This is a long one. The longest chapter so far, I think. And those of you hoping for a laugh will probably be disappointed. This isn't a funny one. It's just personal fanservice.
Having read Ken Akamatsu's Mahou Sensei Negima, I know well the typical definition for fanservice, and that isn't what I mean. What I mean is that most of these have been written to be entertaining. I've kept in mind that I'm writing this for the readers. It's practice, it's a catharsis, it's fun to write, but first and foremost I'm writing this for you guys.
This one, though, I wrote solely for me. Like Sundaes, this is a crossover piece, but this one doesn't necessarily need to be read as such. The characters that make a cameo here remain unnamed, and only slightly described in a physical sense, and so could be replaced with blank faces just as easily, although doing that makes it lose a lot of its potency, I think.
It's blatantly obvious to me, and might be for those who have read my other works. Those of you who do may even roll your eyes at me. Like I said, I wrote this for me. I had to do it. I tried to make it entertaining for you, too, but it was mostly just to get it out of my system. This time, first and foremost, it was a catharsis.
First to guess the cameos gets a cookie. (wink)
Hitsugaya was a serious individual. A man who – by virtue of his relative youth – was required to act far more mature than many of his elder counterparts, and consequently had conditioned himself to take any situation, no matter the case, with a cold stoicism that – according to some – bordered on the sociopathic.
This, however, was not the case.
It took a lot to get to him, but sometimes...sometimes he wasn't able to keep up the shields.
And this was one of those times.
It was occasions like these that he only wished he were able to block out emotion completely and treat his role as a shinigami simply as a job. A duty. Something to be done as mechanically as dressing in the morning and sleeping at night.
Like Tousen Kaname.
Or Aizen Sousuke.
Hitsugaya strained to remain professional. But as he watched the scene unfolding before him, he wasn't sure he could.
"Hitsugaya-taichou."
He didn't look at Rukia. He kept his eyes forward. Locked forward. Unable to look away.
"Hitsugaya-taichou, you're shaking."
No response. He wasn't listening. He couldn't hear her.
All he could hear were the desperate, agonized, terrified sobs of the child in front of him.
The boy had held up admirably at the funeral, had spoken on the deceased's behalf without a hitch. Had even taken an insult directed at the deceased with nothing but a silent glare of suddenly black hatred tinged with deep, cutting anguish.
The young woman who had delivered that insult had been silenced quickly by the others attending the service, by glares of their own flavored with surprise, disappointment, and a promise to retaliate, not gently, if she deigned to speak again.
The boy had lost what composure he'd had now, and was collapsed against the grave marker, weeping openly. Face pressed against the cold, unfeeling stone, he cried hysterically, hiccupping and fighting mightily to force oxygen into his small lungs only to let it out in another broken, grief-stricken scream.
Nobody but Hitsugaya, Matsumoto, and Rukia saw the angular, silent, equally grief-stricken man standing to the side, watching the boy with dry, emotionless, helpless eyes, clad in a dark navy coat that whispered about his ethereal shins in a wind that none of them felt.
Hitsugaya forced himself to approach the spirit.
"...I failed."
Of all the words he had expected to hear, those were the least from Hitsugaya's mind, and he took a long moment to reply.
"You...didn't fail."
The man turned, and looked down.
"...You see me."
"I do."
He looked at Hitsugaya silently for a long moment, then turned his attention back to the child.
"I...spent my life so secure...in the knowledge, the certainty...that there was nothing left afterward. I told myself that my life was not a test...that I was not a pawn for the amusement of some cosmic puppeteer too absorbed in his own sadism to know or appreciate the truth of what he had wrought."
Aizen came forcefully to mind.
"Most intelligent people do," Hitsugaya offered, unsure of quite what to say.
A humorless chuckle. "If that was supposed to help my mood any, it didn't work."
The white-haired captain sighed heavily. "If there were any true justice..." he said softly, and was reminded of Tousen, "you would not say you've failed. He's alive, isn't he? You saved him from death."
"And perhaps it is there that I have failed most miserably," came the reply, "because surely if there were any true justice, I would not be the one with leave to let go. If justice had any reality, I would be suffering. Not he. But look. Look there, stranger, and tell me how it is that I haven't failed."
There was something about this man's voice that didn't compute in the shinigami's head. It was mechanical. Too mechanical. Like this man, this man who wasn't much more of a man than the boy sobbing at the gravesite, was some sort of machine. A creature not built on human emotion.
Not a sociopath. Not someone without the capacity for emotion, like some thought of himself.
Someone without the very concept of the capacity for emotion.
Someone so far removed from humanity that it did not exist.
And again, Aizen came to mind.
Hitsugaya shuddered.
But even as he saw that, he saw another side to the man. A side so completely immersed in emotion that it drowned. Because Hitsugaya saw in the man's eyes, behind the steely sheen of total indifference, a grief so profound that the boy may as well have been skipping through a field of flowers and singing.
These two sides of the man were at war, and Hitsugaya wondered which would win out in the end, if the end ever showed itself.
This man was a living (dying...dead...undead) paradox, a figure of balance so cruel in its extremity. The empathetic side screeched and howled and thrashed at the sight before him...while the pragmatic side acknowledged and pushed upon him the futility of it.
Hitsugaya felt cold, and it was not comforting.
Not this time.
"He doesn't know. No one has told him the truth of what happened, because they're all too afraid to. And he doesn't know."
His mouth was suddenly dry, and the snow-crowned boy sighed again without responding.
"Instantaneous. No hospital...no attempts at rescue...no goodbye. I've failed him. Left him like this." Another humorless chuckle. "It just figures...I always figured out a way to hurt him...No matter what I did to help him, I always managed to hurt him."
He couldn't stand looking at the man's eyes anymore.
He turned. "Kuchiki," he said, and his voice was choked with restrained emotion of his own.
She approached, Matsumoto beside her.
"Yes, Taichou?"
"Your glove."
"...What...about it?"
"Do it. Now."
"Do...what?"
Hitsugaya's eyes flared. "...Give them a goodbye."
Realization dawned on the small shinigami's face. "T-Taichou...I don't know if...I've never used it on someone so young, I...what if...? I don't even know if it will..."
"Do it."
It was an order.
And Rukia had a feeling that disobeying it would be the last mistake she would ever make.
She donned the article in question, walked up to the boy, and instead of pushing his spirit out of his body as was her M.O., she coaxed it out by gently placing her palm on the child's head.
The boy's spirit blinked, cries quieting as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. He looked down at his body, at the chain connecting him to it, up at Rukia, and tried to speak.
Hitsugaya looked at the man. "...Go to him."
The man stared at him.
"Tell him."
Turning, the man drew in a shuddering breath and did as told. Took the small gesture, this last gift, at face value without question.
The boy saw his approach, and opened his mouth in pure shock. Eyes like storm-clouds shot with amethyst widened to saucers.
"N...N-N..."
The man knelt down.
Hitsugaya closed his eyes and lowered his head.
Somehow, watching felt like trespassing.
This moment belonged to them.
Matsumoto looked at him. "...You're not supposed to do that, Toushirou. Death follows its own course, and this kind of manipula—"
"Rangiku."
She stopped.
"Don't...reprimand me," Hitsugaya said.
"I...I'm sorry. Forgive me, Taichou, I..."
"No. Don't...don't worry. It's okay, I...I just...don't really care about protocol right now..."
Matsumoto's eyes softened. "I don't blame you," she said softly.
The child began to cry again, but this time it was different. There was desperation in those sobs now, desperation and love and the heartbreaking timbre of a child who wants nothing more in all the world than the safety and reassurance of a parent's embrace.
And he realized his mistake.
There would always be that hope, now. That hope of seeing the man again. It happened once; couldn't it happen again? Please? Pretty please?
It was a huge mistake, the sort that could cause severe repercussions. Yamamoto-soutaichou would more than likely have choice words for him, when and if word of this stunt got back to Soul Society.
Hitsugaya decided he just didn't care.
For once, he damned the rules and damned the consequences, tossed them aside. It just didn't matter.
He turned.
The man knelt on the ground, holding the child in a tight hug, whispering softly. There was nothing of the machine in him now. No mechanical detachment.
And there was no despair in him now, Hitsugaya realized with a start. There was no semblance of sadness on his face now. Nothing. Nothing but calm, soothing affection and unshakable strength.
"Why is he not crying?" Matsumoto wondered, slight condescension in her tone. "He...he should be crying. This could be the last—"
"That's why he isn't," Hitsugaya interjected, suddenly comprehending. "He knows this is his chance at goodbye. And has chosen not to squander it with tears. To taint it with sadness. He's...leaving the boy with an image of strength, of confidence. A memory to draw comfort from."
Admiration brought the slightest of smiles to the young captain's face. Silently, he congratulated the man.
And then, all too soon, he pushed the boy back, hands on his still-shaking shoulders, and smiled. Kissed his brow. Ruffled his raven-colored hair.
"Go on, my little one. This part's done. I'll see you again."
The boy wiped tears from his eyes. "...P-P-Promise...?" he whimpered in a heart-wrenching, painfully young voice.
"I promise."
A trace of that mechanical tone was there again, and Hitsugaya knew that the man had just told a blatant, boldfaced lie.
He didn't expect to ever see this boy again.
"O...Okay...I'll see you then. 'Kay?"
"Of course. Now go. Don't worry about me."
"I...won't. I...I love you."
"I love you, too. More than you'll ever know."
One last hug. Another kiss to the forehead.
The boy kissed the man's cheek.
And that was goodbye.
"...No."
It was like running face-first into a wall. Like leaning against something and realizing just too late that it wasn't there.
Hitsugaya stumbled, Hyourinmaru halfway out of its sheathe.
Matsumoto gaped. "...What?"
"I said, no," the man replied. "I will not."
"D-Don't be ridiculous!" Rukia cried. "You have to go to Soul Society! If you don't you'll—"
"I know. You've explained it to me twice already. Complete with diagrams. I have made my choice. No."
For the first time since the mission had begun, Hitsugaya felt a trace of anger. "Listen, I don't know what your deal is. I don't know why you'd rather become a mindless drone hell-bent on pointless destruction than be at peace, but that doesn't matter. This is my job. Do you understand?"
"I understand perfectly. I do not care."
"Listen, you. I'm about fed up with this refusal. Don't you understand? You'll become a creature of instinct. You'll kill indiscriminately. And we cannot allow that."
"Then you will kill me."
"Yes. And then you will just end up in Soul Society anyway."
"All the more proof that this discussion is pointless."
"Apparently you hold little regard for your peers. Fair assessment. As a rule, I suppose I not only sympathize but agree with such an assessment. But would you risk putting that boy in danger? The first target a hollow hones in on is whoever was closest to its heart in life. What if we can't get to you in time, and you kill him?"
"I will not."
"How can you say that? You don't know—"
"I do know."
Hitsugaya wanted to scream at the man. He didn't know, and it was just plain stupid bravado to be so damned confident about something like this! He would do it, and there was nothing that would stop him!
And yet...something about the set of the man's eyes...the steel gleam of them. There was no bravado there. Only complete, total, relentless control.
And Hitsugaya wondered...would he?
And then Matsumoto spoke.
"...You're being selfish. God knows I'm not about to criticize you for the trait itself, or I'd be a hypocrite. And you died saving a child's life, so I'd be just about willing to indulge you anything right now. But this sort of selfishness is inexcusable.
"If you choose to stay here, for whatever reason, and become a hollow, you may never see him again. It may be centuries before you end up in Soul Society. And if you aren't there to see him when he arrives, his heart will be broken. Again.You told him you would see him again. And I'm not about to let you prove the lie to that."
She slid Haineko out of its sheathe and stamped it onto the man's forehead with an angry jerk so sudden that he couldn't dodge it, although that didn't stop him from trying. "So stop bitching and go to Soul Society to wait for him."
The man, as he vanished, crossed his arms. "...Fine."
And after it was done, Matsumoto frowned. "Fine?" she repeated. "Just like that? Hell, I didn't expect to win him over that quickly!"
"He never intended to become a hollow in the first place," Hitsugaya muttered thoughtfully.
"Huh? Then why would...?"
"Purely for the sake of argument, maybe. I don't know. But he wouldn't have done it. He'd have let us convince him."
"How can you...?"
"Because he's just that way. He's not selfish. Far from it. He wouldn't deny that child anything. He wouldn't have taken any chance at it. It's not in his nature."
"How do you know that? How can you tell?"
Hitsugaya looked at the tombstone of the man his vice-captain had just sent to Soul closed his eyes.
"You can't deny your nature no matter how you might try."
"And...what was that man's nature, Hitsugaya-taichou?" Rukia asked. "What was he, since you seem to know so well? Just what did you see when you looked at him?"
"...A father."
The tears finally came, and Hitsugaya looked up at the sky as they streamed silently down his face.
"I saw...a born father."
So...do you know? I bet some of you do. And I bet your eyes rolled, too. Because this is a habit of mine. A habit I don't think I'll ever break. But I hope you liked it, anyway. There are plenty of lines in this chapter that I feel particularly proud of.
'Til next time.