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…

VIII: APHELION

Hyoten Hyakkaso.

He'd never even discovered the technique until he'd learned bankai, until he'd gained some control over the most basic, most primal power that Hyorinmaru afforded him.

Tenso Jurin.

Hitsugaya would never have dared to employ the technique in an enclosed space, for fear of losing control and killing someone else. He would have never dared to employ the technique except at great need, in the first place.

He'd managed to keep hold of Hyorinmaru. Even now, as the flowers of ice began sprouting all over a surprised Kyoraku's body—he'd never seen that technique, Hitsugaya had never shown it to him, even back when he was the man's Lieutenant—he tightened his grip around Hyorinmaru's hilt and clambered slowly but painfully to his feet, shedding wood splinters and fallen books with the movement.

He darted in with a two-handed swing; telegraphed from a distance, Kusaka turned to block the blow easily. He said, "I'm surprised you found your way here."

Hitsugaya gave him a cold stare as he came in with a series of lightning-fast cuts, occasionally displacing the pattern with a sword form. In the middle of basic slashes—fragments of aborted forms—an occasional sword form slipped through. Paired Sunbirds. Cat Sunning on Rocks. Eagle Rising.

He met Fanning The Reeds with Stone Lion, and turned a series of wicked curving blows that would have split him from crown to navel. Kusaka was more fluid with the transition between the classical forms and the rudiments of street fighting—more than Hitsugaya had remembered, but he was not the only one who had changed in the intervening years.

The chain caught Hitsugaya's arm, and ice began to form along the sleeve of his shihakusho; he frowned down at it, and with barely more than an exertion of will, the ice flaked off and crumbled away, though it tore his sleeve with it. He tugged against it, but could not find leverage, and Kusaka resisted the pull, aiming a slash at his collarbone.

So instead, Hitsugaya did the exact opposite: he rolled forward, beneath the blow, and struck out in a low-directed Kingfisher Spears Fish. His blade grazed Kusaka's leg, and as he regained his feet, the pommel of his sword found Kusaka's chin with a sharp crack! of impact. Kusaka's head snapped back, and Hitsugaya pushed his advantage, ramming his shoulder into Kusaka's, forcing him off-balance and bearing him downwards with the unexpected force of the movement.

The chain went slack and slipped off Hyorinmaru's blade entirely. The zanpakuto, however, did not skitter from Kusaka's grasp—he managed to hang on to it, and fended Hitsugaya off with a few sharp swipes.

The last of the ice petals fell.

There was a very loud crackle of flaking ice. And then in the next moment, with an explosion of reiatsu so pure and bright that Hitsugaya had to shield his eyes with the crook of his arm, the entire pillar of ice exploded outwards—no, disintegrated.

Kyoraku Shunsui stood there, reeling. The two blades of his zanpakuto were in his hand, pointing downwards at the floor. He said, "An…interesting technique…but…" Hitsugaya never did find out what he'd meant to say, because the next moment, there was the thump of Kyoraku collapsing onto his face, unconscious but very much alive.

In the next moment, while Hitsugaya was distracted, Kusaka had rolled away and to his feet. He didn't bother sheathing Hyorinmaru, simply shot Hitsugaya a baleful look, and took off at a run.

Hitsugaya thought of pursuing, but instead, sheathed Hyorinmaru and went to check on Kyoraku. He knew little of healing kido, but all the field medicine he knew was enough for him to run a quick diagnostic spell on Kyoraku; the only thing he picked up on was severe spiritual energy depletion. Kyoraku's reiatsu was barely there at all, a flickering candle next to the furnace it usually was.

Harribel, too, had broken his Hyoten Hyakkaso; Hitsugaya reflected dryly that if this was the case, he should probably start employing the technique with a lot less reservations than he currently had. In any case, he could not remember if she had been as depleted as Kyoraku seemed to be from breaking the ice pillar.

He thought of getting Kyoraku to the Fourth Division, only the thought of dragging Kyoraku's inert frame all the way towards the Fourth, while possibly having to fend off shinigami who were very much in the frame of mind to shoot first and ask questions later did not appeal to him.

Kyoraku was still breathing. That was something, even though they'd failed to stop Kusaka.

A quiet worm of doubt asked: if the two of you couldn't stop Kusaka, how will you stop him? Hitsugaya ignored it. He had other things on his mind at the moment.

He held the kido spell firmly in his mind for a moment, and then spoke the words. Waited. A few moments later, a hell butterfly—from his Division, of course, none other would have likely responded to his call—fluttered up to him. Hitsugaya recited the message he wanted the creature to carry, and then dismissed it.

He didn't watch it leave. It was his time to leave as well.

Kotetsu Isane heard the flutter of dark wings overhead. She peered up, screening her eyes with her cupped hand, and saw the hell butterfly winging its way towards the first relief station that the Fourth Division had set up.

It was, nevertheless, her Captain, Unohana Retsu, who held out her finger for the butterfly to alight on. "Who could it be?" Isane muttered, and then fell silent.

Unohana paused, and seemed to go, all of a sudden, so very still as the hell butterfly communicated its message. Finally, the moment was broken; she sighed, and the butterfly flapped its wings and flew off.

"Isane," Unohana said. Isane glanced over at her Captain.

Very calmly, Unohana said, "There's been an incident at Central Forty-Six. The Captain of the Eighth Division requires immediate medical attention."

The Captain of the Eighth Division. Kyoraku Shunsui. Isane swallowed, hard, and then put aside all fear and worry the way she'd been trained to, letting the sense of healer's calm envelop her. "…I see," she said. "Captain. Do you need me?"

"I think it would be for the best," Unohana said, glancing up at the clouded skies into which the hell butterfly had departed. "Come, Isane."

Bleeding, winded, and very exhausted, Matsumoto walked among the dead and the dying. Many Hollows foundered on the ground, some pinned effectively by kido spells. They had yet to dissipate; her task now was to dispatch them swiftly.

The relief teams from the Fourth Division followed behind the secure perimeter they had established, transporting the wounded back to relief stations for attention, or dealing with those who were too wounded to be transported on the spot.

Hitomi walked beside her. Their squads had finally come across each other during a sweep. Most of the first responders had, by now, been relieved by the other squads dispatched from the Seireitei. But Matsumoto refused to leave. Most of her Division took their lead from her. It was difficult to ignore the leaden weight of responsibility in the pit of her stomach. It was their Hollow bait that had been stolen, and crushed to send more than a thousand Hollows into Rukongai, by their most recent tally.

A lizard-like Hollow flicked its tongue ineffectually at her, pinned by a bakudo spell. Probably the thirty-six pillars, Matsumoto thought dispassionately. The mask was split, but not entirely so. More disabled than truly dead. Haineko was already drawn and in her hand; she released the blade and ash wrapped around the Hollow's throat until it dissipated slowly into glowing spirit particles.

There were too many of them, Matsumoto thought. The Hollow bait had drawn far too many. And for what purpose?

Hitomi said, "Tani wants to offer his resignation."

"It wasn't his fault," Matsumoto said. But of course it was. The supplies were his domain, his to regulate, and that a box of Hollow bait had gone missing wouldn't look good upon later investigation. Tani was simply anticipating the storm that would hit when it came to light that the quartermaster of the Tenth Division had been remiss in his responsibilities. She sighed, and said, "I'll talk to him after this."

This. After the clean-up. Hitomi simply nodded, weary lines etched all over her face.

The skies overhead were only beginning to clear. Matsumoto thought she saw just the faintest hint of blue. Hyorinmaru's power still sat heavily over the heavens. She almost managed to think that last without a trace of irony.

Taicho.

She wondered where he'd gone now, for it was almost certain that he'd left to take care of his grandmother, and then gone somewhere else since then. She thought about the revelation: that he'd turned out to have the same zanpakuto as this Kusaka Sojiro. In his eyes, she saw at last the nameless guilt that she'd caught momentary glimpses of, over the long passage of the years. Only now the guilt had a name. Kusaka. Kusaka Sojiro.

She heaved a great sigh. There was no knowing what her Captain planned on doing, except that he'd resigned himself to playing Kusaka's game, with no prospect of an end.

Hitomi said, "Have you seen the Captain?"

Matsumoto shot Hitomi a startled look; then realised they were now mostly alone. The medical response team behind were busy transporting and tending to the wounded. The patrolling sweepers were mostly from the Tenth Division.

"Not since this morning," Matsumoto said.

The Division closed ranks behind its own.

"The missing Hollow bait?"

"He didn't do it," Matsumoto said. Hitomi merely nodded.

"A distraction," Hitomi said, suddenly. "I'd wager it's a distraction. Most of the Gotei Thirteen are now out here…rather than in there." Matsumoto followed the direction of her gaze, to where the walls of the Seireitei stood, even though they couldn't quite be made out from here.

Kusaka.

He'd snuck into the Division before, and Hitsugaya's quarters. What was one more storeroom that was, in any case, in the middle of stock-taking? Matsumoto suddenly felt a trickle of cold fear. What else had he done? Was the King's Seal still there?

"We'll need to thoroughly check the Division," she began to say to Hitomi, before she sensed it, then. The air rippled before her, and then she heard Isane's voice, as though the tall Lieutenant had been standing beside her.

"This is a message to all officers of the Gotei Thirteen: be on your guard. Captain Kyoraku Shunsui has just been discovered, out of commission, in the Archives of the Central Forty-Six compound. There is no sign of his attacker."

The message ended as abruptly as it had begun; a sending from the kido spell Tenteikura. Matsumoto glanced sharply at Hitomi who was already nodding.

"A distraction," Hitomi repeated, simply.

The only question was: why hadn't Kyoraku been killed?

Hitsugaya found a small storehouse in which to hide and think. His lacerations were mostly minor, and the bleeding had already mostly stopped. A massive bruise was beginning to form from where he'd slammed into the bookcase, and he knew he was soon going to be stiff.

He wondered if Unohana would tell them about the ice in the Archives. If she had, they would soon be after him again. He sighed, rested his head against the wooden walls of the storehouse. He didn't even know what the rules of the game were, and it was hardly a surprise that Kusaka was besting him easily. He had probably been planning this over a long time.

He carefully cleaned Hyorinmaru as best as he could, shredding the other sleeve of his shihakusho. There was little water, but a trace of ice had the zanpakuto in decent condition again. The soothing movements of damp cloth on steel laid out over his lap relaxed him, if only for a short while.

Kusaka definitely knew bankai. It was a conclusion he had to reach from their fight in the Archives. How else did Kusaka know Hyoten Hyakkaso? Even jinzen, the meditation shinigami performed with their zanpakuto in order to better commune with the blade and to learn new techniques from their zanpakuto would not have resulted in Hyorinmaru revealing Hyoten Hyakkaso to Kusaka, not without the level of mastery only obtainable through bankai.

But Kusaka had not yet released his bankai, and Hitsugaya could only surmise it was for the same reasons he'd been so readily struck down when he first crossed blades with Aizen. There were many reasons, some of which were his own inexperience, and the potent powers of Aizen's zanpakuto, Kyoka Suigetsu. But there was a good deal of it attributable to the fact that Hyorinmaru was best wielded in an open space. Confined quarters cramped mobility, and rendered Hyorinmaru less than effective.

That was the problem, Hitsugaya thought, scowling. Kusaka demonstrated an understanding of Hyorinmaru that he couldn't have yet come to. Or had he? There was something off about that, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. And there was the part where the ice was now somehow corrupted, a dark purple to the dragon's eyes. Something wasn't quite right here, but try as he might, Hitsugaya couldn't yet see how it all added up.

Kusaka had tried for Kyoraku. How had he known that Kyoraku would have gone for the Archives? There was another thing that didn't make sense to Hitsugaya. He hadn't any luck locating Kyoraku, until Kusaka had released Hyorinmaru in the fight, and then he'd only stumbled upon them by following the thread of Hyorinmaru's reiatsu. Narumi and Kahei had appeared premeditated, but now Hitsugaya was wondering if something else was at work here. Opportunity? But that too was problematic. To kill Kahei, Kusaka would have had to infiltrate the Academy. That took more planning than blind opportunism.

What if it was the other way around, Hitsugaya wondered. What if Kusaka had intended to kill Kahei, but had stumbled across Narumi and then tailed him home and killed him?

It had been luck, Hitsugaya decided. That was what didn't make sense. Whatever the case for Narumi and Kahei, Kusaka had been doing something else entirely when he ran into Kyoraku at the Archives and engaged him. It had been opportunity, rather than an intent to kill Kyoraku, bit he'd seized the opportunity all the same.

But what had Kusaka been doing at the Central Forty-Six?

There, the chain of reasoning stretched and reached its end.

Book tucked under her arm, Nanao barely controlled herself as she sat outside the room where Captain Unohana and Lieutenant Isane were treating her Captain. You should never have left him, she thought, clutching on to the book like a lifeline. He'd said he had something he had to see too, only he'd been ambushed and left for dead.

What was it, Captain?

She wondered if it had been worth it.

"Nanao?"

Isane stood, outside the treatment room. Isane always looked nervous, Nanao thought. Surely this wasn't anything different? "He's recovering," Isane said, and the hand clenched around Nanao's heart relinquished its iron fist and suddenly she could breathe again. "But Nanao…"

"Yes?"

"You can visit him only for a short while. He hasn't yet woken up, and he needs his rest. And…" Isane's hesitation was visible. She finally said, "They found ice in the Archives."

Nanao dipped her head in a quick nod of acknowledgement. "I see. Thank you, Isane."

After some time, the storehouse door creaked open, letting in a little fresh air. Hitsugaya looked up, and then thought about how fast it would take him to draw Hyorinmaru from an assumed kneeling stance. He decided it wasn't worth the bother.

"How did you find me?"

Kusaka hadn't drawn Hyorinmaru either. He walked into the storehouse, closing the door lightly behind him. He said, "You're not as difficult to find as you think."

Hitsugaya grunted, and made room as Kusaka navigated the aisles of crates with ease. The Eleventh Division almost never did stocktake, Hitsugaya thought. It was just about disgraceful how much dust there was in here, and he fought off a brewing sneeze.

"What do you want?"

"I came to talk. Is that so hard to believe?"

"Yes. How did you survive?"

In the darkness, he saw it again: the ruin of Kusaka's head, the fragments of Hyorinmaru, shattered, blood and gore splattered all over his arm and his Academy uniform. He'd only been a fifth year, Hitsugaya thought. He'd only been a fifth year, and very much a boy.

He dropped the grume-splattered rock, watched it bounce on the grass, and tried to wipe away the smears of pink on the wet grass, on his uniform, anything to get rid of the stains. White fractured bone showed—Kusaka's skull, he thought. Kusaka's violet eyes stared upwards, unseeing. He would never get rid of the stains.

He had an eidetic memory. Even then, Hitsugaya knew that he would never forget this scene, this quiet night, so long as he lived.

He blinked to shatter the unwanted memory. He barely made out the traces of Kusaka's secretive smile, in the darkness. Kusaka said, "You should know."

"I killed you." He turned his face aside to the wooden panelling of the wall. His eyes had mostly adjusted to the lack of light now; Hitsugaya could make out where one plank met another, and even the grain of the wood.

He wondered if that was his punishment; the memory of that silent clearing, so long as he lived, and Kusaka's return, now. Even when Soul Society spoke of the balance of souls, nothing of this sort was supposed to happen. The dead were reborn in the world of the living, and undertook new lives, and everything from the past was washed away, forgotten. Kusaka could not have been, even had he died sometime after his rebirth.

He could not have remembered. He could not have learned bankai.

"You did. Tensai."

The name, sometimes a teasing joke, sometimes a taunt, fell dead in the air between them.

"They're dead. All of them," Hitsugaya said.

"Who?"

"Central Forty-Six. Aizen slaughtered all of them. The blood was dried, and they were beginning to decay by the time I found the bodies…it wasn't pleasant. But he beat you to it. They're all dead. Killing them serves no purpose."

Kusaka gave him a look best described as puzzled incomprehension, before he broke into a laugh that brought about pangs of pain in Hitsugaya's heart. "You thought I was going to kill them? Don't be silly. I thought even you would have known better by now. No," he said once more, "I do not plan to kill them."

"Narumi?"

Kusaka snorted; when he next spoke, his voice was laced with contempt. "Don't tell me you cared about that arrogant little shit."

"No," Hitsugaya admitted, and he was proud of his success in keeping his voice even, "But killing a disagreeable officer is not the way of the Gotei Thirteen."

"And pitting two half-trained young boys against each other is?" Kusaka retorted.

"We were hardly half-trained," Hitsugaya shot back, more on reflex than anything else. They hadn't been prepared, he knew, and he didn't think anything could or should have prepared someone for the act of ending the life of your his friend. "That's beside the point. What about Kahei?"

"He folded his hands," Kusaka said, "And told the Central Forty-Six."

"His hands were tied," Hitsugaya snapped. And he understood that feeling now, the frustration of finding out there was absolutely nothing you could do except to watch the train-wreck happen, which must have been what Kahei had done, as headmaster. Except he had chosen to fight back, to break the rules of Soul Society and then ask for permission later when he had tried to stop Kuchiki Rukia's execution.

There was something important about this, he knew, some insight to what drove Kusaka, if he could just find the small, definite kernel hidden in the centre of this.

"You never meant to kill Kyoraku, did you?"

Kusaka said, "What do you think?"

"He got in your way," Hitsugaya guessed. "And so you tried to kill him. You were planning something else, and you encountered him."

Kusaka's eyes narrowed. He said, "Maybe."

Hitsugaya pressed home his advantage. "You were planning something else. What's your game then, Kusaka?"

"You should know…" Kusaka murmured, with a sly smile. "Or perhaps you haven't been paying very much attention…Captain of the Tenth Division." He paused. "I'd always wanted to join the Tenth Division, you know. Internal investigations seemed more interesting to me than the cases the Ninth dealt in. And here you are."

"Trust me," Hitsugaya said, "They aren't as interesting as they seem." Mistakes got those close to you killed. Mistakes resulted in a foot of steel in Hinamori's chest, in the taste of blood in his mouth. Falling and failing time and again. One of his biggest failures, he thought. That should never have happened. But there was no going back. There never was.

Kusaka snorted. "Easy for you to say."

"More than that," Hitsugaya said. "What happened…? You wanted to become a Lieutenant. A Captain. You were talking about being the next from Rukongai, shaking things up. Shaking all of those old men running things of their complacency. You wanted to change the world." He said it, as if by bitterness and forcefulness, he could somehow have the answer out of Kusaka. Maybe he already knew the answer.

"Yes," Kusaka said softly. "I did, didn't I? What happened? I died. It changes your perspective."

Hitsugaya looked down at his hands. He said, for want of something else to say, "For old time's sake, Kusaka. You can leave Soul Society. I'll make sure they won't follow you. You can leave all this." The last thing he could do to wrench them away from the blood-soaked path they had once walked before, before the cycle could repeat and the killing could begin again.

But Kusaka was shaking his head. "It's too late for me, old friend," he said, bitterly. "Still, I'll give you the same offer."

"You know I can't," Hitsugaya said, and he did know, although he hadn't wanted to admit it, that Kusaka would have said the same thing. The dragon was stubborn, if anything else. And then he added, for no particular reason, "Then you must know that I'll stop you." It had been, until this moment, a real temptation. To join Kusaka, or to at least walk away. Until he thought of friends and Granny and all the people he cared about, people who depended on him. Matsumoto and his Division. No, he thought, it had never really been a choice he could have taken.

The darkness reflected back Kusaka's pitying smile, in a dozen dizzying fragments. "Oh, of course you will," Kusaka said. "You'll try, even if it kills you."

A/N: Apologies for the late update. There were things cropping up I had to attend to. Consequently, I have posted on a different day from this story's usual schedule.