Disclaimer: Bleach belongs to Tite Kubo. I am just playing in his sandbox.
Chapter 8
Six Months Ago
Toshiro was simultaneously aware of three things as he regained consciousness. The first - his head was pounding mercilessly, the second - the bed he was sprawled face down on was definitely not his own, and the third – there was someone else in bed with him.
He pushed himself upright, and let out a low groan when the movement made his head pound harder. Dimly, he noted the coarse sheets beneath his palms, and the feel of warm limbs pressing against his own naked skin.
Naked?
His eyes shot open in shock, taking no more than seconds to adjust to the shadowed room, and even less to process the sight they met. Immediately, he lurched away from the girl – the very naked girl – he had been pressed to, stumbling and almost hitting the opposite wall along with the large, heavy wooden bucket that had been placed there, in his haste.
The girl whimpered softly at his sudden movement, shifting and bringing her thighs closer together, but did not wake.
He stared, wide-eyed, at the shadowed outline of the girl on the bed, ignoring the pounding of his head and his shock, to wade through his muddled memories to comprehend how he had ended up almost naked and in bed with a girl.
His last memory was of training, heading back to his house, then being hit by a dart – damn his carelessness – and losing consciousness. Beyond that was a blank. How he had ended up in this room, in that bed, and on top of a naked girl was surely the doing of whoever managed to knock him out.
The perpetrator was going to be ice dust when Hyorinmaru was done with him.
It was then he realized that Hyorinmaru was not strapped to his back, nor could Toshiro feel him anywhere nearby. In fact, he could not sense any reiatsu or reiryoku at all, not even his own. He frowned. It was decidedly odd. The first thing he had mastered during his shinigami training was the control of his reiatsu, and had always been able to feel his own as he needed to be in full control of it at all times or risk harming those around him.
The only thing he knew that could shut reiatsu out like this was sekkiseki, and as far as he knew, it was rare enough that the Gotei 13 had trouble trying to replace it after the last war destroyed enough of the outer walls of the Seireitei to cause a shortage. It seemed almost impossible for the perpetrator to have enough of it to construct a room.
His eyes darted to the girl on the bed again, and he quickly put away the thought away for further analysis later. There were more pressing matters at hand – like the fact that he could smell the metallic tang of fresh blood, and his genitals and thighs were coated in a sticky-like substance.
He had a terrible suspicion as to what the substance was, and his heart filled with fear. Praying fervently to Kami that his suspicions were wrong, he scooped a bit of it with his fingers and gingerly sniffed. His heart plummeted. It was as he had feared – the substance was a mixture of coagulated blood and semen.
For a fleeting second, the thought that the blood may belong to him cross his mind, but it was gone just as fast, for a quick check of his body revealed no recently open wounds.
He collapsed in a heap onto the floor, staring at the sample staining his fingers in horror, and his racing thoughts ground to a halt as it reached the only possible conclusion – that he had raped that girl on the bed. He could feel the bile rise up in his throat and he thought he was going to be violently sick. It did not matter that he had no recollection of any of it. The blood – her blood – on his skin was proof enough.
He glanced over at the unconscious girl again, guilt wrapping around him like a vice, so tight it almost strangled him. With great difficulty, he pulled himself together and stood, the long tails of the shitagi he was clad in falling to mid-thigh once again, covering his shame. This was not the time to be falling apart; if the smell of fresh blood was any indication, the girl would likely be in a terrible state and he had to tend to her first.
There would be plenty of time for self-recriminations later.
He strained his eyes in the dark, searching for the heavy bucket he had almost upset before, and spotted its shadowed bulk to his right almost immediately. Feeling around its edges, he was gratified to find a tattered piece of cloth and, when he dipped his fingers in, the bucket half-full with cold water, a large wooden bowl bobbing around on the surface.
He retrieved a bowlful of water, and placed it carefully on the floor. Wetting the cloth, he wrung it dry, before silently approached the girl again. She did not stir.
Carefully, he shifted her thighs apart, guilt tearing at him anew as he felt the sticky and lightly crusted evidence of his crime on her skin. Gently, so as to not disturb her, he cleaned the mess between her thighs, his movements as methodical and clinical as he could make them when he was relying mostly on his sense of touch as he could hardly see anything in the shadowed room. The smell of fresh blood lingered, but without light, he could not see nor locate the source of the bleeding, and his gentle probing yielded no clues.
As hard as he tried to keep his touch light, the bruised and swollen flesh between the girl's thighs were apparently sensitive enough that even the touch of the cloth on it was enough to cause her pain and discomfort, for she moaned painfully while he cleaned the mess there.
When he was done, he shrugged off his shitagi and covered her with it; he could feel the tattered bits of her clothes around her, and knew that they were no longer salvageable.
Rinsing and wringing the cloth once more, he then proceeded to scrub himself with it. He cleaned away the blood and semen coating his thighs, and the dirt, grime and sweat that covered his body, his movements rough and angry, as if he was trying to cleanse himself of the crime that he could not remember committing.
He wondered if he had done anything else to the girl, anything else that didn't leave behind physical evidences, and cringed in horror at the thought.
Once clean, and his skin red and slightly raw from the vigorous scrubbing, he placed the dirty water aside and draped the cloth over the edge of the tub for it to dry. Having tended to the still slumbering girl, he decided to explore the room he had been left in. If he was lucky, there would be an escape route, although he highly doubted it. The perpetrator went to too much trouble for whatever madness he was planning to slip up now.
The room was given a quick but thorough once over. It was more a cell than room – four walls enclosed a rectangular shaped space, the only exit a thick circular metal door. A line of small, round holes were drilled through near the top of the walls, allowing some air circulation and faint streaks of pink tinted light. What was special about this nondescript room, he discovered, was that every inch of the walls were lined with sekkiseki – a rare type of stone that negates all reiryoku. It was the reason he was unable to sense any reiatsu or feel his reiryoku.
How the perpetrator managed to get his hands on enough sekkiseki to construct an entire room may very well be a clue in figuring out his identity. As far as he knew, the source of the sekkiseki stone was a well guarded secret in the Seireitei, and it was rare enough that they had trouble obtaining enough of it to replace the ones that had been reduced to rubble after the last war.
There was a small wooden crate at a corner of the room that contained a thin blanket, two plain kimonos and, to his relief, a lamp, matches and a bundle of candles. He lit the lamp first, the soft, dim light a welcome change from the crippling darkness and put on the larger of the two kimonos.
The girl moved, and her painful gasp jerked Toshiro from his thoughts. He watched as she sat up, dark eyes wide, pained and confused, long dark hair falling messily over her face, obscuring her features, hands pressing the shitagi he had covered her with securely to her front.
He cleared his throat, and she turned her startled gaze to him, instinctively scrambling back away from him to press against the wall fearfully. Guilt stabbed at him once more, and he swallowed painfully.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he told her, voice low and as soothing as he could make it while trying to appear as harmless as possible to her. She clutched the shitagi tighter and glared distrustfully at him. He winced. Of course she wouldn't trust him, he silently berated himself. He was the bastard who had raped her after all.
An awkward silence fell as they stared at each other, one with fear and distrust, and the other with remorse and guilt.
The girl broke eye contact first, grimacing in pain as she shifted her weight on the bed and pushed her long hair back from her face, allowing him to see her features properly for the first time since they were put in this room.
Toshiro froze and his heart dropped painfully. For the girl he had violated, who was looking at him with fear and pain and distrust in her eyes, was none other than his adopted sister – Hinamori Momo.
A/N: Cyber hugs to my wonderful reviewers! You guys make me so ridiculously happy. =)
