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“Captain?” Matsumoto asked Hitsugaya as she was fanning herself to keep the heat at bay.
“What?” he answered, not looking up from his share of the paperwork.
“Why doesn't Seirieti feel like home now?”
He looked up and looked at her. She kept her gaze at a distant point, away from his eyes. “What do you mean, Matsumoto?”
She sighed. “I...don't know. I do things here with others, and I have work, and I have friends, but...I no longer feel comfortable here. I don't feel comfortable in my own skin anymore, honestly.”
“You saw someone you cared for be killed in front of you,” he said quietly. “He may have been a traitor, but you still cared about him.”
She turned to look at him. “When the captains went back to Hueco Mundo and were searching around, they found a journal of his hidden deep in his quarters. Captain Sui-Feng didn't want to give it to me. She wanted to destroy it. But Captain Kyoraku interceded and he gave it to me last week.”
“I did not know that,” he said quietly.
“When I was a child, Aizen's men came and took part of my soul. Gin saw it happen. He decided to get his revenge on Aizen for that.” She shut her eyes. “He changed who he was for vengeance. I just...I wish he had just let it go. I survived, I'm not any different, but he...he...”
Hitsugaya watched a tear fall down her cheek, and he got up and moved closer to her desk, unsure of what to do. “He cared about you deeply,” he said.
“I think it would have been best if Captain Sui-Feng had just destroyed the journal like she wanted,” she said after taking a steadying breath. “Now I have something of his. I wish it had been like before, when all I had were memories.”
Hitsugaya nodded, even though she could not see him. “I understand what it is like to have something fundamental in your life change. You did not know they had taken fragments of your soul until recently. Maybe that is why this place no longer feels like home.”
“Maybe,” she said, opening her eyes. “Does this place feel like home to you, still?”
He shook his head. “No, not really. I doubt any place will feel like home as long as the wall stays between myself and Hinamori.”
“She's still not speaking to you?”
He shook his head. “Lieutenant Abrari said that she's forgiven me, because she knows it was not my fault, but she has not forgotten. She will never forget. And until she can move past it, she will not speak to me.”
“Oh, Captain,” she said quietly, reaching over and putting her hand on top of the one he had set on her desk. “What a pair we make. Perhaps we should run away or something.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “If it is any consolation, I feel most comfortable here, when we are working in silence or talking about unimportant things.”
“I feel comfortable here, too,” she said. “Still, it does not feel like home.”
“No, it does not.” He looked at her. “But we must have hope that it will again, some day. If we do not, it will eat away at us.”
“Then I will have hope, Captain,” she said with a nod, squeezing his hand gently before moving it. “I will have hope that I will feel as though this is home again.”
“Good,” he said with a nod before returning to his desk and letting them settle back into the companionable silence that made both of them feel normal and whole again.