Matsumoto Rangiku longed for the warm night air. She wanted to be outside, in a heady breeze scented with clover and grass, listening to the crickets and the quiet rustle of leaves. She wanted to lie on the banks of the river and nurse a bottle of sake until the moon set and the Water Bearer was high in the sky.
Instead, her steadfast loyalty kept her inside in the chilly relief station tonight, at the bedside of her captain. He was excessively pale against the white sheets. Whiter than she'd ever seen him; she couldn't even make out the minute veins on his eyelids or the backs of his hands. He'd lost a lot of blood in that last mission--too much blood, Captain Unohana had explained, for someone who was as small as Captain Hitsugaya was. And maybe it had been that statement that made Matsumoto's eyes keep returning to the glowing bottom number on the health monitor over his head.
62.
Below the impossibly low heart rate displayed on the monitor, beneath the dangerous blood pressure reading and the temperature far under what a living person's ought to be, was the number 62. It was such an arbitrary number, and so faintly labeled that Matsumoto at first had wondered what it was. Squinting, she was able to see the little abbreviation next to it: 'lb.'
Pounds. Sixty-two pounds, that's what Hitsugaya Toshiro weighed. Matsumoto stared at the number, then down at her captain. He'd barely woken since she'd brought him here yesterday. A light sheen of sweat covered his forehead and cheekbones, so she wiped it away with a damp cloth and let her thoughts drift back to her earliest memories of him. He'd been such a tiny boy when she'd first ran across him in the Rukongai. She had thought nothing of compelling him to join the ranks of the Shinigami; it was obviously where he belonged. She hadn't expected to ever meet him again. Ironic that he'd been promoted past her own rank in such a short time, and in fact had become her own immediate supervisor.
The first time she'd sparred with him was the day after he'd been made her captain, and she hadn't been able to stop grinning as they walked out to the training grounds. With his lightning fast flash steps and astounding swordsmanship for one so young, he'd wiped that goofy grin off her face in two minutes flat. He hadn't grown much in the few years since she'd first met him, but she found that more and more over the next few weeks, he was definitely a man in her eyes. A short-tempered, round-faced, grumpy man that didn't come up to her shoulder, but still a man. She liked to tease him so he'd make that cute frowny face, and she slacked off on paperwork because hell, he was better at it than she was! But she didn't see him as a child, the way she knew some of the other captains did.
Matsumoto focused her gaze and found it resting on her captain's hand, which lay next to his head on the white pillow. His smallest fingers were curled in toward the palm like an infant's, and his little fingernails were awfully purple. Matsumoto lifted the covers and tucked his hands down over his chest, so he wouldn't be so cold. His hands were thin and icy. She knew he was always cold, and in fact suffered much in hot weather. He never bundled up against the cold like others did in the winter, just tucked his hands into his slightly-too-long sleeves and marched right through the biting wind and snow without paying mind to those who shivered around him.
Which was odd, she thought, because people who were small or thin were always more susceptible to cold temperatures in her experience. At sixty-two pounds he ought to have frozen to death by now, surely? Especially on those icy winter nights out in Rukongai. Matsumoto tucked the covers a little tighter around him. It must have something to do with Hyorinmaru. He'd said he dreamed of fields of ice; she believed the arctic winds in his mind and heart were far more powerful than the chill of the training grounds in January. Matsumoto imagined a little blue ice dragon sitting on Hitsugaya's shoulder while he stood at attention, giving orders to the troops before a mission, keeping him cool. Or perhaps curled around his neck like a scarf while he listened to the Commander drone on endlessly at some dull meeting.
The image of a shiny, grumpy little dragon riding around that way made her chuckle, and the noise woke her captain. The blood loss hadn't made his eyes any paler, and for a second everything in Matsumoto's world flashed bright turquoise as they opened and fixed on her. Inexplicably breathless, she stammered, "Sorry, Captain. I didn't mean to wake you. Look, I'm doing the paperwork!" She held up a stack of papers she'd brought with her to keep busy. (The medical unit's magazines were very, very boring.)
The barest ghost of a smile touched his pale lips, and his eyes fell shut again. She watched him lie there for a minute, his breath shallow and face blanched, before she turned her attention to the dreaded paperwork. She'd best finish this report on their mission before morning. With Hitsugaya out of commission, she really didn't have a choice but to do it. Let's see… I took out 4 Hollows from my station, and Captain got 17.
There was another one of those arbitrary numbers. Seventeen didn't really mean anything here, until you took in the fact that he'd done it by himself, without backup, while injured and sleep-deprived. They'd all appeared at once, and by the time Matsumoto had fended off the last one she was battling and raced to his post, they'd all been dead and he was bleeding heavily from a gash straight down his right forearm. At the time it hadn't looked like all that much blood, but like Unohana said, someone who only weighs sixty-two pounds doesn't have all that much blood to lose.
Matsumoto signed the report with a snort. Sixty-two pounds, and every ounce as hard as nails.
It was almost dawn. She got up, stretched, left her things by his bed because she'd return before breakfast. But she'd best walk down to the barracks and clear the empty bottles and trash out of their office now, in case Unohana let him out early and he found them. Maybe he'd be awake when she got back.
A/N: In response to a reviewer, I'd like to note that I got the weight of 62 pounds from Hitsugaya's page at bleach(dot)wikia(dot)com. I assume they got it from some official source.