Shinji and Momo
Because Shinji fixes things even when he is trying not to
Reaching Ceilings
Shinji liked women.
No one who knew him (or who had to spend more than twenty minutes with him) would be able to deny. But though he was a lover of pretty faces, there was a certain type of women that he could never quite reconcile with.
The damsel in distress.
Oh, he pretended, of course. Presented them with flowers and swept them off their feet. But at the back of his head, it always niggled, a small irritation.
Perhaps it was because he had always been surrounded by firecrackers, women who took no shit from him and were more likely to slap him around the back of the head than fall into his arms. Perhaps it was simply because, deep down, he knew he was just a little bit selfish, and he rather liked the idea that a woman could look after herself, and he himself, and maintain that independence from each other.
Perhaps he had just spent too much time with Hiyori.
Oh, he understood the attraction. But being the hero, that wasn't his bag. He would leave that kind of action to people like Shunsui, who took delight in rescuing anyone in any way in the most flamboyant and ostentatious way possible. Kensei did it too, in a much less showy way: he had just to glance at his old division, leaderless, and the handsome but lost looking Lieutenant, and he had been all for coming back to the Soul Society, like the cavalry riding in.
He just didn't get it. He cared for his friends, he had their backs, but it was not his job to save anyone but himself.
He still wasn't sure why he had come back to the Soul Society. It wasn't home any more, but neither was their warehouse, in Karakura. He had spent the last hundred years focused on his revenge, on his training, on keeping them together and getting them ready for the storm that had been building on the horizon. And then, when it was all over, he had felt adrift.
So he had thought about it, and tried to remember the last time he had felt as if he had had a home.
And that had been here, in his division.
It was against his better judgement, but here he was, trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do with himself now. He stared up at the building he had once known as well as his own heartbeat, and wondered if he had made the right choice.
And then the doors opened, and his new Lieutenant was bowing low at him.
She straightened up, and he felt his heart sink, because here was a girl that needed rescuing.
Her smile was meek, and there were shadows underneath her eyes. She was pretty, in a round-cheeked, wholesome sort of way. Her eyes darted to and fro, as if waiting for some kind of confirmation that what she was doing was correct, waiting for acknowledgment or a pat on the damn head for managing to get the fucking door opened on time.
Shinji was almost surprised at the irritation he felt well up inside himself.
She smiled up at him, and it was full of so much hope and fear and sadness and joy that most of his friends, he knew, would have felt like punching themselves in the face in guilt, even though her expression couldn't have been blamed on them. He, however, just felt like turning on his heel and bolting. He didn't need any of this shit.
But there was his division, behind her, familiar to him still as your bed is after a long, cold day, and now he was back he knew he couldn't leave it, even if he had wanted to.
She followed him dutifully as he toured the building, feeling for gnarls of wood in old doorways, searching for cracks in the plasterwork, the way shadows from certain windows fell. Some of it had changed: fresh paint, coats of varnish, new furniture, but for the most part it was right.
Something swelled inside him, and he clenched his fists. Hinamori aside, this was still his division.
He sat behind his desk, and watched as his Lieutenant knocked papers off her own desk, on the other side of the room.
Now all he had to content with was her.
Having a new Captain was not panning out exactly as Momo had hoped. When they had told her someone knew had been chosen for the post, she had been filled with happiness: someone was coming back to take control, to take the responsibilities off her shoulders. There would be someone to drink tea with and chat with, someone to fill the empty desk sat accusingly across from hers.
But it hadn't turned out quite like that.
He didn't seem to want to talk to her all that much. He didn't want the tea she kept offering to make for him. Every time she tried to please him it only served to annoy him all the more, and she didn't know why.
She was diligent with her work, glad that so much of what she had been expected to do was now given back to the Captain, but wasn't enjoying it like she had before. She found herself working late, as she had done with Aizen, but now it was only because she wasn't sure what time Shinji would want her to leave, and was too afraid to ask.
The sky was dark outside: she had missed dinner but still did not feel she could leave her desk until all her work was done or until Shinji said for her to go: and since paperwork was endless and he hadn't even looked at her in over an hour, neither seemed an option.
She resisted the urge to slam her head against her desk.
The light bulb above them blinked, and went out, casting her desk with sudden, deep shadows. She shook her head, tutting under her breath. The wiring in the old building was unreliable, and appliances often tripped fuses and popped light bulbs. They kept a steady supply of spares in the cupboard next to her desk, and she went to get one.
She looked up at the light, swinging forlornly quite a long way above her head.
"Captain, the light…" she trailed off, staring hopefully at him.
He looked up from his paperwork, his face carefully blank. The light from the lamp on his own desk lit his face up now in the much darker room.
"What about it?"
She gestured up at it. He continued to stare at her, deliberately obtuse, and she began to blush.
She was expecting him to act like her old Captain, who would have smiled kindly at her and reached up to unscrew the broken one, replacing it without any issues whilst she went to fetch them some tea. He would have thanked her kindly for doing so and patted her shoulder, and would have made a joke about how the building was falling apart.
He would have been nice.
"Ah… nevermind."
She struggled through more of her paperwork in the near darkness. By the time she had finished it all her head was aching from straining her eyes. She bowed low to her Captain as she gave her goodbyes, but as she raised her head she saw something in his eyes that made her feel deeply uncomfortable. It wasn't affection, which she was used to seeing, or even pity, which had been fairly common recently.
It was irritation.
It upset her, and she walked back to her rooms trying not to cry. Why had he been so irritated with her? Because she had not changed the bulb? But she was far too short to be able to do it by herself?
She flopped back on her bed, and wondered how to fix it.
The next day she went back to their office with a new plan. Shinji was sat behind his desk, feet propped up on it, reading, ignoring his work. The light bulb still didn't work, and she had decided to be pro-active about it. Perhaps that was what he wanted from her? Logical problem solving, thinking outside the box?
She put her head around the door when she heard someone coming, and smiled at a shinigami whose name that she could not entirely remember. He was an unseated officer in their division, and he smiled back charmingly at her.
"Ah, could I ask you a favour?"
She led him into the office, and pointed at the light, but before anything could be done Shinji snapped his book closed with an audible noise and pointed at the door.
"Nope."
"Eh, excuse me, Captain?"
"It's not your job to fix the light. Out you go."
Momo watched him leave forlornly. There went her plan.
But if Shinji didn't want anyone to fix the light, then what was his point?
She puzzled over it for the rest of the day, throughout her paperwork then the afternoon's training session. In the end, she gave in, and went to the meeting of the SWA determined to ask her friends for advice.
Matsumoto just shook her head when she told her about the problem.
"He wants you to prove yourself. He is trying to teach you that you are capable of doing things for yourself, and that you don't need to rely on other people to fix things around you. In his own way, he is trying to look after you."
Cheered by this thought, Momo went to bed that night with a new determination to fix the problem.
If he was really trying to look after her, there was no way he could hate her.
"I hate her."
Kensei rolled his eyes at his friend.
"No you don't."
That was the problem with people that you spent one hundred years living in a warehouse with. They know you pretty damn well and they don't take any of your shit.
"Okay, I don't hate her. But I envy the two of you. At least your new Lieutenants are capable."
"She wouldn't have got to where she is if she wasn't capable, Shinji."
"But she's just so useless."
"Then help her."
"That's not my job, damn it!"
She got to the office before him that morning, determined to have the bulb changed before he got there. She left breakfast early, timing herself so that she should have had it done just as he was making his way to the office. She smiled at the thought. He would come in just as she was stepping gracefully down from the chair she was going to use, and she would smile, and ask him to turn on the light.
He would flip the switch, and it would work, and he would finally smile at her, and be proud of her. She would be fine even if he didn't tell her out loud, like Aizen did: she would be able to tell even if he didn't say a word, and that would be enough for her.
But as she pulled her chair out she realised the fundamental flaw in her plan. Even standing on it, she was not tall enough to reach the light. She hovered there for a moment, her hands above her head, as if she might grow if she tried hard enough.
Clearly she needed another plan.
She jumped down from the chair and looked quickly around the room. She was running out of time if she wanted to have it done before her Captain appeared.
She quickly balanced a fat encyclopaedia on the chair, then a stack of papers still bound together. Another book went after that, and she tried again. It was much harder to climb up now, and she had to balance herself against the bookcase to get up there without falling. She tucked the spare light bulb in her robes, making sure it wouldn't fall out.
She managed it though, wobbling slightly as she straightened up. Reaching as high as she could she could just about get the tips of his fingers to the light fitting. Success!
Now all she had to do was unscrew the bulb, put in the new one, and get down, and prove her worth to her new Captain.
Not too hard at all.
She reached up, and started unscrewing the broken bulb. But as she did so, the chair, which was on rollers, skidded to the side slightly, just as she managed to get it loose enough to come out. She wobbled, thinking she was going to be okay, but at the last moment the pile of books and papers shifted on the worn leather of the seat, and she went flying.
She fell with a thump against the Captain's desk, her head rattling back against the wood, knocking a huge pile of completed paperwork onto the floor, papers floating in the air. There was a searing pain in her hand, and she realised that the bulb she had unscrewed had shattered as she had clung on to it. As she stared at it, still a little in shock, a steady stream of blood began to drip from a lacework of small, but deep, cuts.
The room was a mess. The papers were scattered, her chair on its side. The throbbing in her head was getting worse, and she reached up gingerly to feel a slight dampness. She brought her hand back to see more blood.
And as she looked back up, she saw her Captain stood in the doorway.
"Get up."
She winced at the flat, unimpressed tone of his voice, and pulled herself to her feet, bowing to him as she always did. She felt dizzy when she straightened up, just in time to see him roll his eyes, which made her feel even worse.
"Go to the Fourth."
She didn't argue: she went quickly to the Fourth Division, holding her hand out in front of her, small slivers of glass still sticking out of her skin, leaving fine drops of blood on the pavement behind her.
It was just a small scrape on the back of her head, nothing serious, and the shinigami cleaned and bandaged her hand. She felt awful: not only had she failed to prove that she was capable at doing something as simple as change a light bulb, but she had injured herself and trashed their office.
Well done Momo, she thought to herself bitterly. Well done.
Unohana popped her head around the door just as she was about to leave, smiling in her usual calm and collected manner.
"What on earth happened to you, Hinamori-san?"
And wilting under such a kindly gaze, Momo caved and told her everything. Unohana stood there, just smiling, and listened to the whole story.
"Well, it doesn't seem to me that your Captain is trying to teach you that you should do things for yourself, Hinamori-san, though I am sure that is a part of it."
Momo stared at her in surprise.
"I rather think that my old friend is trying to teach you to take control of your life."
And what on earth did that mean?
She wandered back to her office, her hand bandaged and her mind reeling. By the time she got there someone had already cleaned the office, and her Captain was gone, leading the training for that afternoon. He had left no instructions for her, nor any indication where the training might have been held.
She flicked the light switch on and off unhappily. Someone had changed the bulb.
Momo sat down beside her desk, and put her head in her hands.
Weeks passed in a similar vein. Momo tried everything she could think of to impress her Captain, and failed every time.
She just couldn't work out what it was he wanted from her.
They managed to exist together without talking to each other, without really getting on with each other. It was sad, and frustrating, and she was just about ready to throw in the towel with it all.
Never had she hated her job as much as she did right now.
Today he had ignored her all morning, as was normal, and it was raining outside, making their office darker than it normally was. Even though it was only early afternoon, she was forced to stand, to switch on the light, as she was already getting a headache from trying to work in the dim light.
The bulb sputtered, and went out.
She stared up at it, wondering if her life could get any worse.
What was there to do? She had tried every option she could last time, and had ended up in the infirmary with glass in her hand and a bump on the head. She was just going to leave it this time. She didn't know what the hell this man wanted from her, and it was driving her insane.
But then she looked up, and saw Shinji watching her.
It was a steady, curious look, waiting to see what she was going to try and do next.
She looked back up at the light bulb, and knew that he wasn't going to do anything to help her figure this out. This was a puzzle just for her. She resisted the urge to frown, and tried to clear her mind, but irritation was growing inside her. The sardonic glint his his eye riled her, lit a fire in herself that she had never felt before.
And as she stared up at the light, she realised something. For the first time in her life, her new Captain had made it so that she was not dependant on anyone. She didn't rely on anyone to do anything. Just because she could not reach the ceiling did not mean that she had to have someone swoop in and rescue her.
But it also didn't mean that she needed to stand there all day trying to do it for herself.
She was a grown woman, she was Lieutenant of a Division of the Gotei 13, and people could do what she told them to for a change.
She stood up, and pulled a light bulb out of the drawer.
She turned back to her new Captain.
"Captain, it would save me a lot of time if you changed the light bulb."
He raised an eyebrow at her.
"Why should I?"
And weeks of feeling like a failure, feeling useless, seemed to explode out of her.
She placed the light bulb on his desk, folded her arms, and glowered at him.
"Just shut up and do it, Captain."
She turned on her heel and stalked out of the room, not bowing, not saying farewell. She didn't see it, but behind her, sat at his desk, Shinji grinned.
"Finally."
Outside the office, she leant against the wall, and bit her lip.
She hadn't meant for that to happen, but for the first time, she felt useful, as if she had done something right.
Through the doorway the light from a new bulb flared through.
A smile crept across her face.
He had done it himself.
She realised now that Unohana and Matsumoto had both been wrong: Shinji had not been trying to teach her anything. He hadn't been trying to help her at all. And that was a strangely liberating feeling.
She hadn't needed anyone else.
No one had saved her.
She had saved herself.