Takes place soon after the end of the Soul Society arc, after she awakens.
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Skim Along, Love
Hinamori is sitting outside, on a stone bench that is cut into the wall of the Fifth Division's headquarters building. The bench faces the courtyard, and she is sitting with her back, straight as a board and stiffer than one, with surprise.
Surprise, maybe, but also resignation. Muted shock, maybe. it hasn't really settled in, but she knows she will feel the shockwaves once she recovers from the haze that has surrounded her for the last weeks. (In that case, she has made up her mind to never feel those waves, as wouldn't recovering mean that she has come to terms or some sort of inner peace within herself? Hard to fathom, that.)
But, well, this. She looks at the garden, their garden no longer and therefore hardly hers- it's a thing of beauty, still, but already it's seen the effects of neglect. Ivy crawls upwards along the walls, already taking advantage of the opportunity, and once-tame plots are beginning to sprawl in cautious rebellion. The setting sun coaxes shadows into life, creating chaos among the leaves where there is none and she has to remind herself out loud: it's just your imagination! But she scans the petals, some more withered than others, against her will. Her incapacitation let the flowers suffer, and the asters- she stops. He doted on the asters, smiling warmly down at them and then back up at--
She tears her eyes away from that direction, pulling her white robe around her more tightly, looking anywhere but there and lands on the pond in the corner. When he had suggested a water garden as an addition to their courtyard- theirs, always theirs, for no one else to trespass upon- she had worried. It would contrast too sharply with the rest of the garden, she said, and really, the visual effect- He quieted her with a finger to her lips, and while she had panicked inwardly and made most admirable efforts to act as if she were not blushing a shade of red almost comparable with the color that Vice-Captain Kusajishi dyed Captain Ukitake's hair the day before last, he said that he would handle it, and ruffled her hair.
Now, she can only stare as she watches the moon rise and reflect against the surface of the water, and her hands shake as she clenches them into fists. She wishes for Tobiume's companionship, now, and the promise of fire, the whisper that each of those delicate blooms could be consumed by flame- but could those lilypads ignite? Would they burn merrily, little islands above the water, or would they be quenched before they could start?
She slowly, slowly relaxes her hands, blunted nails still leaving half-moons printed in her palms. But she doesn't lift her eyes from the water, the eerily-colored moon's reflection reminding her of flame that will never be. She can no more harm their garden than she can erase him from her mind.
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Written for 31 Days on LJ, August 22: (this red, red moon)