Title: Lessons in Strength
Rating: PG (general angstyness)
Characters: Hinamori
Word Count: 1076
Warning/Setting: post Soul Society arc.
Written for: bleachcontest week #10 – jump
Disclaimer: Not mine. Please let me play in this sandbox.
Lessons in Strength
She sits in the grass, the falling plum blossom collecting in her brown hair, and he thinks that she could not look more perfect. Yet he knows better. She is not perfect – far from it. The brown hair, once as shiny as antique walnut is dull through neglect. Her kimono is grey around the collar from the sickness that seeps from her pores, but at a distance these symptoms that she is still broken are not visible, can be ignored. Forgotten.
He comes up behind her, confident that the sounds of his approach will raise her head, make her look at her with those confident eyes once more, those eyes that used to radiate with a fire that was almost as strong as her reiatsu. But she keeps her head bowed, her eyes staring through the wet grass to some nothing-point below the ground.
The grass is susurrant from his passing, yet even when he is standing directly behind her she does not respond. His heart aches, and he almost bows his head as low as hers as he wishes for -
And yet it is her that speaks. 'I wish….'
He looks at her brittle hair, still wound up out of habit into the odango, but this one as dangerously close to falling as she is herself. Is she speaking to him, or to herself? He holds his breath, waiting for words to fall from her lips like golden honey, words he can savour, hold close, utter back to her so that his words can sustain her as much as her words sustain him.
She breathes deep, her whole frame straining with the effort. 'I wish I was there.'
His heart beats in fear. 'Where is there, Momo-chan?'
She still does not turn, but a thin touch of reiatsu caresses his cheek, and he is relieved to see that she recognises who stands behind her. She points to the nothing-point below the ground, 'there. Down in the warmth. Where I can close my eyes. And just. Stop. Trying.'
He kneels behind her, wrapping his arms around her painfully thin frame, feeling every unnatural sharp angle of her bones as he pulls her tight. The grass chills his knees. How long had Hinamori been here under the plum tree? He came as soon as he felt her call, but it had been so faint, the bond between them almost faded beyond recovery. How long had she sat in the chill air, on the sodden grass, wanting to be under the soil?
She twists in his arms, and he can see the paper-thin skin stretched tight around her face, the dark circles below eyes that are dry and blank. 'I almost thought you wouldn't come, that I'd lost you.'
He squeezes her in reassurance, yet worries that she has become so fragile that such a gesture might crack her ribs. 'You haven't lost me, Momo-chan.'
She frowns. 'No. But our link, it seems like all it would take is for me to snap my fingers and whisper "Hajike", and you would spiral off to somewhere I could never follow.'
He kisses her head, and enfolds her in the scent of ripe plum. 'I will not lie to you, Momo-chan; I could not reach you anywhere else. Only here, under this plum tree, deep within yourself, can you hear me again.'
She sobs, but the sound is as empty as her eyes. There is nothing left to be poured out onto the ground. 'I tried to call you.'
'And I, you.'
She screams, 'Then why didn't you come?'
Momo punches his arm, struggles to escape his embrace, hurts him. He takes comfort in the hurt, knowing that it says that she still has some strength, that she is still trying, that there is still hope that things can be rebuilt. He kisses her again, and again, until she stops fighting against him.
Only then does he answer her. 'You know why I didn't come.'
She sags into him, 'I am broken.'
The conviction in those words "I am broken" is terrible, and cold. The only conviction she still holds, and it is so utterly wrong.
He strokes her head. 'I did not come because you think you are broken, because you think you are beyond repair. Such thoughts betray our bond, Momo-chan. I cannot help you, guide you, if you do not believe in the possibility that you can be helped, guided. Mended.'
Momo remains silent, before she lets forth a forced laugh, as brittle as frost, 'How can I be mended? The one who shaped my form, the one who made me who I am, the one who gave me colour and life, he was the one who broke me into pieces. How can I be mended when he is not there to tell me who I am, to give me form?'
She shakes her head. 'I don't know who I am, what I am. I am worse than nothing.'
'And yet I am still here.' He waits for the truth of his words to reach her, for her to realise that he had always been there, long before her betrayal, long before the cancer of self-doubt ravaged both her body and soul. Long before she had even seen Aizen.
The silence stretches to minutes before she sighs. But this sigh is different to the others. It is hopeful. 'Oh Tobiume, tell me what to do. Please tell me what I have to do.'
He kisses her eyelids. 'Trust in me. Trust in yourself.'
He whisks her away to another place, leaves her on the bank of a violent stream. She panics at being left alone, until she sees that he stands on the opposite bank. The stream roars in her ears, but the voice of Tobiume caresses her as if he stood at her shoulder. 'You only see the turbulent stream, the pain, the fear that you will not make it to the other side, that you will be towed under, dragged away.'
The figure on the opposite bank points in the stream. 'You can cross. You merely have to find the way, search for the rocks that will hold your weight. Think about the rocks; think about them, the path and your destination, not the obstacles. Do you understand, Momo-chan?'
She nods and sees Tobiume hold out his arms, smiling to her. 'Come to me, Hinamori-fukutaichou, my Momo-san, my Sensei. Ignore the stream. Jump.'
'Jump.'