Disclaimer: I have no legal right to anything herein. If Kubo or Viz are considering suing me, I throw myself upon their mercy; I make no money from this project and have none in general.

Note: Be aware that this fic deals with issues related to mental health, particularly depression and psychological abuse. The vocabulary may not be there, but the concepts are.


This is part of the Chaos Theory AU. It takes place after The Three-Body Problem finishes. Aside from a few minor plot details, it could probably be read as a standalone, however.

It is for BiblioMatsuri, without whom it would almost certainly not exist.


Plasticity

A Bleach Fanfic

Chapter One: Darkness


Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. The desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

Wait – Galway Kinnel


Three years after she'd fallen, Momo Hinamori rose.

Wakefulness did not come easily; she had slept for so long, and some part of her sleeping self knew that to awake was to face pain she might not be ready for.

Pain that perhaps, no one was ever ready for.

When her eyes opened, it was slowly—they felt as heavy as the rest of her. The lights were dim. She couldn't make much out, except that there were squares above her, grey squares. Ceiling tiles? That seemed right. There was a ceiling above her, then.

Her chest rose as she pulled in a breath. With it came the smell of sanitizer. Sharp, enforced clean. The rigid forbiddance of dirt or contaminant. There was a ceiling; she was somewhere clean. Momo felt that she should know what that meant, taken together, but her thoughts were sluggish, disjointed, adrift. Observations without meaning. Awareness without understanding.

She swallowed; doing so brought her hearing back to her. Or at least she was aware of it now. Something was beeping, slow and regular. She tried to raise a hand to her face, only to discover that nothing happened. Her body was not responding to her will. Feeling a little spark of panic, Momo tried again. Still nothing. Her breath quickened.

What was happening? Why couldn't she move? Why couldn't she remember where she was? What had happened? She remembered—she remembered her captain, and then—

(Pain-intrusion-cold. Gasping for a breath; bubbling blood in her lungs. Fading vision. The sun blurring in her eyes.)

"You're awake."

Momo started sharply at the sound of the voice, lurching on… her hospital bed. That's what she was laying on. Her eyes snapped to the speaker. She recognized… Isane. Shinigami Women's Association meetings. Isane was the fukutaichō of the Fourth. Sanitizer. Tiles on the ceiling. She was in the Fourth, on a hospital bed, and she could not remember why.

"Is—" She tried to speak, but her voice rasped and cracked, weathered dry from disuse. How long, she wondered—how long had it been since she spoke?

Isane was at her side immediately. "Shh," she said. "You're all right, Hinamori-san. Let me check a few things, and then I'll get you something to drink, I promise."

Momo tried to nod—what she ended up with was a jerky motion that didn't much match her intentions, but Isane seemed to understand. Her gloved hands were warm as she picked up Momo's wrist, checking what she felt against one of the monitors. Only then did Momo notice the web of wires and tubes she was connected to. Spindle-strings from her body to all kinds of machines she'd forgotten the names of. Red-blue-green wires, telling someone what her heart was doing, what her lungs were doing, what her brain was doing. Her temples suddenly felt itchy where the ends were stuck to her.

She didn't think she wanted anyone else to see inside her just now. Not when she didn't know what was there herself.

But Isane's touch was gentle, and she used soft words that Momo recognized, saying things like recovery and steady and good vitals. So Momo let herself believe, for a while, that everything was going to be okay.

When the other woman returned with a glass of water in-hand, she helped Momo relearn how to grip it, and together they raised the glass to her mouth so she could drink.

The first swallow was agony. She felt like something in her throat had split and cracked like dry mud, and a keening whine escaped her. She doubled over, slumping forward from the back of her raised bed. Losing her unsteady grip on the water, Momo folded over herself, pulling the wires attached to her body taut.

There was no crash of glass, no seeping wet spot on her covers—Isane must have caught the cup in enough time to prevent that. She was saying something, but Momo couldn't make out the words. Instead, she closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her legs.

The only thing she felt was the hand rubbing her back.

The only thing she heard was the slow, ponderous beat of her own heart.

If she could just exist like that forever, maybe it really would be okay.


It wasn't until Renji showed up the next day that anyone broke to her what had actually happened.

(But she'd known. Deep down, she'd known.)

He looked… different. His hair was longer—still just as red, though. But more than that, he was… she couldn't describe it. She didn't know the words, for what you were when you'd moved forward by yourself. When you'd stood all on your own and become stronger because you needed it, deep inside yourself. Those words were his words, and all she could do was look at what they'd made him.

"…Momo."

He'd paused before he said it. She didn't know why.

(Except that she did.)

His arms were at his sides, his fingers curling and uncurling awkwardly in the fabric of his shihakushō. He looked at her like she was about to break.

Momo thought he might be right, but she didn't know why that was, either.

(Because what else could she do? Her world had fallen apart.)

She tried to smile, but her face would not move the way she wanted it to. Maybe because she didn't really want it to after all. "Renji."

He relaxed just a little—she saw it in the way the angle of his shoulders changed. He'd been holding them a little too high, before. Taking a few more steps into the room, he pulled a chair over to her bedside with the soft scrape of metal legs on linoleum floor. Renji never quite sat properly in any situation, so she wasn't surprised when he flipped it around and settled with his arms draped over what should have been the backrest.

"How are you feeling?" He dropped his chin onto his arms, regarding her steadily.

It was more difficult to answer than it should have been, that question. "Oh, I'm… I'm all right." It sounded wrong. Like a lie, maybe.

He nodded slightly against his arms.

(Drowning. She was drowning in her blood. It flooded into the places air should have been, and she was too weak to cough it up.)

"Renji?" Momo's fingers clenched in her blankets.

"Yeah?"

"Can you… can you tell me what happened?" Maybe it wasn't as she felt. Maybe everything was really okay, and it had all been a nightmare.

(Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

Please.)

"Where is… where is Aizen-taichō?" Her captain should have been the first one in to see her. Would have, no matter what else he was doing. She choked on the thought that something might have happened to him as well.

Renji's eyes rounded; he sat up straighter, throat working as he swallowed. "Momo… how much do you remember?"

(Too much. Not enough.)

Her lower lip trembled. "Renji… Renji, where is Aizen-taichō?" Her fists clenched so hard they hurt, even through handfuls of soft fabric.

"He hurt you, Momo. He betrayed Soul Society, and he left." Renji said the words slowly, carefully. He met her eyes; held them. She could see that he meant it.

But of course he couldn't mean it. What he was suggesting was impossible. Aizen-taichō would never hurt her. He would never betray Soul Society. Never.

"S-stop joking, Renji. I'm serious." Momo felt a tremor in her fingers—they cramped from how tightly she'd been clenching them. The tremor became a twitch, a spasm in the muscles of her arm.

"Momo…" Renji opened his mouth to say more.

But she could not hear it. "No!" The shudder in her limbs crawled further along her skin, sliding up to her shoulders and locking the muscles in her back. "Aizen-taichō would never! You're a liar, Renji!"

(Better him than him. Better anything than that.)

"I'm not—" He kept his voice steady, mild, like she was still too fragile, still made of glass, shaking and about to shatter.

The tremor was almost to her heart. She lunged.

Her wires and tubes went with her; the motion wrenched a smaller machine from a stand and sent it crashing to the floor. Several of the monitor wires, red-blue-green, tore free of her skin, her aching flesh, leaving raw patches behind.

Her body was repaired, but it was weak. Renji caught her by the wrists—she had thoughts only to hurt him, to make him take back everything he'd said, was going to say, could have said, was thinking.

"He would never!" she shrieked.

Her hands, cramped and rigid and sore, sought purchase on him. She clawed, but met only air—the hold he had her in was fast. His fingers were rough against the thin skin of her wrists, like his calluses might catch and rip her apart, put runs in her skin like runs in silk.

"Momo, stop, please. Get ahold of yourself!" Renji's volume increased, but his voice had no anger.

All of the anger, all of the hurt, belonged solely to her.

(Liar. Liar. Liar.)

She wrenched in his grip, trying to free herself. Her legs lashed, tangled in hospital blanket. Momo could not recall when she had begun to cry, but the tears were hot in her eyes too, and stung like his calluses, like something too rough dragged over something too soft.

"He would never… he would… he would…" She sucked in a breath; her whole body shuddered, from her heart down to her toes. "Aizen-taichō would never… hurt me…"

Darkness closed around her, and Momo lost consciousness.


Her inner world had never been so dim before.

It was a meadow, with gently rolling hills, a few trees, and wildflowers dotting the fresh shoots of spring grass as far as the eye could see.

But where once there had been a bright yellow sun in the sky above her, it was covered now with ominous thunderheads, lightning crackling between them and giving the entire landscape a sinister aspect it had never before possessed. Wind whipped at her from behind, throwing her hair in front of her face and buffeting her forward.

Momo tried to take small steps, to control her motion. But for all her effort, she was still more or less pushed beneath a familiar plum tree. She planted her back to it and eased her way around, taking shelter from the snapping wind.

That was where she found Tobiume.

The zanpakutō spirit had the appearance of a young girl, a child, really—someone just on the cusp of adolescence. Momo collapsed into her arms anyway, winding her own around Tobiume's waist and burying her face in the spirit's shoulder.

Tobiume stroked her hair, even though there were knots and tangles in it from the wind and her fingers caught. Momo felt the pulls as little pricks of pain—she had no heed for them.

What tears had not fallen in the outer world fell now, all the rest of them. Momo sobbed bitterly, each new breath tearing out of her with force she was ashamed by. She burned with her sorrow, with her shame—but Tobiume held steady.

Her feelings drained with the tears, and when she finally pulled away—a blotchy-faced, hiccupping mess with sore eyes and snot dripping from her nose—she was at least numb enough to pass for calm. Carefully, she sank backwards, finding the hard trunk of the tree easy to rest against. Her legs sprawled in front of her; Momo wove her hands together in her lap, focusing on her breathing.

Inhale, exhale. Inhale… exhale.

Inhale—she had been unkind to Renji.

Exhale—but she couldn't believe what he said.

Inhale—but he believed it.

Exhale—it was right there in his face. Open and easy to read.

Inhale—she'd been stabbed.

Exhale—but it could not have been her captain. He would never.

A sob wrenched its way from her throat. "Oh, Tobiume… what do I do?"

The zanpakutō's spirit sat beside her, legs crossed, sorrow in the lines of her face. "You keep breathing, Momo."


She woke to the sound of humming. How many days had it been now? It was hard to keep track of the time.

Her only visitors after Renji had been members of the Fourth. Their names escaped her, though she was usually good at remembering. There was Isane, who she knew, and a boy with dark hair and a nervous smile. And her other nurse, a pretty girl with gentle eyes.

(Like his eyes.)

Observations, without meaning.

The humming, it seemed, was coming from her left. It felt like great effort to turn her head, but when she did, it was to see a familiar face.

Kiyone Kotetsu didn't look much like her sister, except perhaps in the shape of her nose. Nearly a foot shorter, and with wheat-colored hair instead of silver. She was adjusting several flowers in a vase Momo hadn't really noticed until now. Pink roses, by the look of them.

Belatedly, she realized Momo was looking at her. "Oh!"

Grinning, Kiyone set the vase upright. "Good morning, Momo! I didn't wake you, did I?"

"I… no, Kotetsu-san."

Kiyone grimaced. "You don't have to be so formal. We're both in the SWA, right? Just call me Kiyone."

Momo blinked rapidly several times, trying to reconcile Kiyone's manner with everything she was feeling. No matter the angle, though, it didn't seem to fit. "I… all right."

"I'm glad you woke up," Kiyone continued, oblivious to Momo's dilemma. "I feel kind of bad nicking the flowers from the captain's garden if no one's here to see them." She ran a hand through her short hair, ruffling it at the back.

"Not that that's the only reason I'm glad you're awake, of course. There's lots more."

Momo really doubted it, but she didn't say so.

"Kiyone-san?"

"Yeah?" She canted her head to the side, fingers still threaded through the hair at the edge of her crown.

"Could you… I think I'd like to be alone right now, if you don't mind."

Kiyone's eyes went wide. "Oh. Oh, I'm sorry! Of course. Uh… I'll be back next week with new flowers, if that's okay?"

Momo didn't have it in her to say no, so she only nodded her head once.

"All right, good. Umm… I'll leave you be, then. Hope you're feeling better soon, Momo!" She waved once, a sharp gesture—almost like she was hurrying to do it. Then she ducked out of the door, and was gone.

Momo stared at the flowers for an hour after she'd left.


"…He really attacked me, didn't he?"

Momo fixed a blank look forward—one of the trees in her meadow was burning. A bolt of lightning had struck it with a splitting crack, but not one drop of rain fell to dampen the flames. It just burned.

Tobiume pulled in a breath with a soft sound, and held it for several seconds. "Yes. He did."

The fire was really mesmerizing to watch. It was so beautiful, but it blackened and charred everything it touched, twisting and warping the wood that gave it life. Looking at it for too long hurt, but she couldn't tear her eyes away.

Everything about him had soothed her. The soft sound of his voice—the light tenor of it was almost musical. She heard nothing else when he spoke. He smelled like cedar boughs and steel, both scents that had always lingered around the division. To Momo, it had become the smell of home. His touch was delicate—always delicate, with her. She had craved it like an addict. She still did.

He was the sun in her world. A bright star, a gravitational force, and like a tree, she'd grown only because of his presence.

And in his absence, she, like this tree in front of her eyes, would wither and decay, blacken and burn.

It was inevitable.


With little else to do, Momo counted the days.

She had a few regular visitors. Renji came almost every day. Kiyone at least once a week. Rangiku and Nanao had both been by; she'd even seen Hisagi once.

But such awareness of these regularities made it much more obvious what was missing.

She couldn't blame them for not coming. She knew she was unpleasant company. Physically, she was completely fine. She could stand and walk; Isane regularly made her do so, just to keep her muscles from atrophying.

But she had no reason to do any of it, really. So she didn't.


On the first day of her second month awake, someone new entered.

"Tōshirō-kun?" Momo remembered watermelons in summer and scrubbing her hand through fluffy white hair.

But even she had to admit he didn't look like Shiro-chan anymore. He looked more like Hitsugaya-taichō than she'd ever seen. It was difficult to read his face, even for her, who had known him so much longer than anyone. His eyes were half-lidded, his brows heavy. He wore a frown, the sharp edges of a scowl blunted by something else.

"Hinamori." He stepped into the room, cautiously. His eyes found the flowers—white camellias, this week—and flickered over the rest of the room before landing on her with a strange finality.

"I'm sorry," she blurted. Momo bit down on her tongue. She hadn't known she was going to say that.

He blinked; the frown deepened. "For what?"

"I… I attacked you. When—" She couldn't make herself say it. Her chest ached; it was a throbbing, bleeding wound still. It hurt too much to speak of.

Tōshirō shook his head once, tersely. Like he was trying to jar an unwanted thought out of it. Momo didn't desire to know what that thought was.

"Don't worry about it, Hinamori. It's done already, and I'm fine."

But you're not, the silence echoed.

Momo dropped her eyes to her lap, smoothing out the pale blue blanket on her bed. It was soft—flannel, maybe. Isane had brought it. Her lower lip trembled, but she was out of tears, for the moment. All of them had been used up the night before. And the night before that. And the twenty-nine nights before that.

"What's going on out there, Tōshirō-kun? No one says anything, but… but we're going to war, aren't we?"

Tōshirō hesitated, a muscle in his jaw jumping when he gritted his teeth. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. He hadn't come in much further than the doorway. "Yes. We are."

"It's…" Momo didn't want to ask. But she had to. "It's against Aizen-taichō, isn't it?"

(And he had a smile so bright she almost couldn't look—but she had to, because that one was only for her. She could go blind looking at it, and she wouldn't care. Because it was him.

Her heart faltered; she bled a little more.)

He nodded.

"Tōshirō-kun. Will you promise me...?"

A crease appeared between his brows. It should have concerned her—that he looked so much older than he used to—but it didn't. It couldn't.

(There was no room in an empty heart. Wasn't that strange?)

"Promise me you'll just talk to him. I'm sure Aizen-taichō must have had a reason for all of this. Ichimaru must have tricked him, or—"

Tōshirō's breath hissed out from between his teeth. "No, Momo," he said. "He's not innocent. He's not deceived. He did this. He almost killed you. Not Ichimaru, not anyone else. Aizen."

(But his touch was so warm and gentle—the way the pads of his fingers brushed over her cheek. His lips at her hairline were tender, and the contact lit her up from the inside. She absorbed his nearness like photosynthesis, and she opened to the sun.

He could never really mean to hurt her, no matter what anyone said.)

"Aizen-taichō," she murmured.

Tōshirō flinched, turning and leaving the room without another word.

It was probably better for both of them that way.


The tiny nurse was back—the one who looked like a little doll.

Momo didn't know if that was a rude thing to think about someone else or not. But this girl been coming in for three months, and still she didn't know her name.

"Who are you?" she asked. She was no longer surprised by how tired her own voice sounded.

The girl looked up, blinking at her for a moment before she smiled. "Yuzu Kurosaki, Hinamori-fukutaichō. I'm sorry for not introducing myself before." Yuzu looked like she wanted to bow, but as she was currently taking Momo's pulse, that would have been impractical.

Fukutaichō. She did not hear that often. None of the people who visited made a habit of calling her by her rank; it had been so long since she'd even seen the Fifth. That was probably good—she didn't think she could stand the reminders.

(He smelled like cedar and steel, and the division always did, too. A lingering, faint trace, like you might find him around the next corner if you went looking.

Safety. Home.)

Belatedly, Momo realized she hadn't responded to the introduction. "Oh, um… no, it's fine. I'm not really…" she trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.

Yuzu just smiled and moved to taking her blood pressure.

The door to the room, ajar already, slid open the rest of the way. The bang it made upon hitting the end of the track was too loud for the space, but Kiyone didn't really seem to notice, shuffling in with an armful of yellow daffodils and a bundle of something tucked under her arm. She filled the room without intending to.

"Hello Momo, Yuzu-chan!" The bundle went on one of the counters while she changed out the flowers, permeating the area with a subtle scent of the outdoors and floral perfume.

(It was far too feminine to remind her of him.)

"Hello, Kotetsu-san," Yuzu replied, stepping back from Momo to make more notes on her chart. "What's that?"

Kiyone had no sense for flower arrangement—the daffodils mostly just wound up in a big bunch in the vase—but she fluffed the petals a little bit, then turned to the bundle. Now that Momo looked at it, it seemed to be a stack of paper tied together.

"These are for you, Momo. The SWA collected them." She placed them in Momo's hands with little ceremony.

It did, indeed, appear to be a bundle of envelopes. Untying the string that bound them all together, Momo read the front of each, all labeled in precise handwriting that she recognized as Nanao's.

'Shinigami Women's Association,' said the first. The second, thickest envelope bore the label 'Fifth Division,' and the last just said 'Other.'

"What are these?" Momo asked, frowning.

"Open them and find out," Kiyone replied, taking a seat on the edge of her bed. She kicked her legs back and forth—Momo could feel the motion.

(Nothing about him was extraneous. He moved when necessary. He was still, otherwise—like the surface of a pond.)

Momo wasn't sure she wanted to read anything to do with the Fifth, so she handed that one and the one without a specific label back to Kiyone, who accepted them without protest. Opening the flap of the SWA envelope, Momo tipped its contents out into her lap.

It looked to be an assortment of paper and card stock. Picking up the one on top, she tilted her head, trying to figure out what was supposed to be depicted. It looked like maybe a rabbit and a small bear or something. The caption read 'Get Well Soon, Hinamori!' Opening the card, she saw Rukia Kuchiki's signature at the bottom.

"They're get-well cards. And letters, some of them. From the SWA, and your division, and lots of the other people that know you."

Momo glanced up. Kiyone was smiling brightly at her.

(He was bright, too, but was it the same kind of bright as this? The same kind of warm?)

"Go on," she insisted. "Go through the rest. There must be a hundred."

It turned out that Momo wasn't out of tears.

But these were a different kind.


When Nanao visited for the dozenth time, half a year in, she brought a sketchbook and several charcoal pencils with her.

"I recalled that you like to draw," she said, pushing her glasses up her nose. "I thought it might be prudent to bring you something to do besides reading."

Prudent. Her attitude was always pragmatic. Momo liked that about her. The way her kindness was subtle. It meant she didn't have to be effusive, either—and she didn't have the energy, most days. A simple thank you would do, and Nanao was satisfied.

"I also brought you an update, from the Fifth." Nanao took a chair beside Momo's bed, laying a large binder on her lap and placing her hands on it. "Would you like to hear it?"

(The Fifth was his. Theirs. She didn't know what it would be without him.)

"I…" Momo closed her mouth, dropping her eyes to her hands. Could she stand it? Knowing about a version of her Division that existed without him? A version that existed without her? For so long, the Fifth had been her home.

"Hinamori-san." Nanao regarded her steadily.

Momo could almost feel herself wilting under it.

"I know that this is difficult. I cannot understand what you are going through. But there are people out there who care about you. Who love you, and want the best for you. I…" Nanao pursed her lips. "I do understand what it is like to have a captain whom you admire greatly. Whom you rely on, when you believe that you alone are not enough for something. But you are not merely an attachment to him, and you never were."

Nanao glanced down at the binder and then back up to Momo. "I have been running your division for three and a half years. And not once in all that time has anyone ever spoken an ill word against you. In fact, they want you back—all of them. Not him, not both of you together—you. If you don't want to go back, if you feel that it would be too painful, then that is your choice to make. But do not for a moment assume that even one of them would fail to welcome you if you returned."

Momo swallowed.

(He was home, he was the sun, he was everything.

Could she live without him?)

"I would… I would like to hear your report, Ise-san."

Nanao smiled.

Momo couldn't return it, but she could listen.

And maybe, just maybe, part of her felt a little lighter.


Note: This is a little heavier than what I usually write. But Momo turns a corner in the next chapter. Recovery from situations like this is a complex process, one that happens differently for everyone. In an attempt to adhere as well as I can to the realities of such situations, she is not going to be magically rid of all her problems by the end of this fic. But I promise it will be at least a hopeful end.