Characters: Hitsugaya, Hinamori
Summary: She's never seen again.
Pairings: HitsuHina
Warnings/Spoilers: no spoilers
Timeline: post-Deicide arc
Author's Note: While I don't think Hinamori will do this in canon (I certainly hope she won't), you can create whole universes in fanfiction based on a single "what-if" so instead of a universe based on this what-if I have instead chosen to do a oneshot. Also, if any of you have noticed that the title is the same as a certain movie, kudos to you. While this is nothing like Gone Baby Gone (it's nowhere near as traumatic), it doesn't have a happy ending either.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
He can't say he's surprised when the news comes down. It's hardly like Hinamori's the first, hardly like she'll be the last, and no one has to guess what's happened to her when the hospital room's found empty, and the quarters in the Fifth division barracks are unoccupied as well, empty and resounding as though she was never there at all.
Hitsugaya has always known that he would never be surprised for this to happen.
He's alone at his desk when he receives the news, the acrid scent of ink filling his nose from the mountains of paperwork that have piled up during his stay in the hospital. The theory that Hitsugaya has cherished since he first became captain has almost certainly been proven by how much was waiting for him, that paperwork breeds and proliferates entirely independent of human intervention.
It's Rangiku who comes, delivering new of Hinamori's disappearance with a grim and heavy face—this is how she deals hardships of her own, not denying them or letting them control her but rather allowing them to flow through her and leave little behind.
Within a second of her finishing the captain waves her off and moves to the window seat. It's clear he wants to be alone.
I was beginning to wonder if this would happen. In truth, I was beginning to hope it wouldn't. Is that wrong, Hinamori? Was it wrong to think that maybe you would stay, when it's become clear that there's nothing left here for you anymore?
Was I wrong, or just blind?
Though Hinamori never made matters easy for herself after Aizen revealed himself as a traitor Hitsugaya knows he never made anything easy either. Nor did anything else. One who is isolated can hardly be expected to respond well to that isolation.
Nor to hostility.
Nor to the loss of a lover, the loss of the illusion that she even had a lover who felt the same way she did in the first place.
It was never enough, none of it ever enough. Hitsugaya sighs wearily, the shadows playing hard and fast on his skin.
He'd thought he would be enough for Hinamori. But this is the end of his illusion, too. He was never enough.
There's no use trying to look for Hinamori, though there's no doubt that Seireitei will try—Hinamori's mental state is fragile at best and she's a danger to herself and others so everyone will be trying to look for her (And probably institutionalize her when if they ever find her).
There's no use looking.
Because Hitsugaya knows, better than anyone, that they won't be hearing from Hinamori again.
Not when she doesn't want to be found.