a/n: BACK AT IT AGAIN WITH MY BEST OTP! ESPECIALLY BECAUSE THERE WAS CONFIRMATION THAT MASHIRO IS A WAR HERO IN THE NEW NOVEL AND ALSO THERE WAS A LITTLE KENMASHI really got my engines revving... hooooo boy
in any case, here's kenmashi right after they return from exile and hisagi observing the relationship because i love third party observation
When Kensei Muguruma returns to the division, he brings along a woman with him, one practically sparkling with energy and optimism. Hisagi has to really scrape through his memory, but he finally recalls seeing her all those years ago when he was just a kid. Captain Muguruma is what has mainly stayed in that memory, but he does remember her too, sure.
The woman most certainly remembers him, despite the fact that it's been over a century and he's a grown man now. She walks right up to him almost as soon as she comes through the door, walking with the force of a hurricane, and stands on her tiptoes to peer up her nose at him. Hisagi leans back and simply stares. Her eyes are wide, shimmering, and a beautiful shade of hazel, and she has very full lips twisted into a smile. Just looking at her, feeling the bright energy around her, gets his stomach fluttering for no reason at all.
Her fingers come out of the sleeve of her robes, and she runs them along the tattoo on his cheek. Her skin is smooth and cool, and it feels very good when she brushes her thumb over the ridges of his scars and tilts her head, a knowing smile on her face.
"You're the little boy from back then," she says.
Hisagi swallows heavy, all too aware of the heavy presence of his new captain, his lifelong idol, looming from across the room. "Y-you remember?"
The woman looks coy as she pulls away. "I remember everyone that we save. It's the proper thing for a hero to do." She holds out her hand and shakes his viciously when he gives his. "I'm Mashiro Kuna, your new superior! It's a pleasure!"
Captain Muguruma only grunts as Mashiro babbles on about the rescue, trying to bring back his memory of it. Hisagi feels faint as he guides them through the barracks- he's five feet away from Kensei Muguruma- and to the captain's office. When he opens the door to the room, he sees Captain Tosen sitting at the desk, but he blinks and he is gone.
Captain walks by him with Mashiro on his heels, and he says, "I do remember you."
Kensei Muguruma remembers him, a little kid in ragged clothes with tears in his eyes, and he's both elated and embarrassed. Renji laughs at him later that night over a drink when he tells the story.
Hisagi notices after a few days that Captain Muguruma and Mashiro are essentially a set pair. Where one goes, the other is probably not far behind. Signing papers, going to meetings, they're just barely ever apart. He suspects it's because they're captain and lieutenant, bound together by a traumatic experience.
After an incident involving a prank gone bad, the captain is soaked, his hair plastered to his forehead, and he's yelling so loudly that Hisagi is afraid that the prankster, whom he knows to be a very kind man with an unfortunate mischievous streak, is going to pass out from fear. He should step in, he knows that, but it's intimidating to waltz up to your ultimate hero and ask him to stop being an uncontrollable rage monster.
Mashiro walks up behind Kensei, so light-footed that Hisagi almost doesn't notice her, despite her happy humming. A large washcloth hangs in her hands. It's amazing, really, because the very second she puts her hand on his arm, the captain flinches and stops midsentence, and Hisagi watches. The captain goes back to his scolding, but as Mashiro reaches up and wipes water off of his neck, it turns more exasperated than infuriated. The red is draining out of his face with every stroke of her hand, and he dismisses the soldier with a tired wave of his hand.
"You're all wet," Mashiro tells him.
Captain Muguruma sits in the nearest chair and lets her dry his neck and ruffle the towel over his head. "Dumbass. You think I don't know?"
"You're a real idiot, so I never know what you know."
A lightbulb goes off in Hisagi's head as he realizes, ah, that's it. They aren't just friends, aren't just partners, but they're together. Of course that's it, he tells himself. How could he have been so blind as to not notice before?
When he asks, forced-casually, over lunch, "How long have you been a couple?," a piece of beef slides from Mashiro's chopsticks, and the captain chokes on the green tea.
"A couple?" she asks. She beats Kensei on the back with a fist while he wheezes.
Oh.
"A couple? Really?"
Hisagi would've thought it was Mashiro who had eyes for the captain. Many do, after all. He's very attractive, after all, with his piercing gold eyes, broad shoulders, well-muscled body. It wouldn't have surprised him if Mashiro was the one looking like a lost puppy, trailing after their captain with hearts and stars in her eyes, but that's not the case at all, Hisagi notes.
It's the captain who seems to be madly, completely head-over-heels for his lieutenant. Hisagi notices it over the next months, all the little indications. He's not a master of romance, mind, but he's heard some good love songs, so he's pretty sure he knows what he's talking about.
In any case, it's Captain Muguruma who has eyes for Mashiro. He watches intently at the door every day while he waits for her. He lets his hand linger a little on hers when they exchange things. It's the captain who can't help but stare as she laughs so hard at her own stories that she can't breath, the captain who chews on the end of his pencil while he watches her from across the room, the captain who looks nervous whenever she comes back in from training with some nick or scratch or bruise that she won't bother Squad Four with.
"What's your opinion on the captain?" Hisagi asks her on their lunch break soon after.
Mashiro stops shoveling rice into her mouth and stares at him with big, curious eyes. He notes that even with her cheeks puffed out from the sheer amount of food, she's still pretty with that cute tilt of her head, her plump lips, that slight curve of her nose. Hisagi can definitely see the physical aspects about her that have captured Kensei Muguruma's attention.
"Kensei?" she asks. "I like Kensei."
"You like him?" he presses.
"I've been friends with Kensei for a really long time." Mashiro puts another scoop full of rice into her mouth, but shoves less in and chews slower. "When we first met, I had been transferred from Squad Two to Squad Nine. The captain at the time, Lady Yoruichi, thought I would be able to advance to a higher position there. So, he was the third seat, and I became the fourth."
"Is that right?"
"Our captain at the time was aaaaaaalways really busy with some security matter or another in the Rukongai, so our lieutenant was in charge, mostly. Kensei was basically her right-hand man. Always a stickler for the rules and the like! All he wanted was to become the next captain, so he had to try and be a good boy so he would be noticed."
"The lieutenant before you was a woman?" Unusual. Next to the 11th, Nine was the most male-dominated squad.
"Sure was!" Mashiro sets down her bowl of rice and moves on to shove heaps of tempura into her mouth as though it's her last meal. "She and the captain died on a mission together, and after that, Kensei got promoted. We worked together well enough, so he asked that I be promoted to his lieutenant, and we haven't been apart since."
Hisagi chews on the end of his chopstick, looking for some sign that she likes the captain- a flush on her cheeks, stars in her eyes, all that poetic nonsense, but finds none of it. If anything, she likes her beef tempura much more at the moment. "I imagine you two spent a lot of time together during your exile."
The smile falters on her face, her cheeks pale, and Hisagi wants to bang his head against the table. Sure, just bring up her shameful exile, why doesn't he? It's not like that's at all insensitive. But she doesn't yell or scold him or pull on his cheek like she sometimes does, and instead tries to smile once more.
"Well, I went off on my own for a few decades back then," she admits. "I travelled a lot! And Kensei… He wasn't as interested in making the best of it as I was."
No surprise. The captain is a man stuck in his ways, not an incredibly adventurous type. Hisagi stirs his rice around and listens a little more.
"But when I got back together with everyone around the time when this whole mess with Aizen and Ichigo started, we picked up like nothing happened at all! Isn't that nice?"
He swallows, looks at the strained smile she's putting on, and decides to restate his question in a more direct manner. "D-do you like-like him though?"
Mashiro looks at him, and it's the first time he cannot read the expression on her usually open face. It unnerves him. Makes him feel like he's the one being interrogated, and then he remembers that she used to be in the Stealth Force, and she knows just how to do that.
"Like-like him?" she echoes. She puts a finger to her chin. She looks up at the ceiling, scrunches her nose, and then shuts her eyes and smiles peacefully. "Nah."
"Did you seriously just ask me if I 'like-like' Mashiro?"
Captain Muguruma leans against the wall, looking annoyed, and Hisagi feels very small. Still, he squares his shoulders, looks politely just past the captain instead of right at him, and barks out, "Yes! Just curious, sir!"
"Are you five?" he mutters as he walks past. Hisagi notes that his face is flushed and he has a hand over it.
"It's just, well, I had a talk with Miss Kuna, and-"
The captain slams a stack of spare papers on his desk and looks to Hisagi with a sudden intensity. "You had a talk with her? About what?"
"What her feelings regarding the captain were, sir, and-"
"And what did she say?" Captain Muguruma tugs at his gloves anxiously, trying to look stern and busy, but Hisagi thinks he looks rather excited.
"That, uh, that you're friends, of course. She told me a little about how you two worked together, and that was all."
He looks maybe, just maybe, disappointed. "That's all?"
Hisagi decides to take a leap- he's too curious, and he's willing to suffer the verbal and physical beating for asking the question. "You sound disappointed, captain. Does that mean… you like Miss Kuna?"
Kensei sighs, hard and heavy, slumps down in his chair and randomly flips through the stack of papers on his desk. He sets his chin in his hand and mutters, "What's it to you?"
"I'm only curious, sir. No ill-intentions, I swear."
He sees trepidation in his eyes, but also consideration, and hopes that he's about to be confided in.
"What I'm about to tell you doesn't leave this room, got it?"
To ensure that the captain does know that he has it, he shuts the door to the office and takes a polite seat.
"I liked Mashiro a long time ago," Kensei finally admits. Hisagi feels no better than a gossiping housewife as he leans forward in his seat, but embraces it. "Back when we were just seated officers. I still remember looking at her for the first time." The captain taps his fingers nervously against the desk and scrunches his nose, looking perplexed. "That annoying color of her hair, mostly. But also how nervous and eager to please she looked. We didn't get along for the first few months we worked together."
Hisagi tilts his head- maybe Miss Kuna's habit is rubbing off on him. "But you said-"
"But I came to like her. A lot." The captain is everywhere- rubbing his neck, tapping his fingers, shifting in his chair, looking out the window. "She was really sweet, if a bit annoying, and somehow always got her work done, even when she was goofing off. She was strong and mostly polite, and a lot of people had high opinions of her."
"Why… did you not pursue her?"
"I considered it." Kensei hands over this information almost reluctantly. "But the lieutenant of the Fourth at the time, Yamada, had a real sweet spot for her. Made me nervous. I left her alone and eventually forgot about it."
Hisagi feels disappointed, he has to admit. He was hoping that the captain was still carrying a torch for Mashiro. It would have made things interesting. "I see. You currently don't have feelings for her, then."
Kensei winces and whips a paper off the top of the pile and immediately starts writing on it. Hisagi sits in his chair for a few more minutes, wondering if he's wasting his time by waiting for a proper answer and if he needs to get back to work. He's just about to give up when the captain mutters, very quietly, "Not exactly."
"Sir?"
"I don't think I ever stopped liking her." The captain sounds so… small? That doesn't seem the right word to Hisagi, but it's the only one he can think of. "When she got hurt during the fight with the arrancar, I thought she was going to die."
The captain clenches his fist. Hisagi lets out a pitying, "sir…"
He grips his head and lets out a harsh, dry laugh. "All I wanted was to tear that brat in half. When he hurt her, it was the maddest I've ever been."
Hisagi frowns. "She was badly hurt?"
The captain puts down a paper and points a finger towards his temple. "If you move her hair over, you can see a big scar. It's leftover from the surgery Urahara and Unohana did on her. They almost had to reconstruct the entire half of her face."
Hisagi would have never known it, and is, for the umpteenth time in his career, impressed at Captain Unohana's skill. "So you still…"
Kensei stands, effectively silencing Hisagi,, and crosses the room to the door. "I'm done talking."
Hisagi isn't sure why he's so passionate about this suddenly. Why he's desperate for closure that doesn't even belong to him, because it doesn't even really matter, but he is, and so he stands. "Sir!"
The captain groans and stops. "I said I'm done talkin' about my feelings."
"If captain still likes Miss Kuna, why doesn't he pursue her?" He asks as formally and politely as possible, hoping that it spares him a punishment.
Kensei turns slowly, almost ominously, and glares at Hisagi until he feels like he's going to explode from anxiety. A heartbeat passes, then another, and then… The captain looks away from him, towards the floor, and puts a hand on the back of his neck. "If I ever did something sappy like confess, do you really think she'd love me back? I don't stand a chance."
It's inconceivable to Hisagi, completely baffling, that Captain Muguruma could be nervous, or that anyone would reject him. He's Kensei Muguruma, undoubtedly one of the best soldiers the Academy has ever produced, a captain, and a perfect model of what a shinigami should be.
He tries encouraging him. "Sir, if you give it a try, she just might-"
Kensei slides the door open, an effective interruption. "Forget it, kid. I've got it good. I'm not ruining what I have for some sort of whirlwind romance that would only hurt her and I."
"Sir-"
"This conversation is over, Hisagi," the captain insists. "Get these stupid thoughts out of your head and do some paperwork."
The door slams shut, nearly breaking off, and Hisagi fights the disappointment and anger worming around inside of him. He goes to his desk, sits, and tries his damndest to edit an article, but his heart isn't in it. He tries to file paperwork, but it's no use. Nothing stops the thoughts from swirling in his head that Captain Muguruma might be happier if he got his feelings off his chest, of how much he wants to help him and Miss Kuna. He's scarcely ever seen two people more in sync, and thinking of them apart feels wrong, in the truest sense of the word.
A commotion outside brings his attention to the window, and he finds the captain shouting at a passing soldier. Mashiro enters the scene, blithely smiling and waving her hand lazily (he can just hear her say, "Calm down, you stupid idiot!), and then the captain is glaring at her, his jaw tight and eyebrows furrowed. Mashiro pats his arm quickly, spins past him with her hair glinting in the noon light, and disappears out of the view of the window with the scolded soldier.
The captain's shoulders slump, he visibly sighs, and Hisagi knows that he feels defeated.
He feels defeated, too.