Disclaimer: Bleach belongs to Kubo Tite.
Author natterings: Inspired by brilliant authoress motchi's Too Late. I could just really see something similiar happen to Matsumoto and Hitsugaya.
As always, this ficlet may be interpreted romantically and nonromantically. And hey- got a request? Message me, or leave your idea in a review. Thank you for reading! Comments are great!
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25. A DEEP RAVINE
The crowd was gigantic, each member swathed in simple black and white. The colours of mourning.
Matsumoto stood at the very centre of the crowd assembled around the memorial stone. It was diamond, for ice, and inlaid with lapis lazuli, for his birthday, and for his eyes. The blue-green traced the gentle, sweeping characters of his name. A master carver had made sure that all was perfect and suited to him to the last detail.
She stared at it dully. Her usual flamboyant scarf was gone, her neck was bare. Occasionally, a cautious glance was tossed her way through the prayers and commemorations. These looks of concern were tossed, too, in the direction of Hinamori. No one thought that she could see through her tears, blurring wildly and blotchy over her vision. But she could, as clear as glass.
And it was clear that Matsumoto was a disaster. Seeing the open grief on her pretty face, Hinamori felt that she should question her own grief. But then, it wasn't Hinamori who had been there when he died.
-
"Matsumoto-fukutaichou."
The sadness on her face was shocking as she turned. She didn't smile, she didn't laugh, she didn't try to compose herself. Her voice was teary - it rose and fell on waves of crying. "Hello, Hinamori."
The sun shone so brightly that Hinamori had to squint. She lifted an arm to shield her eyes. "I'm so sorry, Matsumoto. It must have been... terrible." Never before had words failed her so utterly.
"Oh, Hinamori." Matsumoto didn't notice. She tried at a smile, but her eyebrows came together in a rueful way. "Oh, Hinamori. Not as sorry as I am." Then she turned around.
"Wait!" Hinamori called, an arm suspended in the air. "If you ever want to talk. Just know... that I can be there."
Nothing for a moment. Hinamori's arm that blocked the sun quivered.
Then Matsumoto turned. "Thank you, Hinamori." And she walked away, dragging her sleeves along the wood planks.
-
It didn't stop.
Over the weeks, as the date of his passing grew farther away, it became clear that Matsumoto showed nearly no signs of improvement. She didn't know, or perhaps she was too grieved to care, but Hinamori kept an eye on her. Some days she was better, but most days she was the same or worse. She became a cloud, thin, pale and translucent, ghosting over the grounds. Whatever was said to her seemed merely to pass over her head, tries at tenderness made her wince. Once, Hinamori had stood in the shadow of a pillar, concealing her reiatsu, as Kyouraku attempted to console Matsumoto. She burst into tears.
"Rangiku--"
"I'm sorry, Shunsui. I-I'm so sorry. But he's gone." She took a stuttery, fluttery breath. "He's... gone." She sobbed into her thin, white fingers.
"Kyouraku-taichou," Hinamori made her move.
-
"You knew him when he was young. What was he like?"
They sat together at two in the morning, legs dangling off of the roof. The wind was light and merciful. Matsumoto's skin was almost sickly white-blue in the starlight.
"Stubborn. Protective. Brilliant," Hinamori told her. "He didn't really change at all."
"No," Matsumoto said. "Not at all."
Hinamori looked at her thumbnails. Then she looked unseeingly at the night sky. She felt a stinging in her eyes. "He never told anyone. But he loved chrysanthemums."
Matsumoto stared ahead. And Hinamori could tell, from the droop of her lips and the arch of her neck, that Matsumoto had known.
-
There was a storm. It was unusual for the Seireitei - a few minutes of hail, then snow, then hail, then snow. Hinamori found Matsumoto in her room, weeping silently onto her bedsheets. She curled up, like a girl with a stomachache (except Hinamori knew it was a different kind of ache), and shook herself to sleep.
Hinamori swallowed nothing, her eyes on Matsumoto. She looked so fragile. Her face was by no means serene. His passing ruined even her dreams. But Hinamori could understand. Sometimes, she dreamt too, and she found herself with tears on her face, not knowing how they got there.
That night, they both slept fitfully, cold saltwater soaking their pillows.
-
Once, just once, Hinamori entered Matsumoto's room without knocking.
Matsumoto was sitting with her back to the door. She was holding something in her arms.
"Matsumoto-fukutaichou?" Hinamori asked.
Matsumoto whirled, startled. It said something for her senses - they had been blocked by whatever she had been focussed on.
Hinamori's eyes landed on what had been in her arms. A robe.
Matsumoto's eyes widened for a split second. Even surprised, her face was tainted with sadness. She hid the robe. "Oh, Hinamori. Did you stop by to help with the offering this week?"
"Yes," Hinamori replied, acting as if unfazed, and held out a slice of watermelon on a plate. "I brought some flowers as well."
"Good, good," Matsumoto said, standing up. She kept her eyes downcast. "I have mine here. Let's go." She walked past Hinamori to the door. "Come on."
Hinamori turned slowly, her eyes on the spot where Matsumoto had sat. But then she followed Matsumoto out.
The robe had been much too small for Matsumoto herself. And it was coupled with something white. A haori. Instantly, she knew.
Hinamori prayed that day to him, holding the incense to her forehead. I've tried. It's so hard. Please. Help her let go.
-
An invitation out to lunch, to make sure Matsumoto was eating properly. Despite everyone's fears, she had not turned to saké as a way to fill the hole the death had torn in her life. Their fear was the dark circles beneath her eyes and the knobbiness of her wrists, the driness of her lips and the lack of spring in her step.
"I had a birthday gift for his 200th," Matsumoto said as she did not touch her rice. All she did with Hinamori was talk about him and it was frustrating enough that Hinamori felt that she could cry again. Stop it! Hinamori wanted to yell. Please!
She tried, as always, to change the topic, but, as always, the attempt was fruitless. Matsumoto became silent and limp, the end of a candle wick sagging from water.
He had been, without a doubt, Hinamori's closest friend. But - Hinamori wondered - had she been his? Matsumoto's face, her character, the lines of her skin, told a story, and in that story was a relationship with him that had been as golden as any had ever been. Matsumoto might have been his. He was Hinamori's, she knew. But Matsumoto was his. And she felt it flower - the smallest bit of wasted jealousy.
Hinamori knew it was wrong, more than heartless, to resent Matsumoto because of her grief, of her attachment to her own captain. But Matsumoto's unyielding misery was a burr, a thorn. It hindered Hinamori's own healing, it dragged down all their spirits. Matsumoto's grip on his memory, her constant forlorn look, all of it. It all prevented a moving on. It had been nearly half a year. Matsumoto would not accept her new captain. She pushed aside her paperwork, she did not go out onto the field, and when she did, her lack of attention was deadly. She was unravelling, a wreck of what she once was. Her status as lieutenant was in danger, and she did not seem to care in the least. She slept through it all. The only time life would spark across her face was when she spoke or thought of someone dead.
I miss him too, Hinamori thought to herself with a flicker of annoyance, looking at Matsumoto slouched in her chair. I miss him too. I want him back. But that will never happen.
"Do you know how he died?" Matsumoto said.
Hinamori sucked her breath in sharply and let it out shakily. "What?" she gasped for breath. What? No-- she couldn't--
"He was in the garden. He was looking at those damned flowers. And he was thinking and I came up behind him. He turned so he didn't feel the hollow grab his feet." Tears left her eyes, flowing fat and blobby down her cheeks. "The thing dragged him under. It left him lying there in the dirt. How could he call his sword halfway underground? It didn't grab me. It left me." Her cries shook the table between them.
And it was there again - the thorn, sticking in Hinamori's side. But she felt it crack under the weight of pity. She bowed her head and closed her eyes. She didn't ask Matsumoto to finish her rice.
-
A good day - Matsumoto was outside. A surprising day - Matsumoto was tending to chrysanthemums. They were a shot away from his stone. The light refracted and reflected over the voluminous petals.
"Good morning, Hinamori," she greeted.
"Matsumoto-fukutaichou," Hinamori responded, concealing her surprise. She stood back a ways, watching Matsumoto work, her thin fingers flitting over the leaves.
Matsumoto was on her knees, inspecting the colour and health of the leaves. She looked at their stems next, then their petals, almost a thousand it seemed, on just one flower. The garden was a blend of pure white and deep, regal pink. Matsumoto crouched low, her eyes focussed and clear. She asked, just loud enough for them both to hear, "Do you like them?" They were the first words Hinamori could remember in a long time that Matsumoto had said not related to him.
And Hinamori dared to hope.
-
Progress was made. Frighteningly fast, in fact. She seemed to cheer up in a matter of days, recovering from the months-long depression in the relative blink of an eye. But all were too afraid to broach the subject. They all felt it - the possibility that any mention of what had happened might cause a backsliding.
Matsumoto spent a lot of her spare time in the garden by his stone, the light thrown over her in crystals. She still avoided paperwork. She hardly talked to her new captain. But it was expected to come in time. Her hair was looking healthier, wavier again. Today she was in an especially good mood - she was humming.
The circles were still faintly there, beneath her eyes. Hinamori could tell that she cried in the mornings. It made her eyes puffy. She remembered that he had died in the morning, just after the break of dawn.
Matsumoto insisted that she be the only one to tend to the flowers, the only one to turn the soil and give them water. Hinamori kept a respectful distance. Eventually, Matsumoto had a bench brought in so Hinamori wouldn't have to stand. This action cheered Hinamori - Matsumoto considered the rest of the world now. Before, she spent her time in a bubble, shying away from the company of others, turning away from her friends. Slowly, she was becoming restored.
The tune Matsumoto was humming was strangely familiar. It was set in a high key, lilting and pretty. Hinamori couldn't place her finger on it.
-
The very same night, there was a storm. Hinamori rushed to Matsumoto's rooms, worried for her, remembering the last time there had been a storm. She knocked hurriedly. "Matsumoto-san? Matsumoto?" she called through the screen. No answer. She slid the screen open. It was dark. No one was home.
A sense of dread clattered through her ribcage. With a jolt, she remembered the significance behind the song Matsumoto had been humming that afternoon. Her breathing was heavy, and she didn't want to believe why. "No," she said, her voice lost to the wind. No, she thought to herself. No.
The feeling of dread led her to the garden. The heavy blanket she had grabbed from Matsumoto's bed kept her warm. It dragged in the snow, wiping out her footprints along the path.
The garden was a mess. Flowers had been torn at random from the ground. But it was easy to see that it hadn't been the storm that had done so. Letting out a cry, and clapping her hand to her mouth, Hinamori hastened to the stone.
That was why she had grown the flowers. That was why she had been so happy. That was why she had been humming that song. Hinamori knew that song...
"Matsumoto!" she screamed. "Help! Unohana-taichou! Isane-san!"
Matsumoto lay by the stone, curled slightly towards it. Snow was already beginning to cover her, collecting against her side, exposed to the storm, and her lips, ears and eyelashes were frosted. Through the flakes, Hinamori could see her smile. Buried, too, beneath the snow, were chrysanthemums all around, white and pink. The song... it had been a hymn for the dead.
And so, Matsumoto joined Hitsugaya, a whisp of blue light and a swirl of petals.