Characters: Hinamori, Aizen (in spirit), Rangiku (mentioned), Tobiume (mentioned), Hitsugaya (mentioned)
Summary: Sometimes the illusion shatters, and she will never forget.
Pairings: onesided HinaAizen
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Deicide arc
Timeline: Post-chapter 423
Author's Note: This may seem a little disjointed, but I didn't want it to seem fluid, considering the sort of state of mind I wanted Hinamori to come across as having.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
She's been advised not to rise, not even to move, and Hinamori doesn't bother contradicting them and telling them she feels fine. There's no desire in her to move, not anymore, not right now. If they advised her not to breathe, she would be all too happy to have an excuse not to breathe anymore.
So many warring memories steal through her, violent and pulling her away in separate directions like strained clouds.
—The sensation of cold steel sliding through flesh is an odd feeling, Hinamori decides, fluid and indistinct. It's just as strange as the ice shard falling all around her, and the progress of little blood trails down the blade.—
—Tobiume screams at her to dodge and she tries, but not fast enough, and shockwaves cave in her ribs and send her blood coursing in riptides to tear veins apart.—
—The flash of glacial blue isn't winter's sky but Rangiku's eyes instead, congealed and lifeless as chips of blue eyes as she leans over her, but Hinamori can't respond, can't respond to golden ropes caging sunlight brushing her face and can't reply to her whispers, and she doesn't know why.—
Hinamori wants to talk to Hitsugaya. The most haunting memory of all is his stricken eyes—her fingers claw at the sheets when she remembers and the pain of the wound comes back and she screams—and Hinamori just wants to talk to him, tell him it's alright, make him feel better the way she always did when they were children and no one would play with little white-haired Shiro-chan.
But he won't come. His absence is more startling than his presence could ever be, Hitsugaya won't come, Rangiku won't explain his absence and Hinamori is left alone, utterly alone when swishes of gold hair take their sunlight with them and leave Hinamori only deep night darkness in which to face her thoughts.
Hinamori doesn't know how to feel, so she simply doesn't feel at all. Aizen-taicho's kind and gentle voice are utterly irreconcilable to the screaming reality, as broken as the forsaken, shattered blade; she feels sorry for Kyouka Suigetsu, as irrevocably bound to this man as she is and unable to break out of chains.
Why, she laments, is she so blind, so weak? Why do her hands on the hilt of her sword quaver when she thinks of the possibility that she might have to fight him of even kill him? Not that she could kill him, anyway.
No one seems capable of doing that now, anyway. Even the Central Forty-Six have sentenced him to imprisonment rather than death. They ought to kill him, but don't, won't, have lost the nerve.
And Hinamori can't do it either. Can't even kill her ties to Aizen, breaking the choking vines off at the root. He still wields his power over her with an iron hand, always has, always will, will always put her under complete hypnosis and strangle her reality away.
Everything… all of it… a lie? Were all of those soft glances and soft words just a lie? If she could cry she would but can't; the Twelfth tells her she's dehydrated, which is what the IV's for, she supposes, but still doesn't quite connect the dots. And there will be no more crying from Hinamori. Because what has crying ever solved?
So there will be no more tears. No more tears dedicated to a fallen idol, a broken man. No more tears wasted on him.
Hinamori tells herself that she can forget Aizen-taicho.
That she will forget Aizen-taicho.
But sometimes, the illusion shatters, and rabid, maddened howls echo through the reaches of night-veiled Seireitei.
Because telling herself she will forget, and actually forgetting, are two different things entirely.