Winter's Sons

Summary: When a body turns up at the Eastern Wall, run through with a zanpakuto and a sword of ice, all evidence points to Hitsugaya Toshiro. But this is only the first in a string of killings. With Central Forty-Six having issued an order for his execution, Hitsugaya must work against time to clear his name and find a killer strong enough to take on a captain. The past is never dead…

VI: TIME OUT OF JOINT

Imai had left a platter of food and a cup of green tea outside the archive door. Hitsugaya hadn't realised how hungry he was until he saw it. His eyes felt gritty from the lack of sleep, but overwork was something he was almost used to, by now. He'd just never had his life depend so directly on it before.

He ate quickly; the food was good, but it was beginning to turn cold. The tea, at least, was barely warm, but it was still a relief. He would have heated it a little with kido, but felt no sense in doing so in the school grounds. As he did so, Hitsugaya considered his next move. He could not stay at the Academy. It would not be safe, and Imai had made it clear he could not continue to shelter Hitsugaya.

Perhaps he should have worried about Imai, but the man was a good enough swordmaster and he had been warned. Most of the Academy instructors would have been on alert, and as staying at the Academy was no longer an option, Hitsugaya decided that they would simply have to deal with the killer should he return.

No, Hitsugaya thought, there were too many people the next target could be, but his money was down on Kyoraku Shunsui. Captain of the Eighth Division, and one of the most senior Captains in Soul Society, there was far more to Kyoraku than he let on. Most of all, Hitsugaya's past held too many links between them. He owed the man, Hitsugaya thought, and that had formed a good part of his loyalty in the past. He'd be damned if anything happened. And while Kyoraku was more than able to fight off an attacker…

Hitsugaya scowled and dismissed the thought as being far too callow. He'd never shared Hinamori's fascination with Captains, even before he'd come to the Academy. Captains were powerful, but they were still people. Some more experienced and cany than their younger counterparts. They could be killed through wearing them down to the point of exhaustion, through trickery, through illness, through sheer incompetence…executed...overpowered through sheer weight of numbers…

The list went on, all the different ways to kill a Captain. All the different ways Hitsugaya knew he could die.

Matsumoto. What had happened to her? He felt some guilt that he hadn't yet given her a thought. He'd been too busy running, too busy trying to find a way out of his current predicament. Yet at the same time, as his thoughts went to her, she seemed just as natural a target. She was his Lieutenant. Her link to his Academy days was no less than Kyoraku's. Perhaps greater, in a sense.

He exhaled, staring down at the cooling cup of tea. It wasn't the first time someone tried to kill a Lieutenant to get to their Captain.

And he'd been reacting, Hitsugaya thought irritably. What he needed to do was to start fighting back and taking matters into his own hands. He'd started that by escaping the Ninth Division and running for the Academy.

Matsumoto. Could he afford to put her in such a position?

Hitsugaya scowled. He knew what her answer would be.

Hitsugaya dodged the patrolling shinigami along the streets of the Seireirei, and then slipped in through the small postern-gate at the back of his Division. He'd hoped the gate would be left unguarded, and it had been. Its existence was known only to the Captain and the Lieutenant of the Tenth Division, and its presence was carefully concealed by kido worked long ago into the mortar of the surrounding wall. As he passed his hand over it and spoke the keyword to activate the gate, it simply appeared, without any fanfare, as if it had been there all along.

He knew it had.

There was a brass lock for a key, but Hitsugaya didn't have the key on him, and he didn't need one. Such locks were rare in the Seireitei, but they did exist. Instead, he carefully channelled a trickle of his reiatsu into the keyhole. Ice formed, taking on the shape of the gap into which he poured his spiritual energy. It hardened, sending splinters of ice crackling to the ground. Hitsugaya frowned. There was ice on the ground, he noticed. It was not his. He knew his ice, and…

He bent down, and picked up a handful of ice-shavings. He rubbed them between his fingers, trying to sense what had thrown him off. The patterns were wrong, Hitsugaya realised. Woven tightly through the ice was the familiar signature of Hyorinmaru, the same reiatsu. But underlying it…

It wasn't his reiatsu. It wasn't his spiritual energy. Difficult to tell, unless you knew what you were searching for…and because it was his reiatsu, his ice, the difference to Hitsugaya was as clear and stark as the difference between night and day.

He closed his eyes, and called forth the dragon, stirred into wakefulness by his disquiet.

No, the dragon rumbled, and sharp, distinct colours overlaid his vision. You see? It is not the same.

No, Hitsugaya thought, it was not. The key of ice, the fresh shavings that had fallen gleamed a pale, icy blue to his vision. The shavings he held in his hand were a darker, inky-purplish-blue, like midnight violet. Almost, he thought with a shiver, as though the ice had been corrupted, somehow. He thought about it. There had been one, before, but…

But he was dead. And Hitsugaya was used to not-thinking.

It didn't matter. He blinked, and the colours faded. The ice was just ice to his eyes, though the ghosts of the colours flickered at the corner of his vision. He put his hand to the key of hardened, packed ice he had created, and turned it. He pushed against the small postern gate, and the barred wooden door slid open, noiselessly.

The intruder had entered his division, or left this way. There were more ice-shavings on the other side of the door. Had left, then. Some ice had been strewn this way, or…

He had wanted to leave a trail. Hadn't cared about the fact that his comings and goings could be noted. Hitsugaya very carefully made sure that his reiatsu was being concealed, and then strode on.

Perhaps it was because she hadn't been expecting to do so at all, that Matsumoto sensed it.

A faint, very faint flicker of reiatsu, almost undetectable, except for the fact that she was so very attuned to it. She jerked still in her chair, trying to sense it, almost knocking over the empty bottles of sake on the table. She'd needed them last night, after Hinamori. Had never gotten around to clearing them out.

It was two kan for a returned bottle, wasn't it?

There was a second flash of reiatsu after the first, before it subsided. Matsumoto almost worried at her lower lip, wondering. There was a time when she would have known without a doubt who it was, but now…but now she wasn't so sure. Her certainty had been taken away, with the murders. Her hand fell to where Haineko lay on the table before her. With a few deft movements, she fastened the sword to her obi and stood.

She found him in his room, surveying the mess. Matsumoto's hand flew to her mouth; she hadn't come in since he'd been arrested and taken away. No, since he'd gone with Hisagi and Kira.

He sensed her in the door; he always did, and he gave that momentary half-turn of his head that indicated he knew she was there. It worked one way—she'd never been able to quite take him by surprise, though he hid his presence so well that she'd often accused him of sneaking up on her.

"They didn't come back here to conduct a search."

"No," Matsumoto said. The responsibility had fallen to her, but in the middle of running the Division, she'd almost entirely forgotten. No doubt the next round of messages contained some from Hisagi, wondering why she was delaying on the search of her Captain's quarters for any form of evidence that could be brought to bear on the murders.

She wondered if it mattered, now. They'd taken his running away as a sign of guilt, and now events were moving too fast for an investigation to proceed. Almost too fast for her to follow.

"Then he did it," Hitsugaya said, almost to himself, as he looked at the mess his desk was in, closet open and ransacked, chest of drawers all open. "But to what purpose?"

"He?"

He made an impatient sound. "Surely you didn't think I was behind the murders."

"No, Taicho." But it felt good to hear him deny it, with his own voice. "But he?"

He turned now, and looked at her. He looked tired, dark circles smudging his eyes, and his blue-green eyes feverish bright and bloodshot. His robes were crumpled in a way he would not usually have stood for, while on duty. A reluctant half-smirk traced its way across his lips. "Just a guess," he replied.

He inspected the closet, searching through rumpled and scattered clothes, until his eyebrows drew together. "A scarf's missing," he said, at last, in that quiet voice. He moved over to the chest of drawers.

"There's an order out from Central Forty-Six. The Captain-Commander countersigned it. You are to be brought into custody, for the murders of Kahei and Narumi. Preferably alive, but all members of the Gotei Thirteen are authorised to use all available force."

He went perfectly still. "I had heard of it," he said. He was still rifling through his belongings, looking for some sign of what the intruder had come for.

"Kuso," Hitsugaya hissed, suddenly. In a tone that she had almost never heard him use before. He swore infrequently, and his expression now combined fear with extreme anger. He held a pile of letters in his hand.

"Taicho?"

"The parcels," he said. "They've been searched. And one of the letters is missing."

"Letters," Matsumoto repeated. "From Junrinan?"

His breath hissed out between his teeth. "From my grandmother," he gritted. His reiatsu fluctuated, burning, sharp with a distress that sent trickles of ice coalescing along the floor, before he regained control and clamped down on the leaking reiatsu. "He's taken the letter."

He shoved the stack of letters back in the chest of drawers, held up a parcel. A packet slipped out of it before either of them could catch it, spilling amanatto to the ground. Hitsugaya and Matsumoto both stared at the candies. "The packet was opened," Hitsugaya said, clinically. "He wasn't looking. But he found the letter and knew what he could do with it."

He was out the door the next moment, and Matsumoto found herself following him. But he turned then, and barked, "No, you stay here, Matsumoto."

"My place is with you, Captain!" she retorted fiercely.

He shoved a package at her; startled, her reflexes acted before she did. She caught it, awkwardly, in one hand, before she realised what it was. It was entirely white. She unfurled it. Hitsugaya's white haori tumbled loose in her grasp, dark viridian inner lining showing. The character for ten blazed proudly in dark strokes at the back of the haori, with the distinctive alternating slashed patterns at the very bottom of the Captain's cloak.

A Captain had to wear their haori at all times. Never parted with it, except in resignation or disgrace. Even dead Captains were buried with their haori.

Was he—?

The magnitude of the gesture struck her. "Taicho!" Matsumoto shouted, adjusting her grip on his haori. But as she ran out into the courtyard of the Tenth Division, she knew it was too late. Hitsugaya had gone. And he had left without her.

She frowned at the haori, lips pursed. He thought he could manage perfectly fine without her, and had told her to stay with the Division. And he'd run off, chasing the intruder to wherever he had gone. Matsumoto folded up the Captain's cloak, taking good care to handle it far more neatly than Hitsugaya had. She left it on top of his writing desk, in his room.

She knew where he had gone. She'd been there before. A rumble split the air. Matsumoto glanced up, in the courtyard. The sky was dark grey, threatening rain.

Hitsugaya ran.

He ran as fast as he could, and perhaps altogether a little more recklessly than he should have. Without his haori, he was simply a figure in a dark shihakusho, and in his speed, it was easy to get mistaken for a courier.

He flash-stepped past startled patrols, leaped off buildings, using surfaces to propel him forward, towards his destination with increasing speed.

The sky was dark, mirroring his fear, desperation, and anger.

Thunder rumbled. He knew it was going to rain.

He would have run out past Jidanbo, but there was no time to explain all that he needed to to the kindly Guardian of the West Gate, much less put Jidanbo at risk. Instead, a neat pommel strike delivered to the chin and then the head of the sentry on duty took out the man, and then Hitsugaya was moving on, past him, through the postern gate in the Western Wall and onwards.

He was in Junrinan in moments, pushing himself to the limits of his speed. Hyorinmaru was still in his hand, though sheathed. He sensed the reiatsu then; the cold heart of a waiting storm, and then the inky hints of midnight, corruption seeping through the presence.

He was outside his home. Ice slicked the vegetable garden his grandmother grew. There was still no door, just a hanging cloth. He pushed past the cloth, and entered his childhood home.

The man had dark hair, elegantly tied back. His eyes were a bright scarlet, which Hitsugaya had never remembered. They used to be dark violet, he thought. A few shades off the colour of the sky at midnight. He was tall, taller than Hitsugaya had remembered, and altogether very much alive. When Hitsugaya had last seen him, he had been very dead. As dead as Hitsugaya could have made him.

Guilt, anger, fear—all of these swirled together in his mind at once as he took a step forward. He recognised the sword the other man held. It was Hyorinmaru, though the sheath was a dark, glossy red, just peeking out from beneath the dun cloak and the hilt-wrappings were the faint purple that he'd seen on the ice. Grandmother was behind; her mouth gagged and her hands bound together with bonds of ice.

For all of a moment, Hitsugaya was the raw young boy who'd just killed another person. Anger burned with a frigid clarity in his mind.

Hyorinmaru swung up in an instance, on guard. "Release her," Hitsugaya said, "Kusaka."

Kusaka smiled. "I was beginning to think it would take you forever. Tensai."

"Release her," Hitsugaya repeated. The words almost tore themselves from his throat in a growl. "She has nothing to do with the bodies you've been leaving all over the Seireitei."

"Oh yes, the bodies," Kusaka said. There was a streak of madness in his eyes—they'd never been red before—and his smile was several inches too wide. "I thought they would send the right message."

"You wanted revenge," Hitsugaya snapped.

Kusaka blinked in surprise. "On Soul Society," he said. "Let it do them good to have corpses defiling their neat and orderly streets, bound by old rules that should have been better forgotten! No, it was not just revenge, though I enjoyed the chance to ruin the perfect order those old men of Central Forty-Six have devoted their lives to enforcing, whatever the cost." He threw out the pale green scarf, tossed it to the side. Hitsugaya's eyes followed the movement; a letter lay there, discarded as well. "Isn't it obvious? I want to finish this."

"A message," Hitsugaya breathed, realising. All the pieces slipped back into place and this time, the shape of the puzzle changed and all became clear like the sunlight through ice. Kusaka hadn't killed all those bodies and tried to pin the murders on Hitsugaya. That was incidental to all of this, when Soul Society had panicked. "You wanted to send me a message."

Kusaka raised his free hand. In a single moment and a sharp outpouring of reiatsu, a gleaming sword of ice formed in his hand. The same one, Hitsugaya was willing to bet, as had been found in all the corpses. He threw it; it planted itself point-first in the ground, a hair's breadth away from Hitsugaya's leading foot.

He reached out and touched it, felt reiatsu and intention interwoven in the blade. A message. Meant for him. And only for him—Hitsugaya was the only one who could've had a hope of reading the message burned into the blade in Kusaka's reiatsu. Only because they shared an element, because they shared a zanpakuto.

Because they shared a past.

"You want to end this."

"No," Kusaka said, gone eeriely still. "Not yet. I want to play a game, tensai." He smiled, sharp on his drawn, gaunt features. "I broke into your Division. Your men meant nothing to me. I found your letters, and took your scarf. And it brought you here, where it began for you."

"I'm here," Hitsugaya said. "My grandmother has nothing to do with this. Release her, and we'll fight."

He sensed Matsumoto burst through the door behind him. She flanked him, Haineko drawn and in her hands. "Captain," she acknowledged him tersely. "I felt it was best I come."

Kusaka glanced between the two of them, and chuckled. A sly smile crept over his face. "Well, well," he said, "Bringing someone else to do your fighting for you? I expected better, Hitsugaya."

"Go," Hitsugaya snapped, "And I'll hunt you down. I'll play your game."

"So readily?" Kusaka asked, with mock-surprise. "You may regret that, in time."

Hitsugaya stepped to the side. "Matsumoto," he said, in a cold voice that left no room at all for questioning. For disobedience.

She stepped aside. They watched as Kusaka passed by them, left the small house where Hitsugaya had once lived, where she'd tracked him down and told him he had to become a shinigami. In a sense, where it had all begun.

With a sharp, clear crackling sound, the ice binding Hitsugaya's grandmother broke apart and melted. Hitsugaya sheathed Hyorinmaru in a quick gesture and stepped forward. "Granny?" he asked quietly. "Are you alright?" He checked, but realised that Kusaka had knocked her out cold while he was orchestrating his little game.

He knelt down beside her. There was a large bruise around her wrist, where someone had grabbed her. He bit back on his anger, and focused a trickle of healing reiatsu into her body. Finally, she stirred. "Toshiro," she breathed, looking up at him.

"Granny," Hitsugaya said. "I'm so sorry. I came as fast as I could." The anger had faded; all that was left was uncertainty and a gentleness that Matsumoto had seldom seen.

"Don't be…" she said. She touched her hand to his arm. "You came in time…"

Hitsugaya choked back the tension, the tremble in his voice. "Yes…" he whispered, even though everything told him he'd been too late, too lucky… "I'm sorry. You shouldn't have been drawn up in this."

"Who was that man?" Granny asked.

He turned, saw Matsumoto regarding him, the same unvoiced question on her lips.

Clinically, distantly, Hitsugaya said, "He was the first person I'd ever killed."

Matsumoto sat, and listened to her Captain tell them about his life at the Academy. In a way, she'd already known that the Academy had always been hard on its students. But the story that Hitsugaya was telling them chilled her, to the core.

"I learned the name of my zanpakuto as a fourth year student," Hitsugaya said. To his grandmother, who was sitting on the tatami matting, face solemn, he said, "The name of my sword. All shinigami students must learn it, to control their power."

Matsumoto sucked in a breath. She'd heard about his swift rise through the Academy—how could she have not? But this astounded her, nonetheless. Learning the name of his zanpakuto in his fourth year was extraordinarily quick—and yet it made sense. He'd been approached by Hyorinmaru in his sleep, and there was no doubt that learning Hyorinmaru's name would have gotten him on the fast track to graduating from the Academy.

"I learned it," Hitsugaya said, turning to her, "In a formal duel with Narumi Arata. I had challenged him to a formal duel, much to the surprise of many people. Narumi Arata had been a fifth year student, then, and he had previously released his zanpakuto."

Matsumoto said, "The same Narumi Arata who was killed?"

Hitsugaya gave a tight nod. "Yes," he said. "But the trouble didn't start until another fifth year student, by the name of Kusaka Sojiro, learned the name of his zanpakuto."

"What was it?"

Hitsugaya said, softly, "Hyorinmaru."

"That's impossible," Matsumoto said reflexively, and yet it explained so much. The almost identical zanpakuto. The ease with which Kusaka had shaped blades of ice. How their reiatsu was indistinguishable, enough to fool most of Soul Society into believing that Hitsugaya had murdered the two men.

When all along, it had been Kusaka.

And yet they'd been taught that zanpakuto were an extension of their wielders' deepest selves. They were forged from the very souls of the shinigami who wielded them and therefore reflected that soul. It wasn't possible for two separate shinigami to share the same zanpakuto, just as it wasn't possible for two separate shinigami to have the same soul.

But…

"It happened," Hitsugaya said, in that cold, tired voice. He looked away from her. "Central Forty-Six knows that it is possible for shinigami to share the same zanpakuto. By ancient law, this is forbidden."

Forbidden. Something told Matsumoto she didn't want to know what came next. But she asked, anyway.

"What happens, then?"

"The two shinigami are taken to an old clearing," Hitsugaya said. "They are brought before the Central Forty-Six and told of the ancient law and then brought to the old clearing to fight. Only one of them will walk away from the battle. The other must die. It is…not sufficient that he dies. All memory of him will be eradicated."

Matsumoto said, "You won, didn't you?"

Eyes met hers, deep as jade wellsprings, and an ancient, cold wyrm of darkness coiled up at the bottom of those wells. He said, "Yes. Yes, I did."

"Then how is he…?"

"I don't know."

Steel skirled off steel as they fought. Kusaka had always been the better swordsman. Hitsugaya had always been better with kido, the better strategist. Here, Kusaka's longer reach came into play and Hitsugaya was forced to parry madly just to survive.

In the middle of that, Hyorinmaru and flashes of kido spells came into play. Kusaka swept long daggers of ice at Hitsugaya, who made a fist, and watched as the ice crumbled into dust, glittering like diamonds in the light. He returned by aiming a careful Byakurai at Kusaka, forcing him to dodge to avoid the kido spell.

In that moment, Hitsugaya could have taken on the offensive. He hesitated—

Why do you hesitate?

"I didn't want to fight," he said aloud. He remembered how this fight had gone. "I wasn't ready to kill."

You fought and killed Hollows. Why not him?

"He was my friend," Hitsugaya replied. "I could not have killed him. I was willing to give you up if that meant we wouldn't have fought."

Power draws us down paths we would have otherwise not chosen.

"Yes."

You wanted to survive, in the end. More than you wanted him to live. Do not doubt that.

He fought, like a wildcat. Bleeding from too many wounds, he parried the blow that Kusaka aimed at his midsection, and whipped his free hand across and spoke a single word: Byakurai. Pressed as closely as they were, Kusaka could not evade in time, and the stream of tightly-focused blue-white lightning burned through his shoulder and he cried out in agony.

His grip on Hyorinmaru loosened, but the zanpakuto was not a weapon to be wielded with two hands, as much as Kusaka's version was slightly shorter. Hitsugaya led in with a curving strike that tore the blade from Kusaka's hand. The second strike struck home.

A large, diagonal cut opened across Kusaka's chest. Blood sprayed; drenching them both. Kusaka staggered backwards, violet eyes wide with terror and panic. He brought his hand up and managed, "Shakkaho."

Hitsugaya was caught unprepared. He threw himself to the side, but the kido spell grazed him, with a shout of fire. In the scuffle, he dropped Hyorinmaru. Kusaka charged, slammed into Hitsugaya, bearing him down. They rolled across the grass, struggling. Seeking for some sort of advantage.

Hitsugaya managed to wriggle free and placed a tight chokehold across Kusaka's throat. "Give up," he panted.

Kusaka said, chest heaving, "You said you didn't want to fight."

"I don't," Hitsugaya gasped. "Give up."

"Give up Hyorinmaru?" Kusaka wanted to know. "I'd rather die." He twisted suddenly, scything out with his legs, and now he was on top, and there was almost nothing in his eyes as he reached out and broke Hitsugaya's neck.

Hitsugaya woke up.

Matsumoto had left for the Division, under his orders. The King's Seal still had to be protected, and Hitsugaya only hoped that Kusaka's game would not involve her. He snapped back to awareness at once, lying still on his back, breathing heavily.

That was not what had happened. Hyorinmaru had been silent during that fight. Kusaka had lost. They'd fought, and Kusaka had died. They had gone to ground at the end of the fight, desperately seeking for some sort of advantage with their bare hands.

He closed his eyes, for a moment, but he still saw Kusaka's terrified eyes behind closed lids.

He opened them again. A cool wind blew into his childhood home, stirring the hanging cloth of the doorway. He shouldn't have come here. Shouldn't have brought the darkness of the Seireitei into his old home, and his grandmother's life.

She was still awake, mending a rip in an old sleeve. She looked up, even though he was certain his approach had been almost noiseless. He prostrated himself before her, pressing his forehead to the tatami mat. He had done this once before, he remembered. Hyorinmaru lay at his side.

"I should go," he said. "They'll be looking for me."

He'd brought the danger to her doorstep once before. He should not have taken a meal here, much less slept here. Yet he'd given in; weakness at the familiar scents of childhood, the meal with the spices and the textures of the cooking exactly as she'd always done them. They'd lulled him into a sense of normalcy that he couldn't have otherwise gotten.

All the while, Kusaka was out there. Planning his next move. It was where he had to be.

"So go," she said.

So he left.