Mirror Door
By icecreamlova
- : -
Momo is not a stupid girl. Momo is not even an innocent girl.
Being stabbed in the chest tends to take that away from you.
She could have died, but Aizen-taicho was there that day. He destroyed the Hollow with a brisk flick of his sword, and held her in his arms as he flash-stepped away. His hands were gentle and warm against her wounded flesh. She would have enjoyed it more if she weren't stiff with fear and pain.
The day he saved her for the second time was the day she fell in love.
But it was not the only thing that had changed.
- : -
She acts innocent. Hinamori cannot help it; her smiles are habit, her sweetness ingrained, and furthermore, she enjoys the feeling of being... untouched.
Toshiro is not so lucky. She watches him fall until his vice-captain and other friends catch him, and he gets back on his feet again.
It's a lie, of course. She's a shinigami. She's a vice-captain now, and power and fighting and blood are woven into her flesh and bones. No one who has seen a battlefield can walk away with a spring in her step. Hinamori's not that special. She doesn't deliberately hide a jaded woman, and Hinamori isn't jaded yet, but she has killed Hollows before--
--they were people once, weren't they, parts of loving families and loving romances and loving friendships?--
--and led her squad to the Living World to protect people who will not appreciate it.
It is not a willful deception: she's not Aizen, and she isn't even sly, sly Gin. In some ways, the happiness is the truth.
But the happiness, as no one but Hinamori understands, comes from knowing she's still alive. She knows enough to take pleasure in that.
- : -
Momo seems like a stupid, deceitful, ignorant girl sometimes. And occasionally, she feels like she is: Aizen-taicho makes her heart beat faster even when he's delivering a lazy, drawling, back-hand insult he doesn't expect her to pick up on. He acts so gentle. When he touches her skin, accepting forms to fill in, she feels like her body BURNS.
(She trusts him. He is her captain. She needs to trust him with hundreds of shinigami lives, out on the field, and he trusts her.)
Momo falls for it.
But then, doesn't everyone else?
- : -
She is not stupid, but she can be blind to what everyone else is saying, when she wants to be.
A mirror door is very hard to shatter from the other side, after all.
And Hinamori reinforces it. Because she built her world up around him. She is strong; she is deadly strong enough to reach for the stars, but that's useless when the world is crumbling away into nothing. She's not innocent enough to believe that, if she listens to other people, she'll still be convinced of the good in him. Hinamori knows.
It is a comforting lie to bathe in--that Aizen is innocent and the world is wrong--because she has always known that she's not strong enough to keep the world cobbled together beneath her.
Nothing gets through. People enter the room to check on her wound from being run through, to murmur news of Aizen and hope she wakes up to the truth, but Hinamori won't listen, because then what will keep the earth spinning?
- : -
They tell her Aizen's a traitor.
Nothing.
They tell her she needs to fight.
Nothing.
They tell her Aizen is getting stronger, will she please wake up and pull herself together because it's pathetic?
...Nothing.
- : -
They tell her that her best friend will be fighting Aizen, and the earth falls still beneath Momo's feet.
- : -
A mirror door is very hard to shatter from the other side.
It's easy to break from inside.
Hinamori wakes up to reality, shaking and afraid, because she sees the truth now.
That self-awareness is a thousand times more potent as the warnings from the boy who she is finally beginning to accept isn't a child any longer. Her past is gone; the child she was with it.
Aizen-taicho is a traitor.
Shatter.
- : -
No one protests when Hinamori volunteers to aid the efforts in the Living World. She's still a vice-captain. She will go with the next team to reinforce Karakura Town. She sees their looks, though: watch the would-be traitor.
Hinamori prepares her sword for the upcoming battle and wishes to return to a time when this would be a dream; when she was innocent.
'Do you?' Tobiume's voice is wind gliding between new green leaves, the fall of soft petals gliding gently against her cheek. Momo thrives in contact again; she has avoided her knowledge for far too long. 'Would you again?'
The moment she raised her sword to her childhood friend flashes in her mind.
No. Hinamori Momo NEVER wants to be so week, so willfully naive, so blinded by sightless adoration again. She already hates herself for what she has done.
Others would have paid the price for the innocence. She'll tolerate everything but that.
Hinamori walks out of the room where she'd been hiding and pushes away her unconscious mask of sweet smiles, to ready herself to fight.
- : -
END
R & R, please