Summer's Heir
Part One
by Kel
Rating: PG-13/T
Summary: Aizen, even after death, leaves a legacy.
Note: Part one of an ongoing thing that started out being a short one-shot.Yeah. I know. I fail.
Additional note: Please con-crit. Really, its the only reason I posted. I need it. XD


He'd cracked, his mind shattered into shards Momo knew would be impossible to pick up and piece back together. Over the years, she'd come to see - and to even believe - how much Aizen was capable of. Shinigami, powerful shinigami, broken at his whim. Lieutenants and captains alike had, at one point or another, fallen to his illusions. Nanao had been a quivering mess for weeks after a brush in the war. Ukitake had seen things he still didn't quite believe weren't real. Hisagi - she held a real soft spot for him and still bit her lip when she thought of this - hadn't ever quite been the same. The war had changed them all. She liked to think it made her a stronger person.

But she was the only one, she thought sometimes. Seireitei was weak, her most powerful shinigami struggling to regain their pride and power. Momo didn't care so much for Seireitei as a whole; her world sometimes condensed and shrunk so much that only one person mattered.

One person, and she could never escape the thoughts of the man who'd shattered him.

Aizen had created a masterpiece when he molded Hitsugaya's mind to whatever he wanted. In his hands, the young captain hadn't stood a chance. Hitsugaya had fought, so hard. Oh, so hard, and Momo could still see it in the moments of lucidity. In those moments, she could see him struggling, see him still fighting those demons, clawing towards sanity, and it hurt her more than seeing him lose his mind. At least, when he was gone - muttering to himself, working on half a dozen different inane projects, nearly catatonic in a corner - he was in his own world, where nothing was wrong with him. He was blissfully unaware of what had made him this way. When he regained himself, it hurt her deeply to see him realize that something deep inside was twisted and wrong.

She didn't know if she could watch him struggle with his own mind again.

She visited him now, in the place Unohana had set aside, on the outskirts of Seireitei, away from the hustle and bustle of Soul Society. Rangiku had been by earlier; she came at least once a week and always made him a pot of tea while she was there. It had been a weekly ritual that Momo had dared not intrude on; she would have been welcome, she knew that, but Momo treasured her time alone with Hitsugaya. She rather thought Rangiku did, too.

She stepped into his room, closing the door quietly behind her and kneeling in front of it as she always did. She'd learned quickly that a routine was best for him; Unohana had taken note of it and quickly established a day-to-day routine that never changed. It helped settle his mind, she said. Momo hoped - oh she hoped - that she was right about that.

She'd seen how unsettled he could be. Sometimes, it was as simple as pacing. Sometimes his thoughts and ideas came faster than he could get them out and he ended up frustrated and tired. Sometimes - and these were the times Momo sat next to him, tears running down her cheeks - he simply drew in on himself, eyes wide, muttering about things that never happened, and battling demons Aizen had seen fit to bestow upon him.

Today wasn't a good day; she could see that right away. His eyes - eyes that were once bright and attentive and focused - were dull. Sunken. When she looked closer, his mouth was pressed thin, his jaw tight. She wondered if this was one of those times he was seeing things that frightened him or if perhaps this was a rare lucid moment and he'd realized - once again - that he was in a bad way. He looked at her and she nearly looked away.

His gaze was intense, tired. There had always been intelligence there; gods, Hitsugaya was a smart one. She knew better than most that his mind was quick and sharp. Even when frayed and shredded, he was still intelligent. Sometimes even sharp-witted. Even Aizen couldn't temper sarcasm with insanity, she supposed.

"Matsumoto was here," he announced.

She nodded, long ago used to the lack of a greeting from him. Sometimes he forgot. Sometimes he deemed it unnecessary. "Yes. She brought you tea." The cups were still on the table, ready to be taken away.

"It's Wednesday."

Again, Momo nodded. "She always comes on Wednesday."

He gave her a sharp look. Momo wasn't quite sure what it meant. "It's the fifty-fourth Wednesday," he said.

"Is it?" Momo said, smiling at him and inwardly cringing. Fifty-four weeks of Matsumoto visiting. Fifty-four. "She's reliable that way."

He snorted. "Never does her paperwork."

This time Momo laughed - forced, heavy, and short. She got to her feet and gathered the cups up, moving them toward the door. She'd taken them with her when she left. "She seems to be doing all right now," she told him, gesturing toward the low table. "Why don't you sit with me?"

He did, lowering himself to kneel next to her, gaze distant. She had resigned herself to another visit passed mostly in silence when he abruptly spoke again.

"That's because I'm not there to help."

Momo's jaw dropped before she could stop herself. That melancholy tone... That wasn't Hitsugaya. Hitsugaya never sounded sad. Angry, worried, even mild and amused but never, never sad. "Hitsugaya-kun?"

He was watching the door and Momo knew that he wasn't seeing the door, but was trying to see beyond it, toward a world that continued without him while he struggled to catch up. "I'm not there," he said quietly.

So this was a semi-lucid day. Unohana said they were a good sign, that all hope was not gone, but Momo almost rathered he spend his days in ignorance. Lucid days meant pain for him. Anger and hopelessness. She bit her lip and looked down. How to answer that...?

"I heard voices."

Momo cringed. Oh, perhaps it wasn't a lucid day. "Voices?"

"Just one," he answered, fingers drawing a pattern on the table. "In my dreams. When I'm awake. All the time."

"What does it say?" Might as well make small talk, since he wanted to talk. She wouldn't deny him that.

His fingers stopped their erratic dance across the table top. For a moment he was absolutely still. "'Remember me'," he said quietly. "'Remember my name.'"

Oh, gods. Momo felt something in her heart give; Aizen had done a fine job when he incapacitated Hitsugaya. The young captain had been on of his biggest threats and Aizen pulled no punches. He'd researched and experimented and finally, when he had his chance with Hitsugaya, had taken away from him something that Momo only had nightmares about: he'd silenced Hitsugaya's zanpakutou. Unohana had speculated that the connection wasn't completely severed, but she never held much hope that it would ever be the same. A shinigami's zanpakutou was as much a part of them as anything else; when Aizen had silenced Hyourinmaru, it was like wiping clean a part of Hitsugaya's mind.

If this was Hyourinmaru... Momo didn't want to believe it. She couldn't hope. Not after fifty-four weeks. "Do you know who it is?" She asked him anyway. She had to know. She... she had to hope.

"It's loud and demanding," Hitsugaya said, his tone wry and tired. "Like the red-head."

Momo smiled; like Renji, huh? "And it only ever says that?"

Hitsugaya shrugged one shoulder, leaning over the table and dragging his fingers back and forth over the wood. "Remember, remember, remember. All the time." He curled his fingers into a loose fist and tapped the table. "Make it click, Toushirou. Come on, boy, you know the name. It's right there. There, there, there. He insists its there, says I know it. Walk onto the ice. It's cold out there. People die in the ice. Why would I go out there? Stupid dragon."

Momo's breath hitched and she took Hitsugaya's hand in hers; through his rambling, his tapping had gotten faster and faster. She straightened his fingers, running her own over his knuckles until his hands only trembled lightly.

"I woke up cold," Hitsugaya said, gazing into the distance, once again looking beyond the door.

"Did you?" she asked lightly. This didn't mean anything. Just ramblings of a crazy man, that's all it was. This couldn't mean anything. "I can get you some more blankets."

"I woke up cold," he repeated, "and the damn thing was still there." He paused and she smiled lightly at the absolutely disdainful look on his face. "It won't go away."

"Won't it?" Oh, gods, she didn't want to hope...

"No... but I remembered its name. If it wants to talk at least I can call it by name."

Her voice was very small when she spoke. "What's its name?"

"Hyourinmaru." His voice was flat, eyes down cast. His hand had stopped trembling.

She choked, tears stinging her eyes. "What does it say?"

He looked up, eyes weary and Momo bit her lip against the spark of something that she hadn't seen in a long time. "I'll come back."

Lucidity stung. Momo nodded, grasping his hand in both of hers. "I'll be here."

"I woke up cold, Momo." He sounded so confused.

Momo nodded, her thumbs rubbing his wrist. "Was it a bad thing?"

He hesitated, thought for a moment. "No."

Momo couldn't hold back the tears this time. She wiped furiously at her cheeks, morbidly glad that his gaze had turned vacant again. Whether she cried for the hope of his recovery or the knowledge that this hurt him, cut him deeply, to realize he'd never be the same, she didn't know. She couldn't begin to say why she cried; maybe it was both.

The rest of their evening was spent in relative silence: he would only speak if spoken to, and then, only half the time. She filled the silences with idle chatter, Soul Society's gossip, anything she could think of. It was forced, though, and quiet. Awkward.

She left that evening with a heavy heart, hope of that earlier moment replaced with a despair and a certainty that it was a fluke. Nothing more than that.

Momo didn't sleep well that night, or for several nights afterward. She missed her Saturday visit. For hours - days, perhaps - before their regular lunch, she agonized over it. In the end, though, selfishness prevailed, and she knew that's all it was. She was selfish and wouldn't take the pain of seeing him again. Not so soon after actually hoping for him.

Isane-fukutaichou had sent her a message and Momo had replied, deflecting the subtle reproach with a brusque comment about being busy and then disappearing from the Fourth Division's radar. Updates on Hitsugaya's condition - the three or four a week she'd always asked for - piled up on her desk and she pushed them aside, refusing to deal with them.

She'd hoped Aizen-taichou would come back.

She'd hoped everything would be fine.

She'd hoped Hitsugaya-kun would recover.

It had gotten her so far, this hope. It wasn't worth considering.

It wasn't until the following Wednesday evening - after she'd missed another dinner - that she had a visitor in her office. Momo looked up, brush falling from slack fingers, just before the sheer force that was Matsumoto Rangiku burst through her doors, all anger and indignation.

Rangiku stalked to her desk, Momo watching with wide eyes, and slammed her hands on it, rattling the ink jar at Momo's elbow. "He won't talk to me," Rangiku announced and Momo flinched at her accusing tone.

Carefully picking up her brush, Momo tried to ignore the other woman.

"Isane told me you skipped your last two appointments."

"I didn't skip them," Momo answered.

"Goddamn it!" Rangiku lunged for the paperwork Momo was staring at and pulled it away. "Momo, you know damn well what upsetting his routine does to him."

Momo reached for the papers, scowling. "And some work is more important than a routine." It was a flimsy excuse and she knew it.

Rangiku straightened, anger falling away to be replaced by a sadness that Momo knew all too well. She looked away. "More important than him?" Rangiku asked softly, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. "Don't try to sell me that. You were one of the ones that demanded we not give up on him, from early on."

Momo hesitated; she knew that. Knew it better than Rangiku did. That was back when she'd actually hoped things would work out.

But the world was far crueler than she'd ever imagined. "I've been wrong before," she said.

Rangiku paled and Momo found it hard to even continue to look at her. "What the hell happened to you, Momo?"

That answer was, at least, easy. "Aizen happened," she snapped.

"Aizen happened to us all," Rangiku returned in kind. "Don't think you're special." She turned on her heel and Momo could feel the anger rolling off her in waves.

Anger and grief and it was the grief that had Momo staring at the floor, unsure of what she could do or say next. Maybe nothing. Nothing could be done about all this, could it?

Rangiku paused at the door. She didn't look back as she spoke. "He said one thing to me. One thing." She paused. "He asked where you were."

Momo looked up, but didn't say anything when Rangiku left. He... he asked after her?

He asked - and she was silent. A no-show. Momo swallowed hard before hurrying out the door. She could see Rangiku moving quickly down the hallway and Momo called out almost without thinking.

"He talked about Hyourinmaru."

Rangiku took two steps before she abruptly turned. "Momo... what?"

"Last week," Momo said, "when I was there." She was speaking quickly now, eyes closing. Maybe if her eyes were closed, it wasn't real? Did she want it to be real? "He said he woke up cold, that it insisted he call it by name, that he knew the name now, that... that he'd be back."

There was silence and Momo chanced opening her eyes, but one look at Rangiku's face was enough to have her shutting them tightly again. That hopeful look, overlaid atop anger, was too much for Momo to try to deal with. It was enough that she was actually speaking about it.

"He said all that?" Rangiku finally said, her voice small.

Momo only nodded.

Rangiku hesitated for only a moment before she swept back up the hallway and herded Momo into her office. "Tell me about it," she demanded and shut the door behind her.

Momo did, careful to keep any hint of emotion from her voice. Judging from Rangiku's expression, though, she wasn't successful. Momo looked away, not risking looking at the peculiar mix if hope and grief that raced across the woman's features.

Rangiku turned slowly, hugging herself tightly. "I have work to do, Momo," she said softly as she opened the door. She glanced back, her features hardening. "I don't want to hear you've missed any more dinners."

"You won't," Momo said softly as she left. "You won't."

The door closed and Momo simply stood there. Paperwork could wait. Hitsugaya-kun didn't need to. She took two steps forward before she stopped abruptly, turned and marched back to the desk.

She would go back for her Saturday visit.

Hitsugaya-kun needed routine, after all.

...to be continued