It is dark when the final wave comes and catches them unawares. He was sleeping, the toll of war carving deep scarlet lines into his shoulders and calves and chest until his eyelids droop and the waiting arms of his lieutenant wrap around him, carrying him away to a soft bed with warm sheets and bands of clean white cloth which curl around him like ribbons tying up a present. The screams of a keening blade drew him first, the fire of chaos and stench of dying flesh smoking through the thin canvas and choking him awake. (He'll admit it - he hadn't been asleep, merely comatose in his desire to live) Yet after that he can hear the wails and cries of the wounded, the howl of destruction incarnate ripping the brief quiet that had ensnared him.
He leaps to unsteady feet, blade bright in hand, the winter shriek of his soul a cold explosion of power and energy untold, and with a tipping growl he runs to the bloodshed, fear building in the pit of his churning stomach. His forces were decimated by the most recent clash of sword and spirit, the overwhelming, mindless crush of claws and barbs and fangs biting holes through the ranks of his loyal men. They need him now that they're doomed. And so he fights.
With all the solemn brutality that is stored up in his lean body he tears through the crowd of Hollows, the black blood splashing thickly over his face and passing through his teeth onto his tongue, salty and rotten. He swallows reflexively, feeling the decayed fluid burn his throat, and unconsciously licks his lips, the predator coiled in him purring in delight at the taste of prey. A white mask of death looms up before him, roars, and explodes in a hail of shredded, singed flesh, the ball of spiritual flame flying effortlessly from his palm, and he continues.
He'd been lapping blood since the day he was born. Once more wouldn't make a difference.
He and his blade are a whirl of spinning, exhausted death, an executioner's bloodcircle flying black and warm around him in splatters of tainted rain, and through the fog he can hear the gentle whispering of death taking the few that remain fighting. Then Matsumoto screams and goes silent, her ash suddenly melting from the atmosphere, and Hitsugaya spins, the bandages wrapped around his chest, legs, and shoulder muddied with dirt and grime, the black blood of his enemies staining the young whiteness standing there, solemn and frail and vicious. He cries out, tries to run to her side, but can't make it through the clash of stinking undead spittle and venom, and the screams of the dying souls add her voice to their ranks.
White. Black. The sky rains grey and the winter blizzard keens its piercing grief, howling ice ripping the sky asunder, forming angelic - demonic - wings of silver frost and cold, clear snow; a testament to the predators of the skies. The scream that bursts from his lips at his lieutenant's death is unearthly, and the battle stills for just a split second as the heavens scab over with lightning and thunder, pouring the tears that Hitsugaya cannot cry down like a flood to drown the world.
He does not realize how much he needs his lieutenant until she's gone, and it kills him.
Ice blossoms from his fingers and he sweeps through the onslaught of Hollows, wings outstretched and glistening destruction in the gloom, and the battlefield is frozen, a glacier entombing each of the thousands of corrupted souls that have slain his division. He lands on top of the plain of ice; looks around with frozen green eyes, unblinking, glowing, deathly. He is the angel of death, a young seraph with blood on his teeth and death in his fractured heart, the beat-beat-beating of his pulse louder than a storm in his ears. No one is left, he realizes, his cheeks wet with rain. Everyone is dead except him.
There is a sound like the click of a lock, and the angel wings of decimating ice shatter with a smile.
The Fourth Division finds him lying atop the cemetery of ice, Hyourinmaru buried in his own chest, his fingers frozen to the handle. He bleeds pink into the snow, and his marbled eyes are fixed sightlessly on that color. Later, Matsumoto's scarf is found.
The colors - snow-stained blood and bloodstained scarf - match brilliantly.