Title: Gleaming in the Dark Sky

Summary: Commander-General Yamamoto ponders about the true conspirator behind the Diamond Dust Rebellion

Rating: K+

A/N: You know what if Hyourinmaru isn't just an awesome, great, whatever, spirit of the snow/ice family? What if zampakuto had a consciousness, not just sentience, and each and every one of them had their own agenda to carry out? What if Hyourinmaru wasn't as kind as the fandom portrays him to be? I thought it strange in the movie, if there was such a law as, 'thou shalt not have two shinigami attached to your name', why was Hyourinmaru the one to breach it? Was he aware of such a thing? Was it intentional? ...And again runs away my fascination with the movie plot for Diamond Dust Rebellion

-x-

You have watched them for a long time

Some you look on with moments of pride, still others with disappointment with grief, still others—though you do not show it, you must never show it—with fear

You have also seen this before

How the full moon in the winter's sky bewitch young men into taking its quest

You have seen before, how the greedy claws of the dragon spirit steals into many a shinigami's fickle hearts

You have seen all this before and lament in passing what it could have been had he snipped it off at its bud. Kusaka had never been anything special; he was young bright—brilliant even—but his radiance was only that of a short-lived firefly on a warm summer night.

You knew the dragon would have grown bored in the end, burned out its initial fascination as it had done many others so long—and not so long—ago.

You knew that it would abandon this one and choose a next, you knew that it wouldn't have been cruel in spite of it all, it would have kept its bond by giving the him a lesser son, you knew that the dragon would have moved on in the end because it was never its choice to choose the him in the first place, it was yours.

You knew even before a young boy was born, died on a plain of ice, was brought into Soul Society and placed in one of the better parts of the Rukon district.

You knew even before the two had called its name out allowed, summoned the only beast, spirit, creature that could have bested you in one of your furies that Hyourinmaru would choose again, and you knew that the child, man-boy--Kusaka--the vessel you have chosen for an ocean, not a fountain or a stream, would have never held against it.

You knew that it wouldn't work but you did it anyways.

But you never knew that the dragon would reply as a rebuke, an insult, a warning to you.

You would have never guessed that your choice, your decisions, would have been the death of a young man, a bright pupil, the future of Seirietei. You would have never guessed the disaster it would have wrought, befitting of a storm, befitting of a dragon and for all its benevolence.

You would have never known that the dragon, Hyourinmaru, the cold-hearted winter, would leave him for dead as it whisked away another beneath its clouded wings.

You would have never known...

And it weighs down upon you does it not?

Even when it shouldn't matter, even when before, long time ago, you have made more difficult decisions as sentencing one to death, sending others to battles, exiling one and imprisoning the rest.

But this one touches a nerve; it strikes hard because you know it could have been avoided and so do they, especially the boy with frozen eyes and the heavy cover of scales and feathers heaped upon his narrow shoulders.

You should have known, you had known and you chose to do nothing about it.

His death is on you

And heavier still the weight of the boy's life--Hitsugaya's--on your shoulders