Title: Silence
Author: Willow Bark Tea
Summary: In the past, it had been Kuchiki Rukia who dealt with the boy's strange moments of silence and darkness, but lately, that dubious honor seemed to fall more and more onto the shoulders of the diminutive captain of the tenth division, one Hitsugaya Toushirou. Hitsugaya/Ichigo friendship
A gift for deragonmaji. Thanks for all your help and support!
The sun reflected off golden orange hair, casting the furrows between stormy chocolate eyes into even deeper shadows as the figure stalked through Seireitei. Shinigami parted before him as the strangely calm and coldly calculating reiatsu, normally passionate and lively, brushed over their senses. It was another one of those days in which something had snapped something inside the normally brash Substitute Shinigami, pushing the teenager into the background and leading the warrior to the forefront, resulting in such impassivity and depression that even Kurotsuchi Mayuri would become concerned for the boy. In the past, it had been Kuchiki Rukia who dealt with the boy's strange moments of silence and darkness, but lately, that dubious honor seemed to fall more and more onto the shoulders of the diminutive captain of the tenth division, one Hitsugaya Toushirou. Over the course of the year, Aizen had begun searching for ways to break Seireitei, and had found that attacking the young Substitute Shinigami seemed to do the trick, and as Ichigo's freedoms became more and more restricted by Soul Society's concern for his wellbeing, it seemed just about anything could set him off.
Hitsugaya looked up from his paperwork as the office door opened, and Ichigo entered. The young Captain nodded at the teen who took a seat at the other side of the room, and Hitsugaya went back to his paperwork. Time passed in companionble silence. As the light outside shifted from the glare of the late morning into the warm glow of the early evening, the teen's reiatsu slowly, but surely shifted from cold impassivity into the normal warm and ever uncontrollable inferno that was unique to the teen. Hitsugaya signed one last piece of paperwork and stood up.
"Kurosaki," he said, "let's go."
And they left the tenth division headquarters in companionable silence.
No one would ever know how Hitsugaya Toushirou could calm the teen after he was set off without ever saying a word or doing anything, but between the two lay a wordless understanding. And for them, it was enough.
--
Owari
