The hell butterflies were reporting it now. Every lurid detail. That Captain Aizen wasn't really dead, that he and Captain Ichimaru were somehow working together, that Hinamori-kun, poor Hinamori-kun, was bleeding out...
They didn't mention his name. There was no whisper of his part in the conspiracy. Izuru wasn't sure if he should be glad of that or not.
God, Hinamori-kun...
He should have been in tears. But the horror he felt was numb, dull and meaningless. Did it matter if he was sorry? Did it matter if he cried? Did he even have the tears to shed anymore?
There was a hole inside him, an awful gaping void, as if some great hand had simply reached in and removed vital organs. Hollowing him out until the emptiness, the exhaustion, was all he really felt. Izuru wondered when that had happened, if he'd even noticed what was missing until just now.
"Oh, don't look so sad, Izuru. Did you have to watch a puppy die?"
What remained of him jerked violently, and he twisted away, breathless with fresh terror. He hadn't heard a sound, hadn't felt the reiatsu, and surely he should have been able to recognize that particular prickle over his skin by now, yet Captain Ichimaru was there. Standing over him, pleasant smile splitting his face, eyebrows raised politely to show his surprise.
"Awww, am I so scary?"
Izuru choked and stammered incoherently.
Captain Ichimaru continued to smile down at him. Waiting. Patient, Izuru thought. As if he would stand there all day, never mind that everyone was looking for him, never mind that he would be a dead man if they found him, just waiting for his response.
Had his captain come to tie up loose ends? To-- to kill him, to keep him from sharing what little he knew of their plans?
But Shinsou had not left its sheath at the man's side, jutting from his robes and so not dangerous, never as dangerous as when it was hidden. Captain Ichimaru's hands were folded innocently behind his back, and that was less reassuring, but he hadn't moved, still stood there leaning forward with that curious smile on his face, and he could have ended this in an instant if he'd wanted to.
Whatever he had come here for, it wasn't Izuru's death. Which did not come quite as the relief it should have, but then, there were worse things than death, and his captain had demonstrated several of them all too cheerfully over the last few decades. He swallowed, pushing that thought away. It wasn't important right now. There were bigger questions. So he said, with what should have been anger (would once have been anger) but was now only misery, "You... you said you wouldn't hurt her."
Captain Ichimaru could have responded a thousand different ways, each crueler than the last, and in the silence Izuru braced himself for them, but all that came out in that sweetly innocuous voice of his was: "Is that so? But Izuru, you didn't really believe us."
And it cut like the blade of a knife, because every word was so very, very true. He had wanted to believe them. To believe that even with a room full of dead bodies his captain didn't really want to hurt anyone else, that neither he nor Captain Aizen had anything to gain by spilling Hinamori-kun's blood. But when the time came to make a choice, he'd...
He'd sent Hitsugaya after her, telling himself -- just in case... surely they wouldn't, but just in case...
Yes, part of him had known. Part of him had almost let her die. Oh god oh god oh god.
Izuru's thoughts were running in such panicked, shameful little circles that he almost didn't realize what his captain had said -- what it implied. You didn't really believe us.
He knew. He knew that his lieutenant hadn't simply failed to keep Hitsugaya occupied.
Somehow, even in the wake of a massacre, even with the Soul Society in chaos and their government all but eradicated, Izuru still managed to feel dizzy for an instant. He had betrayed his captain, a senior officer, and wildly he even thought, What would Father say, if he... But of course there would be no court martial, no public embarrassment for him to explain to his father's photograph. His captain had murdered everyone who would have been involved in the trial.
Should he laugh or cry? The feeling churning in his belly was a little of both.
Then Captain Ichimaru's hands closed tightly on his shoulders, pale fingers long and thin but deceptively strong and much, much too close to his neck, and the churning in his belly stopped. Everything stopped. Was this how a mouse felt in the clutches of the cat?
Only he wasn't even a mouse any longer, was he. A mouse would have known to struggle. He was something else now, so used to the claws and the teeth and being released only to be caught again that he hung limp and waited, even hoped, for the warm putrid darkness and the final (at least it would be final) horror of the cat's mouth.
He was going to be sick.
"You're very stiff," his captain whispered, right there and terrifying because he still sounded so sweetly bemused. The fingers tightened, pinching his skin, but to anyone else it would have looked reassuring. It had always looked reassuring. "Will it really bother you so much when she dies? The little peach probably thinks you hate her, you know. Didn't you attack her for daring to draw her blade against me?"
He could not move, could hardly breathe, but he struggled to speak. No, he wanted to say, no, I stepped between you because she would have died, you would have killed her, and I knew it.
And even if Hinamori-kun never thought about him that way, even if she hated him now, Izuru still loved her. He had always loved her. His actions that day had been to save her life, and not for the sake of his confusing, frightening, impossibly-traitorous captain...
Would she ever realize that? Could he expect her to believe it, after all of this.
He had no air, no words, and his skin felt like ice all over, but Izuru wet his lips and managed, somehow, with those fingers still digging hard into his shoulders, to say it. "I hate you."
Captain Ichimaru laughed, and his heart skipped what felt like several important beats. For someone who was always, always smiling, the man very rarely really laughed. It was... not a good sign.
Those awful hands went slack, slipping away from his shoulders, but less than a second later they curled instead around his waist and then his captain was pulling him into some awful parody of an embrace. He felt a ghost of the familiar smile brush his cheek as it passed, and his captain's pointed chin came to rest just above his collar bone. Warm breath like a finger over the line of his jaw.
Oh god.
"I could take you with me."
At first Izuru thought he had misheard, but already something in him stirred to life, warm and pulsing and petrified. He knew he was trembling.
"Would you like that?" Captain Ichimaru continued pleasantly. "We're going somewhere far away, you know. We'll have a castle, and be kings, or something close to it. Could be fun~."
He tried to shake his head and break away all in the same movement, but he was so dizzy, his nerves so raw, that the only thing he could manage was to spasm and then go still again. A feeble twitch from the mouse before that awful heavy resignation sunk in once more. He said nothing.
Thankfully (he was almost positive it was thankfully), that seemed to be enough for his impatient captain. "No, huh?" He could feel the widening smile over the thready pulse in his throat, a startling nasty curl of tongue--
--and all at once Captain Ichimaru withdrew, the spot of saliva on his cheek a burning chill in the breeze of movement, and left him to crumple to his knees.
"Oh, well. It was just a thought."
He sounded so cheerfully unconcerned, as if the hammering in Izuru's chest and the scrapes on his palms from falling so hard and so abruptly were his own imagination, or somehow just unrelated to anything the other man had done. As if he didn't know, or didn't care, that his lieutenant was currently hyperventilating and seconds away from really being sick.
There was no sound this time, either, but Izuru was aware of Captain Ichimaru's departure as he hadn't been aware of his arrival. A definite sense of uncloaked reiatsu moving steadily (indifferently) away from him. And that, after everything else that day, was more than he could bear. Izuru twisted around, pulled himself to his feet and called out, his voice at first so small and reedy that he had to clear his throat to try again. "Wait. Wait, Captain--"
"Still calling me that?" The man turned, grinning. "Are you still my man? Even now? Isn't that nice."
They were awful, stinging questions, but Izuru forced himself to ignore them. "Captain," he pressed, determined or desperate or something else entirely. "Why did you come here?"
Surely it hadn't been worth the danger just to sneer at him, he caught himself thinking, and was ashamed to realize how very much he wanted that to be true. What the reason was almost didn't matter, as long as there was one -- as long as there was some kind of deeper meaning to... anything his captain had ever done to him.
Captain Ichimaru frowned and tilted his head to one side, theatrically thoughtful, as if searching for just the right words. Then he said, "Captain Aizen told me to," and the smirk that curved his lips was the single most unpleasant thing Izuru had ever seen. Whatever had been alive in his chest died in that instant, as Ichimaru turned again to leave without so much as a backwards glance.
The hell butterflies came again what felt like hours later to announce that the battle was over, that the former Captain Aizen and the former Captain Ichimaru and their apparent coconspirator the former Captain Tousen had been overwhelmed by sheer numbers and left the Soul Society for parts unknown. Izuru didn't move, didn't even lift his head -- but he recognized the emptiness inside of him, the hole where relief or fear or shame should have been, and knew whose fingerprints were smeared along its edges. Whatever he was missing had been there again with his captain (with Ichimaru), and the silvered shinigami had taken it with him when he left, stowed absently into a pocket like so much loose change. It might be months or years or decades before the wound he'd left behind was completely scarred over.
When Rangiku passed him a drink later and asked morosely if Gin had even bothered saying goodbye to him, Izuru told her he hadn't. Somehow, it didn't feel like a lie.