Work Text:
His footsteps sound like falling leaves. A beautiful sound, and one of Oh-Etsu Nimaiya’s favorite things to hear. Even as he swings his hammer in his forge, metal clanging like thunder strikes, he can still pick up the glide of his walk.
Oh-Etsu’s swings match the rhythm without meaning to and his next swing almost misses when the footfalls stop. The swordsmith finishes the zanpakuto he’s working on, dipping it into water to cool, steaming rising around him and his master. He can feel his king’s eyes, heavy and light on his shoulders.
He’s silent while he waits for his king to speak, and when he doesn’t, Oh-Etsu finally looks over at the ruler of the three worlds.
Ichigo isn’t standing where he expects him to be, as usual. He’s never where he’s supposed to be.
Even when he is tied to here, his own palace, forevermore. The Soul King is not standing behind him, waiting for Oh-Etsu like he thought he had been.
Instead, Ichigo stands before the door that keeps all the asauchi inside.
“Is there something you need, Ichigo?” The God of the Sword refers to his liege-lord casually, as he has for decades, since he was first invited into Squad Zero and the king insisted on forgoing titles when it’s just them.
Oh-Etsu braces himself on the long handle of his hammer, a tense line drawing between his shoulders. “It’s been a while since you last came to the Hooden.”
“It’s barely been a month, Oh-Etsu,” Ichigo’s hands drop to his sides, the sound of fine chains tinkling with the movement. Like windchimes on a summer night. The king throws a glance over his shoulder at his General of the West, cozy embers after a wildfire.
“Like I said, awhile.”
Ichigo laughs. “You are one of my favorites.”
“Don’t you say that about all of us in Squad Zero?”
Most of Ichigo’s humor drops, only the barest edge of it still there. “Usually.”
The Soul King’s eyes go back to the door that holds the asauchi, attention pulled once more from his blacksmith. The call rings through his head again, high and reedy and echoing like two voices layered together. It screams for Ichigo’s attention, but it does not beg like so many others do.
Many will, have, and are begging for Ichigo. His attention, his blessings, his death. His son has and will, just as his four generals have and will, and Aizen Sosuke, Karin Kurosaki, and thousands more as they reach the end of one cycle before beginning the next.
None of them will ever have the same pull that his zanpakuto does, as is right. Zangetsu is here, a part of his soul, and he sees the blade Oh-Etsu aims at him in three minutes, his sharpest blade that cannot be contained by a sheath.
“That blade will do nothing, Oh-Etsu,” Ichigo turns the knob, stepping into the darkness.
“This is going to make Hyosube mad.”
“Then let him be mad.”
The door shuts behind Ichigo, and the sun lights up the darkness.
The asauchi press themselves against the walls, cowering away from the ocean of power falsely contained by a bipedal body.
All but one.
One asauchi steps forward, its face spread in a skeleton’s grin. A hollow’s grin, and Ichigo’s face races to match it, feeling more present than he has in three millenia.
He sees himself in this zanpakuto, more of himself than he’s known in minutes and centuries, that part of himself that so many of his Squad Zero don’t even know that they hate about him.
Ichigo is shinigami, soul, quincy, human, and hollow. He is Vasto Lorde and to forget that last piece is to forget his dominion over all three worlds.
He is not just of the Earth and of the Soul Society. He is of Hueco Mundo too. He is the white sands and endless night, the skeleton trees and caverns below.
His zanpakuto’s bone-face cannot change. It is inflexible. Zangetsu still grins wider when he takes Ichigo’s hand, his laughing demand rattling in Ichigo’s skull.
Forge Me, King.
The sun rises from the darkness of the shed, black and gold robes fluttering around him as his soul floods into the asauchi, his zanpakuto. Floods and builds, the once human frame of Zangetsu lengthening and distorting, scales and fangs and two great wings with a long tail that cracks the air like a whip.
Minutes and moments later, his horse stands to bear its king. But to call the creature before him a horse would be like calling a dragon a lizard. Calling Zangetsu a dragon would be fairly accurate. Ichigo glances into his three worlds and finds the word for Zangetsu’s spirit form.
Longma. A dragonesque horse, or perhaps a horse-shaped dragon. White scales gleam with only a few gentle waves of black to interrupt the pristine expanse. A long reptilian tail cracks the air like a whip and fangs snap at the air. Zangetsu tosses his head, forward-facing horns meant for goring shining in the light of Ichigo’s reiatsu. The light of his spiritual energy spreads like a solar flare as an echo of his joy and the puddle of Zangetsu’s shadow ripples like water.
“Ah,” Ichigo kneels, tracing gentle fingers along the edge of the shadow, watching as more ripples spread inside of it, “hello there. There’s no need to be frightened, I knew you would be here too.”
The Soul King smiles when a pale hand reaches from the puddle of ink and shadows and Ichigo pulls him out until a shadow, an echo of the past, stands before him. His second spirit looks just like his son did when he was younger. When he was still kind. Though this boy has black hair, instead of the shock of orange so like Ichigo’s own.
The boy is uncertain before him, blue eyes shifting from side to side before looking up to look his wielder in the eye. He blushes and jerks his gaze away, hands clenched in his long black robes that ripple like a wind’s blowing them away from his body, though the air is still inside the shack.
“I suppose I could refer to you as Zangetsu as well, and in most worlds I do, but not this one. In this world, I will gift you your own name. You shall be Hibikage, Zangetsu’s partner.”
The boy, his zanpakuto, stares up at him in wonder but stays silent. Ichigo already knows Hibikage is not a spirit that uses many words. His shining blue eyes remind him so much of his sisters in the Other Worlds, that Ichigo can’t help but reach a hand up and ruffle Hibikage’s silky hair.
“Ah- what?!” Hibikage scrambles even as Zangetsu snorts in amusement, Ichigo’s main zanpakuto’s form blurring as it settles into a more human shape. An inversion of Ichigo, he’s a pale moon instead of a bright sun and his black and gold eyes spark with dangerous humor and he cackles as he lords his height over petite, little Hibikage.
“Aw, what a cute short-stack that came out of my shadow.”
“‘Cute’!?” Hibikage rages, all teenage angst that pulls the corners of Ichigo’s mouth into a smile. “I’ll show you ‘cute’, stupid horse!”
Ichigo grabs Hibikage as the spirit lunges in a dirty strike at both Zangetsu's throat and groin, laughing while his lively spirits rib each other, Zangetsu cackling as he puts Ichigo between them and Hibikage tries to climb him like a piece of cat furniture.
The Soul King feels as alive as he did before his coronation.
“Come,” he says between huffs of laughter, “it is time to finish forging you both.”
That makes both asauchi shut up, Zangetsu and Hibikage taking his hands and following him out. So lively, and not complete yet. Ichigo supposes that just speaks to who he is. What he is.
Oh-Etsu has finished the blade he was working on and it’s cooling in a bucket of water when Ichigo returns with his two asauchi. In the face of two incomplete blades, Oh-Etsu can’t come up with any words as to why he can deny his king any longer.
“Fine,” he sighs with a laugh. “I’m guessing you already knew how this was going to turn out, huh?”
“Duh,” Ichigo rolls his eyes and they flash Hollow gold-on-black, Nimaiya pausing only for a second.
Shoulders tensing before slumping, he gets to work and is unsurprised when Ichigo plunges into the fire of his smithy the barest second after his last swing and finishes the forging of his own blades with a fierce wave of spiritual pressure so written over with joy that for one day, all three worlds feel just a little bit brighter.
The sword and khyber knife in Ichigo’s hands are perfectly weighted for Ichigo’s hold on them and he hears the distant cackle of Zangetsu and the grumbly hum of Hibikage and smiles.
Finally, the present has caught up to the future.