Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach

He heard her voice often.

It wasn't a hallucination – not something he actually believed was real – but sometimes he thought it would've been better if he did think it was real. Hitsugaya knew it was all coming from his own head. And maybe that hurt more than anything, to realize that what he was hearing wasn't her, but his own wishful thinking.

Shiro-chan! She said. Her voice was so familiar – such a part of him. It was always cheerful and affectionate, polished with their years of history together. Shiro-chan, smile!

And he did, his mouth curved up to one side bitterly. She didn't know what he would do – how far he would go – to hear her say that again. He would smile for her. He would laugh for her. He would – he would –

And then he abruptly changed the course of his thoughts so that he could steer away from that shadowy, painful piece of himself. He would tighten his grip on Hyourinmaru's hilt, or curl his fingers firmly around the thin handle of the pen he was filling out reports with – or, if he had nothing, he would simply clench his hand into a fist. There was no use thinking about the ifs. Already, there were too many unresolved whens.

He was glad for one thing though: that his memories weren't growing fuzzy. They were still as they had been before; clear and lucid, warm. But now they were also sharper, like pieces of broken glass that hurt to pick up with his bare fingers. And they were more also more precious. He treasured each one carefully; fearful that someday he would lose them. Hitsugaya had never kidded himself about things lasting forever, but he saw more than ever how fleeting each day could become. How fast they could slip by, washed from his fingertips, drifting in a tide of change. Hitsugaya was not a stranger to change. But this change was not only fast-paced and dangerous, it was dark. Foreboding. A maze of differences that could pull apart the people you thought you knew most.

He remembered what Matsumoto had said to him once, much earlier, when he was leaving the hospital wing where she still laid unconscious. He had been staring into the shadows as he left, thinking about the way she'd lain there, her face pale and drawn even as she drifted in a world parallel to this one. He had never seen her like that. He knew she had changed since they both left the place they'd once called home, but he had never thought that the burden they all carried here alongside their flawless swords and division seats would rest so heavily on her shoulders. He had never thought he would be able to do nothing but watch as it dragged her down. It made him feel so – damn – useless.

"Hitsugaya-taichou," his vice-captain had said, and he'd jerked his head up, brilliant turquoise eyes settling at once on his lieutenant. There had been something he couldn't read in her gaze, something that told him she knew what he had been thinking – had seen him all too clearly in the dim half-light of the hallway outside that invalid room. It'd flickered through Hitsugaya's mind that he ought to be uncomfortable and give her the flat stare he usually gave when someone had caught him off guard. But he was so tired, really, and he just couldn't bring himself to care.

"Matsumoto," He'd said. His voice had been level, but even he had been able to hear the slight undercurrent of tiredness. Another day he would've winced internally and straightened his shoulders to cover it up. This time he'd just stood, waiting.

He'd expected there to be something important, something regular – another captain's meeting, maybe, or an announcement, or news from his division – and so when she'd said so quietly that he had to strain to hear – "You wonder why it happened this way, don't you?" – his eyes had widened fractionally. The silence had stretched for a long moment; his lack of reply, reply enough.

"Don't be so hard on yourself." His fukataichou's voice again. He'd looked at her but this time her eyes had gone past Hitsugaya, watching something in the distance that only she could see. It had been the first time in a long time he had heard her so somber – and he had never before heard the blanket of weight that lay beneath her words. "We all do the same thing."

A pause.

His voice had been low when he'd spoken. The words had rasped against his throat. "Thank you, Matsumoto."

His vice-captain had nodded. And then that had been that – the two of them not quite meeting each others' eyes, but understanding each other in a way that went beyond the simple understanding between captain and his lieutenant. They had both known that whatever they were up against, they would stand together.

So Hitsugaya moved on. He knew that he was not the only one who had lost something, and he also knew he had still more to lose. They all did. They could afford no mistakes now. Even after she woke up and it became apparent that she still wasn't who she had been – or maybe she had become someone else, but he didn't believe it and hated thinking it – Hitsugaya kept going forward.

Yet, whenever he heard her voice in his thoughts, he didn't try to block it out. The pain that hearing her brought, he figured he could take – that was the price he paid to remember what she sounded like. And her voice gave him steel determination, besides. He would bring her back. He would make sure that never again would someone like Aizen bring the Soul Society to its knees.

Toushiro-kun, she said, you have to keep chasing your dreams, remember?

Except that dreams were not so simple now.

After her voice had passed from his mind, he would shift his grip on the hilt of his sword and tilt Hyourinmaru's blade up towards the sky, or relax his grip on the pen and continue to print the next row of neat letters in his report. Or, if there had been nothing he'd been able to hold on to, he would loosen the fingers he had clenched into a fist; begin to walk again. Dreams changed along with the people around them. He was chasing his dream. And his dream, now –

To see you smile, Hinamori, with true happiness.

He would hear her voice again: her real voice, calling his name. Perhaps not sounding exactly like before, because things could only go forward, not back – but he would hear it.

Towards that, he would fight.