensing that something's very wrong, keeping his back to the wall. Ichigo can see his own bony ankles and the legs of a pair of his sweats and that's it. Kon edges closer and then squats a few feet away, arms around his knees, head cocked to the side, trying to meet Ichigo's eyes. He can feel that one of them has already turned yellow. He blinks and Kon sees the black and gold eye. Ichigo watches his own face go slack with surprise, watches Kon fall backward onto his ass with a startled “Gah!”

 

Laughing at him the whole time, his hollow pulls him up to his knees and jerks him like a doll across the carpet until he's leaning over his own body, a fist in one of his t-shirts. Kon stares up at him, wide-eyed.

 

“Come look at us,” his hollow says aloud, hissing with Ichigo's voice. Then, they're both being dragged over to his mirror. The hollow grabs Kon's arm and pulls him up and then there's suddenly three of them. Ichigo feels nauseous at the sheer strangeness of it. Two identical boys with orange hair sitting still as rocks and a third in the mirror, hair as white as snow and skin the color of rain clouds. He's got both hands on the mirror glass and he's laughing like he's never had so much fun in his life.

 

Kon has legs like a grasshopper, even though they look normal, and it seems he finally remembers how to use them, because suddenly, Ichigo feels a bare foot, his foot, on his ribs and Kon gives him a good shove, propelling himself away and sending Ichigo lurching sideways.

 

“Shit,” Kon mutters, backpedaling up against Ichigo's dresser. “What do I do? Ichi- What-”

 

“Say goodbye,” his hollow smirks from the mirror.

 

Ichigo feels his limbs jerk again and then he's right at the mirror, and it feels like the surface tension of a pond or a sink-ful of water - entirely too malleable. His hand pushes through and then he's in it up to his shoulder and Kon crawls back across the floor.

 

“Wait!”

 

*

He clings to the side of the building, hands somehow sticking to the glass. He's never understood this sideways place, even though it's his soul, and the other parts of his soul live here, and so technically, he lives here. It still gives him vertigo. It still takes him awhile to readjust his sense of what's 'down.'

 

He doesn't get the chance this time, craning his neck up to see along the shear face of the building, flinching back when he sees his hollow crouching on the glass, crawling toward him face first, like a spider. Ichigo slides himself what his body still feels is 'down,' feet catching on a window frame, nearly throwing him off. He looks up again, sees his hollow regarding like he's an interesting sort of bug.

 

“Still pretty pathetic, aren't you.”

 

Ichigo clenches his jaw and stays right where he is, as much of him pressed against the side of the building as is physically possible.

 

“Even with that pretty bankai of ours. Even when we fight like heroes.” The hollow laughs, mocking the very idea.

 

“You wanna fight me me now?” Ichigo challenges, putting whatever spit and fire he's got left after a night of fighting into his voice. Still, it cracks. “I won those fights on my own, and I'll prove it now if you want.”

 

The hollow reaches for him, with long, gray fingers and Ichigo grabs its wrist before those fingers can touch his face. “No. You didn't. I was there every time, and if you look in that dark, deep spot that you're scared to go, you'd know it.” They stare at each other for a moment in a sort of stalemate. Then the hollow shrugs and shakes his head, snatching its hand back. “Not interested in a fight right now. And neither are you. You're about to drop.”

 

Ichigo's fatigue is evident in every move he makes, from the weight of his eyelids to the muscle spasms in his shoulders and legs. And it looks to be the same for the hollow. His white coat is tattered and his black eyes are ringed in charcoal smudges.

 

“Then what the hell do you want with me?”

 

The hollow grins again. “I want what I always want; I want to be king, and I want you for my horse.” He leans in close and Ichigo turns his face away from breath that smells like nothing. “I want to ride you.”

 

Ichigo rests his head on the glass and rolls his eyes. “You're as tired as me. You can't beat me.”

 

A short snicker. “Wrong. You've already been dethroned.”

 

Ichigo's head snaps up as the hollow gives his shoulder a sharp shove, upsetting his tenuous balance. For an eternity of seconds, Ichigo's arms pinwheel in the air as he leans back and over what still feels like the ground. His breath freezes in his chest as he confronts the certain knowledge that he will fall, and then his back hits the glass, the back of his head a half-second later, and the hollow is crawling forward again, first over his sandaled feet, then his bent knees, then it's got arms on either side of his waist and Ichigo jams his knees up into the hollow's middle, but it won't budge. It gets his legs pinned under bony shins that feel just like his and its breath is sharp and heavy.

 

Ichigo panics, because he's beginning to understand what the hollow might want, and he reaches for Zangetsu only to find that he's not there, that he hasn't been there since he arrived. Ichigo closes his eyes and seeks him out, finding the old man perched on the side of another building, unflappable and inscrutable as always.

 

“Help me fight him,” he calls.

 

He sees the old man turn his head away. “You've already lost that fight. Beat him in this one.”

 

He knows that the hollow can hear them, and he's certain of it, when it leans over him and hisses, “Do it, Kurosaki. Fight me this way. Acknowledge me.”

 

The hollow holds him down with a body that looks like it could blow away on the breeze, like ashes or paper, but which might as well be the weight of one of these sky scrapers. And Ichigo doesn't know how to fight when he can't move. He's not sure he wants to know how to fight like this.

 

And then his attention catches on that last bit, two words said between bleached white teeth. The hollow's breath is still short and cool on his face. Its body is coiled with potential violence, but it's waiting and watching.

 

Ichigo glares down darkness personified in bone white. He glares at the reverse of himself and pictures another version of himself back in his room, probably huddled between bed and desk, clutching the stuffed toy he usually inhabits.

 

And he grasps at where the conflict lies. He knows both of them more intimately than it's possible to know anyone else. One is his physical body, and the other is the negation of his soul. Both compete with him for dominance, both seek control over their existence, both seek acknowledgment. The hollow leaning over him looks hungry, looks starved, and Ichigo leans up into it and bites its lower lip. He strains against the hands holding him down and the hollow rears back, snarling and licking at its torn lip, swiping at the black blood dripping down its chin. Ichigo shoves himself up onto one hand, the hollow still crouched over his legs, and wraps his hand around the cool, smooth skin at the back of its neck. He pulls gently at white hair just as wild as his own and shoves their mouths together. The hollow chokes and then grabs onto him, sliding forward on its knees until it's fully straddling Ichigo's hips. Ichigo, now that he's closer, can taste bitterness on the hollow's tongue. He can also feel that the hollow is, in fact, distinctly male. 'It' is a 'he' and with the way he's grinding down on Ichigo's hips, he doesn't want Ichigo to ever forget it. The hollow's hands clutch at his hair and his clothes, seeking purchase, seeking certainty. Ichigo seizes the moment and twitches his hips to the side, feeling his body move again with its own strength, toppling the hollow sideways and laying him flat on the glass. Ichigo stretches out over him and feels the length of his own body arching back up into him.

 

“I win,” he says into the hollow's ear.

 

“You win this time, King,” he hisses in reply, black eyes only visible as slits through smudged eyelids.

 

Ichigo grins and reaches between their bodies.

 

*

He doesn't know how he gets back to his room, either. Spirit travel is a tricky thing. When he feels he can, maybe he'll grill Urahara about it. He probably won't reveal the exact circumstances of his travels because they involve rolling off of a strung out hollow and falling through the glass as soon as his back rests against it, landing on his ass in his own room and promptly toppling backwards to knock his head on his futon.

 

Perhaps it's something he'll look into later, maybe even with his hollow.

 

Now, he crawls, exhausted, into his bed and shoves Kon over a bit where he has fallen asleep, sure enough holding onto the stuffed lion for dear life. Ichigo drops down beside him and decides that reentering his body can wait until morning.