Pairing: None

Music: Our Solemn Hour, by Within Temptation

Word count: ~ 1900

Rating: T

Prompt 57: Door

The guards walk past his cell every twelve hours. Ichigo knows because he once counted the seconds, and maybe that's pathetic and a little insane, but he can't bring himself to care anymore. Not after everything that's happened.

So.

Anyway.

The guards walk past his cell every twelve hours. Each time they do, Ichigo uses a sharp-edged rock to carve half of a line into the wall. Two marks is whole line is a whole day.

There are two hundred and eleven whole lines on the wall.

Because there's nothing really else to do, he often thinks about Rukia, wondering if Renji, Chad, Orihime, and Ishida were able to get her safely out of Soul Society before the whole mess with the traitors was revealed. She'll be safe in the world of the living—Urahara owes her that much, at the very least, and Ichigo's fairly certain he'll pay his debt. Also, now that everything's come to a head, there's really no reason for the Gotei 13 to chase after her.

Not when they already have Ichigo.

It was so simple for them, too—so stupid. They'd just picked him up off the ground where that traitor left him—and if this is what Soul Society is like, Ichigo can't blame the man and his…friends? Subordinates? Well, anyway, he can't blame them for jumping ship. Granted, Ichigo and his friends had chosen probably the very worst time to invade, but still. This reaction is too much along the lines of a secret society or a particularly paranoid medieval king. Ichigo was healed by the scarily kind woman with the weird-ass braid and then dumped in here without so much as a trial or an acknowledgement. His friends had escaped along with Yoruichi, Rukia, and Renji, but Ichigo had been left.

He tells himself that he doesn't mind.

He tells himself this every twelve hours when the guard walks past.

He still can't bring himself to fully believe it.

The battle is a bit of a blur, but Ichigo calls it up in his mind anyway. What did I do wrong and what can I do better? The Hollow in his head took over when he fought Byakuya, and it was strong—far stronger than Ichigo at the moment, even with Tensa Zangetsu, which is a little frightening. It's possible that the Hollow is powerful enough to stop the other captains here in Soul Society, if only Ichigo was strong enough to control it and not go on a mindless, rampaging killing spree, like the darker half of him wants to. These people don't deserve his mercy, not when they were willing to execute Rukia for something that wasn't even truly her fault. Not when they had let that monster from the science division engineer the death of Ishida's grandfather and then put the old man's head in a jar.

Halfheartedly, Ichigo wishes he could go back to a time when all the monsters were huge and grotesque and easily identifiable. Freeing a Hollow to pass on is nowhere near as agonizing as the thought of taking on—and killing—someone who used to be human.

As he pictures the battle in his mind, something stirs inside of him, something that he recognizes. That eerie, two-tone voice hisses behind his ear, no less persuasive for being what it is.

Ichigo knows quite well that it's a monster.

He knows that it will overwhelm and devour him the first chance it gets.

He also knows that it's his only chance of escaping this place, since no one else is going to help him.

Ichigo has always been one to confront things head-on, to strike first when he sees an advantage or an unavoidable conflict. Now, he summons all of that willpower, that fighter's instinct, to him and closes his eyes.

The guard has just passed, and will not be back for twelve hours.

The cells are built to keep reiatsu inside, to contain it. They do nothing when Ichigo isn't trying to get out, and they'll keep anyone outside from noticing what's happening.

In that sideways, slanted world, the Hollow laughs gleefully in welcome, and raises a blade that is Zangetsu's exact opposite.

"Well?" it hisses in a voice that promises bloody mayhem. "Here to fight me, soul reaper?"

And Ichigo meets him, stroke for stroke, black and white crashing together. He answers, "No."

What he says is, "I'm here to win."

When he reemerges into the conscious world, he has no awareness of how much time has passed. He's fairly certain the guard hasn't gone past yet, because there's a discarded Hollow-skin crumbling around him and a Hollow-mask lying beside him, and that's the kind of thing that a guard would probably look for.

But he's alone, and strangely, he doesn't feel that vague, faint resentment towards his friends for not coming to rescue him.

For a moment, he wishes they hadn't taken Zangetsu, because more than anything he wants to feel that solid, comforting weight in his hand. Instead, he carefully lifts up the mask and stares at it for a moment before settling it over his face. There's a phantom pain in his gut, as if that pale twin's blade is still anchored there, and Ichigo presses a hand over it as he recalls the Hollow's words.

What's the difference between a king and his horse?

You don't have the instincts to be the king, and I'm not going to get ripped to shreds carrying you like a damned horse!

If you ever give me the chance, I'll drag you down and crush your skull.

"No," Ichigo tells him. "Not happening."

There's power swirling through his body, and he feels more complete than he has in two hundred and eleven days. He doesn't have Zangetsu, but Zangetsu is him, and that's enough to make his mind work, calculating possibilities.

For better or worse, Ichigo's always been good at fighting.

For better or worse, he's part Hollow now, and that means he's far from defenseless, whether or not he has his sword.

Taking a deep breath, Ichigo calls up all he can remember about Hollows and the ways they fight, calls up the instincts that are beating a tattoo against the inside of his skull. He focuses on the burning, tearing rage building inside of him, the part of himself that he's always tried to deny and suppress, and points a slender, sword-calloused finger at the cell door.

"Cero," he murmurs.

Ever since he came to in Urahara's training room, wearing the mask of a Hollow and feeling a Hollow's gnawing, aching hunger, Ichigo had known that something was different, that he was different. It had scared him at first, the idea that he wasn't in control of even his own body. But Ichigo doesn't handle fear very well—or at least, not in the way that normal people do. He can only stay scared for so long. After that, when it comes down to it, he falls into a world of narrowly focused determination and cold rage. For all that people call him a hothead, Ichigo's not. When he gets angry, really, truly angry, he goes cold. At his most dangerous, he's icy.

People always seem to underestimate that.

He's been scared of Soul Society since they threw him in a cell and locked him away like a particularly dangerous mad dog. But two hundred and eleven days is a long time to be afraid, no matter the opponent.

By now, Ichigo's rage—augmented and sharpened by the Hollow inside of him—is practically arctic.

He tears through Soul Society with all the destructive force of a Category Five hurricane, and even the captains fall before him. He'd been holding back, always, uncertain of the thing inside his head and its blood-tinged whispers. Now, though, he's in control of it. He's mastered it, and it shows.

Ichigo shatters the boundary wall and staggers into the Rukongai, drunk on the destruction, and feels the fabric of the world part beneath his fingertips. His fingers tighten on the hilt of Tensa Zangetsu, recovered from the wreckage of what once was the Second Division's headquarters, but the arrival of a strong sense of Hollow doesn't put him on the defensive the way it usually would. Instead, he waits, tensed but not nervous, for whomever is crossing over to emerge.

There's a pause, brief and yet noticeable, before a man steps out of the opening. Ichigo recognizes him from when the three rebelling captains arrived to search for Rukia, despite Renji having already vanished with her. Tall, dark-skinned, and blind, but with a weary, keep-calm-and-carry-on air that doesn't quite fit in with the other captains Ichigo has met. It makes this man memorable, and Ichigo watches him warily as he turns his head a little each way, surveying the area with his remaining senses.

"Kurosaki Ichigo, I presume?" he says after a moment, and despite the inflection, it's not a question.

Ichigo drops his sword slightly and steps back. This man rebelled from Soul Society, so he probably didn't drop in just to help them throw Ichigo back into prison. "I'm pretty sure you already know that I am," he answers, trying not to flinch as his voice comes out gravelly and unfamiliar. "And you are?"

"Tousen Kaname." The man draws his sword, making Ichigo tense, but he simply steps around the younger man and sends a shining, deadly arc of sword-sharp blades at a group of approaching soul reapers. "Lord Aizen suggested that you might be in need of rescue. I am relieved to find that he was wrong."

Rescue. Ichigo relaxes carefully, Tensa Zangetsu still ready, but lowered to his side. "Not really. This was as far as my escape plan went. Got a way out?"

"Of course." Tousen inclines his head and steps back to Ichigo's side. "Soul Society has perverted the idea of justice, or ignored it where they see fit. This can never be the road to peace. Kurosaki Ichigo, will you pursue that path with us, or stand aside?"

Phrased that way, it's really no choice at all, and Ichigo is fairly certain that Tousen knows that. He bites back a sharp retort, remembering two hundred and eleven days of solitary imprisonment, without Soul Society allowing even a word to be spoken in his defense. That's not justice. There's still the faint sting of betrayal, too, that his friends left him. He's known them all for a long time, and they came to get Rukia after only knowing her for a few weeks. He might be the strongest of them all, in his own way, but even if he wasn't, he would have found a way to come to the rescue.

That they didn't is a betrayal that hurts far more than Ichigo believes it should.

Nevertheless, he draws himself up and asks, "You'll leave Karakura out of whatever you're planning? You'll leave the world of the living alone?"

Tousen looks at him, even as shouts of fury and horror rise in the background, and nods once, sheathing his zanpakuto. "I'm sure something can be arranged," he offers, and tears open a door in space with a touch of his finger. "Come, Lord Aizen is waiting."

Ichigo brushes his fingers over his Hollow mask, shattering it into shards that fall away like flower petals, and follows the ex-captain towards the future.