Well, welcome to chapter two! Thanks to all of my readers, reviewers, watchers, and favoriters (?) for getting BoH off to a great start! Hope you guys enjoy this one just as much as RDBH and that I can learn to stop abusing exclamation points!

Warnings: For this chapter, more allusions to underage sexual situations.

Rei: Japanese woman's name, in this case meaning 'nothing' or 'zero.'

'obaa-san' - traditional honorific meaning 'grandmother,' although this is occasionally also applied to elderly women of no relation. (Ichigo is known to call Yamamoto 'jii-san,' or 'Gramps,' in the same manner that Kyouraku calls him 'Yama-jii,' roughly 'Old Yama.' A more polite form would be ojii-san, meaning 'grandfather.' Dropping the 'o' eliminates a significant portion of the respect involved in the term.)


BONDS OF HONOR

Chapter 2: Secrets of Gold


Matsumoto was drunk.

Very drunk, in fact, which was rather unusual, given that it was only lunchtime. While the wayward Lieutenant often spent her workdays in varying shades of 'tipsy,' she usually waited for the workday to end before attempting to thoroughly drown her problems in the bottom of a bottle.

It was, therefore, her Captain's regrettable duty to find out why she was seeking the solace of sake hours earlier than usual.

" 's b'cause... b'cause Gin is a bat rastard," she informed him gravely, when he finally grew fed up enough to ask. Her hair was tumbled across her face; she flipped it back out of her already-bloodshot eyes with an absent wave of her hand that knocked over one of the empty bottles littering her desk.

"I see," Hitsugaya answered, watching, carefully blank-faced, as the bottle rolled across the paper-littered surface of the desk, smearing more than one critical document, before toppling over the edge and plummeting to the floor. It was saved from smashing only by landing on a large pile of paperwork that Matsumoto had knocked over an hour earlier, littering the floor beside her desk. "Is this observation a result of any particular action, or just a generalization?"

Drink-muddled blue eyes blinked back at him, working through the clearly overcomplicated question for a long moment, before comprehension dawned. "He was at the Twelfth," came the very slow, very carefully-enunciated reply. "An' Shuuhei was there. An' he told Kira that Gin said to say 'hi' to him, but he never said anything t' me," she continued morosely, before blinking twice, staring at him out of glazed eyes. "He likes him, you know," she added, with an air of imparting a great secret of the universe.

It was a testament to the unfortunate amount of experience Hitsugaya possessed in Matsumoto-logic that he had no difficulty in distilling the drunken rambling into a semi-coherent whole.

"Gin is a rat bastard because he likes Kira and didn't ask Shuuhei to say hello to you?"

"Yes!" came the triumphant yelp, and Matsumoto attempted to slap one hand on the top of her desk for emphasis, but, given that she had shifted her chair rather far to the side, managed to miss the desk entirely and nearly topple out of her seat as a result. There was a long pause while she reoriented herself, during which Hitsugaya sighed softly went back to his paperwork.

When she'd managed to return herself to the intended location at her desk, Matsumoto narrowed her eyes slightly and squinted across the office at her superior, head weaving slightly as she did so.

"D' you think that Gin's a, uhm, a rat bastard too, Captain?"

"Of course," Hitsugaya answered steadily, frowning when the head of his brush glanced off the rim of his ink disk and splattered the top of his desk. "He hurt the people he'd sworn to protect. That doesn't give him a particularly high standing in my books."

"Mmhm. You're not making fun of me, are you, Captain?" She was listing sideways in her chair; frowning in concentration, she managed to prop herself up on one elbow, staring at him expectantly.

"No, Matsumoto," he sighed back, not raising his head from the papers before him. "I don't find this funny at all."

Apparently satisfied, Matsumoto took another drink.


When she passed out on the couch half an hour later, he carefully covered her with a blanket, made sure there was a wastebasket and a glass of water within her reach, and headed to the Eighth to threaten Kyouraku with a frosty fate if the man did not stop supplying Matsumoto's alcohol habit.


When Matsumoto woke up again, an hour after sundown, she utilized both the wastebasket and the water for the purpose her Captain had intended, downed another bottle of sake without blinking, and stumbled out of the barracks, destined for Rukongai.


His haori hanging safely in his wardrobe, Hitsugaya silently pulled the charcoal-colored cloak tighter around his shoulders, the hood up to disguise his distinctive hair. His reiatsu was wrapped tighter around him than the fabric of the cloak; he had no desire to be detected tonight.

Hyorinmaru, blade still secure upon his master's back, shifted restlessly within the young Captain's mind.

"Are you certain this is wise?" the ancient dragon rumbled, and Hitsugaya suppressed the urge to sigh as he slipped out around his Division's night guards, silent as a fleeting shadow.

"Probably not," he answered silently, darting off the path and into the shadow of a bush as a group of unseateds from the Ninth meandered by, talking too loudly about a recently-rebuilt bar out in Rukongai's thirty-fourth District. Once they were past, he carefully extricated himself from the his meagre shelter - occasionally, there were advantages to being as small as he was - and darted out to the grassy verge.

He couldn't use Shunpo - the use of reiatsu would be easy for someone to detect - but even running he was as fast as the winter winds, and Matsumoto, drunk as she still was, moved slowly tonight. It didn't take him long to catch sight of her, meandering her way through the twining maze of streets that lead through the better districts.

It took almost two hours before Matsumoto finally stopped in front of a - comparatively, at least - tidy and sound house deep in the twenty-third. The walk, and the time, had at least taken the edge off of her intoxication, and she managed to stand relatively straight at the doorway as she knocked.

The old woman who answered the door had a pinched, unpleasant face that seemed at odds with her clearly overfed body, crammed into a black yukata decorated with biliously pink flowers. Hitsugaya - himself ensconced less than happily halfway up a tree at the far edge of the clearing where the building resided - was too far away to pick out smaller details than that, or catch the voices of the pair when they spoke.

As soon as she opened the door to Matsumoto, though, the old woman leaned back into the house to shout for something, apparently angering Matsumoto in the process; even from this distance, he could see her shoulders tighten, the angry clench of her fists and toss of her head.

The anger vanished, though, when a second figure, small, thin and dark-haired, garbed in a plain brown yukata, appeared in the doorway next to the old woman. Instantly, Matsumoto's shoulders unknotted, and, her entire form virtually radiating joy, Matsumoto stepped forward and embraced the newcomer. When she pulled back a second later, Matsumoto leaned forward, setting her hands on the figure's shoulders, clearly questioning something. When she received only a nod in response, she shook her head, clearly dissatisfied, and turned away.

Unhesitatingly, the other followed after her, leaving the old woman alone in the doorway. She sneered after them for a brief moment, then slammed the door, cutting off the glare of yellow lantern-light from within.

Without the harsh backlight, it was easier for Hitsugaya's dark-sharp eyes to make out the details of Matsumoto's companion; a girl, he realized, as the pair of them walked across a well-worn path, moving diagonally away from the house and somewhat closer to the tree he was obscured in.

She had to be close to Hitsugaya's own age - within a decade either way, he decided, narrowing his eyes as the pair passed close by 'his' tree. The threadbare yukata was wrapped tight around a body that was a few shades too thin to be called healthy, but the girl moved steadily in Matsumoto's wake, her strides confident on the packed-dirt path.

Hitsugaya waited long enough for the pair to get to the limits of his vision, then pulled his reiatsu and his cloak tighter still, slipped down from his tree, and followed.


It took only a few minutes of walking along the narrow, well-trodden path for Matsumoto and her little shadow to reach their destination; a small, grassy clearing, sheltered by a dense ring of thorn-laden bushes on the ground and a ring of shadowing trees above them.

Without any particular desire to be prickled to bits, Hitsugaya took to the trees once again, finding one with a broad branch twice head-hight off the ground, and stretched out along the branch, keeping himself obscured behind a large clump of leaves. From that vantage point, he could see the entire clearing with minimal difficulty, but wasn't likely to be spotted by his bleary-eyed Lieutenant.

Matsumoto, for her part, stopped at the edge of the path where it entered the clearing and knelt down in front of a cairn of rocks, carefully extracting... lanterns?

Yes, Hitsugaya realized, lanterns. Four of them, to be more exact, all of which she lit with a careful kidou burst - a very careful kidou burst, given how intoxicated she still must have been and how little force was actually required to light a well-filled storm lantern.

Without a word exchanged between them, the girl calmly picked up two of the now-burning lanterns, and crossed the clearing to place them carefully on a pair of small boulders, spaced at roughly equal distances across the side of the clearing. Matsumoto did the same with the other pair of lanterns, and between the four of them, the small clearing proved to be quite well-lit.

If you had asked Hitsugaya his predominant emotion at that point, the answer would have been 'confusion.' For one thing, Matsumoto - who was quite happy to drown herself and anything resembling her responsibilities in the office under a flood of rice wine during the day - was in a field in Rukongai in damn near the middle of the night, dutifully attending to what appeared to be a standing appointment with the thin-faced girl.

His confusion doubled, however, when Matsumoto crossed to a gnarled tree that sat like a brooding vulture over the livelier brambles ringing the clearing. Without hesitating, she slid one hand into the twisted hollow at the center of the tree, then carefully withdrew... a bokken?

Blinking in utter disbelief, Hitsugaya watched as a the wooden blade was tossed to the girl - she caught it single-handed - and a second one extracted from the center of the twisted tree.

Weapon steady in her hand, Matsumoto turned, strode steadily back to the center of the clearing, and stopped facing the girl, raising her blade in a kendo salute. The gesture was returned automatically, thin hands tightening on the wrapped wooden hilt.

"Defend," Matsumoto said simply, and lunged forward.

Eyes narrowing, Hitsugaya watched the blades collide.


At ten-thirty the next morning, Hitsugaya raised his head at the sound of the office door sliding open, his mouth thinning as his Lieutenant tried to slip in without being noticed. Inconspicuous, however, she was not, particularly when entering her workplace two and a half hours late.

"Matsumoto!"

"Yeek!" Jumping enough to risk accidental exposure, she clamped both arms over her chest, hands at her shoulders and elbows pressed against her sides. "Captain, don't scare me like that!"

"How would you like me to scare you, Matsumoto?" came the return growl, and she paused, blinking, unsure whether her Captain was joking or not.

Setting his brush down, Hitsugaya shoved the paper he'd been working on aside and leveled his fiercest glare on the woman. "Matsumoto, tell me, in your own words, what you did while you were on duty yesterday."

"While I was... on duty? Why do you ask, Captain?"

"An exemplary Lieutenant, Matsumoto, will arrive on time to their office, complete their paperwork and assigned duties in good order, and return to their own quarters or an appropriate establishment to relax once off-duty."

That earned him a few blinks of china-doll eyes, and what appeared to be an utter lack of comprehension of the point he was trying to make. Scowling, he jabbed a finger at the woman as he spoke. "You, Matsumoto, are the farthest thing from an exemplary Lieutenant ever discovered by the Gotei. You arrived two hours late, did none of your assigned tasks, and spent the entire workday dumping sake down your throat!"

Blue eyes widened, blinked again, and he could see the last remnants of a hangover being burned from her frontal brain by the first delicate tendrils of alarm. That was for the best - the point had to be driven home with heavy strokes if it was to take root.

"Captain, I -"

He cut her off, his voice level and cold. "Matsumoto, you are a drunkard and an escapist. Since you took the position, your performance as a Lieutenant has been nothing short of abysmal, and it is getting worse. To date, the only effective task in this office you have managed is that of a paperweight."

When Matsumoto jerked back a half-step, shock opening her mouth, he steeled himself and struck for the kill. "If you plan to continue teaching kendo to Rukongai brats, you are expected to finish your assigned duties first."

The blow hit home.

Her face going chalk-white, Matsumoto staggered backwards, colliding with her desk and scattering a pile of papers from the top of it. The hiss of falling parchment didn't cover the sudden, panicked gasping of her breath.

"You - how?" came the trembling whisper, as long fingers twisted frantically against the edge of the desktop, manicured nails bending and finally cracking as they tore into the wood.

"As your Captain, I have a right to investigate any aspect of my subordinate's personal lives that I believe is interfering with the fulfillment of their duties," he answered, voice arctic as he stared at her.

"You... followed me?"

Yesterday, when she'd asked if he had been making fun of her, his only thought was how painful it was to see his Lieutenant in the state she'd been in; angry with the world, numbed with alcohol and cynicism.

Today, he realized that the intoxicated numbness she'd been inflicting on herself was nothing compared to this - the pain of watching one of the most perpetually optimistic, unfailingly cheerful people he knew breaking down in front of him, fear and pain clouding eyes that never ceased to smile.

She'd smiled for Kira's sake, when he came to her, broken after Gin's betrayal. She'd smiled for Shuuhei and Komamura, when they'd twice mourned together for the loss of Tousen. She'd smiled for Hinamori, as the girl mustered the courage to leave her old life and the pain of Aizen's betrayals behind, walking away from her childhood friend for the last time. She'd even smiled for Toushirou himself; when she'd first found him, nearly freezing his grandmother to death with his uncontrolled reiatsu. When he'd joined the Academy and turned the record-books on their ear, just as Gin had done a few decades before, by graduating in under a year. (Hitsugaya, however, had managed it with full honors and attained a seated position upon graduating, something Gin had literally had to kill for.) She'd kept smiling for Hitsugaya as he won his way up through the ranks, accepted command of the Tenth, and became the most notoriously irritable Captain in the Gotei.

Through it all, Matsumoto smiled, gentle hands ready to catch her friends when they fell, and support them as they found their feet again.

For all of them, she'd smiled.

Last night, an hour into the practice bouts, the thin girl had managed to knock Matsumoto's blade from her hand and halfway across the clearing, and Matsumoto had laughed in sheer joy. It was, he realized now, probably the first time he'd ever heard such an unforced, untainted sound from her.

Locking his own eyes on Matsumoto's terrified ones, he asked quietly, "Who is she, Matsumoto?"

Pale hands lost their grip on the edge of the desk, knees buckling under the weight of fear that pressed upon her shoulders. Gracelessly, Matsumoto allowed herself to fall, crumpling to her knees before her desk, head hanging as tears began to well in her eyes. The answer, torn from her throat on a trembling whisper, hung heavy on the air before her.

"She's my daughter."


The crack of wooden swords echoed again, slim feet - one set bare, the other still clad in waraji and tabi socks, growing damp with the early dew - dancing through the grass to the rhythm of the blows. Another flurry of cracks, blows and blocks and parries, and a quick, breathless voice calls 'Hold!'

The heavier bokken draws back, falls motionless against a round shoulder, and Matsumoto waits patiently while the girl she matches unties the black scarf that is perpetually bound over her hair.

The thin tendrils that have escaped the braid to fall, rebellious, around her face, are soaked with sweat, but barely darkened from their natural white-blond shade.


"Your..." For a moment, Hitsugaya can't find his breath. "Your daughter?"

When Matsumoto simply nods, hair curtaining her anguished face, he sits silently for a moment, letting the information settle in his mind.

When it does, he very quietly gets up from his seat, retrieves a pitcher of drinking water and a glass from a corner of the bookshelf. The sound of liquid pouring lifts Matsumoto's head from sheer curiosity; surprise sends her cross-eyed when the glass is abruptly thrust under her nose.

"Drink," comes the gruff demand, and she does so, only partly because her mouth is still dry and horrid-tasting from last night's drinking. When the glass is empty, he takes it back without a word, sets it on the table next to the couch, and comes back to hook a hand under her arm. "Come on," he orders softly, pulling her gently to her feet, and she allows herself to be guided to the sofa. She sits as he orders, staring helplessly at the table and the empty glass on it as her Captain vanishes again.

She's more surprised than she should be when he reappears a few seconds later, carrying the water pitcher and a second glass.

"All right, Matsumoto," he says softly, filling both glasses before he sits down beside her. "Tell me."

Picking the glass up, she stares down at the water filling it, and almost smiles as she begins.

"Gin and I were still children when he left Rukongai for the Academy," Matsumoto began, sipping slowly at her glass. "He didn't tell me he was leaving, but then, he never did. I'd come to half-expect him to up and vanish without warning, but I always expected him to come back..." Sighing, she lowered the glass, staring down at the water trembling within. "I guess I should have known, that time. It was the first time we'd ever..."

When the sentence trailed to silence, Hitsugaya prodded her with a soft 'Ever what, Matsumoto?'

The arched eyebrow that answered him left a mortified blush tracing across his cheeks. After a long moment spent sputtering incoherent syllables, the young Captain fell silent, shook his head and gestured for her to continue.

"It took almost three months before the rumors of a silver-haired genius sweeping the Shinigami Academy reached back to my District," she explained. "By that time, though, I knew that... well, the expression 'it only takes once' is right, anyway," she grimaced, waving one hand towards her midsection. Sighing softly, Matsumoto slumped against the back of the couch, letting her head fall backwards. "I stayed a few years, long enough to make sure she could take care of herself. And then I left her with Rei-obaa-san, and followed Gin."

Little wonder that the words sounded bitter as she spoke them. She'd left her own child in order to follow the man who had forever been leaving her behind.

"I've been going back as often as I can ever since, trying to spend time with her, make her believe that I love her." The words were sighed, weary under the weight of decades worth of guilt and pain. "I was actually coming back from visiting her when I first ran into you, Captain. I suppose it's true what they say about Fate being a fickle mistress, eh?"

"Quite," Hitsugaya answered dryly, frowning at the table. Silence rang for a long moment before he spoke again. "You've been teaching her the Shinigami arts."

There was no question in the words, but Matsumoto nodded anyway, pushing herself up off the back of the couch to meet his eyes again. "Yes. She's not a prodigy, not like Gin or yourself, Captain... although perhaps that's for the best," she added, chuckling weakly.

"It might be some cause for concern among the upper echelons if she were," he admitted, frown lightening ever-so-slightly. "But why isn't she in the Academy already? Certainly she's of age, and I know she has the reiatsu potential to be admitted. With you guiding her combat skills, she should have no problem gaining entry."

"The problem is what it always is for Rukon children," Matsumoto answered, sighing into her cup. "Money. I don't know if you're aware, Captain - you wouldn't have had to deal with it, given your reiatsu levels when I first found you - but scholarships to Rukongai students are very limited. Although the Academy will always make arrangements for students of exceptional potential, like you, the average Rukon children have to compete with the children of low nobility and other Seireitei families for the right to enter with monetary aide. Sometimes a sponsor will pick up the expenses of a child's schooling, but the Academy itself will only assign scholarships to those they consider exemplary. And as limited as the scholarships are..."

"Let me guess. Not enough funds for all of the Rukon brats to be put through?"

"Exactly," sighed Matsumoto. "And the stipend I send Rei every month means I can't save the funds for Academy tuition."

"I see," Hitsugaya answered, nodding faintly as he toyed with the condensation on his water glass. After a moment of thought, he asked softly, "Who else knows about your daughter?"

The answer was as swift as it was surprising; "Nobody. You are the only person in the Gotei who knows of her existence."

White eyebrows shot upwards, creasing the pale forehead. "You never told Ichimaru?"

"What was I supposed to say to him?" she snapped back, eyes flashing as she slammed her glass down on the table. " 'Oh, by the way, Gin, you got me pregnant the first time we slept together, let me introduce you to our daughter'?"

Hitsugaya grimaced mildly. Put like that, it did sound rather... "The subject never came up during... later meetings?"

A snort answered him. "Gin didn't waste a great deal of time thinking about the consequences of our meetings, Captain. I don't think they mattered enough for him to care."

"That's unfortunate," Hitsugaya replied, standing up slowly and collecting both glasses and the pitcher. When Matsumoto hadn't moved from the couch after her Captain had returned to his desk and restarted his paperwork, a frigid glare was leveled in her direction. "Matsumoto..."

"Eh?"

"I will not continue to tolerate a Lieutenant who is good for nothing more than a paperweight, Matsumoto. Regardless of your personal history, you are expected to complete your work," he added, jabbing his brush at her laden desk.

Her face went white, before a narrow flush of angry red crept across her cheeks. "I just trusted you with something I've never told anyone, and you -"

Clenching his teeth on the apologies he wanted to make, the sympathy he wanted to give her, he forced his voice to its notorious parade-ground bark. "Get to work, Matsumoto!"

Fists clenched and eyes glittering, she pushed herself up from the couch, fury and betrayal warring across her features. For one moment she stood, tears of hurt flooding her eyes as she glared at him, before his silent stare sent her spinning around, storming back to her desk.

Bending his head over his own work, Hitsugaya tried to ignore the silent flow of tears down Matsumoto's cheeks.


"You may break for lunch," he said flatly, as the shadow of the sundial edged around to one o'clock. "I will expect you back in no more than an hour."

It was the first either of them had spoken since he'd ordered her to her work two hours before; she'd been making her way steadily through the stack of papers on her desk, eyes diamond-hard and still heavy with tears.

The only acknowledgement she gave his words was to carefully cap her ink and rinse and set aside her brush, shuffle her completed papers into order, push back from her desk, and leave without a word.

Closing his eyes, Hitsugaya leaned back in his chair, trailing her reiatsu signature until she was well out of the barracks and headed deeper into Seireitei, looking for a place for lunch. Oftentimes, she would simply meander her way over to the Eighth, but Kyouraku was absent today, headed into the Living World for Rukia's wedding, and even Matsumoto would not stoop to raiding the man's wine cellar when he was not present to help.

When it was reasonably certain that Matsumoto wouldn't make an abrupt return to the office, Hitsugaya quietly drew out a sheaf of papers he'd been working on earlier in the morning and added a few notes to it. Once the ink had dried, crossed the room to tuck the papers under the much-diminished stack on the corner of his Lieutenant's desk, then ventured off to the Division's Mess to see what was available for his own lunch.


Matsumoto returned as quietly as she'd left, resuming her seat and her work without a word. The pile of papers shrank quickly under her still-furious attentions, and Hitsugaya kept his gaze steadily on his own work, perfectly aware that he'd know when she reached the last set of forms.

It was nearly evening by the time she did so, but he heard the soft scrape of the staple in the papers against the wood of her desk, the pause as she tried to equate the forms in her hand with standard Division paperwork, and the sharply indrawn breath as she realized that they were nothing of the sort.

"Captain -"

"Hm?" he answered mildly, raising his head from the crossword he'd resorted to an hour ago, waiting for her to finish.

"Captain, these -" The sheaf of papers, small boxes filled with Hitsugaya's tight, neat writing, were brandished by a shaking hand. "When did you - ?"

"First thing this morning, before you came in," he answered calmly, and watched as Matsumoto's eyes widened to a degree he wouldn't have believed possible.

The Shinigami Academy admission forms, nearly complete, were placed carefully, almost reverently, back on the desk. In the box next to 'Sponsor,' the name 'Hitsugaya Toushirou' was written in clear, bold strokes. Staring down at the papers, Matsumoto laughed, a breathy exhalation with more than a hint of tears behind it. "Captain, you... I spent all morning hating you," she laughed, the faintest shade of hysteria coloring the words. "Why did you have to trick me like that?"

"By putting it at the bottom of your stack, you mean? If I'd left it at the top, the remainder of your paperwork would have been left unfinished," he answered dryly, the corners of his mouth twitching upward when she blushed dully.

"You will find, however, that those forms are almost completed," he added softly. "All that's left to be filled out is her name."

When Matsumoto shot him a startled look, he shrugged slightly. "You never mentioned it."

"I didn't, did I?" she laughed weakly, shaking her head and swiping at her eyes with the heels of her hands. "It's Kin. Matsumoto Kin."


O


Translation Notes: The name Kin is a multi-layered pun. Phonetically, it is similar to her father's name, Gin (meaning: silver), and the name Kin means 'gold,' a reference to her hair.

Yes, I will be introducing more OC's through the course of this story, as well as bringing back a few familiar faces. Next chapter, we'll return to Karakura, peek in on Ichigo and Rukia's wedding again, and see how the rest of the gang is doing.

Reviews are love!