Welfare
As you may have noticed, prologue for trilogy is up. Now unless this one is finished, I will not be giving that one any updates, except for maybe the first two chapters. –shrugs- This one is really short, so I apologise, there really isn't much to touch on… and I do not own Bleach.
…Oh yes! I have to mention the time frame otherwise it'll get messy. Well, so far, we've been following up to the part Hitsu goes back to Seireitei. However, Hinamori died before Ichigo actually left for Hueco Mundo. I do know in the movie she is mentioned, but let's take it she doesn't exist anymore so that we can all be happy with our own lives. Then we shall assume everyone got out of Hueco Mundo safely like nothing happened, but that will be from the next chapter onwards.
There was that matter of waking up in the middle of the night as if something just downright scared her out of her wits, Hitsugaya noticed with a flinch. She would walk down the 4th Division corridor, wander about like some mindless soul, and collapse in the bathroom where her body laid, waiting for a female 4th Division member to enter and notice her there. Even as he witnessed the bun girl loitering around the corner, bags under her lifeless eyes darker than that of a real panda's, the 10th Division captain did nothing to help her. He did not attempt to reach out to her, offering to bring her back to her room, because he knew that even if he tried to mutter a single word, she would ignore him, turn away and bury her face in her knees which she brought up to her chest.
Then there was that matter of sending out shrill cries, giving the 4th Division members on night shift an early Halloween scare. The first person Unohana would notify would always be him; sometimes he wondered why his presence was just so much desired around the hospital of Seireitei, other times he would simply oblige, stand there so helplessly and watch them pin the young hazelnut-haired girl down, injecting a serum of some sort into her skin. He daren't look. He daren't turn away either. Hyourinmaru would offer his words of comfort, embrace him with its wings of ice and distort his vision, just a little would suffice, until the whole ordeal was over.
But then what, he asked, was the ordeal in this case?
He wasn't the one who had a sadistic bastard who wore a mask of kindness as a captain. He wasn't the one who admired this so-called captain of his, if he ever had him as one in the first place, to the point whereby he lost his senses. He wasn't the one who was fatally injured – though, Hitsugaya thought with a resisted wince, that shoulder of his would give him a bit of a set back every now and then – and fell into a comatose state, only to wake up asking where his captain was. Like hell the white-haired taichou was going to acknowledge anyone like Aizen as his superior; he was ashamed enough to have worked alongside this so-called colleague of his. Most of the time he blamed himself for leaving Hinamori in this sadist's hands, thinking that nothing was wrong when in actuality, everything was wrong.
Throughout it all, however, he had not experienced any ordeal as terrible as Hinamori's. There was but one exception which he would like to forget, just for this one night…
For the girl who had grown up with him in Junrinan; for the girl who admired this captain of hers; for the girl whom he swore to protect ever since that happened; for the girl whom he loved and regarded as an older sister……had passed away the very night he returned to Seireitei grounds.
Hitsugaya hadn't a clue when it had happened; all he knew was that Unohana sent him a jigoku chou (hell butterfly) carrying a message requesting for his immediate presence at the 4th Division just as he was about to finish up the paperwork for the day. By the time he reached there, she was already long gone. The head of the Medical Department had explained that Hinamori's most likely cause of death had been suicide, for a bloodstained razor blade was found lying on the floor next to her bed, her wrist slain with dried blood forming a thick line across, forming a crimson path down the bed sheet. But that wasn't the primary cause of death, Unohana explained. Just as she said, it was most likely suicide, for another reason lied beneath the surface.
She knew it would've had been horrible if she allowed the white-haired genius to take one last look of her before her reishi particles completely disappeared into the energies revolving the land which they stood on. Due to the fact that many people were concerned about her, and were yet informed about her sudden death, Unohana had called for a small group of her seated subordinates to work together and form a special barrier around her to prevent any of her reishi to dissolve, at least, not too soon; the barrier would not hold out for long, and if Hitsugaya allowed it, they would stop maintaining the alternate world of physics that lied within the shell of spiritual power. With slight reluctance, he agreed to take one last glimpse of her face, biting his lower lip until it drew blood as he did so.
The worst of her had not been her mutilated wrist but of her eyes; they were so hollow, so empty…lacking of the usual warmth they usually carried. It was like he was staring into two dull, brown plates of which more than half of their structures had been horribly charred beyond repair. Blood trailed along from the opening of her nose and the edges of her lips, joining in to form the river of blood which pooled around the blade, her jaw hanging open as if in a mid-scream – he closed his eyes; his mind couldn't help but visualize what might've had happened, and he tried as much as he could not to show the wince – and her right hand, used for wielding the blade she ended her own life with, hanging over the edge of the bed sloppily. Hitsugaya sighed, turning away and excused himself from the room, claiming that he had paperwork to do and had to finish it by that night. Unohana took his answer as a yes and asked her subordinates to stop supplying the barrier with reiryoku.
It wasn't that he was afraid of seeing a corpse like that, heck, Aizen's fake one was probably one of the worst he had ever seen. Hitsugaya's fingers curled into clenched fists, Hyourinmaru rattling uneasily on his back; it was just that…..the common characteristic amongst all dead bodies had not been the fact that they were dead, but rather, the most obvious sign to show that they no longer breathed life: the secret lied within the eyes.
Hinamori's eyes…were exactly the same as Kusaka's when he died.
The only difference being, Kusaka's sparked as he fought against death, resulting in his failure to do so when the heavy eyelids drooped over his dulling navy blue orbs. And Hitsugaya, he had seen it all. He had seen the best friend he ever had getting pierced to death right before his own eyes, yet he could not do anything, not with him being restrained he couldn't. By the time he managed to get out of that struggle, it had already been too late. Never again was he going to see his towering friend smile; never again was he going to see him laugh and have fun; never again was he going to hear him call his name. What Hitsugaya would give for just to hear that voice again…
'Shiro-chan!'
'Toushirou!'
Shaking his head, Hitsugaya moved on. By now, he thought to himself, Hinamori's body should've had disappeared, and became part of the energy flow that held Seireitei together. Either that, or he hoped that she was going to have a good life as a human when the time of reincarnation would arrive for her.
A slight fluctuation in reiatsu attracted him towards his left; it had been the Division of the number six, Kuchiki and Abarai were together as usual, and…was that a senkaimon opening up for them? Hitsugaya stared at the scene of the stoic captain he always knew and respected giving them a few parting words before turning away, apparently muttering something along the lines of 'you will be duly punished when you return'. There wasn't much happening after that, albeit the fact that Kuchiki and Abarai got into quite the heated argument about who was going to beat Ichi-Kurosaki's ass up when they reach Hueco Mundo, and it had been decided that Kuchiki would do the job of slapping the idiot awake. Hitsugaya almost allowed himself a smirk at the thought of the raven-haired subordinate, though much older than him, giving that loony strawberry a tight smack across the face. Almost.
The gates of the senkaimon creaked open, a ray of light bursting out while jigoku chou fluttered their wings around the pair. Just as they were about to leap into where the gates would be taking them, a servant – well, he looked like one, judging by the different colored kimono he wore – arrived behind them, asking for them with all due respect to wait for just a moment, and handed them two nicely folded cloths. When asked who supplied them with these, the servant replied with a pang of nervousness that he wasn't allowed to tell and immediately rushed back into the 6th Division barracks. Hitsugaya scoffed, arms folded as he leaned against the bark of a tree nearby, his reiatsu so perfectly masked that not even the two of them had noticed his presence a mere few meters away from them; typical Kuchiki-taichou behavior, he deduced.
However, from the way Abarai looked exceptionally down, the prodigious taichou of the Tenth could only think of one thing: he had already been notified of Hinamori's death. It was understandable, the 6th Division fukutaichou had been Hinamori's classmate, as well as one of her closest friends. The person he dreaded to see most would be Kira, or worse, Kira confiding in Matsumoto and the two of them making a mess out of his office with their bottles of sake. The young wielder of Hyourinmaru merely pushed himself off the tree bark and gave the two of them one last glance before disappearing into the shadows.
"That bit-uh, Hinamori, has…?"
"Yes. It has been confirmed," Rukia quietly replied, casting her violet eyes away from the orange-haired shinigami sitting comfortably in front of her. The rough, sandy winds brushed against their frames; Ichigo almost cursed when sand got into his eyes, and began rubbing them frantically, only to make them worse. "Though we're not sure what the primary cause of death is, Unohana-taichou suspects that Hinamori-fukutaichou not only cut her own wrist, but also…"
"She indulged in medical drugs behind the 4th Division's back, thinking that they would help her regain her strength faster so that she could come here on her own," Renji continued. "It led to some drug overdose, and when she found that she was dying instead of healing, she decided to end her own life. Well, that's just a theory…by Hitsugaya-taichou."
"Eh? Toushirou?" Ichigo's fingers curled, digging deep into the fabric of his shihakushou. "Then, Toushirou is…"
Rukia and Renji exchanged glances before the former shook her head sadly while the latter simply turned away. "We don't know how Hitsugaya-taichou is taking the matter. We only know that he was the first to be informed when Hinamori-fukutaichou passed on. Frankly speaking, we didn't even get to see her for one last time; Unohana-taichou explained that her reishi had already dissolved, so we went on to looking for you instead."
Silence fell amongst them, time ticking by for a few seconds before Ichigo replied softly, "…I see." Pausing slightly, he turned towards the front. "That little rascal…..I bet he's actually hurting inside, just that he doesn't want to show it. Not like he's the kind who would anyway, but still I'm…worried about him."
"Ichigo…."
"…Maybe…maybe when we all get back home with Inoue, I'll go and see him again." Turning back to face his two friends from Soul Society, a smile played off his face. "He probably won't like an 'idiot' like me worrying about him and all; I bet the first thing he'll say when I get back, and tell him straight that I want him to confide in me, would be, 'You are the king of morons, Kurosaki. And I don't need the king of all stupidity to talk to me about caring about someone else's welfare when he can't handle himself properly and trot all the way to Hueco Mundo'…or something like that."
In the end, in all actuality, all Ichigo really wanted to say was that once this shit was done and over with, he wanted to see that look of annoyance and disbelief on the chibi captain's face again.
