Winter's Sons

Summary: When a body turns up at the Eastern Wall, run through with a zanpakuto and a sword of ice, all evidence points to Hitsugaya Toshiro. But this is only the first in a string of killings. With Central Forty-Six having issued an order for his execution, Hitsugaya must work against time to clear his name and find a killer strong enough to take on a captain. The past is never dead…


IV. THROWN TO THE WOLVES

A day later, Hyorinmaru was taken from him and surrendered into the custody of Acting-Captain Hisagi of the Ninth Division. Hitsugaya himself was moved from his modest but comfortable room into a holding cell in the Ninth Division.

Giving up Hyorinmaru felt like a violation. Hitsugaya felt the pang in his heart as he watched Hisagi's fingers close around his zanpakuto. Still, the man accepted his zanpakuto gravely, and carried the blade with the respect recquired and the assurance it would be returned to him in due course.

"If you are able to tell me," Hitsugaya said, to Hisagi, "Why?"

Hisagi looked at him, expressionless, and said, "Narumi Arata turned up dead, after speaking to you. You were left unguarded in that period of time. The same traces of reiatsu were found at the crime scene. I am obliged to take you into formal custody now, Hitsugaya-taicho. Word has come in from Central 46 and has been confirmed by the Captain-Commander. You are to be relieved of duty."


Matsumoto was staring at a bottle of sake in the administrative office, and trying to get some paperwork done when Kira burst in through the door. "Kira?" she asked, startled, because he looked as agitated as she'd ever seen him. Something had happened, something that had broken the mask of reserve Kira was accustomed to wearing.

"Matsumoto-san," he said. "A second killing has occurred. The murder scene is still fresh."

She understood what he was telling her. "Take me there."

He nodded, and gestured for her to follow him. She picked up Haineko and belted on her zanpakuto. Someone, Matsumoto felt certain, was framing her Captain. It was her duty as his Lieutenant, not just to run his division as well as she could in his absence, but to see to proving his innocence in the matter.

They passed the seated officer offices, and Matsumoto called out for Kira to halt for a moment. "Sone!" Their third seat poked his head out of his cubicle a moment later.

"Matsumoto-fukutaicho?"

"I am leaving to attend to something with Lieutenant Kira," she said, clearly. "Please see to the division and the preparations for the rest of the transfer ceremony."

Without a Captain, her presence was critical, she knew, and she saw a flash of dismay on Sone's face. Their seated officers were capable, but with their Captain in custody, the Lieutenant was critical to maintaining division morale. Her job was to show them that the Tenth Division was capable of functioning, to give things a semblance of normalcy.

And her job was to watch her Captain's back, and she couldn't do that shut away in an office or talking to the men.

But Sone was a good officer, and he hid that flash of dismay almost as instantly as she'd seen it. "Understood, Matsumoto-fukutaicho," he said.

"Thank you!" she said cheerily, and grabbed him up into a hug, because the poor, overworked man needed it. She waved, and headed back out to join Kira, the forced cheer evaporating just as quickly as she'd put it on.

"Let's go."


What made things depressingly bad was that Narumi Arata had been killed in a courtyard in the Ninth Division. It looked like he hadn't successfully made it out of the division, one of the Ninth Division officers at the scene explained. Her name was Ando Kenta, and like all the shinigami of the Ninth, she wore her shihakusho sleeveless. That revealed tight muscle, and her hair was cropped short to slightly above her earlobes.

Matsumoto couldn't hide her surprise at the name; Kenta was a male name. Ando grimanced. "Look," she said, "My father really wanted a boy, and when he had a girl, he decided to name me Kenta anyway. Can we get on with this?"

"Has the time of death been established?" Kira asked, pointedly taking the hint.

Ando shook her head. "The first responders from the Fourth Division have yet to arrive." Matsumoto was surprised at that—as well as touched. Kira had left in a rush to bring her here as soon as the body had been discovered.

She realised what the knot in her stomach was; the moment she'd arrived at the scene, she'd recognised the icy traces of her Captain's reiatsu. Unmistakeable, familiar in its crispness, she felt the traces of Hyorinmaru, liberally swirling around the crime scene. As damning a sign of murder as anything could have been. She almost didn't find her voice. A flash of silver hair and pale blue eyes, so pale they were almost grey.

Gin

She felt betrayed. And at the same time, she couldn't believe he had done it. She caught the sympathy in Kira's eyes, as he stepped forward. "Please explain to Matsumoto-fukutaicho what has happened here."

"Narumi fought," Matsumoto interrupted, trying to focus on the scene before her. His zanpakuto was drawn and in his hand; he had taken several slashing wounds to the torso, all caked with ice that glittered treacherously in the sunlight. His zanpakuto's edge was clean, which meant he had not managed to draw blood. He'd been outclassed. "How good was he?"

"Narumi Arata?" Ando snorted. "Ninth seat of the Seventh Division." Matsumoto frowned. Any single digit seated officer was a dangerous enough opponent, which meant that the killer was above ninth seat standard. Above even Kahei's standard, and that meant the killer was powerful and dangerously skilled. But anyone could have told that from the feel of the reiatsu that lingered here. The same sword of ice protruded from the dead man's chest, and now Matsumoto saw what had disturbed them so much about the killings.

It was identical to Hyorinmaru. She felt her hands close around freezing ice, even before she had been aware of taking the step forward. It was ice, of course; hard and it leeched the last bit of warmth from her fingers. The stylised wrappings were nothing more than details in the ice, but what sealed it was the four-pointed star that served as the tsuba, the guard of the blade.

It couldn't be.

Ando was saying something; Matsumoto forced herself to let go of the ice-blade, to ignore the similar blade that was sticking through her heart right now, to calmly say, "I'm sorry, Ando. I didn't catch what you were saying. Could you repeat it, please?"

Ando hardly blinked. She said, "I called up Narumi's service records from the Seventh Division. They were quick to arrive, and they had Narumi's Academy records as well. It seems that Narumi Arata was one of those highly-gifted students who appeared likely to make swift progression through the ranks."

Matsumoto and Kira exchanged glances.

Ando continued, "He graduated eleventh in his year. Of note was an incident recorded where he fought a formal duel against one of the youngest prodigies the Academy had ever seen."

Matsumoto felt the blade of ice return, lodged between her ribs. Ando had paused, waiting. "Who?" she forced herself to ask.

Ando's expression was very carefully set in one of neutrality. "Captain Hitsugaya Toshiro."


Matsumoto held onto her composure with nothing less than the discipline of a woman who held the second-highest rank in any division of the Gotei Thirteen. She could not allow herself to doubt her Captain. Not here.

She wandered the scene trying to take in anything that could be evidence. The Fourth Division officers soon arrived to take Narumi Arata's body back to their division for the autopsy, while the sole shinigami from the Twelfth had also arrived to take the sword for further analysis. They all saw her Lieutenant's armband with the insignia of the Tenth Division on it; they all gave her a respectful berth.

Narumi had fought. His zanpakuto had been drawn, and he had been overmatched, failing to draw any blood. He had been dispatched, or so it seemed, with relative ease. That sort of power disparity frightened Matsumoto.

As did how traces of her Captain's reiatsu had come to be here. It was a sunny morning, and the ice had not melted. It was not ordinary ice; it had been created by reiatsu, and she recognised the reiatsu the moment her fingers had closed around the hilt of the ice sword.

Taicho, she thought. He had been out of sorts on the morning of the transfer ceremony. He had brushed it off as if it had been nothing, but it hadn't. What was he keeping from her?

Something nagged at her; she didn't know what. She looked back at where the medics had thrown a white sheet over Narumi's corpse and was preparing to shift it onto a stretcher. The scene itself had been roped off, and shinigami were going over the scene, trying to find other pieces of evidence that they could use to put together how Narumi had died.

"Matsumoto-san," Kira said. He was standing before her, waiting. For what?

She found her voice again. "Something's not right," Matsumoto said. And then she understood what it had been. "The blood. What happened to the blood?"

The slashes had killed Narumi, she was sure of it. But there was no spreading stain of blood on the stones of the courtyard. Wherever Narumi had fought his attacker, he had died there, and then he had been moved.

Kira frowned, and then bent to inspect the ground. "Ando-san," he called out. Ando jerked her head back from where she was conferring with some men, probably from the Ninth. "Has any blood been found?"

Ando shook her head. "Not here," she said, regretfully. "A few stains consistent with dripping blood, but he was not killed here."

"Where was he killed?" Matsumoto asked. It was the natural question that followed. She was seeing it now; even as the traces of her Captain's reiatsu sang to her senses. He was being held somewhere in the Ninth Division. The further from the Ninth Division barracks that Narumi Arata had been slain, the better it would go for her Captain.

Ando frowned. "We're still looking," she said. "I've sent a team to his family manor in order to investigate." That was right, Matsumoto thought. Kahei had been killed in his quarters at the Academy. She felt a faint pang of regret. He'd been a good man, though she hadn't known him all that well. Ando turned away, ordering investigating shinigami about. There was little left to do, Matsumoto thought, as she looked around the courtyard.

But something else caught Matsumoto's eye, and she bent down. A torn scrap of cloth, a sandy brown with fraying threads fluttered on the flagstones. She picked it up, and glanced at it. Non-descript, it looked as though it had been torn off from someone's clothing. Maybe a cloak. Narumi Arata had not been dressed in brown.

She pocketed it, quietly.


There was too much time to think, in his cell.

Hitsugaya assumed the cross-legged position of jinzen, even though he no longer had Hyorinmaru, and sifted through the thoughts that darted on the surface of his mind, then watched them settle like silt in a pond. It was a damning picture, in all, if only he could ask exactly how he'd been supposed to have killed Narumi Arata, despite all their disagreements, while being locked away in a room in the Ninth Division. He rather suspected that the fact his reiatsu had been all over the scene of the crime had removed any doubts they must have had; they'd been more than happy to chalk the rest down to his reputed genius and cunning.

Ever since Aizen had killed the Central Forty-Six and used their authority to order the execution of Kuchiki Rukia, the Gotei Thirteen had taken an increased autonomy in governing their own affairs. Except that Hisagi had said that he'd been relieved of duty, and the Captain-Commander had confirmed it. What, he thought, quite perplexed, was Yamamoto up to? When Ichimaru had failed to kill Kurosaki Ichigo in their encounter at the Western Gate, he'd been called to account for it in front of the gathered council of Captains. Any member of the Gotei Thirteen was entitled to a military court-martial, and Captains were subject only to trial by their peers, which in this case meant an assembly of the Thirteen Captains, including the Captain-Commander among them.

He'd never seen that trial.

Someone, Hitsugaya thought uneasily, had it out for him. It was blindingly obvious from the start, when a display had been made out of Kahei and he had been killed in a manner that screamed that the killer had an affinity for ice. More importantly, traces of his reiatsu had been found at the killing scene, and Hitsugaya didn't know what to make of that. Reiatsu could be hard to pin down, and it often took intense emotion and a powerful source of spiritual energy to cause reiatsu traces to linger in a place.

He'd have had to have fought Kahei, for that to happen. There were traces of their reiatsu, a few days after he and Ichimaru had fought outside the barracks.

And the killings hadn't stopped. They'd continued. Narumi Arata, a man whom the guard could testify Hitsugaya had fought with, shortly before his death. Hitsugaya snorted; he'd never ever gotten along with Narumi.

The same method? He wondered. He knew so little about this second death. And then, of course it seemed that the Captain-Commander had convened the Captains in his absence and made a decision. Or perhaps he'd made it on his own. Had the matter made it to a vote? That he hadn't even been given a hearing shocked Hitsugaya. It meant that whoever had it out of him had been highly-placed, if no one had moved to block the attempt to remove him from his position without hearing out what he had to say.

He heard the footsteps, a moment before he caught sight of the fluttering hem of a white haori. Hitsugaya looked up, as the Captain of the Thirteenth Division, Ukitake Jushiro paused outside his cell. Ukitake wore the full-sleeved haori, and while his long pale hair was usually unbound, it was tied back by mauve thread today. His dark eyes were always warm and reassuring. Ukitake was a man Hitsugaya could respect; his kindness to his subordinates and his compassion were well-known throughout Soul Society.

"Captain Ukitake!" the guard at the entrance to the holding cells said. Ukitake smiled at the young woman.

"Please," he said, "Leave us. I wish to speak to Captain Hitsugaya, privately."

He saw her wavering, but an order from a Captain was an order, despite how politely it had been phrased. She nodded, and moved further along the corridor, until Hitsugaya heard the sound of a door shutting.

"Ukitake," he said, with a nod of greeting. He hadn't missed that Ukitake had deliberately mentioned his rank, when speaking to the guard.

"Hitsugaya-taicho," the other man said. "I'd hoped to see you sooner, but…" he shook his head. "Events have caught up with us."

"I've heard little since I was moved to the holding cells," Hitsugaya said. "Is there anything you can tell me?"

Ukitake nodded. "Narumi Arata was found dead in the courtyard of the Ninth Division. They haven't managed to place when he died, but they found that he was killed, along with some family retainers, in his family manor. What was significant was your reiatsu at the scene…and the sword of ice sticking out of his heart."

Hitsugaya said, "I see." The same method. And it had been done as a show, this was obvious now, the theatrical element to the deaths aside. He still felt he was missing something, only he couldn't see what it was. Narumi had been singled out. The family retainers hadn't turned up anywhere else. But a show had an intended audience. Who, Hitsugaya thought, was this for? And what was it saying?

"Yamamoto-sotaicho called a Captain's meeting," Ukitake continued.

As expected.

"He decided to suspend you from duty."

Hitsugaya asked the question that he needed an answer to. "Did it go to a vote?"

Ukitake's eyes closed. He nodded. Wordless.

"Who?"

"Soifon. Kurotsuchi. Kuchiki. Zaraki. And the Captain-Commander." Hitsugaya almost cursed silently. Zaraki was the wildcard—Captain's meetings bored him, that much he made clear, and he cast his votes almost on whim. He was primarily interested in battle, and Hitsugaya had no doubt that Zaraki could have voted against him simply out of sheer bloody-minded principle that he'd been excluded from a fight.

That was the requisite five Captains. With the Third, Fifth, and Ninth Divisions still with Acting-Captains, all they needed for a vote to pass was half in agreement.

"Abstentions?"

"Komamura," Ukitake said. He smiled lightly. "He felt that trying a Captain in his absence was not right, and not done in the Gotei Thirteen. I do believe a few were astonished by his decision."

So was Hitsugaya. He admitted he knew little about Komamura, except that the towering Captain had a debt to Yamamoto (didn't most of them?) and tended to follow the Captain-Commander's lead on such issues.

Which left Captains Unohana, Kyoraku and Ukitake solidly against the motion. Almost as expected. He'd spoken to Unohana shortly before Narumi had died, and Kyoraku…

Hitsugaya said, "Ukitake. Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet, Hitsugaya-taicho," Ukitake said, waving him off. "The matter is to pass to the Central Forty-Six. The death of Kahei was regrettable but the Gotei Thirteen had matters in hand. Now that Narumi Arata has turned up dead in the Ninth Division's courtyard, the nobles will be clamouring for the matter to be quickly resolved. That Hisagi-fukutaicho has admitted to being remiss in offering you parole has also been noted."

Hitsugaya felt the frisson of fear, and then he dismissed it. Breathed in the cold, until it enveloped him and his mind was as clear as the skies on an autumn day. "It's passing to the Central Forty-Six then?"

Ukitake nodded, hands clasped before him. "Regretfully so. The Gotei Thirteen will be allowed to appeal the decision only once." With the current state of the votes in the Captain's meeting, Hitsugaya didn't think he wanted it to come to that.

Not with the killer on the loose, and with no sign that he was about to stop.

"I should also mention," Ukitake said, "That Kahei's funeral has been held." He paused, meaningfully. "It was held at the Academy, and he was buried under the cherry blossom tree in the courtyard. They almost had a funeral for the nobles, but in the end, he was the headmaster of the Academy, and—"

"He loved it there," Hitsugaya said. His voice was quiet, almost a whisper. "He wouldn't have wanted to be buried anywhere else. And he always liked to look at the cherry blossom tree from his study window. It was a stupid thing. Mostly dead, and it had never flowered." He cleared his throat. "Thank you, Ukitake."

"I do believe I saw Hyorinmaru in Hisagi's office. I will of course, be speaking to him about showing me the courtyard," Ukitake said. He smiled gently. "Be careful, Hitsugaya-taicho."

Hitsugaya understood. He watched as Ukitake turned, and left down the passageway he had come. He sat, still in jinzen, only now the thoughts weren't trying to piece together what had happened. He knew what he had to do; decision crystallised in a single instant like ice forming across the surface of a still pond. He weighed plans, discarded them.

The guard came back. She still treated him with deference, even though she never referred to him by name. Probably didn't want the awkwardness of having to address him without his rank.

As he waited for Ukitake to do what he had come for, Hitsugaya thought. He wondered if that was how Hinamori had felt, locked up in the holding cells of the Tenth Division, reading a letter written by her Captain's own hand. Aizen. Hitsugaya believed it would be a long time before he could think the name without bitterness, hatred, or resentment.

He exhaled. It was almost time. "Guard?" he called out. He stood up, went over to the bars. They'd put a guard with him, and the steel bars were decently solid, but he had yet to be moved to a more secure place, with sekkiseki in the walls to seal in his reiatsu and to make sure he was helpless. For all they'd decided to relieve him of duty and put him in a holding cell, Hitsugaya thought, they hadn't brought the full weight of Soul Society justice down on him yet. His window of escape was narrowing.

He murmured the chant of the kido spell under his breath. He didn't shorten it, though Hinamori might have. When she came, approaching the bars warily, he stared up at her, with the void in his eyes.

She fell.

Hitsugaya's fingers clenched around the bars of his cell. He'd have to be slow but steady, he told himself. Any release of Captain-level reiatsu would raise alarms at the Ninth Division. He shed reiatsu, bit by gradual bit over the long span of minutes, allowing it to flow around his fingers as they pressed against the cell bars. He shaped it like ice, coating the bars, forcing centuries and millenia of glacial action, the long pressure of progressive years into the steel. It was, after all, only steel. He applied some pressure. The steel cracked, brittle and glazed with ice.

He slipped out through the opening he had made in the bars, careful not to cut himself on the jagged edges of the steel. Hisagi had never asked for his haori; now he took it out, and folded it neatly, before carrying it as a bundle under his arm. People would notice a short figure in a white haori. People would take far longer to realise a shinigami was where he shouldn't be. There was nothing he could do about his hair now, though the colour was unusual enough that he would be remembered.

He knelt down beside the guard he'd knocked out with hakufuku, borrowing a leaf from Hinamori's book. Her eyes were wide open and staring; she'd simply fallen and lost consciousness. He closed them, and then checked to see she hadn't hurt herself from the fall. And then he stood up and strode along the corridor.

He already knew where Hyorinmaru was, even if Ukitake hadn't told him. The zanpakuto sang to him, a constant presence of ice and the weight of the years against his mind. It was the glint of light in the depths of the empty night, and he sought it out, walking down corridors and casting his senses out for any sight of shinigami.

He kept his reiatsu carefully hidden. He'd be discovered eventually, but the more careful he was about keeping from sight, the more distance he could put between himself and the Ninth Division. And that, too, was what Ukitake had given him. His next destination.

He almost ran into the shinigami at the intersection. Hitsugaya judged his timing, slipping back behind the corner. The shinigami hesitated, almost as if he'd sensed something. Hitsugaya had no time for chants. He brought the void up into his eyes, the crushing weight of the vast, empty space that hakufuku invoked, the threat of endless white oblivion, and stepped out into the corridor. Their eyes met. The shinigami resisted it, for a moment, but then he, too, crumpled to the ground.

Hitsugaya had no time to check this one. He ghosted down a few more corridors, always moving towards his sense of Hyorinmaru. Hisagi's office, he knew. Ukitake had said as much, and he knew that the man would probably spend the whole evening tying up Hisagi. He had, Hitsugaya thought, a positive talent for doing so, and in the most kindly, well-meaning way possible.

He found the door to Hisagi's office, then, and tried it. It was locked. Hitsugaya frowned down at it. Most offices had the same kind of doors; a latch system, which could only be opened from within. There was really only one answer for it that he could think of. He laid his fingers against the door, shortly above where the latch would be and spoke one word: shakkaho.

The altered spell burned a narrow hole through the door, exactly as he had intended. Hitsugaya reached through the hole in the wood and fumbled for a few minutes before he managed to lift the latch. Then he slid the door open.

Hisagi's office was well-organised, for the most of it. On a sword-stand by the filing cabinets, he recognised Hyorinmaru. He strode over and reclaimed his zanpakuto. He ran his fingers along the smooth, polished scabbard for a moment, before he slipped Hyorinmaru on. With Hyorinmaru's weight against his back, even as Hitsugaya tightened the straps that secured the zanpakuto, he felt…strangely complete.

Having reclaimed Hyorinmaru, he searched for the back exit to the office. There was always one. He found it behind a hanging curtain of bamboo slats and ducked past it, unlatching the door and then sliding it open.

The Shakkaho was bound to attract attention, as much as he'd tried to control it. If he was to make a clean getaway, he would need to move as quickly as possible away from his point of entry.

Most of the Divisions were built along similar lines, though Captains had added or taken away buildings and rooms as the centuries went by. Ninth Division was no different in this respect, and Hitsugaya did not find much difficulty avoiding shinigami as he walked in the dark, winding shadows cast by the barracks buildings.

He caught sight of the courtyard, and skirted it. Even so, he could hear the murmur of Ukitake's voice, carrying in the silence. Too silent? Hitsugaya wondered. It didn't matter. Rather than try the entrance, where the sentries would be posted, he took a running leap and vaulted the low wall that separated the Division from the Seireitei outside.

He landed and went into a quick roll to absorb the impact of his landing before he was back on his feet, then jogged off into the obscuring darkness.


A/N: Apologies for the late update. I was a little occupied at the time.