Disclaimer: I do not own bleach. Honestly. You can look everywhere in my dorm room, and I guarantee that there is none to be found. I don't own Kubo Tite's Bleach, either.

Spoiler Warnings: Roughly to the beginning of the Hueco Mundo arc (mostly post Soul Society).

Hope you enjoy!

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The last thing she saw before the darkness took her were the eyes of her former captain. Dim and empty, they displayed none of the warmth they'd held during the years in which she had padded softly behind him through the halls of Seireitei.

In truth, child, I cannot bear to kill you again.

His hand, still warm and heavy, rested gently on her head, his fingers softly stroking her hair.

So instead, I give you sleep.

A flare of reiatsu. Some kind of kidou binding technique, her instincts told her.

And so let the withering hands of time, not mine, bring you to your last breath

Her world swam before her eyes, darkening and distorting. Weighed down by now leaden limbs, she sank to the cold stone floor, struggling against a rising fog in her brain.

She heard him kneel beside her and felt a warm, mocking hand brush a strand of hair from her forehead. His face came into view above her, wearing a kind, gentile smile that did not match the deadness of his eyes.

Goodbye, Hinamori-kun.

---

There was nothing. No light. No sound, not even her own voice or heartbeat. She could not move in the vast emptiness, or perhaps there was nothing that could move. Stillness. No heat, no cold. No time. No time. No seconds, no hours, no years.

Nothing

Nothing.

Only nothing.

And then, after an eternity of silence

A sound.

A low, continuous babble, rising and falling.

A voice?

She clung to the sound. She reached for it, stretched for it, a dim memory welling up inside her of places that were not void and not emptiness, places where there sounds and light instead of silence and darkness.

But the sound came no closer, grew no louder. It stayed ephemeral, intangible as the void itself. There was nothing but the void, the sound, and despair.

And then.

And then.

A sudden warmth. Fleeting.A single, clear moment in the endless, timeless void.

And the sound, the voice, resolved for that brief moment into words.

Please…please…wake up, Hinamori…come—come back to me…I—I…

Wake up? Come back? A name? Hinamori?

She had a name. She was sleeping. Someone was calling.

She seized the name. The identity. The warmth. The voice.

She grasped them, and pulled, straining against the invisible, intangible bonds that chained her to the void.

She pulled, and she felt them shatter.

Free.

---

The first thing that returned to her was self-awareness. Once again, she could feel the weight of her own body, the presence of her limbs. She knew that she lay upon her back, her arms limp at her sides.

Then, touch. She rested upon a soft, slightly squashy surface. "Bed," supplied her sluggish brain. A soft, warm, light thing covering her. "Blanket." A cool feeling on her face. "Breeze"

Now, hearing. The rhythmic thumping of her heart. The rasp of her own breathing. A high-pitched twittering far off to one side. Birdsong.

What was left? Ah, sight. But all remained darkness.

There was a brief moment of panic. Had she gone blind? No. Wait. She had to open her eyes.

Slowly, grudgingly, her eyelids creaked open. The light stabbed like a thousand white-hot needles. She closed them, then opened them again.

Gradually, the piercing glare faded and the colored blurs surrounding her resolved into the walls and ceiling of a room, a vase of white flowers, and the serenely smiling face of Captain Unohana.

"Welcome back, Hinamori-san."

---

Captain Unohana carefully studied the face of her patient. The young woman on the bed's cheeks were sunken, her skin ashen. However, her wide, dark eyes were open and lucid, if a little over-bright.

"Do you know who I am, Hinamori-san?"

Hinamori opened her mouth, but the only sound that came out was a choking, gasping croak. Unohana leant forward and gently tipped a cup of water against the girl's lips. Hinamori initially gagged, but after a few moments was able to slowly, painfully, swallow.

She tried to speak again, and this time succeeded in answering, albeit in a horse, rasping voice. "C-ca-ptain Unoha-na."

"And do you know where you are, Hinamori-san?"

"The F-fourth Division medical center."

At this response, Unohana let out a silent sigh of relief. She hadn't been certain, when it had been reported that the former vice-captain at last was stirring, that Hinamori's mind would return from her coma whole and unharmed.

"C-captain, what…what happened? Why…where was I…" Hinamori broke off, her narrow chest heaving with the exertion of just forcing those few words out.

Unohana's eyes narrowed, her look sharpening slightly.

"Do you remember the Arrancar attack on Soul Society?" When Hinamori slowly nodded, the Fourth Division captain continued on.

"As best as we can determine, during the course of the battle, you were captured and dragged down to Hueco Mundo." Her voice took on an unusually steely edge. "Apparently Aizen believed you to be the mentally weakest of all the high-ranking Shinigami. He and his subordinates attempted to torture you into revealing our battle preparations and strategies for the coming war."

Unohana's lips twitched upwards. "You showed him, though, what a true Shinigami is made of, Hinamori-san. From what we found out, you held your tongue through every kind of physical pain they could put you through, through every truth drug they dosed you with, and that you even refused to break under Kyouka Suigetsu's illusions. I think, in the end, even Aizen was impressed."

Hinamori's eyes, which had taken on an empty, haunted look, fluttered closed, and a soft sigh escaped her lips. Unohana reached out, laying a comforting hand on the girl's ashen forehead, but Hinamori flinched so violently that Unohana immediately withdrew. She chose not to comment.

The bleak tone back in her voice, Unohana went on. "Aizen chose, though, to reward you in the most unusual of ways. Instead of just killing you, martyring you, in a sense, he just bound you in a deep coma with a combination of kidou techniques that not even the experts in the Corps had ever seen before. Had he not been defeated, you probably never could have broken free. You would just have lingered on in a state of unconsciousness for centuries, millennia even, until old age claimed you at last."

Those words hung in the warm stillness of the hospital room for a few moments, the songs of the birds outside the window garishly loud. Then, Hinamori's soft, dry-throated whisper quavered through the air. "He's…dead then? Aizen's…dead?"

The captain of the Fourth studied her patient carefully, evaluating the effect her answer might have. "Yes, Hinamori-san. He is dead. The war was our victory."

Hinamori's face showed no signs of distress or grief, and once again, Unohana felt relieved. There had been some worry amongst the captains that Hinamori might still be under the influence of her former captain's brainwashing, but it seemed that all their fretting was for naught.

"Ah, that's…good. But what about…did anyone…I mean, is Tosh—everyone alright? Abarai-kun and Kira-kun and Matsumoto-san and, and…"

Unohana smiled warmly. "They're all fine. It would seem that our former captain grossly overestimated those nasty hybrid Hollows of his and vastly underestimated the strength of a united Soul Society. There were some losses, but all our captains and vice-captains made it through unharmed." She paused for a moment, then added blandly, "All of them…even Captain Hitsugaya."

The sudden bloom of color on Hinamori's winter-pale cheeks told her all she needed to know.

Unohana rose to her feet, straightening her haori. "If you please, Hinamori-san, I must leave you now to attend to some of my other patients. In a few moments, I will send one of our healers in with a sleeping draught."

The horrified, bulgy-eyed expression on the bedridden girl's face would have been almost comical on the face of a healthy person.

Unohana bent to squeeze Hinamori's hand reassuringly. "There, there. You'll need your rest if you want to be up and walking any time soon. Do not worry; you shall only be asleep for a few hours this time, not years, I promise you that."

She released the quivering hand and made her way to the open door. Then, a soft, tired voice stopped her.

"Years…you said years, Captain…How—how long was I asleep for…Captain Unohana, wait…please..."

One hand on the doorframe, Unohana turned back toward her patient for a moment, her blankest smile splashed across her face.

"Nearly nine years, Hinamori-san."

And with that, she was gone.

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Exposition, exposition, exposition. Sorry 'bout that. The next chapter will have some better, faster, more entertaining (I hope) dialogue

I also apologize for the absence of a certain white-haired captain in this chapter. In the original idea for this fic Shiro-chan made a very early appearance. However, I wanted to give him the entrance he deserves, so his arrival's been delayed

By the way, reviews make me happy. If I am happy, I tend to write faster. Therefore, if you wish this fic to be updated in a reasonable amount of time, it is in your best interest to tell me what you think (constructive criticism is good, but no flames, please)!