Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach, or any of the characters used in this fic. They all belong to Tite Kubo. I only own any of my original characters that I choose to include, as well as any of my own original plot ideas.

Ch 36: This Boy Fills Coffins

A/N: Some lemon.

"Placed under surveillance, you say?" the director raised a hand to his chin, stroking his beard. "May I ask what has prompted you to request such a thing, Captain Hitsugaya?"

He'd called in for a sick day, only to end up in the director's office in the evening hours afterward. He was sure that this reflected poorly upon him, upon the reputation he had held for the past two years, but he couldn't be bothered with polishing something so trite. Between his reputation and acting upon what was appropriate, Toshiro would rather the former be used to start the blaze that would burn him at the stake.

"When everything works itself out, I'm sure you'll know."

Those words echoed now in the silence of the office, the words of a dead man. Words that he hadn't been able to decipher in all this time, these months. Words that, he feared, he would never understand fully. What a waste it was that Toshiro hadn't realized it sooner. But he couldn't have noticed what had been staring him in the face, as he was hunting down a murderer on the streets of one of the biggest cities in the world. The safety of the citizens, all possible future victims, had been the foremost thing on his mind.

Not Kisuke Urahara's curious statements.

Staring into the director's weathered gaze, it dawned on him. Urahara hadn't been playing mind games with him. He'd known, or had at least had an idea, who had started this insanity. And he hadn't said a damned thing about it. Toshiro should have arrested him for trespassing on a crime scene, and, had he known at the time that the vendor had been messing with him, he certainly would have done so.

He opened his mouth to give his answer, but the director simply nodded. A perceptive sort, this man, who seemed to be able to pick up on intention and insecurity. He seemed to know everything. The elderly man motioned to the chair before his desk, silently insisting that the young captain be seated. Toshiro didn't move.

"I don't approve of how things are progressing here, Director Yamamoto," the boy said calmly. "With all due respect, sir, I feel that your judgment in this matter, in assigning an outsider to operate within a critical police investigation, was faulty."

The director didn't speak, just laid his hands upon the desk and nodded again in acknowledgment. Toshiro wished he would do something, even berate him for questioning and speaking out against an authority far higher than his own. Perhaps, were he to push the director further, he would be removed from the case, even transferred to another department or division within the city. Thus far, anything would have been better than this. Than being plagued by the thoughts of failure, of not being taken seriously.

What must it have been like, being the perpetrator in a game so vile as this? A challenge, he imagined, given just how far technologies had come in the past twenty years, but also a natural high, trying to think a hundred steps ahead of the police, wondering when he would be caught.

An insider was what all the evidence now pointed to. Someone within the NPA, quite likely an officer, who knew very well that what he was doing was wrong. Not just some mildly-unhinged character off the streets of Ikebukuro. He wished it were the latter, as it wouldn't be quite so devastating as arresting and prosecuting a fellow officer, perhaps even a friend, for the murder of almost thirty people over seven years.

What would prompt a comrade, perhaps one of his own men, to do something so low?

But that wasn't necessarily true. He had to remind himself, almost constantly, that the unknown officer appeared to be little more than a copycat playing the same sick game. By choice, of course, but perhaps in response to the original killer's actions. But the possibility was always there, that there may not be two killers, just the one changing his tactics to make the case that much harder on the NPA.

Regardless of the situation, Toshiro couldn't think of anyone who qualified as a suspect more than Mayuri.

"This wouldn't happen to be a personal matter, would it, Captain?"

Of course the director would have heard of the obvious discord, read the reports, known who had been questioned and concerning what. It wouldn't have been surprising if he knew about Retsu's minor involvement, too.

"No, sir," he lied through gritted teeth. He should have said yes, should have given some indication that it did have something to do with the fact that he couldn't stand, and wanted nothing to do with, this man. "It's merely a matter of past performance. Disregard for protocol and..."

A deception that was sending people to the grave.

# - # - # - #

Steam filled her lungs, stealing away the crisp air of night as the seconds passed. Her fingertips slid against the glass walls, breaths growing deeper and longer with every touch. She'd only come in to prepare for bed, to quickly wash her face and change her clothes. But this, and the bruising that would follow in the days to come, was more than welcome.

It was much more than just sex to her, even if he didn't think so or even know it. All this made Retsu feel that every moment spent with one clinging to the other brought about some unspoken secret to be remembered. Something that hadn't existed in the past. What worked and what didn't, how long this could keep up, which touch elicited which reaction, what put that dusky glow back into him. The one she'd been missing so much for the past day or two.

Hot water raised temperatures past the boiling point, but her skin could still pick up on the feel of his tongue across the flat plane of her sternum. For a moment, she gaped, forehead pressed into his shoulder, raising her pelvis and securing herself around his waist with her ankles. Mayuri hissed, blunt nails raking against her back, teeth leaving a sharp bite on the side of her neck, her heart aflutter.

Her hand curled around his arm, flattening him against the wall, the skin beneath her fingers raised. It reminded her of all the questions she had, everything she had to know and didn't.

The days away and the nights within are different, both in feel and atmosphere, but the ideas, the thoughts, both turned to dreams in recent slumbers, no longer daunt her. Perhaps, slowly, she's fading into the background of this game he's made, gradually accepting it as a part of a nature she didn't always understand so fully.

He filled coffins, and not in the way he should have.

She'd seen him as someone else, bitter and pessimistic towards the world, ignorant to the unspoken reality that must have pulled her in. Part of her own nature it was, to see people not as villains, not as wicked, fabled demons, but as patients. To have sympathy and compassion even towards those who would not once dare to return the gesture. It seemed that, from the beginning, she'd labeled him as a patient, not a terribly unsteady mind, determined to make a case out of him.

She hadn't seen that he loved secrets, exposing them. There hadn't been another kind of person in her world before, the sort who didn't see everything with the same bright light as herself. Hers had been a place of sun and color, but never any shadow.

It was there now, giving everything a whole other dimension.