Chapter Text
Hitsugaya thinks he’s dreaming.
He wakes up again today with Hinamori curled up in his arms. It’s a sight he couldn’t get enough of; he softly peppers kisses against her forehead, each kiss a reminder that he is awake. She murmurs protests against his chest. “I need to go,” she says, but she burrows closer in his embrace, entangling her legs with his.
Laughter cascades from the top of her head. “It’s difficult to work when you do that.”
“But you’re so warm, Shiro. It’s always cold outside.”
Early rays of sunlight shine through the sheer curtains on his window. Outside, a garden basks in the softening glow of daybreak, and leaf buds emerge green from snow dust that gently settled in the last season.
“But it’s spring now.”
She disengages from his hold, bringing all of the blanket with her and stands up grumbling. “Just say you don’t want me to stay.”
This isn’t the first time he heard her say those words. Their treatment of mornings rubbed off on each other in the short course of time. He laughs amidst the quiet stillness in his quarters and pulls her back to him rather roughly. She lands on his lap, eyes still struggling to open, her limbs groggy in response, but her lips are alive against his.
“Are you finally awake?”
She nods, her lids fluttering open. “Thanks for the wake up call.”
“Aren’t you the morning person between the two of us?”
Her arms wound around his neck. “I think I’m still sleepy. Need another wake up call.”
He smiles, unable to help himself.
xxx
“He’s humming,” a soldier tells Matsumoto.
“I can hear very well,” she quips. “Just stick with the training routine for today, and go over the monitoring reports from our squad. Highlight anything you find out of place.”
“Hello Matsumoto. Great work on accomplishing the summary reports to Kyoraku. He likes how brief and concise they are, ” Hitsugaya says when he notices her keeping pace.
She almost halts — he complimented her. Wow. This is a good change, everything about him now is a good change, and she knows it’s driven by some newfound happiness. But not all happiness has anchors — that much she knows. It could be just as fleeting and ephemeral, an escape, a diversion, and no one ends up in a good place in that situation.
She clears her throat. “Mayuri started with the simulations.”
Hitsugaya stills, and she deftly recognizes the change in his aura. He slightly glances at her with piercing eyes. “Have you prepared?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He nods. “I expect to do well as always. You have improved a lot since then.”
Matsumoto battles with herself. Shinji was worried to the point that he wanted to intervene, but she thwarted his plans so he gave her access to records and documentation. She witnessed centuries of pining and sidestepping from both sides and she wasn’t about to ruin it for them. At this point, however, she knew she messed up.
“Momo is good for you.” She lowers her voice to a level audible only to him.
“I have much to thank you for albeit against my will.” He doesn’t smile, but she knows he’s grateful. “I just hope you don’t rat us out to your friends from other divisions. Drunk you has a big mouth.”
“And a big heart.” Her addition makes him roll his eyes. She holds herself back from saying, I really don’t need to tell people. It’s already obvious enough. “So did you like, talk things out?” She tries to feel out their progress.
“Hmm. We wanted to take it one day at a time and see how it plays out.”
“Is she doing well?”
A pause and a shrug. “Yeah, I think she is.”
“But have you asked if she really is doing well?”
The pause lengthens. “Do you have something to tell me?” he snaps.
“It’s Kira,” Matsumoto spills. “It’s the first person — the first memory she always sees, and it affects her simulations so I would like to ask you again, is she doing well? ”
Hitsugaya knows this feeling so well. It’s knife sharp, menacing, and cold. “Kira is dead.” The bastard one-upping him even from beyond the grave. “And she has moved on.”
A heavy weight sinks in her chest, but it’s no use when he’s already like this. He has closed himself off to the reality in favor of the bubble of his current emotions. Matsumoto resigns to a grin and slaps her captain on the back. “I’m glad. I’m rooting for the two of you.”
She fails to tell Hitsugaya that he’s also one of the reasons why Momo won’t survive the simulations.
xxx
“When I get back, I need to tell you something.” Kira’s holding her wrist tightly. His own pulse against her skin is frantic and she blames the high stakes of this fight. She nods without understanding anything and soon enough, he’s gone into the fray.
The scent of blood is so strong in the air that Hinamori can taste it in her mouth. A mix of rust and desperation. She gags at the sensation, but much more despises the paralyzing cold coursing through her veins, rendering her a proper target for the enemy.
Bright, sharp white arrows transition into red the moment they hit shinigamis. No one dares to utter bankai because no one even gets to unsheath their swords. Frames of seconds filled with futile attempts to survive emerge around her.
Tobiume’s voice is silent. She is absorbing all dying screams of masters and zanpakutou. Hinamori’s shivering extends to her, and she runs out of excuses and apologies for the souls she cannot save.
“We have to move,” she tells Hinamori. “You need to move.”
A quincy lands a few meters in front of them and sets his sight on her. He walks with unhurried grace as if insulated from the attacks, safe in the knowledge that no one can get to him. One of their soldiers from the division runs amok towards him. She remembers him. He likes to drink a lot and can be quite loud, but he takes interest in kido and has been an earnest learner. The sound of piercing hits the soldier’s chest before the shape of an arrow takes form.
The red sputters on her feet.
Hado escapes from her fingers with no need for incantations. The quincy deflects her advances one after the other. She’s quick to her feet, the adrenaline guiding her exactly where she needs to shunpo. His arrow grazes her ribs, but Tobiume slices against his white regalia.
He remains standing with no wound. A smirk slowly paints his face. She hasn’t hit him, he thinks, but she has marked him, and he shatters into miniscule pieces after a few seconds.
Hinamori isn’t sure how she is breathing. She sees familiar names, hears familiar voices, but she shuts her mind. She can’t afford to think or feel right now. She only needs to find Shinji Hirako and protect him.
She spots him amidst the carnage, simultaneously bickering with shinigami from other divisions and thwarting incoming attacks. He beckons her over as soon as he catches her figure. Her colleagues look at her warily, refusing to meet her gaze. It’s only Shinji who meets her gaze directly.
He grits his teeth and slices the air behind her. A swarm of arrows falls on the marooned ground. “Focus on the fight, Momo. We need you.”
Kido is made for large scale battles, Shinji made her understand that. She is the critical support, the blanket of protection that their squad requires in order to advance, however the truth is that they are merely resisting the quincy's offense. There’s a fine line that shields them from being completely eradicated, and she’s the one maintaining it.
“The tenth division needs help!”
She picks up the call for help. She wishes she hadn’t because a name crosses her mind and pushes itself to the forefront. She sees him form in front of her, from a bratty kid who shoots watermelon seeds like bullets with his arrogant mouth to a dependable captain whose path is paved by his prodigious skills.
She feels Hyourinmaru go through her chest and the shock that traverses his grip to her body. She doesn’t want to remember this memory, but it’s a moment that has carved a space for itself in her consciousness. It only gives her pain, the kind that mixes anguish and betrayal and guilt. He doesn’t have to go through all of this. This is her misery, this is her downfall; it’s her burden to bear.
But his silver hair glints against the moonlight sifting through the window sill inside the room where Unohana keeps her. His head rests a few centimeters from her hand, and she wants nothing more than to reach out and ease out the sadness in his features.
Why are you still here? She whispers to the night.
He cares for you. That voice does not belong to him, but it sounds like him although much older and wiser in its cadence.
Why?
The reason why people care for each other. He tells her as if it’s a fact, and she’s supposed to know.
It dawns on her that she can’t recognize love if it stood in front of her. She refuses to see it, and now she’s so afraid to go after it. The moment he truly lets her go, she might fall apart.
She hears him yelling Hitsugaya’s name.
And then silence.
It can’t be, Hinamori tells herself. Her even breathing picks up and it becomes ragged and heavy, as if a pressure is pushing her from above. She can’t move, her kido spells dying on her fingers. Even her eyesight is starting to blur. She is cold from within despite the heat from the battlefield.
A splash of red hits her on the face. Someone is impaled beside her. One flank of their squad gets eliminated, but their combined screams are muffled against her roaring ears.
“Momo! FOCUS!” Shinji screams. A sternritter settles behind him with a wide grin and nocks an arrow.
Tobiume gets into her head and yells, “Momo move!”
It’s so easy to attack the enemy, Momo notes, but she’s frozen in place. She can only watch as her captain gets pierced, blood pouring from his mouth, a look of resigned disappointment in his face.
She couldn’t even cry.
xxx
Hinamori couldn’t let go of him. His hands weave across her back, running circles against her clothes, guiding her to calm down with each hitching breath.
“I just had a bad day,” she sobs.
“I know.” He doesn’t say anything more than that. He knew about her simulation results; Shinji personally came and told him and Matsumoto.
The Twelfth Division developed the technology to simulate recent wars in the last century, and they have imposed annual participation for all shinigamis. For some, it’s a necessary training to fix loopholes and improve gaps. For others like Hinamori, it’s reliving a nightmare over and over again. Kurotsuchi has found a more intense pattern to her failures; all triggers are bound to him and his death.
Hinamori couldn’t bear to lose him.
He was tasked by the two captains to fix this problem despite Matsumoto’s protestations. It isn’t his problem to solve, but while she is right, he has grand declarations he keeps to himself. Promises he will keep. Hinamori wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore. He will always protect her and keep her safe. He will be strong enough for the both of them - even if it meant doing all of it at a distance.
“Listen, why don’t I brew you tea and we’ll settle to sleep?”
“Shiro, I’m sorry,” she sniffles, “I’m sorry I’m still not strong enough.”
He kisses the crown of her head, his words lost in the ember strands. “You’re strong enough, you just don’t know it.”
She eventually calms down with chamomile and surrenders to a blissful slumber. He watches with fascination how her lids flutter from time to time, how her chest heaves rhythmically to her breathing, so synced and timed with his, and he prays there are no nightmares when he leaves her side.
He has been far too greedy. He only wanted happiness but he gave her a weakness.
“I love you.” He hopes she doesn’t hear it. He doesn’t want to burden her one last time. With his words lost to the mundane nightscape, it makes the parting easier.
xxx
The moment she heard Hitsugaya say it, she knew he would leave her. She didn’t stop him - couldn’t stop him. She waited for the nights to claim her dreams and turn them into nightmare fuels, but nothing came, only bleeding nothingness and emptiness that feels heavier than weightless space.
Hinamori finds herself going back to the junction near his quarters. She stays there for a long time, seeking refuge in the faint glow of his room in the distance, remembering the crooks and crannies of his room. His fading reishi in the area tells her he is again out in the wee hours of the morning for training.
She wishes she could tell him good night.
She also lost the privilege to send smiles across the hall whenever there’s a gathering. She misses the small talk, and even the exchange of formalities between a captain and a lieutenant. She finds that her role in his life is being reduced into an insipid wallflower.
She also realizes that she wants to say it back to him.
Matsumoto finds her in a ramen shop, blanklessly staring across the booth, with half of the dish untouched, already gone cold. She slides beside Hinamori, but that gains no response from the younger.
“How is he, Rangiku?” Hinamori asks after the seconds lapsed into minutes.
“Buried himself in work,” Matsumoto takes her neglected ramen and finishes it. “You both suck, you know. You suck at communicating. You’re literally best friends but you don’t talk talk.”
Hinamori starts to tear up. “I lost something that’s very real to me.”
“Well, story of my life.”
Now she feels selfish, she’s mourning the loss of an alive but cannot-be-hers-Hitsugaya, and Rangiku had her childhood best friend and love of her life die in front of her.
“I’m so sorry Rangiku. I didn’t mean to -”
“Oh shut up, it’s been years. It still hurts, if that’s what you’re asking.” She sighs and looks wistfully at Hinamori. “I don’t think I’m ever gonna get over him. On some days, I feel like grieving, the wound is raw, and my flesh is pried open. On some days, there’s peace and acceptance. This is what we have been given, and this is what we have done out of it. But you, you and Hitsugaya-taichou, all the opportunities you have been given and you’ve wasted each one. Seeing the two of you pine for each other for several centuries like parallel lines never meeting. It’s so goddamn frustrating. I’m jealous and angry and hurt that some people have been given chances, but then you resort to these conclusions and mess everything up.”
“I’m not prepared to lose him that way.”
“So did you think I was?”
Hinamori takes Rangiku’s hand in hers and squeezes tight, relaying all her apologies with each caress of a thumb. She sees her crying when she lifts her head. “Kira…Kira told me to wait. He had something important to tell me after the war. He held my hand like this, tight and desperately clinging. All throughout the simulations, I see familiar faces succumbing to death around me, faces that will never see their family and comrades again, will never get to eat their favorite meals - never even had the chance to before they died, will never wear their comfiest set of clothes, or hear the voices of their zanpakutou. Some of them will never know true love or meet their soulmate or they have but they cannot reunite again, not even in reincarnation. They will not laugh again, experience the frustrating transition of spring to winter, and eat watermelons in the summer. And I….I’m doing all of these. I’m happy - I was happy. I laughed and danced with Toushiro under the moonlight with their corpses underneath our feet. I kissed him while their loved ones continued to grieve the empty side of their bed. How could I…how could I do this… and Kira still had to say something to me.”
Rangiku pulls her in for a hug, the gesture allowing her floodgates to open. In that small, secluded booth, all sorrows were released.
“I had the worst night of my life after laughing for the first time after Gin died, and then I realized, will he be happy to see me like this, so downtrodden and ugly, it’s not like me. How can we hold ourselves back from experiencing happiness the same way they would have rooted for ours had they lived? The past is not always heavy, Momo. Sometimes you just have to unburden yourself with it. So don’t do it, don’t chain yourself to a lifetime of misery. We all deserve to be happy, you deserve to be happy.”
Hinamori tightens her hug around her friend. “Thank you Rangiku.”
“And for the record, Kira already knows it’s Toushiro you love.”
xxx
“I made a mistake,” Hitsugaya sits cross legged beside Byakuya. The older shinigami sips quietly from a cherished porcelain. “I scared her off with that I love you .”
“Why is it a mistake?”
Kuchiki household makes the best tea, but somehow it’s Hinamori’s he likes the best. “Because I gave her something to lose.”
“Isn’t that better?”
“I’m a liability to her and myself. I wouldn’t know what to do either if something happens to her. You said so before, emotions cloud judgments and hinder the best and most objective decisions.”
Byakuya’s smirk appears just above the rim of his cup. “How shallow of me.”
“You’re retracting your statement?”
“I am.” His slender fingers place the china on the table, and he continues to stare at the courtyard where Rukia and Renji’s toddlers are currently wreaking havoc to his stone garden. A smile breaks on his lips, a rare expression on one of the most feared shinigamis in Soul Society, but Hitsugaya likes this change for him. The man earned it after a long time. “We’re motivated by our fears but only because we care and love them too much. That’s not a shame to admit. Don’t be so scared to go after what you want, Hitsugaya. We don’t know how long this era of peace is gonna last, but when you have something to protect, it makes you even more prepared for what’s to come.”
“That’s a long response.”
“Good thing you’re listening.” It’s not a compliment. “You are, aren’t you, Hitsugaya-taichou?” It sounds like a threat, and it’s his cue to leave.
xxx
Hinamori asks for one more chance. One more chance to redeem herself, and Kurotsuchi’s sadistic side, the one that enjoys others’ suffering in the name of science, complies. Before she blacks out on the contraption, she faintly registers the scent of pine and mint in the room.
An urgency, a drowned out voice.
“When I get back, I need to tell you something.” Kira’s holding her wrist tightly. His own pulse against her skin is frantic and she blames the high stakes of this fight. She nods without understanding anything and soon enough, he’s gone into the fray.
The scent of blood is so strong in the air that Hinamori can taste it in her mouth. A mix of rust and desperation. She gags at the sensation, but much more despises the paralyzing cold coursing through her veins, rendering her a proper target for the enemy.
She shouldn’t be the casualty.
A long breath through the mouth, a concentration of reiatsu, and she becomes present in the battle. In a matter of minutes, she has become an insurmountable support and long range fighter in the skirmish. She can hear Shinji shouting praises to her from the front, and the validation slightly gives her reprieve.
“The tenth division needs help!”
She picks it up even though she doesn’t want to, and like all other run-throughs, Hinamori goes rigid at the sound of his name thrown around across their lips. Hitsugaya and Hyourinmaru. His silver hair glinting against the moonlight, his eyes brightening when she passes him in the hallways, his vocal color drifting like music when he utters her name. They’re all gone.
She slumps to the ground, unable to breath, as if she bound herself in bakudo. Shinji’s praises have turned into curses, but she couldn’t hear, couldn’t yell anything back. Behind him, a sternritter nocks an arrow, the target locked.
“Momo, tell me to snap.” Tobiume’s gentle voice wafts through the air. “You’ll be fine.”
Hitsugaya is fine. He will be fine. He is a skilled captain, a tenacious one at fights, and a powerful shinigami. She trusts him enough to be all right, and she will see him at the end of this battle. She trusts him enough to be alive.
Hinamori holds out her palm and sends out a hado. Two rays of light almost pierces both sides of Shinji, but they lock on to the sternritter and bind onto other enemies in proximity. With targets finally bound on a spherical chain, Momo clenches her palm into a fist and thrusts out her sword to the sky.
“Snap, Tobiume.”
The sound of electricity travels through the binds, a short interlude of nothing, and then multiple explosions. The sky of Seireitei turns red and black, the fire difficult to put out.
The first thing Hinamori sees when she emerges from the simulation is her captain, clapping with his arms in the air, and hitting Kurotsuchi’s jelly head. “Told you she’d be a scary kido wielder.”
“I might need to experiment on her,” the other captain says.
Shinji hits him again harder. “That’s a no.”
On the other corner is open-mouthed and wide-eyed Matsumoto, and beside her is a smirking Hitsugaya.
xxx
It takes a week before he sees her again.
He finds her at the junction of his quarters in broad daylight, her weight shifting from one foot to another. His poncho rests on her shoulders despite the warm summer breeze. Her head is bowed down, and he hears her murmuring sentences under her breath.
“Momo,” Hitsugaya calls out. He sees her attempt an excuse, but she doesn’t say anything.
He wants nothing more than to hold her. He takes one step closer which she mimics, and another, and another until they’re only a breadth away from each other.
“You can’t sleep?” he asks, and he resists the urge to tuck a stray strand of her hair behind her ear.
“That’s my excuse for tonight if you came home late,” she breathes out. “But no, I can sleep on my own now. I started listening to music, asked Ikkaku to bring me some CDs from the human world. They make for very vivid and happy dreams.”
“No nightmares?”
Hinamori shakes her head. “Sometimes….there are. It can’t be helped. But I’m generally okay.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” He instinctively reaches for her fingers to give her comfort. The tips of her skin resting languidly against his knuckles is a welcome touch, he doesn’t realize the extent of how he missed them.
“How about you, Shiro?”
“More nightmares.”
Her hands suddenly engulf his. “What do you mean nightmares?”
“Nightmares of what you could further do with hado,” he sighs. “You released a complex combination of binding and explosions without incantation.”
“I’ve heard the same sequence of words many times in Soul Society the past week, thank you.” She doesn’t take compliments well, the blush already invading her cheeks.
“I’m truly afraid of you, Hinamori.”
She sticks her chin out and rolls her eyes. “Then it’s a good thing I’m on your side, always on your side.”
“So what’s your excuse for going to this junction today?”
Hinamori peeks at him through her fringe, and her voice wavers in response, “I want to tell you how stupid I am - “
He cuts her off just as quickly. “But you’re not.”
“How stupid I am not to say it back to you.” Her hands cradle his face and softly directs them to only look at her. “I love you.”
Hitsugaya scans her expression for anything. “...as a friend?”
“Stupid,” she murmurs before her lips crash onto his. “I love you, Shiro. You’re not going to run away from me again, are you?”
He shakes his head, too stunned to speak. He distances herself from her just so he can quickly wipe away the pooling tears. “That made me reach heaven for a bit. Can you repeat them again?”
Hinamori chuckles and tackles him into a hug, her small frame wound around his waist, dainty face peering up at him with wet lashes. “I’m choosing to love you. I’m choosing to be happy.”
“That’s nice,” he kisses her forehead. “I had the same plan in mind.”
xxx
“Quite a big day you had, birthday boy,” she sneaks her hand into the very large pockets of his enormous coat. It’s winter again. She feels something metallic on the edge of her fingertips and heart skips a beat. Could this be —
“Relax,” he snickers. “It’s only a key.”
Hinamori makes sure not to show the disappointment in her face, but he catches it nonetheless. Hitsugaya tips her chin to his under the snow-filled night sky, and traces her moles with his thumb. “I love this little constellation here.”
“You changed your locks?” Hinamori feigns innocence. “I say good choice, considering how Rangiku, Ikkaku, and Yumichika hold sleepovers in sporadic frequencies.”
“I love this little constellation here,” Hitsugaya repeats. “Stop interrupting me Momo. I prepared a speech.”
“Oh my god. Is this —”
“No, it’s not.”
“Oh thank god.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It’s not that I’m not ready or anything. I would say yes actually. It’s just that —”
“You what —”
“Yes, I said yes!”
Hitsugaya breaks into laughter. “Okay, so you’re moving in with me.”
“Wait what?”
He pulls her closer again, locked in his familiar and warm embrace, the smell of peppermint hanging over her carnation scent. “I said, I love this little constellation here so I want it to be the last thing I see before I fall asleep and the first thing I wake up to in the mornings. So will you move in with me?”
Hinamori shrugs, similarly cackling as well, “I already said yes.”
“Should I throw in another major M-word in there? We could look for rings.”
“Shiro-kun!” she huffs, “ I want it to be romantic.”
“Not with the way you keep cutting me off.”
“Please refer to them as sweet interruptions - “
“A what now —”
“Sweet inter—”
He kisses her, slow and steady.