Notes: hints at 392 in the end, but there shouldn't be any solid spoilers, I think.
The sun blooms beautifully over Seireitei.
It is summer, and the sky is painted up brilliantly in the most impossible shade of blue. The wind is cooperating too with a nice, subtle breeze, and this is just that kind of day, he supposes, where you don't want to do anything important.
Hitsugaya's appreciation is short-lived, naturally. Once the hour starts to actually taste like summer, the lieutenant of the tenth division slips away with a bottle of sake, a laugh, and a toss of her wild ginger curls. Hitsugaya only sighs at her indiscretion – by now, he can categorize her type well enough to know that she wasn't going to work to begin with anyhow – and picks up the first report of the day.
Double-takes, just to be sure.
He knows this inkwork.
That faint lingering scent of peaches.
A letter, he realizes, and all the formalities are almost forgotten. That's all it takes.
He rechecks himself, though – he's a captain now, gotta act like one – calmly unfolds the sheet, and his eyes trace over every exquisite bold black calligraphic stroke until he finishes reading and rereading again.
A moment passes before he sets the letter down and goes back to thumbing through the paperwork.
After all, if he finishes early enough, he can go see her.
It's kind of a big deal, not that he'll ever admit to it. After all nowadays, he sees her at least once a week. That's over fifty memories a year.
That's over three hundred memories less than before.
When it comes down to it, he supposes, she reminds him of summertime.
Even in the coldest winters, when the bitter frost dusts every rooftop in Soul Society, she carries summer with her in just a single lift of a smile. Hitsugaya knows—it's enough to melt even the snow.
It's in the summertime when her smiles are more frequent, her cheeks are pinker, and her warmth is even greater and more tangible. But it's in the wintertime when the idea of summer becomes suddenly important. Left alone, Hitsugaya knows, he might just freeze up entirely once the ice consumes him.
Even he's not completely immune to frostbite.
There are a million moments that feel like infinity.
All combined, they feel like they will never fade.
It goes fine the first few scores of years—as fine things get in Soul Society, anyway. But another few years pass by, and Hitsugaya is older. He has matured, and he too has seen more than he'd initially calculated. And he is beginning to learn, to learn that distance can change everything, that distance is the constant, that distance is what matters.
He learns this one the hard way, and there's nothing he can do about it now.
Distance is first the lateral space between them when he first warns her about the third division; it's the chilling desperation in her scream when she finds her captain murdered. Distance is when he orders to have her locked up. Distance is the shattering feeling he gets when she breaks down in front of him, and the new, cold world between them when she points her Zanpakuto at him.
And then despair.
"Why did you lie to me?"
Distance suddenly becomes everything.
According to Matsumoto, Kira and Abarai both visit her in the first week she's been permitted to have visitors.
It takes Hitsugaya a full two weeks before he finally gets up and go.
He looks up at the sky—a painted tangerine smeared with yellows and reds and the beginning shots of purple drawn—and the lingering clouds overhead. It reminds him of home, of Rukongai, of easy summer afternoons and popsicle snacks, and other things that they used to do together. The thought is comforting enough, so he pushes through the doors.
And he doesn't know what is it that the others see first (his white hair, his turquoise eyes, or the formal white captain's robes over his back: which is it?), but the attending shinigami bolts at his post, clearly startled.
"Captain!" He greets respectfully, unsure.
Hitsugaya nods in acknowledgment. "Is Hinamori in here?"
The shinigami shuffles over to young captain and nods in response. "Yeah—the lieutenant's resting up in the last room over there—do you want me to come with you?"
Hitsugaya only glances once. "It's fine," he says shortly.
He walks to the last room slowly, because he doesn't know what he expects. He doesn't know what he's looking for—or even if he is, at all. But time's up, and the door is in front of him, so he puts his hand on the wood, runs fingers over the smooth texture, and slides the frame open.
"Hinamori," he starts out of respect.
He stops.
She's curled up in a corner. She doesn't even look up.
Hitsugaya wonders briefly if she's asleep—but her reiatsu tells of a whole different story.
It's completely unstable.
Finally, after a long while, she turns to face him, and Hitsugaya almost tumbles backwards at the sight of her face.
Steady tears slide down her porcelain face, but that isn't the worst part. There's still the red veining at the corners of her eyes, the dark circles set deep under her eyes, the deathly white tone of her skin, and the obvious bruised swell of her lower lip.
The desperation cut in her eyes.
His mouth parts.
But the worst part is when she finally speaks.
"'Shiro..." she starts, a sort of faint wonder caught in her voice, "why am I still alive?"
This time it only takes him a day.
He's outside her door again and this time, she looks up once he opens it and lets the light spill on the smoothed wooden floor. She winces slightly at the sudden burst of white, but this time her lips peel back in a small, cracked smile.
"'Shiro..." she greets.
Hitsugaya fixes his gaze at a spot over her head.
It takes him a while to search for the right words, but in the end, he's still uncertain and lost and settles with: "Do you want to come watch the sunset with me?"
But it's enough.
The sun is round and soft and yellow and starts to gently touch the mountain peaks.
He looks at her, assesses the awe drawn on her face, and his mouth slants in a half-smile. "Look at you," he teases. "Lookin' at the sky all wide-eyed like you've never seen it before."
A hint of color touches her cheeks—animates the light in her eyes. "Shut up," Hinamori returns, smiling. "At least at my height, I can see more of the sky than you can."
Hitsugaya scowls but the smile is on his face all the same. He's only barely containing his relief.
"But..." Hinamori trails off.
The skies are exploding in tangerine.
He glances over. "But what?"
She laughs slightly, pushes a tuft of hair over her ear. "I never really liked sunsets," she admits.
Hitsugaya pauses. The Hinamori he knows is not the type of person to say things like that.
"What do you mean?" He asks carefully.
"It's like watching something end," she says, and they both know exactly what she's talking about. Hitsugaya opens his mouth to intervene, to change the subject, but she continues, suddenly determined-alive. "Toshiro... are you planning to... I mean, the next time you see Captain Aizen..."
He looks away from her.
The sky is now drenched in a bath of red.
Spreads.
"No," he finally says, closing off. "I can't do that."
And then anguish. "Shiro—"
He suddenly turns to her and grasps her shoulders. "Why?" He starts. "Don't you know what he did to you?"
A long silence passes.
He lets go, looks away, and all that's left is a long silence.
And they're both still so young too – there's still a whole world out there just waiting to happen. He thinks he's seen enough to know enough, to be able to appraise the gravity of the situation, but she shakes her head, gasps, "No it's not—don't say—" the silence stretches again before she says with a final raw note of despair, "You don't understand."
It's enough to pierce through him.
The space between them suddenly becomes very infinite. The fifth division vice-captain turns her heel and sprints off in the opposite direction, leaving only the sweet, lingering balm of peaches behind. A million miles of distance. Hitsugaya stands there, speechless, broken, everything, nothing, until the sun finally sets—sinks into the ground until the black swallows Soul Society whole. He can only imagine a thousand mirrors shattering.
The image stays with him for a very long time.
When the time comes, it takes him less than a second to understand.
The distance between his Zanpakuto and her heart can speak for itself.