A/N: So, ages upon ages ago I got a request to do a chapter about Toushiro training after the Winter War. Since then there have been many attempts and false starts, but I finally decided I was just gonna write something dammit. It is not the best but it's done, yay.

Warnings: Speculation ahoy. Also mega angst. I'm gonna have to write something super fluffy now to make up for all of it ... Boo.

Toushiro knows he will never forget the way it felt to have Sousuke Aizen cut him out of the sky.

It's not the physical injury he cares about, although he'll carry the scar down his shoulder forever most likely. You can't become a Captain-level Shinigami without learning how to forget about pain.

But he will never forget how it feels to be completely defeated. To be simply not good enough.

Toushiro poured all of the strength he had into that last fight, that last strike he remembers only as a cyclone of reiatsu inside him, taking him over.

He lost. He lost spectacularly. Not because of bad luck or circumstance; not because of anything but his own weakness.

And he can feel that weakness, pressing on him from all sides, holding him like an expert kido binding. In his sleep bone-white blades slash at him while he stays frozen helplessly in place and masked Arrancar faces taunt him.

Other faces too, ones he can't picture without feeling something like panic in his chest.

Even with all his power, every last bit, he couldn't win. He couldn't keep any of those promises he made to himself, to destroy, to protect. (They were lofty and impossible anyway and he always knew it, but he's Captain Hitsugaya, his whole life he's been defying expectations so if only he works and believes then impossible becomes something for the rest of the world –)

He couldn't.

So every spare minute now he spends training himself. He waits impatiently for chances to slip away to his remote cavern, while the stacks of paper pile higher on his desk and the men under his command begin to murmur among themselves in questioning voices. He trains until his hands bleed, until bright spots flash behind his eyes, until his reiatsu is all but dried up and he is doubled up on the cave floor half-conscious and freezing cold.

He puts himself through all of this because he never again wants to feel not good enough.

But now he feels that way every day.