It's been nine months since I've seen you all, and I understand more than you know that that is entirely unacceptable. It's been at least six months since I've followed the storyline of Bleach. The story of why I haven't been writing lately is too long, too involved, and too personal to go into true detail. Suffice it to say that I wasn't in a good place, and if I'd tried to write anything on this story or most any other, it would have been awful.
I can't vouch for the quality of the scenes ahead, but I can assure that they were born from honest inspiration.
Alarms were going off in her head.
Something was wrong here, and she needed to figure it out now, or else there would be dire consequences. She'd never really known what the word, "dire," meant, and she'd been around for a long, long time. But now she understood. This was dire. This was the definition of dire. Whenever she heard the word from now on, she would think of the scene in front of her right now, and she would shudder.
Hitsugaya Toushirou was smiling.
Matsumoto had been around her captain long enough to have seen him smile before, but Hitsugaya's smiles were just as muted as the rest of his emotions. They were tiny things, exotic creatures that kept themselves hidden, and Matsumoto had trained herself to keep watch for them. For a long time, it had been an indication of when she could get away with her usual tactic of sneaking away from her desk for a few hours to...do things.
Now, she had a much deeper reason to watch for Hitsugaya's smiles.
And she should have been happy to see one now, but she wasn't. She was terrified.
This was no ordinary smile. This was no Hitsugaya smile. The boy captain's face was split in a wide, completely oblivious, blissful grin. He was leaning over his desk, cradling his head in one hand, and she was sure that if his hair weren't normally messy enough to qualify as a natural landmark, that it would have been messy now.
Matsumoto stepped gingerly into the office she shared with her commanding officer and drew in a deep, steadying breath. She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, his eyes found her, and he spoke.
He said, "...You're pretty."
Matsumoto stopped dead in her tracks. "...I'm sorry, what?"
"You're pretty," he said. "And tall. How are you doing that?"
"Doing...what?"
"Being tall. It must be nice, being tall. And pretty. Pretty tall. Those things look way too heavy, though. Do they hurt your back?"
If anyone else had asked her that, she would have attacked. Normally, if Hitsugaya had asked her that, she would have shot back a short joke and called it done. Now, she had no idea what to do. She didn't say a word. Her eyes were wide, her mouth was open, and her entire body felt limp.
Her captain...her straight-arrow, rules-are-rules, ten-foot-pole-up-his-backside captain...was stark, stumbling drunk.
He was laughing now, as Matsumoto's kitten hopped up onto the desk and batted at one of his pens. Hitsugaya picked up the pen and tapped the tiny animal's head. "What are we gonna name this little guy?" he asked, in a tone of voice far lighter and happier than she had probably ever heard. "I hear people, out there, talk about their pets being like...their children. So...you know, he's like...he's like..."
Matsumoto felt her face redden. "...I...don't know, Toushirou."
"I think...Ash."
"What? He's orange, Toushirou, not..."
"Yes, but..." He held up a finger as though he'd caught her at something. He jabbed it at her. "You found him. And your sword is a cat...like ashes. Ash cat. So this cat...should be ash, too." He started giggling madly as if he'd made a joke.
"...Uh...right. Well, we'll think about it. I think maybe we should wait until you..."
"Until I...?"
"Since when did you start drinking?" she demanded, sounding almost betrayed.
Hitsugaya blinked. "I drink a lot." He lifted up an empty mug from the desk. "Kyou...Kyouraku...he found a new tea. He said I should try it. Help me relapse. Relax. I tried it. It's amazing."
Matsumoto closed her eyes and sighed. "Some times he's unpredictable...sometimes he's not. Well, you enjoy your tea, Taichou. I...I need to...go."
"Oh. Okay. Bye!"
He was waving at her with far too much enthusiasm.
He reminded her of Kurosaki's sister.
Matsumoto shuddered, turned away, and shut the door of her drunk captain's office behind her.
"Dear God, I'm going to murder him," she breathed.
"What the hell?"
Kyouraku Shinsui was a master of acting surprised. He did so now, as Matsumoto stalked up to him, looking ready to rip out his spinal column and hang him with it. "My, my. You look tense, Rangiku-chan. That's unlike you."
"Cut the crap. Why?"
The pretense fell from Kyouraku's stubbled face. "To prove a point. That boy can't relax to save his life, much less his sanity. We're all tense around here, but he's worse than most of us. I don't think anybody could convince him to unwind on his own, so I decided to force him."
"And what makes you think you have the right to force my captain to do anything?"
"Seniority, but that means little to him. I know. There will be consequences for this experiment. I'll take them."
"You...you...!"
"I'm almost surprised at this reaction. I think I know what this is about. This is about Hitsugaya-kun's predecessor, isn't it? That man could drink me under the table, and you were so relieved when his replacement could barely stand the smell of alcohol that it's become a safety net. It's your proof that he won't do the same thing to you that Kazuhiko did. Isn't it?"
Matsumoto blinked. She had expected Kyouraku's usual game of playing stupid until he learned something. He wasn't usually anywhere near this...transparent about an issue, and it had her reeling. She finally stammered out a reply: "What...what are you talking about? He never did anything to me. Okay, so I hated him. I hate Kudo, too. That has nothing to do with...with..."
Kyouraku shrugged. "We all have secrets. I know that better than anyone. I could never forgive myself if I didn't let you keep yours. But...I know, Rangiku-chan. So did Ichimaru. Why do you think the man is dead?"
So there it was.
Out in the open.
"...You know about that."
Kyouraku shrugged. "Not until it was too late to do anything about it. I'm not certain I would have, but...well, let's say I wasn't as good at reading people back then. Ichimaru was always hard to pin down. So was Kazuhiko, for that matter."
Matsumoto sighed. "...I shouldn't be surprised. I still don't know why I am. Maybe...maybe you're right. Maybe I don't want to see Toushirou drinking because...because...then..."
"For what it's worth, I learned a lot from...that particular mistake. I wouldn't worry, if I were you."
"...Go on?"
Kyouraku laughed. Matsumoto frowned at him, but said nothing. "The moment he realizes what the secret ingredient in his new tea is, I'd bet a year of sobriety that he'll go on a rampage. Tell me I'm wrong."
"Mm."
"Furthermore, imagine if you had given Kazuhiko the sort of...forgive me...access that you've given Hitsugaya-kun. You've openly kissed a few times now, haven't you? Holding hands, foregoing all protocal when speaking to each other...and whatever else you might be doing behind the doors of the office you share." Kyouraku winked, then grimaced as if he regretted it. "Imagine how forward Kazuhiko would have been, given that kind of permission."
Matsumoto suddenly found herself feeling...slimy.
"Has Hitsugaya-kun even once taken advantage of it?"
"...No."
"You've already seen him in what I assume is...a rather comical state. He does love his tea, after all. What has he done?"
"He...called me pretty. And tall. And he asked...he asked me what we should name the kitten, because...because he's like...our child."
Kyouraku's face split into a grin. "You see? You never do anything drunk that you wouldn't think of doing sober. And what's he doing? Telling you how pretty you are. Not how sexy you are, or about how he'd like to see what's under your uniform...but just how pretty you are. That...that's adorable." Kyouraku chuckled to himself. "Do something for me, Rangiku-chan. Take a couple of days off. Spend them with your captain. Reassure yourself. I'm sure he'll tell you anything you want to know."
"...That feels like cheating."
"Mm. And when Kazuhiko was swimming in his own head, did you ever once have a problem with manipulating him?"
"No."
"Case in point. Go, Rangiku-chan. Don't worry. We'll find someone to run the division for a few days. Yama-jii won't like it, but you both need this. We need you sharp, we need you focused. At your best. That means we need you to relax, and we need you to trust each other."
"Toushirou is...not going to accept that."
"Let me worry about that. You have enough to work out. Go."
And so she went.
With no idea what to do, what to say, and what to think.
"Where are we going?"
Hitsugaya was, perhaps unsurprisingly, rather articulate considering the situation. He clearly wasn't himself, and he wasn't walking very well (Matsumoto had to hold him up every so often so that he could regain his balance), but there wasn't the faintest trace of a slur in his voice, even when she strained to hear one.
Of course, that didn't mean he was making sense.
Or maybe he was, and that was the problem.
"It's stifling in there. I need fresh air."
The kitten had situated itself on Hitsugaya's shoulder, seeming to cling for dear life whenever the boy captain swayed. "I like fresh air," he declared. "I like cold air. Do you like cold air, Ran...Ran..."
"Of course," Matsumoto said, even though she rather detested the cold, most of the time. She was slowly coming around, though. You didn't spend any amount of time with Hitsugaya Toushirou without coming to appreciate cold on some level.
"Oh. That's good. I like cold air, too. I like watermelon. We should get some. Do you...?"
"Yes, Toushirou."
"Oh. That's good."
He seemed satisfied with this, and remained silent for a while.
Matsumoto eventually found that she had led her captain to a pond outside the headquarters of the Sixth Division. She glanced back at Hitsugaya and, for the first time, thought she understood Kyouraku's motivation for his...experiment.
He looked peaceful.
Content.
He looked happy.
Hitsugaya dropped unceremoniously in front of the water to a sitting position, and Matsumoto sat down beside him. The kitten hopped from Hitsugaya's shoulder onto Matsumoto's lap, and she scratched behind its ears as she figured out what she was going to say.
Hitsugaya was humming a little song to himself.
It was harder and harder to remain irritated at Kyouraku, much as she wanted to hold on.
"You know what I used to think?" Hitsugaya said, in that musing, meandering way people had when they don't realize that they're talking at all. "I used to think Bet-Wetter Momo went away 'cuz of me. Maybe she didn't like watermelon. I don't know how you can't, but...she's kind of weird sometimes. You know?" He looked at Matsumoto, who could only nod dumbly and pretend she understood. "Then she came back and she was all proud, she was in the academy and she was doing awesome and...and...and this Aizen guy, he was paying special attention to her. Giving her compliments and...stuff. Flowers."
"He was grooming her," Matsumoto said darkly.
"I thought, you know, if she can do this...maybe I could, too. I'd see what's so interesting about this academy and all. Then you came along, and you were already an officer and...and...yeah. You said I should put my power to good use. So I did."
Matsumoto blinked.
Had she?
She honestly couldn't remember for the life of her if she'd met Hitsugaya before that first day when he'd become her captain. It certainly hadn't seemed like she'd known him. She wondered if maybe she should cut back on the sauce a bit. This apparent hole in her memory bothered her.
But Hitsugaya seemed adament, and he wasn't so plastered that she thought he was lying.
"Ichimaru visited me. When I was at the academy. He said," and Hitsugaya lapsed into a halting but eerily accurate imitation of Ichimaru Gin's voice, "'hey, hey, lookit this. Thought you might show up one o' these days. Don't look so puny now, eh? Good. Maybe ya can make officer after all.' I asked him if there was a height requirement to join the Gotei 13, and he just...grinned at me. 'Nah, nah, nuttin' like that. Butcha know...it don' hurt. Do me a favor, though, kid. You graduate, 'n you join the ranks, you see if ya can't join the Tenth.' So...I did. And then I found out that my vice-captain would be you. I thought...that was nice. You're nice. Kind of lazy sometimes, but...nice. And pretty. And tall."
Matsumoto found herself smiling.
"I can trust you," Hitsugaya murmured thoughtfully. "I know...when I ask you to do something...you'll do it. If I ask you to keep a secret, I know you'll keep it a secret." He blinked at her. "Am I talking too much? I feel like I'm talking too much."
"...Not at all, Toushirou."
"Nobody's seen him all day! I'm telling you, something's wrong!"
"I didn't say there weren't somethin' wrong. What I said was I don't know why you think he's gonna need our help to get 'im out of it. Ain't like he hasn't proven himself fifty times over. Gotten to the point where the only person he's provin' a damn thing to anymore's himself."
"That's not the point, Madarame-taichou! What if he is in trouble, and we could do something about it, but didn't because, 'he can handle it'?"
Ikkaku ran a hand over his bald head in frustration, but continued walking. He felt like he'd been dragged around half of Soul Society by the time he and Hinamori finally caught some kind of lead as to where Hitsugaya'd vanished. For any other soldier in the Gotei 13 to be missing for a few hours, this wouldn't have been a problem unless there was a meeting or a mission. For Hitsugaya Toushirou, it was a sign of the end of the world. Especially since Hinamori was still in "make up for everything" mode and remained convinced that the only way she could possibly win over her childhood friend again (never mind the fact that Hitsugaya had never been all that angry with her in the first place) was to do anything and everything he asked, and half of what he didn't.
Ikkaku might have put a stop to it, if he didn't usually find it kind of funny.
Today, it was giving him a damned headache.
He nodded to Renji as they passed him, made a, "save me from the batshit crazy woman," gesture when Hinamori wasn't looking, and was just about ready to pick a fight with somebody just to make the day even passably interesting when they found him.
His head was resting on one of his vice-captain's legs, and he was staring up at the sky with the happiest freaking look on his face Ikkaku had ever seen. He'd seen a lot from the captain of the Tenth Division, most of it unexpected and more than half of it in combat. This was new.
This was different.
This...was freaking scary.
As if it hadn't been freaky enough, though, Hitsugaya turned over as they approached, and actually waved. "Hey! It's Bet-Wetter Momo! Hi, there! You look pale. Are you cold? I like cold."
"...Holy fuck."
"Hitsugaya...taichou?"
"Kyouraku-taichou gave him some new tea to try," Matsumoto explained. "Apparently it's amazing. It helps him relapse."
Ikkaku blinked.
Stared.
And promptly fell over laughing.
As sporadic as my updates are, and I know they must be infuriating, I assure you all that if I ever decide to abandon this or any other project, you will be the first to know. I love these characters, I love these stories, and I love to share them with you. I'm not done yet. I'm working through a tough transitional period right now, and I hope that I may be forgiven.