Where There is No Sun (1)

Ichigo's eyes widen. He can't believe what he's just heard.

Even Soi Fon seems uneasy with the order Yamamoto has just given her. Her eyes dart to the teenager. His body is weak from the continual strain of war; even now, his shoulders heave with heavy breathing. Ichigo can't remember the last time he was properly rested.

He sees Soi Fon's hands clench briefly, so tightly they shake. "S-sir…"

Yamamoto's spiritual pressure blows away from him in a buffeting wave. Ichigo is nearly pushed off his feet. Soi Fon's foot slides back an inch.

"You will defy me, Captain?"

Soi Fon pales, and Ichigo doesn't blame her. Yamamoto has shown himself to be a capable commander, an unbeatable force.

But since the beginning of the Winter War, he has also revolutionized the meaning of the phrase, the end justifies the means.

Yamamoto is brutual.

Yamamoto is vicious.

Yamamoto is merciless.

Soi Fon's shoulders dip as she visibly relents. Any other captain would not have so easily, though all would have eventually. They would have helped Ichigo out, except for maybe Mayuri. He would consider it a waste.

Soi Fon took a step in his direction. Her hand twitched at her side, and a dozen of her men appeared around her.

"Take him." She ordered.

Ichigo hadn't known that sealing spiritual power could hurt so badly.

Within moments, he is securely bound and tied, supported only by the hands holding him up. He clings to consciousness; he wants to hear the rest of this conversation.

Soi Fon stops Yamamoto when he goes to leave. "…What will you tell everyone?"

He thinks for a moment, sparing a careless glance at the teenager.

Facing the archway again, he says, "He died in battle."

Yamamoto disappeared around the curve of the stairwell, heading for the ground level.

Soi Fon bites her lip. It was a very small, uncertain gesture; Ichigo wonders if anyone else saw it. She steels her resolve and squares her shoulders once again.

"Put him in a cell on the lowest floor. Taku."

"Ah!"

"Bring Ochi down once he's secured. Have him put every seal he knows of on the door." Her eyes focus on a spot over Ichigo's head. She can't bear to meet his.

"…along with a sustaining spell. As Yamamoto hasn't determined his sentence, he could be down there for a while."

Ichigo releases his grip on consciousness then, with an inward sob. He had never imagined it would come to something like this; he should have left with Shinji and the others.

He resurfaces sometime later. An older man in a heavy robe is positioned at Soi Fon's right on the other side of the door. The lingering sting of spiritual power weighs the air.

The door is sealed. Ichigo doesn't have to look, to move to know that even if he were a captain with years of formal instruction and centuries of experience under his belt, he would not breach those seals.

The robed-man was speaking. "…-haps it would be prudent to make the official declaration." His eyes catch Ichigo's briefly, and he clears his throat, adding, "While he's with us."

Soi Fon is startled, and looks down to him before she can remember her disinclination to meet his eyes; she does for a moment, before jerking her chin to the side with a forced, "Che."

She grasps her wrist behind her back and straightens.

"Kurosaki Ichigo, you have been found guilty of treason and inhumane practice. You are hereby been sentenced to…" She hesitates, messily. Her ramrod posture fails her for a moment, and she stutters as she thinks. "To…indefinite years…h-here. In Fuchi."

Ochi nodds, pleased, and leaves. His footsteps are whisper light, but loud.

Soi Fon's fists shake. She's biting her lip again as she looks off in the direction the old man had gone.

With an awkward, almost clumsy move, she falls into an abrupt crouch and snatches a fistful of Ichigo's hair, pulling his face closer to hers.

"Kurosaki," She says lowly, urgent. "I will make sure someone knows you're done here. I'm sorry."

Then she follows Ochi's path, and he is alone. Ichigo stares after her long after she's gone.

Subconsciously, he recognizes the hollow moving in his head.

Shit, it says to him. Didn't see that one coming.

xx

There is absolutely nothing but darkness. Darkness, and the hollow. Even Zangetsu is elsewhere.

The old geezer probably stuffed him somewhere. The hollow says. We'll find him if we look long enough. And whaddya you know! Plenty of time!

Ichigo ignores him. He's too busy being grateful for his constant and overwhelming fatigue. If he were at full energy, he would be going nuts at what has just happened. Yamamoto ordering him locked away for…however long. Telling everyone, all of his friends and family that he's dead. Putting him in the literal abyss, where the gloom is so thick that he cannot see anything, at all.

It is true cave-darkness.

…Should I go crazy now? He wonders to himself. But the hollow is there, and he hears. His dry laugh, like dead leaves crunching underfoot, echoes through Ichigo's head.

If you feel like it. The hollow leers, a certain predatory gleam in his eye. But, careful Ichi. The crazy will bring us closer together. Is that what you want?

Ichigo scowls.

Not really.

So let's make a game out of it. How long do you think you'll hold out? You've already got the voice in your head…

More laughter.

His frown deepens. Rolling over on the stone floor, sighing, he thinks, I'm thirsty.

And the hollow's cackle tapers off in his mind, and he hears something almost like remorse in his voice.

I think that's something you need to get used to.

xx

Ichigo thinks to the hollow, How much time do you think has passed? A few hours?

Longer than that.

Ichigo muses over how its voice has changed since it first spoke up. Then, the hollow had been chipper, hyper, happy its own sadistic way. The last few passes, it has been…weary.

How much longer?

Longer.

xx

It refused to tell.

Ichigo decides one…something. Ichigo decides that a few days at least must have passed. He certainly feels more rested, sleep being, pretty much, all that he can do with the hollow silent and unresponsive. But his body, already sore and out of whack from so many cycles of injury and healing, injury and healing, bemoans the density of the floor. His back aches in four different ways. His neck is stiff, and his hips hurt.

Around the same time, Ichigo comes to the conclusion that no one plans on feeding him.

Guess it's a good thing I can't starve in this form, he thinks. Then he tries to figure out how much of that is sarcasm.

He wonders what's happened to his body. He's never really tested, tried to discover how long it can half-live like that. A few weeks, maybe a year or two? How long before his heart forgets how to beat? And with Kon lost, sometime in the War…

He leans against the wall he'd felt out some…time before, and dismisses the train of thought. There's nothing he can do until someone comes to get him. He trusts Soi Fon will tell someone, sooner or later, like she said she would.

xx

Eventually, without really realizing it, Ichigo drifts into something deeper than sleep, closer to hibernation. And the hollow, seeing its chance, goes to work.

xx

Driving someone insane is difficult, the hollow discovers.

It is grateful for Ichigo's exhaustion as well. Sleeping Ichigo means there's no one aware and alert to ask, "What the hell are you doing?"

It had to dig through the Id to reach the Ego, and that is difficult enough in and of itself. The Id is a lazy place, nothing is really complete or…well, awake. But it's thick. There's a lot to dig through. It takes a while to reach the Ego.

The Ego is cluttered. There's stuff everywhere. It manifests like a crowded storage room, with breakables stacked everywhere, that will fall if it so much as looks at them.

This is very dangerous, very difficult as well. If the wrong thing is broken, moved, Ichigo will go insane in the wrong way. The hollow doesn't want to make a vegetable out of him. It just wants to make him a little more…open-minded.

The ground rumbles beneath its feet. The breakable things tinkle as they shudder against each other.

I know, I know. The hollow bends slowly and gives the ground a pat. I know. But this stuff takes time.

It ties back its sleeves and rubs its hands together, wondering what it should break first.

xx

The floor begins to rock again as the hollow lifts up a heavy clay pot, its mouth sealed with wax, triumphantly.

Sheesh, I'm working, I'm working! A little patience, please? The hollow stomps a foot.

The rumbling spikes, and the hollow's eyes go round as the sounds of breaking glass come from various parts of the room. H…hey, cool it. You're gonna hurt the poor guy.

There is a last, impatient vibration, and the hollow turns just in time to see a vase tumble down and shatter. It plucks the plak that had hung around the neck from amid the sharp pieces.

It says, RemoRsE.

The hollow blinks, shrugs, and drops it back to the ground.

Oh well.

xx

And eventually, Ichigo wakes up.

He sits up in the dark, rubbing at his face and groaning at the heaviness in his limbs, a kind he hasn't felt in…god. Years.

He gives the hollow a mental jab.

Oi. How long have I been asleep?

He got the impression that the hollow was tired. Had it been sleeping?

...I dunno. Don't bother me.

Ichigo snorts.

A few minutes later…

Hollow.

What.

How long has it been?

...a long time. It's been a really, really long time.

Soi Fon said she'd tell someone.

She must have lied.

Ichigo takes a moment to process that. Soi Fon, lie? It hadn't even occurred to him. She looked so unwilling to put him down here, he took for granted that, maybe, she was just trying to…

To what? Leave him a ray of hope? Psh.

Like that ice-bitch would do something like that, the hollow sneered sleepily.

Ichigo shrugs off his hakama, bundling it up for a makeshift pillow. Lying with his eyes open (for all of the difference it makes), he's suddenly hurt and angry.

You said it.

xx

The hollow has slept too. Since completing its work in the Ego, it pushed around a few things in the Id to augment Ichigo's more…base desires. After that it was tired so, yeah, it slept.

You boxed up the old man, right? He pokes the ground, eyes drifting closed.

There was a soft rumble, like a purr almost.

That's good. Now we just have to wait.

Another tremor, this one like a roll, a wave beneath the surface.

The hollow peeks.

Makes you happy, huh.

Something flutters in his chest. Yawning, he writes it off, and lays out to sleep.

xx

Later, he sees that fluttering for what it really is: trepidation. The hollow curses to himself, as privately as he can (because here there is no such thing as an unspoken thought), and wishes that he had been a little slower to join forces with It.

He's nervous, and he's been very, very reckless. He doesn't know what It is, where it came from, what it works for, anymore than Ichigo or the others. He's as much of an idiot as he's always accused Ichigo of being. Figures since, they are only inversions of each other, he supposes.

The hollow realizes all of this as he wakes up, and sees how the city in Ichigo's mind has begun to show wear, assumedly from the damage he has done.

He sees broken windows. He sees crumbling mortar. He hears creaking support beams, and the swoop of oncoming rain.

The old man isn't here, at least.

But more than that, he feels a tug, a pull, insistent fingers trying to lead him to the tallest skyscraper in the center of the 'city.' A force, a specific kind of force too, a…a…

xx

There's a vortex, a maelstrom in the street at the base of the skyscraper. The hollow clings to a jagged glass tooth, the lone remnant of what was once a thick window. Its hands are torn by the edge, and it growls, frustrated, fighting panic, as its hold slips in the blood that escapes from its wounds.

The storm's strength had gradually increased. At first, leaves and pebbles were drawn to it. Now…how long had it been…so much time later, the buildings are leaning in, making huge sounds like the roar of a dying Titan, that reverberate through the city and make the hollow's bones throb fiercely.

Ichigo is still asleep outside. The hollow is not an especially emotional being; right now, though, there are few things it wants more than King clinging to the familiar for what could be dear life next to him.

Because if King were here, he would be going out of his mind, freaking out, and the hollow could be the cool and knowledgeable one like he usually was. Er, when the old man wasn't around, anyway.

But King isn't here. He has no clue that his world is going away. And there is nothing to distract the hollow from understanding: he's fucked up.

And he's going to pay for it, very soon.

xx

High above, Seireitei is torn by civil war.

If you stop any lone person and ask them—how the hell did this all start?—none can answer, through few might try.

Many will point fingers at the remaining arrancar; the few sympathizers that had swapped sides during the course of the war, and fought against Aizen.

Many of those many feel, deep down, that they have simply cast for a scapegoat and ensnared an easy catch. But there has been little sign of the arrancar in recent times. Students from the Academy have graduated and taken rank, and know nothing about them, or the vaizards.

The vaizards; ever fewer know of them. Most that do would not be so quick to assign blame, for they are aware of the injustices done and are not anxious to add to that list.

Battle soon has split Seiritei into halves. It begins to become clearer why they are fighting.