"Too bad."
"Yeah. Who would've known that they decided to hold a party here in Rukongai as well?"
Ichigo and Matsumoto dragged their feet through the dirt as they sulked along the path leading from the "town hall." As the lieutenant of the tenth division knew where her ex-subordinates lived, they had wasted no time practically teleporting to the rukongai, but even that knowledge had left them no wiser. Though it was best felt by the inhabitants of Seireitei and those connected to it, the victory of Soul Society had been a huge relief to the innocents, as they, too, felt the pressure of the war upon them. Surprisingly, many of the different districts had joined forces and created a huge celebration; one that nearly the whole, it seemed, population had decided to participate in. Each of the three houses they'd knocked on had been empty, which left them both with a heavy sense of defeat.
"It's not too normal, no. Usually, people are too spread out, and unwilling to share with one another. Well, not all, but even some. To think that everyone have left..." The woman shuddered as they passed yet another house with dark windows.
"I guess that means we have to come back tomorrow?"
"I guess that's our only..." Matsumoto let the sentence fade out unfinished. Ichigo, who hadn't stopped walking at the same time as his friend, turned to her, about to ask her what the matter was, but merely blinked at the look on her face: Confusion, surprise, but above all, recognition.
He turned back around, looking after whatever had Matsumoto stopping... And his eyes fell on the most probable cause.
Even though he'd never seen the man before, he could easily tell that something had happened to him; something bad. The first thing he noticed about him was his eyes. They were dull, sunken in, and the dark bags under them spoke of sleepless nights. To add to it, he was pale, and as far as he could see with the puffed-out, casual yukata in the way, extremely skinny. Not the thin type of skinny either, more the type that you become after rejecting too many meals. All in all, the man looked unhealthy, lost, scarred...
Just like Toshiro.
"L-lieutenant Matsumoto..." The tone in his deep voice, (one that didn't suit his fragile body, Ichigo mentally added,) was wary, almost as if he was asking if that really was his former superior. He bowed lightly, after a moment's hesitation.
"Inuyama Kentaro," the woman replied, confirming her companion's suspicions: This was one of the shinigami who'd followed his taichou into their capture.
The man looked over at Ichigo briefly, coming to a conclusion. "You're here because of taichou, aren't you?"
Matsumoto nodded. "We're not here in official business, merely as friends, so you have all right to decline," she stated diplomatically, and walked closer to the man, determined, "but we want to hear what happened."
Kentaro sighed, and seemed to weigh it over in his head, before he motioned for them to follow. He turned around, and with low shoulders and a hunched back, started walking away from the street and to a stray road that lead into one of the smaller forests. The two shinigami almost didn't hear the low mumble that escaped him.
"No... You don't."
Ichigo and Rangiku gave each other a look, and followed.
It was hard to tell how many weeks had passed. Or if it was rather months than weeks. It could even have been only days. None of them knew anymore.
In the middle of the room lay the normally prideful captain, clothes scratched and torn, not to mention bloody. One pale hand was drawn to a paler chest, the former undoubtedly broken. Gin, this time posing as the loyal captain Komamura, had been there only a short while ago, but the blue and yellow wrist was no new injury; they, some arrancar posing as shinigami from the fourth division, had used minor healing skills to heal all other wounds but the wrist, resulting with a not only broken, but infected hand. It hadn't helped that it had been repeatedly stepped on during the torture, causing the white haired man to vomit several times. Not that any of the hostages had been given any real amount of food.
"Captain?" one of the men dared ask, though carefully. The man addressed forced his eyes open, immediately trying to get up, as not to look so pathetic in front of his men. Had the situation been different, all three men would have opposed to this, in case moving could do further damage, but at the moment, they needed a symbol of authority. If their leader gave up, they had nowhere to go.
The door opened again, and the subordinates noticed how the boy flinched, even though his expression turned grave. The lieutenant of the ninth division entered; Hisagi Shuuhei.
Hitsugaya felt the need to bark an order at him, but he caught himself; it was just Gin. Sadly, it was the second time in a short while that he had to remind himself.
"I'm just here to check up on you, Captain Hitsugaya," he said respectfully, but the white haired male wasn't buying.
"What do you want, Gin? Why are you keeping us prisoners? We'll never talk, none of us."
"Gin" shook his head. "I'm not allowed to tell you, Captain Hitsugaya."
Hitsugaya jerked forward, stopped only by the pounding wrist. "Stop calling me that, you bastard! Stop these games!"
"You're not as sharp as before... That's good."
"What are you talking about?"
"Confused...
He finally caught the traitor's eyes with his in a death glare.
"Cut. It. Out."
The image of Gin flickered once more, but the split second view of that grin was enough to fuel the hate in his soul.
"The Gotei-13 has no more use for you."
What the hell?
"You were only a temporary fill in for the tenth division, just someone to be there until someone older and more emotionally strong could take over."
Hitsugaya's eyes narrowed. What was he trying this time?
"The Gotei-13 captains only acted as friendly as they did to keep you in there. All of the lieutenants and subordinates were ordered to observe you. They have never been your friends, not even comrades, they have only waited for any of the other lieutenants, any of the other shinigami, to defeat you and take over your place."
The captain growled. "That's a load of shit, Hisagi!"
Gin, and therefore Hisagi, grinned evilly. He reviewed his words, and noticed his slip up, without another word, the black haired man walked out of the room.
"DAMN!" The captain kicked the ground angrily, before sinking into a slumped position, feeling the doubtful eyes of his surviving men on his bruised back.
For a little while, everything was far away. He could hear the rumble of voices talking, see the light play on the canvas of his closed eyelids and feel time passing by, but the cold that was muffling the world made it all insignificant. No words could or would be made out of the rumble. The light reached him only skin deep. The seconds moved at a sluggish pace where neither minutes nor hours were minimalistic enough. He could die like this, assuming that he wasn't dead already. He just wasn't sure anymore.
Needles were prickling his skin, leaving no inch intact, small stinging sensations keeping him aware that he still could feel on a physical level. Yet, the sensation was too surreal to be something else than a dream.
Suddenly, something in his chest jerked harshly, painfully, making him aware that he couldn't shut himself down completely. The tranquillity had to end. After several minutes with his head down into the sink, his lungs were giving him a heads up that no, he wasn't as dead as he thought he was after all.
Air. He needed air.
As if something had pulled him, Hitsugaya jerked his head back, coughing up water that had accidentally made its way down his windpipe, forcing wheezing gulps of air back into his body. His hair gave a wet smack when it heavy with water slapped his forehead, but he wasn't sure if he felt that either. It was a numb feeling. Reaching up, he ruffled his white hair, the large drops of water easily slipping off the thin silken strands. Like always, it fluffed out and up in a lively way. He frowned at the irony as he gripped both sides of the marble sink and looked into the mirror; inspecting everything but his own eyes. For some reason, he didn't think he could handle that.
He looked down into the rippling water instead. It resembled his inner turmoil more perfectly than any mirror could.
Even in the partly crystallized water, he became aware of the dark circles that surrounded his eyes. Funny; he'd scolded Momo for looking like that, once.
Momo. His dearest childhood friend. Sister, even.
A droplet of water, or a tear; one seemed as likely as the other, slipped down his cheek, and he went to wipe it away. The touch between his warm hand and ice cold cheek could've set off sparks. He hissed, and let it be. He knew he looked like a mess, water soaking his head, hair and shoulders, eyes red and sore, skin pale to the point of being almost translucent. He looked unhealthy, and very much so. He should've known that sleep would do him no good. Not if nightmares was all it brought.
He closed his eyes again and rubbed them dry; not that they weren't already. He had been staying inside his division for a good while, and was in no haste of getting out of there. His subordinates needed not just a powerful leader; that was useless. They needed a mentally strong one that they could place their trust in, one they could look up to and strive to please. Once that thought was planted in his mind, it started growing. Should he step down from his position as a captain of the Gotei 13? Was he really any good for his men in his current state? How long would it last before he was degraded?
He felt like putting his head down into the near-frozen water again, and this time keep it there until his lungs didn't give painful jerks anymore, but resisted. He had witnessed what had happened to the third division when they lost their captain. The atmosphere was still gloomy; in the last recruitment week, Kira Izuru could count the new shinigami on his own two hands; in the past years, the usually playful and friendly division had to bring in a thick and heavy folder to keep account of all the names. They were heavily dispirited. Not only were they betrayed, they were without an icon. Without the betrayal, Hitsugaya himself had thought that Kira would someday make a fine captain, should there be need for one, but instead, the lieutenant drowned somewhere in the loss, and was an unlucky role model to his division. His despair infected them all.
Could he really imagine the tenth division like that? Sorrowfully burdened with their captain's pathetic leave?
He let himself dry off before he returned to his office. There were questions, but no doubt. He had already made up his mind.
He would survive. Or so he hoped.
A bad feeling pushed at Ichigo's guts. It wasn't the sort of feeling he got from being told bad news, nor was it worry, or anticipation of something ill. It was pity, and it wasn't unreasoned.
Matsumoto and he had followed this Kentaro to his house located in the outskirts of the forest. A beautiful home, the teenager immediately thought as he saw it from a distance. It wasn't big, but not too small either, and lay by a lake that glittered in the sun. With no surrounding mountains, the view was unlimited and the sun would come up early and go down late no matter what time of year it was. It was a house for a family; that was easy to see.
Upon entering the building, though, shivers ran through the adolescent's body. The house was strangely empty, the kind of empty that came from moving out furniture and other inventory that you didn't need. They entered something resembling a living room, and Ichigo frowned. There was a working desk in the corner, all sorts of tools for wood carving scattered along the top, as well as the floor around, some children's toys here and there, along with what sometime had to have been a most beautiful bouquet of flowers, but now was a bunch of wilted, crispy, brown stalks bound together by a cotton band. The air was filled with dust; he could see it sparkling in the slender sunbeams that entered through the window.
With its back to the rest of the house, a leaning chair was placed beside a table with three smaller surrounding chairs. A cup of, probably, cold tea sat on the table, and two piles of books, along with one open book, lay beside. Both stacks were tall, but one taller than the other, one with books that seemed newer than the other. Probably one with read books and one with unread ones. Ichigo frowned at the sight; the house formerly occupied by a family of a woman, her husband and their child was now only used by one man, and if the depressed captain back in Seireitei was anything to go by, he could understand why.
The man motioned for them to seat, and Ichigo did, but Matsumoto kept standing, shifting her weight from one leg to another, unsure of where to put herself. Kentaro himself sank down into the chair as if it had been made to fit his body alone, and closed his eyes. Although both the redheads were eager to hear whatever the man had to tell them, they said nothing. It took the man a while to open his eyes, and when he did, they had changed morbidly. They were dull, looking into himself to draw out memories that were restrained somewhere in the darker areas of his mind.
"Like I said," the man said so suddenly that Ichigo was startled, though he didn't let it show, "you don't want to know what happened, because it should never have happened." He rubbed his face somewhat shamefully.
"Please." Matsumoto's expression was determined. "We need to..." She stopped herself, swallowing. "I need to know what happened to my captain. I need to know if there's anything I can do to help at all."
Kentaro studied her, but seemed to give.
"In the Shinigami Academy, we were all warned about the possibility of torture during a hostage situation. We went through it time and time again. 'They want information. Information you under no circumstances will give them. Use that to go through the pain. Do it for the Gotei 13, for the Soul Society.'" He broke off, and in the corner of his eye, Ichigo saw Matsumoto nod. Apparently, she had been taught the same thing.
"Lieutenant Matsumoto... If you were being tortured, and your captors didn't want anything from you, if you had nothing to hold on to, what would you do?"
She furrowed her brows. "What are you getting at?"
The man sighed. "...What if those who tortured you were the Gotei-13 themselves?"
A pained cry echoed in the dungeon, and three shinigami shuddered where they sat. The floors were relatively clean in their cell, although scattered with hay which made it hard to find somewhere comfortable to sit. Their door, consisting of nothing but horizontal metal bars, gave them a front row view of the torture their captain was subject to, and even if they did turn away, the sounds eagerly described the morbid scene.
For the second time that day, although it was hard to tell without any sun to go by, they had visited the white-haired captain in his torture chamber. They hadn't cleaned the floors of the water he'd repeatedly been close-to-drowned in by "Unohana," (until he passed out,) nor had the water on his skin gotten a chance to dry. Rather the opposite: "Ukitake" had soaked him in more water, and now, he was poking at him with an iron pole, the hot metal and hissing water making a dangerous combination as his skin sizzled like a frying pan. He had been at it for so long- telling him how worthless he was, how little he meant for Soul Society and what they were going to do with him if he returned, in his normal, friendly voice with his normal, friendly smile- that the previous pole had gone cold, and he'd put it back in the pile of glowing coal. The air reeked of burnt flesh, vomit and blood, as "Ukitake" had force-fed the boy with poisonous candy which had made him writhe, scream and throw up. Two of the three shinigami bearing witness to the torture had thrown up themselves.
"What important knowledge do I have that you would strive so hard to get? What do you want to know, huh, Ukitake?"
After a month of daily (and nightly) torture performed by all of the captain's friends and colleagues, his subordinates had noticed a change in him. He wasn't as indifferent to what they did to him any longer, he referred to the torturers by the names of their disguises, and he would scream and beg, not to mention that he never fought back any longer, even when he was given the chance to. He struggled to get away, oh yeah, but he never actually tried to hurt his captors, who all were disguised as shinigami.
It took some time before the captain got the answer to his question.
"Nothin'."
The captain's teal eyes grew wide.
"Ya don't have any information we need, lil' captain."
The sizzling iron pole was brought down on the tender flesh again, refreshing the sickening smell of cooked meat. It was no doubt of the arrancar's identity this time; the voice and dialect of Ichimaru sounded foreign in Ukitake's mouth.
"Ya seem to have misunderstood what we're doin'. We're going to break ya down, bit by bit, an' when ye'r completely broken, we're gonna build ya up like an arrancar soldier. Ye'r gonna fight fer us, lil' Shiro. Ye'r gonna help us take down Soul Society as ya know it, and ye'r gonna be sane doin' it. Ye'r gonna want it."
"Never! None of the things you say will happen! I'll never join forces with bastards like you!" Hitsugaya spat saliva, poison and blood at the other white-haired captain's feet, glowering hatefully at his smiling face. Although it must have been incredibly hard, he managed to serve one of his soul-shaking glares to the body of the man who might as well have claimed to be his father, with all of the care and affection he showed towards the other "Shiro."
A grin distorted the peaceful face. "Ye'r sayin' that now, but soon, ye'r gonna slaughter them all, and ya ain't gonna care who, 'cause they're all yer enemies. Maybe ye'r gonna take down Ukitake, maybe Unohana, maybe yer subordinates, maybe Soi Fon, maybe Matsumoto…"
'Ukitake' leaned in to speak directly into the Captain's ear.
"Maybe, at the end of the fight, ye'r gonna find yerself with yer sword buried deeply in yer dear sister Hinamori's fragile heart?"
Hitsugaya screamed, though it was hard to determine whether it was because of the traitor's terrifying words or the glowing pole digging into his stomach.
"Ye'r gonna fight fer us, lil' Captain," Ichimaru repeated. "Ye'r gonna fight fer us and enjoy it."
A/N: ...Nah, the bad excuse for a plot isn't moving much yet, is it? It's pretty much just beating up Hitsugaya for now, isn't it? Oh well, it won't last too long from now on, I think. At last this is getting somewhere~!