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He’d taken to spending the day beside her bedside. No one else seemed to be around during the day to do it and he had nothing else better to do with his time. They were practically under house arrest, waiting for the decision that would determine their future. They could have just as easily left, forgone the waiting and just returned to their lives in the world of the living. It was Hiyori that kept them from doing so, not her specifically, in fact, Shinji was positive that when she woke up, she would kill them for not leaving when they had the chance. No, it was more the principle of letting her heal first. Tessai could heal, Hachi too, but Unohana was better. So with that in mind and some of the nostalgia that returned with them being back, they had all just come to the same conclusion; they would stay and hear them out. So whilst his evenings were beside Hiyori, his days were beside the lieutenant of the fifth division.
She was a small, frail thing, machines breathing for her as she fought for the will to live. He’d heard her story in whispered narrative from people passing outside the rooms he’d taken residence in. Hiyori was at least off the machines, breathing for herself now, but for Hinamori Momo, her injuries were far too severe. Hiyori was a fighter, Shinji knew it wouldn’t long before she was awake and cursing the name of everyone who came in to check on her. With Momo, she needed something to fight for.
He felt connected to her in a way, them both having suffered at the hands of Aizen, hurt both mentally and physically. Although the psychological trauma she had endured was a lot more than a surprise haircut when he was sleeping or the weight and blame of everything that had happened to them. In some ways, he blamed himself for what she had gone through as well. Had he been more observant, more willing to take action against him, then perhaps none of this would have happened, the hollow incident, her trauma, even everything that had happened to Ichigo.
“You’re blaming yourself again,” a hand on his shoulder, a whispered voice in his ear. He hadn’t even heard her come in. “Don't, especially not with her.”
“It’s not that simple,” he muttered, eyes still fixed on the sleeping soul. He knew he wasn’t directly responsible, but he might have well have been. “It never has been that simple.”
Lisa sighed and withdrew her hand, manoeuvring herself between the bed and him, forcing him to look at her from his seat. “Kyōraku sent me to tell you that a new Central 46 has been chosen, however, they still expect it to take a while for them to review our case. With any luck they’ll be so inundated with cases that they’ll let us go free...” there was a beat before he cracked a smile at her joke. She smiled with him, before turning to look down at the lieutenant of the fifth division.
“You’ll get attached,” she commented drily and Shinji had to admit that she was right. Yet still, he sat by her bedside, told her whispered stories of his century in exile; of the counties he’d visited and the events he’d seen. He didn’t need to, she had friends, yet he wanted to. The two captain-class of tenth were here every night, the lieutenants of at least half the divisions in the Gotei Thirteen all stopped by once every couple of days once the workday was over. In short Hinamori Momo, wasn’t short of people fighting for her, if only she’d wake up to see it.
“Don’t listen to that sourpuss of a perv,” he was awarded a slap to the back of the head for that comment and he chuckled. “She’s just jealous that the child she used to babysit back in the day is now taller than her.”
Lisa grumbled standing up and making to leave. “It’s half an inch,” she muttered. “Barely even noticeable...” she was gone before her sentence finished, the words cut off with the snap of the door sliding into place. He sniffed with a smile, revelling in the silence of the room, the rhythmic beeping of machines as normal to him as the sound of a fan on a hot summers day, or the thrum of a washing machine on its final cycle.
The window was open, a soft cool breeze circulating them as winter ended and spring arrived. It had been a long winter, not helped at all by the war and its aftermath. A winter of worry and stress, of meetings and talks. Of whispered truths and wide berths as that even after four months people still didn’t know how to act around them. the breeze, grew stronger for a minute, a stray piece of hair falling on Momo’s face and instinctively Shinji reached out to tuck it back behind her ear. “If anything,” he whispered, fingers lingering a little too long. “You’re worth getting attached to...”
The door slid open and Shinji recoiled, hand resting on his knee, a weird fluttering in his stomach as he turned to look at their guest. A male, brown hair and average height, hair that looked to have been styled a certain way, and was now trying to be styled completely different based on past events. He glanced at Shinji, and then at the sleeping figure on the bed next to him, a stack of reports in his hand and his shoulders slumped.
“Sorry to bother you... I see that Lieutenant Hinamori isn’t awake yet... I’ll er come back...”
“Are you from the fifth?” It was obvious really, he’d spent enough time with Aizen that he knew the signs of someone who inspired him to look like him. Even with the haphazard undercut in an attempt to hide the fact that his previous hairstyle had been a carbon copy of the floppy yet the ruggedly handsome style of his previous captain.
“Yes, sorry once again...” he bowed and turned to leave.
“I can help you know,” he gestured to the stack of reports in the male's hands. “It can’t be easy being left with all the paperwork and no one above a third seat to turn to.”
“I’m the fifth seat,” he admitted softly. “We haven’t had a third seat since Lieutenant Hinamori was promoted almost twenty years ago.”
“And Sosuke believed that having a fourth seat is bad luck...” the fifth seat nodded his head, a small look of surprise on his face and Shinji chuckled. Shinji’s own captain had believed that as well, Shinji thought it was stupid and actually made Sosuke his fourth seat whilst he was still acting captain, before promoting him to lieutenant. It seemed that upon Shinji’s departure, however, the tradition of not appointing a fourth seat returned. “Let me see it...” he held out his hand for the reports, bending his fingers up and down when the fifth seat hesitated. “What’s your name?”
“Er... Nii Katsumi.”
“Well Katsumi,” Shinji preferred being on a first-name basis with people. “Hirako Shinji, although Shinji is fine and I don’t bite.”
Katsumi stepped forward, finally handing Shinji the stack of reports and hovered awkwardly at the foot of Momo’s bed, hands clasped in front of him looking around.
Shinji flicked through the reports whistling softly as they all had one thing in common. “This is a lot of transfer requests...” Katsumi nodded. “Old man Yama isn’t going to approve all this, so we’ll focus on the more pressing stuff first.” he flicked through some more reports before finding the two he was looking for. “Like the monthly budget and the store inventory.” He looked up. “Pull up a chair, you can’t learn if you’re not watching.”
If Shinji was being honest it had been a while, and whilst the process for completing such reports didn’t look to have changed much in over a century, he still found himself questioning a lot more than he would have liked. Especially when it became apparent that most of the paperwork in the division had been split between captain and lieutenant. Something that was fine in practise, but when both are out of commission caused the whole division to come to a standstill.
Finally, after a decent three hours of work, they had gotten through the majority of the work and Katsumi no longer looked like he was about to crack under the pressure of his newfound responsibility. “Right so, the past six months worth of budgets have been completed, and we’ve complied the end of year reports. Inventory and stock have been ordered and the acquisition forms need to be sent to the first along with the budgets. ”
“And those?” Katsumi pointed to the rather large stack of transfer requests at the end of the bed.
“Is it that bad in the fifth?”
Katsumi shifted uncomfortably. “It’s not bad... but it’s not good either. The third and the ninth are struggling as well, but they have Lieutenants Kira and Hisagi to hold them together,” Shinji saw the other man’s eyes flick towards his lieutenant and Shinji nodded in understanding. For a division like the fifth, to have loved and trusted someone as much as they had Sosuke, to have that all ripped out from under them with no warning, was devastating. “You have to step up, for Momo, for the fifth. Reassure them, they’re looking for a lead, they’re lost without that sense of control. You have to take control.” Katsumi nodded, but from the look in his eyes, Shinji knew that his words hadn’t sunk in.
~*~
It was a week before Shinji saw Katsumi again, and not in the way he imagined. He half expected the young fifth seat to be back the next day, another stack of paperwork in his arms, pleading for Shinji’s help, but his visit to Momo’s bedside was undisturbed.
The morning he saw Katsumi again, he was late, not that he had a specific deadline to adhere to, but he always liked to appear just after her morning visitors left for work, that way she was never alone for too long. That morning in question, however, he turned up, to find that there were voices coming from her room.
At first, he thought the voice was Katsumi, but as he got closer he realised there was more than one and none of them was the fifth seat he’d met a week ago.
“Do we have to make a decision today?” The voice was quiet, desperate even and Shinji hesitated, hand on the door as he prepared to slide it open. It didn’t seem like the sort of conversation he should walk in on.
“No,” he recognised that voice as Unohana Retsu, Captain of the Fourth. “I wouldn’t expect anyone to make such a decision without first thinking it over. However...” she trailed off as she moved away, a trolley being pushed behind him blocking out the rest of the conversation. Not wanting to be privy to anything else Shinji left.
Whatever was happening in the room was really none of his business, he assumed the second voice was that of the tenth captain. As far as he could tell, Captain Hitsugaya and Momo were close. Siblings, not by blood but like he and Hiyori or even Kensei and Mashiro. Rukon siblings. People were rarely related in the Rukon, friendships made there became closer than those bonded by blood. Not wanting to disturb them, he left, slinking back out the way he came and into the early spring morning. It was warm, a sign of a false spring before a couple more months of winter descended onto them. At least that’s what the meteorological division over in the department of research and development was saying. He guessed he would just see if anyone else was awake that he could bother, or spend the morning with Hiyori before checking on Momo again in the afternoon, but without even meaning too his feet went into an automatic pilot of sorts and before he knew it he was standing outside the door to his own office about to walk in.
“Hirako-san?” He turned, one hand on the door about to open it, to see Katsumi looking at him curiously, a fresh stack of files in his arms. “Are you looking for Lieutenant Hinamori?”
“No...” he glanced back at the door, before lowering his hand. “She’s still asleep... say has it changed much?” He jerked his head towards the office and Katsumi cocked his head, puzzled.
“We haven’t touched it since Cap... the previous captain left.” Katsumi wouldn’t have known what his version of the office looked like anyway.
Curious, he placed his hand back on the door and pulled it open. The first thing he noticed was how bare it looked. Very traditional, albeit a little bare. A bookcase to one side hosted an array of books, a calligraphy scroll on the wall. A cupboard to one side, with a small zen garden atop it and Shinji, walked over to it.
“Ah that cupboard doesn’t open and the old captain couldn’t find the key.” Shinji grinned a self-satisfied smirk. He worked hard to keep the secrets in that cupboard safe from suspicious characters like Gin and Sosuke, it brought him a joy to think that even after all this time, Sosuke had been bested by a cupboard.
Reaching it, he pulled it away from the wall slightly and reached down behind it, before withdrawing with a record. “It doesn’t need a key, it opens from behind.” In truth Shinji had lost the key to that cupboard ages ago, back when he was a Lieutenant, so had removed the back of it as a way to clear out what was inside, but never actually got around to replacing the cupboard. When he saw how much the cupboard annoyed Sosuke he kept it and used it as a place to store his music.
“How did you...?” Katsumi stared at him, and Shinji handed him the record. Shifting his load slightly, the other man accepted the record, recording it curiously, before looking back up at Shinji.
“This used to be my office,” Shinji announced, finally saying it out loud and from the look on Katsumi’s face the penny had dropped.
“That explains how you knew so much about how the filing and budgets worked,” if the younger man didn’t have his arms full, he would have probably facepalmed.
Shinji chuckled and nodded. “It had been a while though, so if there were any problems with it send old Chojiro my way, he’s probably out of practice with my backwards way of problem-solving.” He turned back to the cupboard and pulled it away from the wall, even more, revealing that as well as records, there was his old gramophone and he beckoned for Katsumi to give him back the record.
Katsumi complied and after a few minutes of turning dials and ensuring it was wound-up, the deep tones of Louis Armstrong filled the office. A wave of nostalgia hit him, of him sitting at the desk, reports stacking up as he favoured listening to the greats over actually doing work. That’s what his Lieutenant was for, and an over-eager third-seat who was just aiming to please.
“Hirako-san?” pulled from his musing as the song ended, he turned back to find himself in the present and with the fifth seat looking at him, a questioning look in his eye. He waved at him as he turned to his cupboard to find another record, encouraging the other man to continue. “If you’re not visiting the Lieutenant today, would you mind walking me through all of this?” He lifted his shoulders, showing off the stack in his arms and Shinji turned back to regard it, Kid Ory, in his hands.
“What are they?”
“Sitreps...” he chuckled nervously and Shinji scowled. He hated reports from the world of the living, too many words, but he softened his face and turned back to the gramophone, switching out Louis for Kid and motioning Katsumi over to the desk, files and all.
“Come on then.”
~*~
He didn’t intend it to turn out that way, nor did he intend it to continue, but Shinji soon found himself returning to the fifth division every morning, before spending his afternoons with Momo. He’d had an inkling it was bad by his first conversation with Katsumi, but after spending some time over there and seeing the state of the sitreps and even the general morale of those he passed in the corridor, he now knew it to be worse. He promised himself it wouldn’t be for long, that he would only help out as little as possible to allow Katsumi to step up and take command, but it was clear that even the fifth seat's knowledge was lacking. Promoted before his time and out of necessity, Shinji owed it to the division to help out more than he should.
Working with the fifth only seemed to heighten his guilt, reminding him that their gaps in knowledge were down to poor management, a management change that wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t let Sosuke do what he’d done. The guilt, rather than causing him to withdraw in on himself, only caused him to work harder. He owed it to the fifth, not only that, he owed it to the poor woman currently fighting for her life over at the fourth.
It was at the fifth that Lisa found him a month or so later. “It’s time.”
The time, it seemed, was a decision, he’d almost forgotten he was on trial. So used to his routine and the work he had been doing, he’d forgotten that he wasn’t actually captain, he was only helping out as a way to absolve his own guilt.
“For what it’s worth,” Katsumi said as Shinji said his goodbyes and made to leave with Lisa. “I’ve learned more under you than I ever did under Aizen.”
“You got attached,” Lisa smirked as they walked towards the Central Forty-Six compound.
“I didn’t get attached,” he did but he wasn’t willing to admit it. “I’m...” he struggled to find an excuse. “I took pity on them, poor things never even knew what greatness was until now.” Lisa rolled her eyes, arms folded but there was a twitch of a smile and Shinji grinned. “How do you think this will go?”
The smile was gone, her usual stoic expression back. “We should be ready to leave.” It was a statement, something that they had all probably discussed behind his back. Only he wasn’t ready to leave. Not because of the fifth, or even the fun he’d started to have, but a small part of him didn’t want to leave until he knew Momo was safe.
The rest of the journey was in silence, neither talking, both too concerned with their future to exchange in pleasantries.
“He was at the fifth,” Lisa announced, to everyone else’s amused looks.
Hiyori scowled her eyes, arms crossed. Whilst she’d awoken a couple of weeks ago, she still wasn’t completely healed, under strict orders to take it easy and when those orders came from Unohana Retsu, even someone like Hiyori listened. “Don’t you dare,” she hissed when he walked over to stand next to her. To anyone else, it could have easily been in threat of a hug, or a hair rub, or any of the signs of affection he usually showed. But the look in her eyes, the terrified look that he would sooner leave them than return back to the world of the living said everything. He said nothing, unable to make a promise he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep.
He was spared having to voice his thoughts by the doors opening, and several fully-clad shinigami beckoning them to enter.
~*~
"I want my job back," if Yamamoto was surprised, then the old man didn’t show it. Instead, he nodded, almost as if expecting it. They were cleared and supposedly supposed to be packing, no point staying around as Hiyori had stated. But to Shinji, there was a point to staying around and now he was allowed to stay, he had to take them up on that.
“And the others?”
Shinji shrugged. “I don’t speak for them, only for me and I know that the fifth needs someone, and who better than someone who’s already done it before.”
The Head Captain of the Gotei Thirteen looked at him, his burning gaze as hot as the fire in his soul before he nodded once. A signal for his lieutenant to come out from the corner and hand Shinji his haori. “Monday.”
Out of all the people he could have chosen to tell first, including his friends and family, the very ones who were saying their goodbyes and packing up to leave, he instead headed to the one person who had helped make his decision to stay that much easier.
“So hey,” he chuckled at the lameness of his word choice. “We’ll talk more when you wake up, but I just wanted to let you know that the fifth, it’s in good feet,” his joke was lost behind the beeping of the machines. “So rest up, take your time and when you’re better we can hand over then.” He placed a hand over hers so small in comparison to his own and held it softly. “Just get better yeah? You are worth staying for.” He gave her hand a squeeze before intending to let go and leave.
All of a sudden three things happened at once, the beeping of the machines crescendoed, the hand in his flexed then squeezed back and before him, brown eyes stared up at him, panic as she woke up unable to breathe due to the machine breathing for her.
Shinji didn’t have time to call for help, the increase of volume from the machines alerted the healers to the room and without ceremony Shinji was pushed to one side as Unohana and her flock of officers took to Momo’s bedside to reassure her and unplug her from the machines.
An order was sent to fetch Captain Hitsugaya, another to alert the Lieutenants of third, sixth and ninth, but to stress that only family should see her now. Someone approached him and reiterated the order.
“I’m sorry it’s family only, I’m going to have to ask you to leave...”
“I’m her captain,” he said rather dumbly, his haori limp in his hand as he watched the healers flood around his Lieutenant, hoping that after all this she was going to be alright.
He caught sight of Unohana’s gaze, a gaze that drifted down to the haori in his hand before nodding allowing him to stay and returning to the task at hand. As others left and flitted about, fussing and making notes Shinji crept forward, inching towards a gap at her bedside. Brown eyes met him and he smiled reassuringly, before noticing her hand, just as he had left it. She glanced down at it, flexing her fingers experimentally before nodding, allowing him to hold it once more.
“I’m Shinji...” he whispered, not knowing if he’d actually ever introduced himself, or if he’d just expected her to know who he was.
“I know,” her voice was hoarse, months of being intubated hadn’t done her vocal cords any use. “You told me stories about the world of the living, all the places you’ve seen and the languages you’ve heard.” She smiled softly, a wistful look in her eyes. “I’d like to visit one day.”
Shinji looked at her, unable to mask the surprise on his face. Even Unohana looked surprised that Momo had been so aware. She finished up her notes, and inclined her head, judging that Momo was stable enough to be left alone before she left. No doubt to meet up with Hitsugaya and update him on her progress.
“You heard all that?” he whispered, squeezing her hand softly. She nodded, wincing a little as unsued muscles strained at the effort. “Well then, how about you work on getting better and I’ll take you there myself.” He smiled, a full piano toothed smile and she blushed, the action bringing some much-needed colour to her very pale cheeks.
“I’d like that,” she said, eyes closing softly, and Shinji couldn’t help but reach over and brush a stray piece of hair away from her face. “Thank you for caring about me.”
“Of course,” Shinji said with no hesitation. “You are worth caring about.”