Characters: Hinamori, Hitsugaya
Summary: Going, going, gone.
Pairings: onesided HitsuHina, onesided HinaAizen
Warnings/Spoilers: Vague spoilers
Timeline: Post-Deicide arc
Author's Note: This will happen to Hinamori eventually. I'm sure of it (In my own paranoid little way). Then again, I'm not sure if I really want this to happen. What I would really like is for that, the next time we see her, Hinamori isn't moaning over Aizen anymore; please, Kubo! For God's sake, give the poor girl some more character development! Let her grow beyond this!
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
Hitsugaya watched her spill, helpless, unable to do a thing, after Aizen left and left her, dissolve into a bubbling pool of acid, corrosive and burning. No one could reach her, no one could help her, no one could even touch her for fear of being burned by her feverish heat. He watched as her sweet mask crumbled—and imagine Hitsugaya's shock as he realized that it was indeed just a mask—and the Hinamori he always knew became just a distant memory, a hollow lie.
The new reality of her was frightening, unnerving, still sweet-natured but this was only a façade she strained to keep up, to stay sane; and was she ever really sane, to begin with? Underneath the veneer there was a quagmire of neurosis, dependency like Hinamori was an addict and Aizen the much-lauded drug, and a song that wasn't madness but veered close at times.
But still, Hitsugaya loved her. He always had, in his own way even as a cantankerous child, and he hoped that now that Aizen was gone, maybe, Hinamori would see it too.
Soon, all too soon, reality and Hinamori forced him to see that nothing was so simple as that.
She had always loved Aizen. She was absorbed by him, burned for him until she came to ash. Hitsugaya saw that, was almost insanely jealous; part of his whole motivation to become stronger was not only to protect Hinamori but to prove himself to her as well. To make her love him. And Hitsugaya were foolish enough to think that Hinamori would forget him once he was gone.
But she didn't, of course she didn't. How could she, when their relationship had been so parasitic, and Aizen still had Hinamori's blood singing in his veins?
Hinamori collapsed first. Her body gave way, and mind followed. His terror defined him, hidden to roil and storm and destroy beneath the exterior of ice and snow, because he thought that she might die, and that he would lose her (Selfish, selfish, you were so selfish, Hitsugaya realized later, when he came to terms with the fact that dying was the least of what could happen to someone).
Unable to wake Hinamori thrashed and moaned on the bed, her lips forming the name of her traitor captain. Always Aizen-taicho, Aizen-taicho. Never Hitsugaya-kun, or Shiro-chan. Always Aizen-taicho.
It hurt him. It always had.
Her delusions consumed her and would not let her go. Even when Matsumoto told Hitsugaya to get some sleep, that she would watch over Hinamori, begged and wheedled for him to sleep for just a few hours, he didn't leave her bedside. He drooped and wilted, while she, like a leech, grew rosier and fuller and more heartbreakingly lovely in proportion.
Then, she picked herself up and started walking around leaving little invisible blood trails behind her, with glass shards from her captain's illusions nearly crippling her feet. They still devoured and controlled her, played her like a puppet master with a puppet. Her skin had a rosy, sickly hue; her eyes wide open and feverishly bright. Her flesh was burning to the touch.
She would defend her captain—still the lover of her mind, it wounded Hitsugaya to know—to anyone who would listen and begged you to save him. She begged him! Hitsugaya, of all people, who wanted to kill Aizen more than any other. Hinamori lost the respect of everyone around her, became a pariah, an object of pity and contempt, someone to be avoided, and he, despite how much he loved her, was ready to deem her a lost cause.
How strong was Hitsugaya's love, really? How strong was it when he just wanted to get away from her, didn't want to hear her talking anymore?
How strong was it when he almost wished he didn't know her?
Then, Hinamori's development took a sharp, alarming one hundred and eighty degree turn.
Simply, she crystallized and congealed. She finally started to loose herself from Aizen's grip, as the illusions he planted in the darkest recesses of her mind finally began to fade, and she emerged from the darkness of her own miseries and thwarted desires. Hinamori came back, but she wasn't the Hinamori Hitsugaya remembered.
This woman, petite, delicate and pale, became hard and brittle beneath a wintry smile. Hinamori's small hands looked hard and old and angular, like veined ice chiseled to frozen perfection. Even the fire of Tobiume could not melt this ice; its permanence was absolute.
She became ice, suspended, motionless, timeless. So beautiful, a little snow princess, but cold, frozen. There was no more life-fire left in Hinamori.
It was not bitterness that had come to define Hinamori; Hitsugaya still knew her well enough—or at least, he told himself he still knew here; how well did he really ever know her, if he could never comprehend until it happened that she might crystallize like this?—to know that. Instead, she had become stiff and stern, a thing of terrible beauty on the battlefield, the pain of Aizen's betrayal staining her and turning her heart to a lump of blue ice.
Her smiles were rare now, not easily coming, and when they came, they were of an entirely different formation than the bright, ebullient Hinamori Momo smiles of the days when Aizen was still with her. They were instead small and wistful and never lively, a little sad, always cool. Like dusk falling over a lake, staining the water dusky pink and wine violet.
She was everything she needed to be to survive, and Hitsugaya saw nothing familiar in that stony, crystalline face.
Just when you thought he would get Hinamori back, he realized he never would.
She was a creature of ice and far-off mountain crags, to fly so high up that the air would become thin, and fly alone, proud and regal but strangely sad.
A stranger now.
That was all she ever would be.