Special thanks to Prodigy Keyblade Wielder and s0ccermadnes for being my Beta-readers!

Disclaimer: Please refer to the previous chapter, which will eventually refer you to Chapter I

Spoiler Warning: This is an AU-ish, Hitsugaya-centric work based off the 'what if Hinamori Momo died rather than recovered after being attacked by Aizen Sousuke during the Soul Society arc'. Spoilers for everything up until the latest manga chapter, since I will try my best to incorporate all canon ideas that do not directly contradict the first premise into the story. I derived storyline canon from the manga –I also incorporated additional information from the anime as long as it did not contradict the manga or the AU premise accordingly.

Author's Note: This is the rewritten version of Chapter II, and the entire storyline has undergone a massive change in plot and structure. Hence, if you read the previous chapter II before 27 June 2007, then I would highly suggest you read the current Chapter II, and all chapters before it.

Pairing(s): Hitsugaya Centric; HitsuHina, perhaps one-sided HitsuMatsu

Unending Storm

Chapter II: No Such Thing as Fate

'No, I didn't want to become Captain. It's not something I ever aspired for, and I sure as hell don't enjoy being one. I want my life back, goddammit!'

-Kurosaki Ichigo, 5th Division Captain

Hitsugaya held back a twitch of annoyance with sheer will as he listened to the umpteenth shinigami who had come to his office request a day off.

The requests of the older veterans, he could understand. The distant, haunted looks in their eyes and the painful memories that radiated in their reiatsu were convincing enough for him to excuse them for emotional duress. The older shinigami, the ones who had seen, fought, and bled in the wars personally, were most in need of composing themselves without the constant hubbub of the workplace. The problem lay with the younger recruits; they had never quite grasped the devastation of warfare, and had consigned the Arrancar to nothing more but nighttime stories to scare children into bed. They had leapt at the chance of skiving off work, and left the office in droves to hit bars, shopping malls, and other centers of amusement.

But while that fact alone annoyed him, his real annoyance lay behind the motives of their actions. The young Captain granted permission to all that requested it – against his will, sometimes, but since the reasons for the unofficial holiday were sentimental to begin with, he couldn't very well refuse – but Hitsugaya couldn't help but notice that the lessons of the past had been all but forgotten by those who learned it secondhand. If today, as the anniversary of the actual war, could be used as an excuse to skip out on duty…then it only proved that the shinigami had utterly failed to learn from their mistakes. It was a sobering thought.

Yet once again, he couldn't exactly deny permission to those that asked. Thrice-damned protocol.

"Permission granted. Take your unfinished reports to the archive and sign out with Akira." Hitsugaya relented, the low timbre of his voice and his level, impassive tone concealing his mounting annoyance. "You'll receive a double workload tomorrow," he added, looking up from his paperwork to fix the subordinate with a piercing glance. "Dismissed."

The younger shinigami paled visibly under his Captain's legendary cold gaze. He bowed hastily, muttered his gratitude, and scurried out of the office before those penetrating, jade eyes could freeze him to the spot. Hitsugaya watched the recruit leave, then sighed and ran a calloused hand through his silvery-white hair. There goes another one.

The office was silent once more, and completely still save for the occasional flurry of snowflakes landing on the windowpanes. It was still too early for Matsumoto to arrive (albeit, the workday began two hours ago), and in her absence, the entire room was, quite literally, below freezing, since its sole occupant saw no need for warmth. For him, the cold was liberating and welcome. Warm air made the windows fog up and obscured the view.

Without his Vice-Captain's constant distraction, the Tenth Division Captain was left to his own musings. A small portion of his attention was directed towards filling out the reports mechanically and flawlessly, as he had always filled them out over the past century and a half. Another portion of his mind mentally reorganized his schedule and memorized the active squads' assignments with perfect accuracy. The rest of his mind was left to wander, shifting to thoughts that were more personal in nature.

Per se, the feeling of loss that had been gnawing at him all week.

Normally, he would have dismissed the feeling as an unwanted obstacle, letting Hyourinmaru freeze it and shatter it into oblivion; it was beginning to interfere with his performance – distracting him and making him hesitate where he usually made decisions without remorse. When he sent a scouting mission to 76th District last night, the wrenching feeling in his chest had multiplied tenfold, and he had been on the verge of ordering them to withdraw without any apparent cause.

But try as he might, Hitsugaya couldn't banish the notion from his mind. It wasn't that he didn't trust his own intuition and Hyourinmaru's instincts, but that the feeling of loss was…nostalgic. The only logical conclusion was that it was a residual feeling from events a century past, reawakened by circumstances and some outside stimuli.

His eyes narrowed – why should events a century past still cloud his judgment?

Probably because it never seemed like a century had passed. It was still strange to think that today was the hundredth anniversary of the actual day the war ended. But the calendar didn't lie, and every history textbook at the Academy boldly printed the date as the day of victory.

Gods, had it really been so long? The memories were still raw and sharp. Hitsugaya closed his eyes, and the recollections came back in a rush. He could almost see the carnage-strewn battlefield, taste the blood on his lips, and smell the stench of decay in the air. In the silence of his office, he could almost hear the phantom echoes of the dying cries of the wounded and the harsh clang of metal on metal. Too many battles, too many losses. The images were as clear as the day they were formed.

And her. Always her.

Damned photographic memory.

Hyourinmaru's frosty presence stirred in the back of his mind, steadying him after he had ventured to close to the emotions he had frozen and locked away decades ago. The images faded away in a gust of cold wind. As he reopened his eyes and glanced out the window at the snowfall outside (for any sign of his tardy Vice-Captain), Hitsugaya caught a glimpse of his own stoic reflection captured on the freezing glass. A more angular jaw, sharper eyes, and features that were unmistakably those of a young adult, even if they still bore faint traces of childhood…the changes in his physical appearance were indelible evidence that a century had indeed passed him by.

But what did time mean to the shinigami anyways? When a lifetime could span millennia, what did a few centuries–?

"Gosh, Taichou, it's freezing in here!" Matsumoto's cheerful greeting jarred Hitsugaya from his thoughts. He inwardly swore at his own inattentiveness, letting Matsumoto startle him, but outwardly enacted an automatic response.

"Matsumoto, you're late," the white-haired Captain growled, but his Vice-Captain shrugged it off without remorse as she pounced on her desk and flicked on the desk light with maddening joviality.

"So, where is everyone? I didn't see anyone but Akira-kun in the officer's room."

"The requested a day off," Hitsugaya replied, without looking up from his paperwork. Hopefully, Matsumoto would read him well enough not to press the matter any further.

"And you agreed?" No such luck. "Aw, Taichou, you're so nice!"

Hitsugaya unconsciously gripped his quill tighter. "It wasn't because of that," he answered softly.

"Then why…oh." Realization dawned on Matsumoto's features. Her grin faded. "Oh..." Her lips changed into a wry smile and her eyes gained a most peculiar shade of gray as she picked up her quill and paid extreme attention to the forms lying on her desk. As well as they both hid the fact, old wounds had a long way to go before they healed. Too many battles, too many losses.

'BIPBIPBIPBEEP! BIPBIPBIPBEEP!' The shrill ringing of the alarm call on Matsumoto's desk prevented a would-be awkward silence. The orange-haired lieutenant snatched the communicator from its resting place in the blink of an eye. "Vice-Captain Matsumoto." Her voice was dead serious again.

/Takashi Ayuma, squad leader, reporting! Squad stationed on patrol in West Rukongai District 76! Fifteen minutes ago, we were ambushed by unidentified enemies! Requesting emergency assistance/

Matsumoto's eyes narrowed and she glanced over at her Captain for confirmation. Hitsugaya's expression remained impassive and inscrutable as he set down his quill. He nodded briskly. She turned back to the communicator, and barked, "Status report, Takashi."

/Heavy snowfall, visibility is poor. Three men are down, two more missing. Currently taking shelter behind a boulder in a forest clearing, exact location unknown. They haven't found us yet…Haen estimated that we're outnumbered at least three to one. Matsumoto-fukutaichou…I think…we're in trouble./

"Help is on the way. Hold positions, regroup, and lay low." Matsumoto commanded, and then clicked off the communicator. "Taichou…"

"Get Haineko, Matsumoto." Hitsugaya commanded without missing a beat as he left his desk. "We'll have to flash step through Jyunrinan District and over the Hakke Ridge." Hitsugaya grimaced at the thought of the thousands upon thousands of continuous flash steps needed to cover such a distance. Seventy-sixth was a long way off and a full-ranked shinigami would waste at least half a day alternating running and flash step to get there. Even completely with shunpo, a brief mental calculation told him that it would still cost them at least half an hour to arrive.

He glanced over at Matsumoto, and caught her stormy grey gaze with his jade blue eyes. Her eyes were serious, a far cry from the normal carefree and lazy vice-captain that drooled over the couch. But his eyes were sharp – he caught the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes, and the faint whitening of her knuckles as they grasped Haineko's hilt. The same conclusions that he had reached with ice-cold logic were running through her mind as well.

It would take forty-five minutes to get to Seventy-sixth District. Half an hour, minimum.

The squad that had called so desperately for support didn't have half an hour.

In short, they weren't going to get there in time.

His footsteps crunched softly into the bloodstained snow, and the only surviving spiritual pressure in his vicinity was rapidly dying away. As Hitsugaya surveyed the carnage around him, a creeping fatigue that wasn't entirely the result of flash stepping slowly ate away at the edge of his mind. They had arrived ten minutes too late.

Ten minutes too late to save her.

A phantom memory echoed in his mind as he stepped through the scarlet snowdrift, but he shunted them back into their frozen mental prison before he could remember their significance. The last thing he needed now was to muse over long gone events of the distant past. Hyourinmaru shifted in the back of his mind, and he could sense the dragon's dissatisfied growl reverberate against the nape of his neck, even if he didn't remember – didn't want to remember – exactly what caused Hyourinmaru's displeasure.

Why do you run?

Like usual, Hyourinmaru did not add anything else to explain its insightful comment. It didn't have to. The sword was keenly attuned to its wielder's moods, and at the moment, its wielder's spirit force was a blistering hailstorm of unacknowledged emotions and unspoken words – all of them locked behind that immutable wall of ice and left to disappear. They never truly disappeared, of course, because losing the memories would mean forgetting.

Hitsugaya Toushirou did not forget.

But he was remembering more than he would have liked as he knelt beside the limp, shivering mess of blood and cloth – the only survivor of the ill-fated squad – and gently brushed off some of the fallen snowdrift. The boy was alive, perhaps, but long, harsh experience had taught him too well. Even in the semidarkness, Hitsugaya barely had to glance at the blood seeping into the soiled snow and the mutilated parts of the boy's limbs to realize the wounds were fatal, and would have been excruciatingly painful if the frostbite had not destroyed all of the nerve endings.

He hadn't seen anything in the last few decades that even vaguely resembled the ragged gashes that marred every body littering the frosted ground. It looked as if a savage animal had ripped through blood and bone with bare teeth and claws, and then scorched the corpses beyond recognition.

They looked eerily like Arrancar attacks.

With the corpses littering every inch of the ground, gore everywhere, blades clashing, cries of the dying, blood, blood, blood

Goddamnit.

He really didn't need this right now. Hitsugaya's jaw line tensed, and he forced the insidious whispering to the back of his mind, concentrating instead on the situation at hand. Pale emerald eyes flashed dangerously as he mentally ran through hundreds of possibilities, his gaze flicking from one corpse to the next trying to analyze what had caused such damage, and how the wounds should be dealt with.

"H-Hitsu…gaya…taichou…?" the boy's voice rasped softly; his eyelids fluttered, but remained closed.

Hitsugaya's wandering gaze immediately riveted to the boy. "Aa."

And with a pang he realized the boy couldn't be much older than an academy graduate was – one who should be enjoying a typical afternoon with his friends back home, not dying in these unfamiliar snows. Tousled black hair and a youthful, pale face. No name came to mind.

He couldn't even remember the boy's name. Just another nameless subordinate.

"So…c-cold…"

Hitsugaya's jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

Time was running out. At this rate, exposure would kill the boy before the internal damage and blood loss could, unless he did something, and did it quickly. But the Tenth Division Captain was keenly aware that, even if he was a genius, there was no possible way he could heal the boy. Fatal wounds were fatal wounds, and no healer in Soul Society could do anything for him now. But Hitsugaya needed to keep him alive and talking to find out exactly who had done this, and how they did it.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt himself squirming, despising himself for his inability to save the young death god. Somewhere behind the ice, he was furious, desperate, and devastated. But his expression was smooth and emotionless – the ice would keep those emotions at bay, and he could concentrate on what was logical and realistic without having to deal with the mess of emotions and moral implications related to events like this. The results of a century and a half of being a Captain. The results of a lifetime haunted by dreams of frost. Numbed.

All he needed to do now was staunch the wounds and thaw the boy enough for him to speak articulately. He hadn't had time to bring a medical kit, so anesthetics were a luxury he couldn't provide the boy. Hopefully, the cold had done a thorough job of killing nerve cells.

Hitsugaya furrowed his brow in concentration, opening his reserves of reiatsu. A high-level kidou spell, nothing lower than seventy. Anything less wouldn't thaw the young death god quickly enough and cause massive amounts of tissue or brain damage, but anything higher would fry the boy upon contact.

"Bakudou #79: Ryuuenkai." His voice cut sharply through the muffled drizzling rain and snow. The air suddenly crackled with Captain-leveled reiatsu, its soft blue glow momentarily illuminating the dim clearing. Then the spiritual energy blossomed into blinding white, writhing tendrils that coiled tightly over the boy's limbs, torso, and head, shining even brighter before all of them simultaneously melted into his battered body, leaving only a sizzling puddle of melting snow behind.

The boy visibly relaxed, almost collapsing in on himself. But his limbs did not stop quaking, and blood was still seeping from various wounds. Too much blood.

Without warning, the youth tensed in alarm, his eyes flying open, and his broken fingers grasping desperately into the hem of his Captain's white cloak. "Hitsugaya-taichou! You…we couldn't…ambush –" he was interrupted by a fit of coughing.

Hitsugaya laid a steadying hand on the boy's shoulder, and took care to quash his spiritual pressure even further – he couldn't risk exposing the boy to any high-levels of reiatsu without knocking him unconscious. And if the boy lost consciousness now, it was unlikely that he would ever regain it. The Tenth Division Captain levered the boy into a more natural position, then channeled a miniscule amount of reiatsu into the boy, lending his subordinate a little more spiritual pressure.

The thin eyelashes fluttered, and this time, the boy opened his eyes fully.

This time, Hitsugaya could not help but draw a shuddering breath in surprise.

Momo's eyes were staring back at him – the same shade and shape. The same wide, innocent expression was plastered across the boy's face, and the same swirling, chocolate-hazel eyes staring into his sharp, aquamarine ones – the memories that always stirred gently beneath the ice suddenly exploded into vivid recall.

Shirou-chan…

"Whoever attacked you is long gone. The area is secure." Hitsugaya replied tersely, more for his own benefit than for the boy's. He kept his tone as calm as he possibly could, but soft enough not to jar the boy's fragile consciousness. "What can you remember?"

The boy closed his eyes again, as if in recall, and Hitsugaya felt an inexplicable twinge as those chocolate-brown eyes hid themselves beneath pale eyelids. The boy spoke softly, no more than a whisper that was almost lost in the rushing, snowy winds. "Fire. There was this man…he was the leader, I think…there was this sword…fire…I couldn't stop them…Yamasaki was closest…she screamed…and we tried to fight, but he – he was too strong…I couldn't…"

Without warning, the trembling ceased. And the boy went terribly, terribly still. Hitsugaya caught his breath, fearing the worst.

But then the boy opened his eyes again, struggling this time, and turned his head slightly to look into his superior's gaze. And Hitsugaya realized that those Momo-like eyes were fearful, searching his own eyes for a reassurance that wasn't there.

"H-Hitsugaya-taichou…am I going to…die?"

And for the first time in years, Hitsugaya Toushirou hesitated, unable to answer. A dragon could not lie. Ice could not reflect anything but the truth.

But how could he tell the truth, when the boy was looking up at him with wide, innocent eyes the almost exact same shape and color of hers, hands still weakly tugging at the edge of his cloak?

"Everyone dies." It was a close to comforting as he could get under these circumstances.

The boy did not flinch away, but continued staring straight up at him, then smiled weakly.

"Promise you won't tell…Nee-san?"

"Aa." He could always get someone else to deliver the official condolences.

The boy was rambling now, his coherence slipping away with his ebbing lifeblood. "I wanted to be…like Hitsugaya-taichou. Hitsugaya-taichou is strong, strong enough to…protect…everybody else."

"I was so proud to…finally get into Hitsugaya-taichou's squad…I want…to get stronger…so I could be a Captain too…" His eyes glazed over.

"And be strong enough…to protect…everyone…"

Hitsugaya didn't notice his nails digging deeply into his palms, drawing blood. He didn't notice his own clenched fists shaking in barely suppressed anger. He didn't notice that he had released the kidou spell, and that his reiatsu had gone entirely cold, even colder than the snow around them. He only noticed that, as the boy's eyes faded to black, he hesitated, and then whispered words already halfway between reality and a final, dreaming sleep.

"Then everyone…can live…happily…ever…af…ter…" And then the last line was his to finish, because the boy could no longer speak.

The end.

He had stopped believing in fairytales a long time ago. Because he had learned the hard way, in more ways than one, that there was no such thing as a 'happy ever after'. No such thing as victory, when all the bad people die, and all the good guys return home heroically. He had learned that everything cost something else to get, and there was no such thing as a perfect ending. There was only reality, and ice. Only a sharp difference between those too weak to survive, and those strong enough to move forward.

The same difference that explained why he was alive while the boy in front of him wasn't.

A brush of his fingers closed those dead, brown eyes, and in a swift, decisive movement, he stood, his Captain's haori whipping about him in the heavy winds. Matsumoto's reiatsu was approaching, but slowly, at a painful walk. Which could only mean that she hadn't found anything more than he had.

He should have known that, if Fate had its way, nothing good would happen today. But with a cold narrowing of his eyes, Hitsugaya reminded himself that there was no such thing as Fate; his actions and consequences were his and his alone, and that the present determined the future, not the other way around. Unless something astronomically impossible happened to convince him otherwise, then for all intents and purposes, Hitsugaya Toushirou did not believe in Fate.

So why did it feel like some higher being was laughing at him? Laughing loud and raucously as the strewn limbs, the bloody corpses, and the broken swords screamed of that exact date a hundred years earlier? Laughing as he stood there, silently watching this nameless boy's corpse slowly buried by freshly fallen, white snow?

No such thing as Fate. No such thing as Destiny.

But it didn't matter. He did not want to think about it now. Hitsugaya closed his eyes for a moment, and, with an ease only attained through many years of practice, the mixed feelings raging inside him dissolved into the ice, and the calm, analytical mindset of a dragon took over. There was an unknown opposition group that was too dangerous for an individual squad. Perhaps even too dangerous for a seated officer. He didn't plan on taking the chance that it was, or on risking the lives of any more subordinates by sending them after the rogue group.

But you did not cross a dragon without consequence, and Hitsugaya Toushirou did not easily forgive transgressions. The rogue group responsible for the carnage around him would learn the meaning of ice.

It was time to take matters into his own hands, against regulation or not.

"Taichou…"

Matsumoto's voice sounded quietly from behind. The white-haired Captain turned, his expression inscrutable, just in time to catch his second-in-command's fleeting look of sorrow before she wiped her face clean of any emotions.

"Let's go." He turned to leave.

"…and the bodies?"

Hitsugaya paused briefly, and then his voice cut through the storm's howl as clearly as a whip of ice.

"Leave them. The snow will bury them until the posthumous affairs squad finds them." Without another word, he slipped into shunpo, before Matsumoto could read his expression. But he missed Matsumoto's knowing expression, as she glanced at the dead boy lying behind, then back in his direction with a bitter half-smile. The Vice-captain shook some of the snow out of her long, orange hair, and placed a hand on her hip in a mock pout.

"Same old Taichou; still won't admit that he actually has a heart beneath all that ice, eh?"

She sighed, and then followed her captain into shunpo, disappearing into the sleeting ice, and leaving the sad bodies behind.

Rewritten July 6, 2007

The original Chapter II was a montrosity before I broke it into three - over 10,000 words on 30 pages in Verdana 10 font. However, since I did break it into three, that means chapters three and four are essentially done, except for a bit of proofreading and tweaking.

Oh, three more things. First off, since the storyline can potentially branch off into two different directions here, I would like to ask: Would you prefer a happy ending, or a tragic one? Kindly review and submit your vote. Secondly, would anyone prefer to see 'Next Chapter Previews' in the Author's Note? That way, the reader has a better idea of what's going to happen, as well as a sense of anticipation, while I have a way to make people actually READ the author's note.

Lastly, I would like to note that, while this story recieved over 3000 hits, only ONE person reviewed. For the author, that's pretty discouraging. Please, if you liked it, SUBMIT A REVIEW and tell me that you did. Alot of work goes into writing literate chapters, and it only takes a minute or two to write a quick review.

-Karia Ithilai