9. One Day
Shinji and Momo
Momo is twice as sweet as the fruit which shares her name. Shinji wraps an arm around her shoulder as they walk, she's told him this is okay, but she still twitches a little and he can tell her first instinct is to recoil. It might not have always been that way. It's possible that Momo was an entirely different person before the catastrophe that was Aizen. But the again, maybe the essence of a person is immovable. After all, Shinji himself has only changed in how he approaches the world, and not necessarily how he approaches himself. Momo is probably just the same. He flashes her a toothy smile, gives a light squeeze and then drops his arm.
"Good morning, captain," says Momo, politely, she smiles but her eyes are unsteady and flashing like she's not quite awake.
"Mornin', vice-captain," says Shinji, "you're runnin' a bit late, aren't ya?" He grins when she squeaks.
"Well, I was helping Izuru with something," trails Momo, "I was going to work through lunch to make up the lost time."
Momo watches her captain closely and bites her lip when his smile falls into something like a frown … If not for the fact that his teeth are still showing. They are always showing. Momo has had dreams of dark corridors where all she sees is the teeth of this captain's smile and all she hears is the bitter laugh of the previous one, but they're just dreams and Captain Hirako has been nothing but kind, if not ridiculous and a bit unusual… Characteristics which are, at this point, basic features of all the vizards.
"Why would'ya do that?" Her captain asks, he looks genuinely confused and Momo is confused for it.
"To make up for the lost time?" Momo says, unsure. And then her captain stops and she turns to face him.
A long, uncomfortable pause follows them before captain Hirako lets out a laugh; short and maybe a little condescending but Momo has lived her whole life proving people wrong and these types of laughs do not bother her anymore. "A good vice-captain wouldn't leave her work unfinished!" She says.
"I don' know about that," Shinji mumbles, "I know some pretty good vice-captains that barely do any work at all…" Without either of them saying so, Momo knows that they are both thinking of Rangiku. He gives her a wink and she laughs faintly and when they continue walking Momo feels less like she's been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
At noon, captain Hirako locks the office and wanders off before Momo can ask him for the keys back in. She's not naive enough to believe it is an unintentional move, but she's fairly certain that if she asked for them back, he'd give in. Momo has been told by Rangiku that captain Hirako doesn't know how to act around her, apparently she is not as brash as he's used to and he hasn't quite figured out an approach to her. This is better for her because it puts them on an even playing ground and right now, Momo will take every advantage she can get.
Momo is also a little more on top of things than captain Hirako gives her credit for and after she jiggles the door nob once more for good measure, she walks to the reception desk and to their fifth seat and asks for the papers she gave him earlier. The fifth seat gives them over with a formal bow.
Momo doesn't need Captain Hirako's unwavering interest, nor does she love his suspicions. She can feel his eyes on her, unyielding and open, he is probably trying to see if he can make her uncomfortable. She wonders which will be more incriminating: to be unbothered by it at all, or to be too bothered by it. She feels like she is always being tested.
It's unfair though, to accuse him when she has kept him at arms length on everything. It's visible in their company's resent fissure; those who have accepted Captain Hirako and those who have sworn they will protect Momo.
Momo knows that she isn't a solider because she's high on honor and morality, even when she is. The truth it, honor and morality make for a poor solider. She has seen the effectiveness of cruelty and precision, she cannot be that person, but she is still a solider for whatever reasons make her a good one (cunning, Nanao says, genius, Kira tells her), and she does not want to be protected. It's her job to serve, and her pleasure to protect what is precious. She has talked to her company without Captain Hirako's presence in the morning, to tell them that she is a big girl and that they should always take pride in their captain, until circumstances prove otherwise. They listen to her because they love her, and they know she is worth listening to.
If it is protectiveness for their vice-captain which will make them listen to her, Momo knows that it is just a good reason as any. It is politics, in a way … and she wants to like the captain, too. She wants the company to be a family again.
Momo stops writing because her hand is shaking. The wind in the courtyard is lessened by its walls, but the papers around her still flap a little under the rock she has placed over them. The form in her lap, held stationary by a clipboard, has drops of something watery on them. Momo sets her pen down so she can touch her cheek and she is surprised that she is crying. It happens sometimes, usually when she is asleep. Lately, when she daydreams, it sneaks out too, like her soul demands to have an audience to its pain.
"Oh look," Captain Hirako calls, Momo brushes away any remnants of water and glances up to see her captain swaggering across the courtyard, "a peach!" he grins and it is comforting and disconcerting at once. When he's close enough, he bends at the waist like a straw and his face is almost even with hers despite still standing. "You cover all of your bases," he observes, his eyes scanning her paperwork.
"I didn't mean to disobey you," says Momo, her voice doesn't waver at all, "but I have some paperwork that needs to get done today."
"If I got upset overtime someone disobeyed me," Shinji says, his smiles wider now, it looks almost painful in its intensity, "I'd have died of an aneurysm a century ago."
"That sounds really painful," Momo smiles.
"Yeah," says Shinji, "mostly in my ass." His smile drops as if remembering something. Momo thinks he's probably got a thousand stories about the vizards. One day, she'd like to hear them. For a moment he watches her again, and she gets that feeling, like he's waiting for her to stab him, but then he stands again. Towering and lanky and almost goofy.
"Do you like music, Momo?" he asks, suddenly. Momo is feeling off kilter.
"I guess," she says quietly, remembering. "Aizen-taichou used to play music in the office sometimes … really quite stuff, he said it would help us stay focused." She wants to drop the honorific but she can't just yet and she is not ashamed, even when Shinji flashes her a look that is almost disapproving, or at least as close as he's likely to get to it.
"Aizen had really shitty taste," he gags, "I'm talking about real music, Ella Fitzgerald?" he asks hopefully, Momo says nothing and Shinji looks personally offended. "Let's go dacin' then, we'll call it training."
"I don't think the captain commander will approve," Momo says. Captain Hirako winks.
"The cap'n commander owes me 150 years of debt, so I don't care." He offers her a hand and Momo takes it, after gathering all of her paperwork.
Momo feels his hollow through his skin, nasty and evil and simmering, wrapped in his own spiritual pressure kept at bay by training and it cannot touch him, even when it is him. Momo knows he can feel her too, the hurt and distress and hope just under the tips of her fingers, he's watching her and feeling for it at the same time. It is the first time she does not think he is waiting for her to betray him, and it is the first time she does not feel betrayed in her own way.
She'd like to feel him out like this, palms pressed together between corny jokes and music history. Captain Hirako knows jazz like it his name and Momo knows how to be sweet in the realest way. Dancing might be fun.
