AN: hey, look, chapter's two's edited now. erm, changed a few things, mostly the matsumoto stuff... cuz i /really/ don't like my portrayals of her... so i'm changing those parts the most... still, i think it'd be funny to compare the changed ones with the originals (which are still up on my da account as i've been too lazy to fix them yet... i probably won't until i finish all these updates... all the italics you know). anyway, here's chapter two and three's halfway done... with all luck i'll get two or more up tonight. (grins) review people, and tell me how i did! (loves you all for sticking around)
Chapter Two The Nature of Dragons
Instead of being angered by her response, he was frightened. She wasn't angry at him, he knew, but she wanted privacy while her heart splintered into millions of pieces. He needed to say something... something encouraging. "Hinamori..."
"No! No, Hitsugaya!" She spat his name out, hurling it at him with the force of a verbal insult. "Whatever you have to say, I don't want to hear it! I won't believe it! I'll never believe a word you say! Get out! Go! What don't you understand!? I don't want you here!" She stamped her foot impatiently, her fury exacerbated by Hitsugaya's complete lack of reaction.
What she didn't know was that he was reacting on the inside enough for both of them. "Why don't you disappear?? Why don't you leave me?? Why?!"
His face devoid of emotion, he responded, "I'm not Aizen, Hinamori." His voice rose with each syllable. "I'm not the one who stabbed you in the back while thanking you for your loyalty!" Each word punctured the wall of fury in Hinamori's face and forced her backward yet another step.
"No! He didn't do it, he didn't do it, he didn't do it..." Her voice trailed off, muttering the repeated sentence as she hugged her arms around herself. "You're wrong! You're lying! I told you I wouldn't believe you!" But still, she moaned in despair.
"I didn't come here to ruin your illusions. That's what he did! Don't deny his betrayal! Don't you dare let him control you even now, when he failed to kill you."
The tears threatening to fall from her eyes finally did in crystalline droplets, splashing noiselessly to the floor. "Stop it, please... Please, let me wake up and this nightmare be over..." She was no longer talking to him, she was sinking to her knees as her sobs erupted in full force. "Why Aizen-Taichou, why?" Her petite frame shook with the torment of her breaking heart, her mind replaying the scenes over and over.
Hitsugaya knelt down in front of her and tilted her chin up. "Listen to me—"
"No!" she hissed back, jerking back from his touch. "Stay away from me! Don't touch me!
I know you murdered Aizen-Taichou! Don't even come near me or I swear I'll..."
"You'll what? You'll slap me? What you could you possibly do to me? What could you possibly do that you haven't already done?" Suddenly his voice had turned self-mocking, his tone bitter. "I've murdered your precious captain, have I? Or maybe the villainous Hitsugaya was so distressed at your evident death that he took it upon himself to seek your revenge? Or maybe you hallucinated that lovely stabbing scene, and Aizen's letter proved my horrible guilt. But he couldn't possibly be truly evil, couldn't be the worst backstabber in the whole of soul society, he couldn't possibly have escaped every single captain in order to turn tail and hide in Hueco Mundo with his hollow allies, could he? Because you can't bear to believe you dedicated your life to a man who didn't care about you at all, except how he could use you."
That's when he realized Hinamori was looking at him in a totally new light. She had stopped crying and was staring at him in wide-eyed wonder. "What?" she asked, her voice breathless.
Hitsugaya stared at her, under the distinct impression he was missing something. Something apparently important, considering the hopeful expression on her face. "To which part of that were you asking clarification?" he asked, his eyes narrowing.
"Aizen-Taichou is alive?" Her eyes were lit up, suddenly excited, and Hitsugaya was unexpectedly confronted with the Hinamori of old, before this disaster had fallen. "Is he?" she demanded.
He stared at her, his eyes full of disbelief. "You'd better hope he's not. Because if he is, then I didn't kill him, did I? Which means he's the traitorous piece of filth we all know and thoroughly despise, which apparently you don't want to believe. You're screwed either way though, aren't you?" He knew he was killing her heart with every word, but he needed to say it. His mouth was operating totally outside of his control, telling her thoughts he'd promised himself to never say. She needed to let Aizen go and he needed her to. Or he'd be standing all his life on the sidelines waiting for someone who never intended on coming.
She crumpled before his eyes. "Why do you hate me? Why? I don't understand what I must have done to deserve this." Tears slid down her cheeks once more and she stared disconsolately at the floor.
Utterly unprepared for that reaction, Hitsugaya immediately gentled his tone. "I don't hate you, Hinamori... I—"
"Don't you dare call my name! I'm not your friend, Hitsugaya," she snarled into his face.
"Just leave me alone. Leave me alone! I want to be left by myself."
He definitely couldn't follow her constant mood swings. Why, why, was she insisting on this irrational prejudice against him? Why did she blame him for Aizen's defection? But such thoughts were for another time. Right now, they were distracting to the main problem.
Hinamori stood up, striking a defiant pose and glaring at him. "Go! Don't just sit there with that dull expression! How many times have I told you that I want you to leave!"
"Hinamori. Shut up." He stood and faced her, refusing to budge and not quite sure why. After all, this conversation was going nowhere.
She stamped her foot. "I will not shut up! Nothing you can do will deter me! Get out of my room!"
"No, I mean you're going to wake everyone up. You're in a clinic and many patients here are worse off than you. Show some respect for what they've endured."
Her responding look was blank and slightly mollified.
"I'll leave now. But Hinamori–don't waste your life on him. Or your sorrow." And with that, he swished out the door, his shinigami robes and taichou's haori rustling quietly together.
She slammed the door shut hard behind him. And burst into heart-wrenching sobs filled with the knowledge of her loss and betrayal.
From Hinamori's room, Hitsugaya went straight to Unohana-Taichou to inform her that Hinamori had awoken and her current mental state as a result. He recommended giving her some time to adjust to her new reality and Unohana wholeheartedly agreed with him, though she decided to keep watch on the fukutaichou's room for the time being.
"But how did she react to seeing you, Hitsugaya-Taichou?" She studied his face carefully, her piercing gaze picking out what he wasn't saying.
He shrugged, unwilling to discuss it with any amount of detail. "I didn't enjoy the experience if that's what you're asking."
Unohana nodded at him compassionately. She knew he wasn't ready to discuss the matter at any significant length yet, but she worried that he would put it off infinitely. Still, now wasn't the time to pressure him.
" If you'll excuse me." He exited her office in a swirl of captain's robes, heading back to his office. Dawn wasn't quite due for another hour yet, but the extra paperwork from Matsumoto might yet prove a sufficient distraction. On the other hand, reversing his decision, he didn't feel up to the monotonous tedium involved in another division's paperwork, especially when said division no longer had a taichou or a fukutaichou, though hopefully that last was soon to be corrected. And he most certainly was not about to do Aizen any favors at the moment. If he even had to read that... that scum's name... well, he couldn't be held responsible for his actions.
His control was slipping, faster and faster towards oblivion. The mindlessness was approaching and he needed to be there before it came. Unconsciously, he slipped into the quicker shunpo, flashstepping out of the Seireitei. His mind automatically sought out the deserted places of Rukongai, the places he knew were studiously empty and devoid of life. He stopped in one of many barren wastelands, emptiness stretching out from horizon to horizon. More importantly, he knew there would be no konpaku for miles and miles. He fell to his knees, feeling the wild screams erupting inside him, struggling to be unleashed. A frenzied roaring filled his ears and he finally gave in to the calls of Hyourinmaru.
Dragons innately personify the essence of paradox, he thought dispassionately to himself. Their needs were simultaneously simplistic and yet full of complexity. For example, a dragon is fiercely independent. It forges its own path and refuses the influence of any outside advice. Its raging terror cannot be subdued and neither can it be manipulated or given orders in any respect. However, it also possesses an intense loyalty and devotion accompanied by a yearning need to bestow said loyalty on something or someone. Hyourinmaru had wholly dedicated his sense of self to Hitsugaya. There was never a question of who his master would be. He knew Hitsugaya in ways Hitsugaya was incapable of even thinking. No flaw would stand in the way of his choice to uphold him. No neglect would ever be enough to cause Hyourinmaru to not support Hitsugaya in battle.
By the same token, Hyourinmaru's assistance and guidance were never conventional. He could not necessarily be counted on to do what Hitsugaya thought was best while fighting. Instead, displaying his characteristic independent streak, he would select an entirely new technique to employ. It had taken Hitsugaya much time to learn how to listen, especially in the midst of battle. It had been fairly difficult getting the hang of carrying on an internal discussion of fighting tactics at shunpo speed while tracking an opponent with equal skills to himself. Hyourinmaru, of course, had been the one to illuminate the best method for doing so. Hitsugaya, even once the technique was mastered, didn't fully understand the mechanism by which it succeeded, but he knew enough to realize the closest explanation was a merging of their conscious thought.
The way Hyourinmaru explained it to him was through visualization. Hitsugaya could close his eyes and see his essence, the parts of him that combined, formed the basic outline of who he was. Interlaced with it was a netting of ice that had, very purposefully, snarled itself into impossible knots. Over time, the ice continued to tangle and melt while Hitsugaya would fuse more and more into the ice until it was difficult to tell where the ice ended and Hitsugaya began.
As a result of the technique, Hyourinmaru and Hitsugaya never needed to talk in words. They merely understood each other, thoughts deeply ingrained on either side and full of complex subtleties that simply couldn't be expressed in words, they understood easily. Hyourinmaru's every emotion, Hitsugaya was also able to feel. It also worked in reverse. Hyourinmaru had dedicated every part of his being to Hitsugaya and vicariously experienced Hitsugaya's life as a result. When Hitsugaya was overwhelmed by the extent of imminent disaster, it was Hyourinmaru who provided the badly needed support and relief. He just took control of Hitsugaya. He had done it when Hitsugaya had seen Hinamori on the floor, stabbed and dying. It hadn't been complete control, but Hitsugaya had barely participated in thought and attention. Of course, the ideal in battle was to have the merge. It was what gave them such an edge in battle, the total unison with which they could fight. The old adage, "two heads are better than one," was extremely apt, especially with a shinigami and his zanpakutou. It hadn't been the best time to swallow Hitsugaya's "self" for a while, but it had been necessary. As a result, the battle had been over before it began. After all, Hyourinmaru was fighting virtually alone and he knew nothing of Aizen's techniques. Which, reflecting back, was precisely how Aizen planned it.
And now, Hitsugaya faced himself at the worst of his failures. He hadn't prevented her from being stabbed. He had screwed up one situation after another throughout the whole ryoka threat. He had trusted Aizen. No questioning idiocy there, despite everyone else having trusted him also. He had hit her in the face. He had been so distracted by his mental analysis that he had forgotten she would still attack him. He should have known she would attack. Even after that, Ichimaru had still nearly killed her. His nightmares just imagining what would have happened had Matsumoto not disobeyed his order were understandably horrific. He had not saved her then either. Following that, when he should have known she would still follow him, he didn't even realize, didn't even predict... It was his fault. He should have known she would follow him. Because of his lapse in attention, she had nearly died. If not for Unohana-Taichou, she would have.
But that wasn't the worst of it. He could live with his failures, because, in point of fact, she was still alive. It was Hinamori herself that he couldn't live without. And he was losing her. The look in her eyes that morning, the anger in her voice and her stare... She was pushing him away. She was pining for Aizen and pushing Hitsugaya further and further away, rejecting his comfort and even his friendship. He felt her words like knives, stabbing him over and over, blaming him for the loss of her beloved captain. His world was caving in around him, and he succumbed to the frozen mindlessness Hyourinmaru offered.
Hyourinmaru exploded with all the rage and helplessness Hitsugaya was suppressing. Ice shot in streaks in all directions, spraying the earth in glistening shards of imminent death. The entire landscape heaved upturned soil and loose dirt in shimmering waves. Jagged streaks of rampant chaos shredded the rocks and countryside, flashing and glistening in the brilliant sunshine. Sharp ice fragments flew everywhere, stabbing the dirt and shooting through the air, propelled by huge forces of wind. All other sounds were drowned out by the driving winds and the constantly shifting ice. Hyourinmaru screamed, a defiant roar of anguish to the skies, layers of frozen ice covering the prone form of Hitsugaya. He yelled, shouted and roared until his voice was hoarse and the ice smothered the ground in piles and feet, creating a new, glassy forest. He drove his spirit energy onward until there was almost none left, minutes passing in hours. When Hitsugaya regained consciousness and control he was thoroughly exhausted and nearly unable to speak. He stumbled forward about a foot before tripping through into a foot-deep conglomerate of mud and ice. He stared a moment, quite aghast at the vast array of havoc and destruction surrounding him.
With the last vestiges of his spirit energy, he soaked the water deep into the dirt and melted the last of the ice, changing what had once been a barren desert to a deeply corroded expanse of quagmires and wet earth. Beforehand, the soil had been ill-equipped to deal with plant life of any kind, simply because of its nature. It blew easily in the wind, as sand, but was too hard-packed to allow the roots to truly take hold. But now that Hitsugaya had scoured the surfaces deeply, he had altered the whole nature of the soil itself. He had given it water for life and the harsh atmosphere ground the dirt into a more fertile earth for seeds, carefully watered and ready for a new beginning.
He liked to think of it that way. His anguish, despair and lack of control had given a desperate, empty place a new opportunity, a second chance. As always, it came back to Hinamori. No matter his failures, no matter his loss, she was his one constant. In the end, it didn't matter how much she cared, or even that he had not protected her. What mattered most was that she had survived, and therefore, he still had another chance to redeem himself. He had time to grow, to train, and to become whatever he needed to become in order to protect his Hinamori.
The reason Hyourinmaru had chosen Hitsugaya was very simple. Dragons tend to seek out their own and so do zanpakutou. Hitsugaya, on the inside, was a dragon. In the same way that Hyourinmaru chose one focus, one goal, one person to dedicate himself to utterly, so did Hitsugaya. And for Hitsugaya, he knew from the moment he met her, that it would always be Hinamori.
So when Hitsugaya plumbed the depths of his own inadequacies, it was his motivation, his muse, his Hinamori that always pulled him free of his self-introspection. It only seemed fitting that, to honour her, he should create something beautiful in return. And so this desert would become a haven. For her.