A/N: Thank you SO MUCH, all of you guys! ;_; I'm glad that you received my story so well! I'm really sorry I didn't reply to all of your reviews, but know that I'm grateful! (The rest of this chapter was written thinking of all of you!)
This time, the reason of Hitsugaya's trauma is becoming a bit more clear. Prepare for surprises...
Ichigo stopped by the road with eyes slightly widened when something most unusual happened.
He could very, very clearly feel a reiatsu.
He turned, looking up at a tall building of Soul Society; the tenth division quarters. Out of worry, he had seen his guests away, with the exception of Rukia, who practically had moved into his closet, and asked Urahara to send him to that other world, to which the man only nodded, sensing the seriousness as well. Ichigo easily figured that he was the one who had sent the white haired male back to Soul Society.
Now, he had been thinking about visiting Rangiku, as she had required of him, most likely to talk about Hitsugaya, but while he normally would have walked from bar to bar looking for her, he somehow knew she wouldn't be there this time. The woman loved alcohol, gossip and shopping more than everything else, but the wise woman knew better than drowning her sorrows with any of them. It was further proved when he could sense that she was sitting on roof, and he flash-stepped, standing by her side after only a few seconds passed.
The woman didn't do anything to knowledge his appearance but lying down, hands under her head and eyes moulding the clouds into fantasy shapes, her shinigami robes lay crumpled around her just like her hair. He walked over, sitting down as well, closing his eyes.
It took a couple of minutes of silence for either of them to talk, even though both knew what he was there for, but finally, Matsumoto opened her mouth.
"Captain never returned from his mission."
Ichigo drew his breath.
"I know."
The silence settled upon them again, but the strawberry didn't let it stay for long.
"What happened back there?"
"I have no idea."
"He hasn't told you?"
Matsumoto shook her head. "No, every time I try to ask, he draws back like he's been burnt. …Not unlike this time." The woman fell into thoughts she didn't finish, and Ichigo decided not to prod in them.
"You told me to seek you out," he said quietly. "Well, I'm here now, and I'm pretty sure you didn't just take pity upon me and decided to tell me what was wrong. Just now you even told me you have no idea yourself, so..."
Sighing with a nod, the woman bit her lip. That was right. She had a hope, a hope that the amazing power of the one and only Ichigo Kurosaki could cure her captain of the darkness he was in. She sat up, head hanging lower than normal, and studied the folds of her black robes with care. "I…" Her eyes met with his for a split second. "I've looked into this a bit," she admitted. "It was hard to find information, but I managed to acquire some… After searching for a while."
Ichigo stayed silent, waiting for her to continue.
"When captain returned from his mission, he was first sent away with a 4th squad medics team, so I figured Captain Unohana could give me her opinion on the matter, as I know she was specifically made to treat his injuries behind closed doors."
Rushing like she was on the end of a trail of gunpowder and a fire was racing towards her, Rangiku ran towards the closest thing to a hospital Soul Society had. Even though it was flooded, it wasn't too hard to navigate around the 4th division with some common sense and some help from fellow shinigami. Wounded were being transported between the rooms, and medical relief teams rushed behind. It was hard to stop someone, but as she spotted a lower ranked shinigami standing by the wall, catching his breath, she managed to seize him by the shoulder just as he was going to walk away, and ask where his captain was.
She couldn't believe her own eyes or ears.
The most powerful healer of all times had been sitting alone in an empty examination room for a couple of hours. According to the man, she'd been doing this now and then for the last few days. That was how Rangiku found the woman, too; sitting on the bed with her eyes downcast as if regretting something.
Once she snapped out of it, Unohana looked up at the visiting vice captain, and stood from her seated position, the wide sleeves hiding away her delicate hands. "Vice captain Matsumoto," she said with a smile, which weirdly enough didn't seem as pure as her usual smiles. "It's a pleasure to have you visit. Is there anything I can help you with?"
"Did she tell you anything?" Ichigo's urgent words betrayed his calm appearance. If she met Unohana, and she was the one that took care of Toshiro, then…?
Unfortunately, Rangiku merely shrugged, and continued to tell.
Unohana closed her eyes, eyebrows drawn together as though in pain. "You know as well as me, Vice captain Rangiku, that I cannot give you that information. Aside from already being classified," she looked, sadly, at the woman in front of her, "Captain Hitsugaya has specially ordered that all records should be deleted, and that no word escapes from the 4th division. Even if I was allowed to tell you…" Rangiku witnessed something she would never believe she could; a dainty hand, soft like feathers, reached up to cover what obviously was the start of a river of tears. "…I don't think I would be able to."
The substitute shinigami's eyes widened, and he looked far off to the south, where he could see the 4th division area. "Unohana? The Unohana… Crying?" His words carried strong disbelief. If anyone could hold their mask, it was that woman, and even if she cried, it shouldn't be her place to cry for someone hardly related to her. The Gotei 13 captains were comrades, not friends.
Matsumoto nodded, and bit her lip.
"So now what?" Ichigo crossed his arms. "We're at a dead end?"
The strawberry blonde woman shook her head no. "Captain was sent to Hueco Mundo with a team of six men. Captain Unohana told me that three of them returned; we could ask them."
Getting up, the man swallowed. That would be a crucial clue. "Are they here in the tenth division?"
"Not anymore."
"Huh?"
"After they returned, they were… Well, I don't know if they retired or were ripped of their ranks, but they're no longer shinigami. They live in the Rukongai, far away."
Ichigo gave a slow nod. "You know where, though."
A grin was his answer, and it was only a matter of seconds before they were half way to the Seireitei walls.
Hitsugaya rested his hand against a raised arm, the wood of his brush pleasantly digging into his forehead; pleasantly, as this kept his eyelids open for another few seconds. Thirty two hours. That was how long he'd been awake so far, and he was absolutely starting to notice. Every light he saw seemed to be shining towards him with double strength, and his eyes were burning, too dry for swift blinks of his eyes to be effective. He heaved a shaky breath, willing them to stay open for just a bit longer.
He did not want to fall asleep.
Every moment spent with his eyes closed were moments spent in his worst nightmares. He'd never been afraid of the dark, but now, he made sure to stay inside his office whenever the sun went down. He suspected himself of having grown paranoid, but he guessed that as long as he acknowledged he had a problem, he'd be able to hide it. And that was the important thing.
When the burning feeling scratching at his eyes became too strong, he closed his eyes after all, and with horror, found out that it was nearly impossible to open them again. Still, he held on to consciousness for his dear life, because he did not want to fall asleep again.
But he was so tired…
"Make yerself comfortable, lil' captain, 'cause ye'r gonna stay here for a long time!"
The taunting laughter of two arrancar soldiers slowly faded into silence as they walked further and further away from the chamber, in the very heart of where they kept prisoners in Hueco Mundo. Hitsugaya was unsure whether this underground facility was something the arrancar had dug up from old times or not, seeing as the chains that bound him to the wall were shiny and new, while the metal loops fastening them to the wall were rusted. He tried pulling them, weakly, but as expected, they wouldn't give.
He'd been dragged in from the battlefield. It had been half a month since they'd arrived in Hueco Mundo to find any weaknesses in the construction of the fortress there, and they had encountered many battles, but seeing as he brought the top six men (actually, five men and one woman) in his squad, save for Matsumoto, who lead the tenth division in his absence, they all ended in a matter of minutes. Several of them would, he had noted, make good vice-captains, sometime in the future.
But it had all changed when Hitsugaya was away, studying a single tower in the midst of all sand, trying to find its purpose.
Returning to his squad of six, he found one of the stronger men on the ground, fatally wounded, and by the time he'd knelt down beside him and put a hand on his forehead, dead. After that, the woman fell, a long arrow piercing her chest. They all drew their swords, one of them too slowly, but one by one, they were struck with poisonous arrows that seemed to fly from nowhere, and though Hitsugaya was the last one to fall, he fell indeed.
He wasn't sure of how long they were going to be kept alive, but going by the fact that they hadn't killed them yet, they had to have some sort of motive. Hostages? Information?
"Captain!"
He turned. On the wall to his right was a door of metal bars, and trapped there were three of his subordinates. Good, at least someone made it. He took notice that they were all lacking their zanpakuto, just as he himself.
He didn't get a chance to reply to them as the door opened, and all four pairs of eyes flew to the woman who entered.
"Matsumoto?"
The red-haired lieutenant put a thin finger to her lips as the heavy door closed behind her, soundlessly. She seemed wary, looking from side to side, but who wouldn't be when infiltrating the enemy's camp?
"Captain..." The woman ran over to her superior, kneeling down in front of her and reaching for something in the pouch hanging from her waist.
"W-what are you doing here, Matsumoto?" He shook his head. "No, it doesn't matter at the moment. We're inside the enemy's base, and we have our third, fifth and seventh seat with us. If we can find a way to contact Soul Society, we might be able to get the upper hand in this battle. We'd better stick together, though; the enemies are everywh—!"
The last three letters didn't come out, stepping away in favour of a choking noise that came from a sickening feeling and a sharp pain in his abdomen. His shaking lips wouldn't form the rest of the word, and he felt blood bubbling in the back of his throat. Unable to get his suddenly dizzy mind to function properly, he slowly looked down, his chest heaving with shivering gulps.
"M-matsumoto...?"
The woman's worried frown had changed into a sick grin, which was widening in such a fashion that the shinigami couldn't help but wonder if it wouldn't split her face in two.
"You're right, captain, the enemies are everywhere."
"Ngh!" The white haired man's head snapped up as the knife penetrating the light skin of his stomach tilted slightly, making it slide deeper into his flesh, tearing it apart fibre by fibre. Through the cold, hard bite of the steel, he held his eyes open and looked up into the face of his trusted lieutenant.
For just a flicker of a moment, he saw what he'd hoped to see again as a corpse on the battlefield; a worthless body, a careless loss for the losing side.
He saw the face of Ichimaru Gin.
"Y-you...!"
"My, my! Wha's gotten the lil' Captain so upset?"
What pissed him off the most that even though he'd seen the traitor's face for the briefest half second, the face was still that of Matsumoto's, and the voice the same.
"Shit... That bastard is using his zanpakuto's powers for this?" Hitsugaya didn't bother watching his tongue in this place. He'd gladly have it cut, if dying from the blood loss meant not having to spill any secrets about Seireitei.
There was no answer, but the familiar facial expression told him what he wanted to hear.
"Aizen has u-used his illusion to make Ichimaru," he spat the name like venom, "appear like Matsumoto to us." He bit back a groan; it was painful to speak with the knife in his body, but his subordinates needed to be aware of the situation.
"Ye'r not a bit less intelligent than ya used to be, Captain," the traitor in a woman's body said, not bothering to hide his dialect. "This'll be too fun."
"What are you hoping to achieve with this poor act?" Hitsugaya glared, hiding the fact that he was biting his lip so hard that it, too, bled.
"Nothin' yet."
This time, a cough threatened to shake his body. "Yet?"
He couldn't deny the gasp that slipped through his lips at the same time as the knife slipped out of his stomach. He panted harshly, drawing in the old, dirty air to cool down the flaming pain. Without a word, the traitor stood from the floor, the image flickering once again as he turned away from the captain. "Enjoy yer stay, lil' Captain. I know I'm gonna."
Dizzy with confusion, Hitsugaya lowered his head and said nothing.
A/N: ...Surprise!