Title: Insomnia
Author's name: cccpirate / Karlie
Pairing: Kira/Hinamori, with a very failed attempt at romance.
Rating: PG
Word-count: 2,645
Squicks/spoilers: Spoilers up to 269 (The End Is Near) and hypotheses of what happens thereafter. Squicks... um... a slightly head-screwed Hinamori? Also it makes a couple of minor assumptions about what will happen after the current fights going on in manga, so in about three weeks this will be zomfgsofarAUauithurts. Also, there's a couple of random Karlie-interprets-Soul-Society-customs-that-have-not-yet-been-explained-yet things, but nothing major.
Notes: ...I have never written these two before so please don't kill me? Kira seems a little... off to me, although we haven't seen him since the end of the Soul Society arc in the manga universe, so...
The song-lyrics come from "Trouble Sleeping" by The Perishers.
i. I've never cared too much about honesty
Hinamori Momo wants people to know that she is perfectly sane. No matter what Yamamoto-soutaichou may say, she is perfectly sane and perfectly able to make her own decisions.
Which is why, the day she wakes up on the thirty-second day since the defection, she still loves Aizen-taichou with all her heart. Because believing that this man – this good, good man – could have been tricking Soul Society for so many decades; believing that Aizen-taichou was capable of orchestrating this whole, devious plot; believing that he wants to destroy everything they've spent centuries working for?
That, she knows, is insanity.
No, she thinks fiercely, even in the face of Yamamoto as he states the facts again. He is a victim in this, just like she is, and if thrusting Kyoka Suigetsu through her middle was what it took for him to escape with his life, then she would let him do it again without a second thought.
ii. I'm thinking about what you've said
When Kira was a small boy of eighteen, long before Hinamori and Abarai had died, his mother had sat him in her lap and apologised for the whipping he had received for breaking the vase that had contained the ashes of his grandfather's scabbard. Shizuka, aging now, in the strange way people did in Soul Society, had rubbed his back as he'd cried and sent for the tea she drank to dull her headaches to help him with the pain. Izuru, rules are there to keep us safe, she had said in that old, old voice buried in soft blond hair. Rules protect us, and tell us what to do, because we need guidance towards the greater good.
She had died the following summer.
Kira kept the rules and obeyed the rule makers until he had stood in the Central Court surrounded by their corpses, the scent of old, dried blood cloaking him like a thick blanket, cloying and tart on his tongue, and the promise that Hinamori would be safe anchoring him to obeying the rules given from above, and then the only thought in his mind had been, now what?.
Do what you're told, of course, he told himself sternly, Kagekiyo's voice heavy in his ears. People are above you for a reason.
You couldn't get higher than heaven, but then what...?
He didn't know. Nobody did. Which was the cue for the mini-nervous-breakdown that Hisagi-sempai had dragged him out of with far too much sake and a session with the fourth division's liver-purification treatment, and well, yes, he hadn't been able to walk in his waraji for a day or so after that, but the tears had stopped and left Kira with an aching emptiness inside that he wasn't quite sure to fill.
He was not so brave enough to try to fill the hole with drink. He tried doing paperwork and quickly found himself drowning in much the same way Hisagi-sempai was. He tried being annoyingly useful and had Abarai-kun dunk him – fully-clothed, the idiot! – into the officers' onsen.
He learned to avoid Hitsugaya-taichou almost as quickly as he learned that his presence was not required near the General Relief Station. That didn't stop him from hanging around, occasionally waiting outside while Abarai or Hisagi checked on their men, still healing, and there was always, always a first division presence around; often a lower seat, but sometimes even the soutaichou himself, a forbidding presence even though Kira was sure – quite sure – that he didn't mean to be so.
"He keeps coming in here, Kira-kun," Hinamori complained during one visit (Kira had snuck in by pretending to be Third Seat Iemura, slicking his hair back and stealing a pair of Renji's broken shades, poking the lenses out).
"He is the Commander-General."
"Yes, but—" She thumped the coverlet. "Oh, the things he says about Aizen-taichou!"
"Hinamori-kun," Kira said gently. "He ran you through."
"I know."
"Then why...?"
"He did it to protect me, of course! It's Aizen-taichou!"
Kira frowned, thought back to the official report submitted by the adjutant officer of the sixth division and sighed. This again. "Hinamori-kun..."
"He is a good man, Kira-kun," she interrupted fiercely. "He wouldn't go with Ichimaru-taichou. He probably just went to bring him back!"
Kira ignored the leap of hope low in his belly; it was false hope. "Maybe," he said quietly, caught in the awkward place between knowing she was wrong and not having the proof. "We'll have to wait and see.
iii. You're jumping in my bed / You're sitting on my chest
It was on the fortieth night after the defection that Hinamori was allowed to return to her division, all privileges of her rank restored. With the Hitsugaya Expedition still in another world it left four divisions captain-less, and with her hospitalised, four without adjutants. The workload was too much for the remaining divisions to cope with. The third-seat from the first division, Yamamoto told her, in the tone of voice that was an all-too-jarring cross between kindly grandfather and veteran of war and the man who wanted to see Aizen-taichou defeated and dead, would be dispatched in the morning to assist, and for the moment, the work of the captain had been assumed by Kuchiki-taichou, and so she should just rest.
In her fukutaichou quarters (which had been rearranged neatly, the futon laid out and the cover turned down; it didn't even smell the same anymore, as though it was an unreal parody of her room, where something was missing but she couldn't put her finger on what, exactly), Tobiume lay in its stand, sheath clean and glimmering. Hinamori gave it a cursory glance and then changed into her sleeping yukata; tomorrow, she thought, they'll talk. Or she would talk to Tobiume and hope he listened to her and count on the fact that unlike Abarai-kun's, her sword was not as mean; Tobiume is more reasonable, she thinks.
The thump came while her eyes were closed but she was trying to ignore the noises from her division; her eyes snapped open as sleep went running and Tobiume looked at her curiously with his birds-nest eyes.
"Yo," he said. "Long time no see."
There was a pause, thick and awkward, and Hinamori shifted uncomfortably, peering at her spirit from her pillow.
"I was gone so long," she said softly, her fingers curling beneath the cover. "I thought—"
"Oh Moomin," he replied gently, a branch catching in the over-blanket. "Did you really think I would ever leave you?"
"No?"
She wasn't sure now.
He patted the covers above her chest with leafy fingers. "Just because my body is there," he nodded to the blade, "does not mean I'm not in here."
"I know."
Tobiume leant forward, the bark at his neck creaking and cracking, a shower of brown dust peppering the cover of her futon. "Oh?" he asked, a note of surprise in his low baritone. His breath smelled not of wet earth but the overpowering scent of overripe, rotting fruit, sweet, tart, the buzzing of flies humming quietly as his voice rolled. The two twigs that poked out of his forehead were wilting; plants suffer without being tended. It was her fault.
He smiled wryly. "Is it really?" She didn't know that, either. "I miss you. Come back to me, won't you?"
I'll try, she thought, and he slipped back into the sheath.
iv. Leave me
Wabisuke looked at Kira from beneath the curtain of long grey hair. "You keep speaking to me, but I have no answer that you cannot find yourself."
"Aa. I—I know."
"That said," the blade said, lowering his head again so that the dull eyes again vanish behind the shadows. "I appreciate the company."
v. Twisting in my head
Hitsugaya-kun returned from his Expedition on the fifty-sixth day in a short white bluster. He mentioned something about his point being proven regarding the older captains and then softened, reaching for the teapot and pouring two cups. "You, Hinamori?" he prompted, nudging a cup towards her with the crook of his knuckle.
"I," she began, and then stopped. Hitsugaya would not talk about Aizen-taichou with her but to repeat the same things Yamamoto told her. "I'm fine, Hitsugaya-kun!" she told him, wrapping her fingers around the warm cup and smiling. "Tell me about the mission!"
Tell me about Aizen-taichou.
Hitsugaya didn't even twitch at the diminutive and he blew on his tea, waiting for it to cool to lukewarm ("Shirou-chan, it'll go cold!" she'd scolded him, fifty-three years ago in Junrinan. "I like it cold," he had replied tartly. "Go pee on something."). He looked better in person than he did over the communications, and the conversation was easy – he spoke more about Matsumoto and Inoue ("that ryoka girl, Hinamori") than he did about the enemies they faced and the battles they fought but Hinamori did notice; the muted reiatsu was not just him offering a courtesy, and she had been in the fourth division long enough now to tell the difference between hasty chiyudou and proper healing. He mentioned nothing about Aizen.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Hinamori," he said as he left, eyes soft, brow not quite as stern, his shoulders nowhere near as tense, and Hinamori realised that while she had missed Hitsugaya, she missed Kira even more.
vi. But never me
Abarai-kun left on the sixty-first day and returned to Soul Society on the sixty-eighth day, taking Kuchiki directly to the fourth division and then being placed under arrest and taken to the first division's holding cells under charges of desertion. Hitsugaya told her this with an impatient sort of gentleness, explained how Kuchiki had fallen to one of his creations, how the invasion squad had all been injured by Hollows working under his command trying to save one of their comrades from his domain.
Slowly, it all began to finally click into place, piece by piece. The teacup burned her fingers as she wrapped them around it; she didn't care. Around the sudden, squeezing twist in her chest, she couldn't even feel it.
"He isn't going to come back, is he, Hitsugaya-kun?"
"No."
A pause. "He really did want me to die, didn't he?"
"Hinamori..." The furrow in Hitsugaya's brow deepened, the ability to say 'yes' escaping him like snow melting through his fingers. Instead, he settled for "I'm sorry."
Hinamori held herself with a strange dignity then, her eyes fierce and over-bright as though she had been looking at the sun for too long and finally been burned, and in that moment, Toushirou was reminded of exactly why she held the rank she did and all the work she had done to get there. "Oh," she said simply and left it at that. So this was how it felt for Kira-kun. "How is Rangiku-san?"
"Matsumoto sends you her regards. And sake."
vii. I sure could use the rest / It's you, now and always you
On the sixty-eighth night in the hours of the Ox, Hinamori found herself wandering a street away from the East Gate; unguarded now but for a small squad from the Eighth Division – her gut twisted and then she squashed it down. Aizen (not Aizen-taichou any longer) had lied for decades – she did not feel angry with herself for believing him. He had taken two other captains with him and damaged Soul Society (damaged, wrecked, devastated; there had been bags under Hitsugaya-kun's eyes, though she had been polite enough not to mention it) – she was angry with him for that. He had injured their soldiers, killed their men and done it all through his underlings instead of by his own hand – that was not the Aizen-taichou she knew.
He had really, truly never existed.
Which was why she was outside, here, now, to give her a reason to keep the keening wail locked inside her chest until it curled up, rolled over and died. It wasn't fair, it wasn't right, and she just wanted to break his glasses and his tea-cup and—
"Hinamori-kun?"
"Kira-kun!"
She did not jump. Really.
Kira smiled, stepping out from between two narrow buildings to where he was illuminated by a night-lamp hanging on a nearby building, and lifted his hand from Wabisuke. "You're out late. Can't you sleep?"
"It's just a walk."
"Oh." A pause. "Hinamori-kun, I—"
"Hinamori," she corrected, because she wasn't — she wasn't Hinamori-kun anymore. Kira would never be able to say it as warmly, never be able to manage the affectionate pat, his fingers would never span her head and flick off the covering of her neat little bun and he'd never tease her, scold her lightly, say, 'should an adjutant officer be so unkempt, Hinamori-kun? Surely I don't work you that hard, do I?'...
And that was okay. It was okay.
But Kira blinked, his mouth dropping open just a quarter of an inch as though he wasn't quite sure whether it was a good thing or not – to call her Hinamori was so familiar, and yet, the loss of the diminutive rankled, somewhat. Kira'd always been exact, and they'd always been a three – Hinamori-kun, Kira-kun, Abarai-kun (and part of him has always been secretly afraid of Hitsugaya-taichou, younger than all of them, more powerful than all of them except maybe Abarai-kun; Kira's always been tactical, too; not the best by a long shot, nowhere near as good as Hisagi-sempai, but even he could tell that Renji's bankai would be more than just 'formidable' when it's fully-mastered, and oh dear, now he wasn't entirely sure what the point is but he knew that referring to Hinamori-kun as just 'Hinamori' in front of Hitsugaya-taichou would not be the best idea).
He licked his lips and tried again. "Hinamori. I—"
"Yes?"
He smiled, then. It'd never be the same smile from the academy, Momo thought; it was a little weary at the edges, and there were lines about his eyes now that creased with the effort, and maybe out of all of them, Kira's the one who looks like he's pushing his age more than she or Abarai-kun ever would. But he'd never smile down at her from a blood-spattered wall, and he'd never say 'goodbye' with a sword running through her, and for everything Kira's done wrong in his long afterlife, there'd always been the right intentions there, worn on his sleeve and in the curl of his lip as he chewed it.
It wasn't as if her record was clean, either. In one way or another, they were all traitors.
It took her a moment to realise that the pale white hand, palm empty, open and up in the air, was Kira's.
"If you're having trouble sleeping, would you like to come with me? There's a tea-house in the East-First – they know me there," he added sheepishly, as though insomnia is something to be ashamed of. "I think you'd like their oolong."
"I like jasmine tea," she replied after a second, looking upwards: three months ago, or even longer, Kira would have laughed, waited for her to catch up, commented about how she only wanted the tea for the dango to go with it. And Abarai-kun would have been on the other side, a few paces ahead and he would have snorted, looked over one broad shoulder and said, 'who needs dango when there's one stuck to her head?'.
The tea would remind her of paperwork and the division buildings and—
"We'll get both."
"Eh?" Now Abarai-kun was in jail and Kira-kun was broken and she was no better, all of them in jigsaw-pieces.
He dug his waraji into the floor, but kept his gaze steady. "Both. Oolong and Jasmine. And dango. Sometimes sleep comes easier with a full stomach."
Jigsaw pieces to be fitted back together. "Oh."
"Shall we?" Maybe someday.
"Yes."
-end-