Archive of Our Own

It's her first day back on the job and Hirako-taicho is on the damn ceiling. To be clear, it's not just her captain, but his whole table, the collection of trinkets he's somehow managed to amass already, and two large stacks of paperwork. Not looking up at all, not even to acknowledge her presence, he leisurely flips through and examines the documents while making notes with a brush in the margins — entirely upside down. Her table, thankfully, remains untouched.

She keeps her tone steady and pleasant. “Good morning, Hirako-taicho. Would you like to come down from the ceiling so I can greet you properly?”

This must be a test of some kind, although it’s bad form to use your shikai to cast a mind-bending illusion on your subordinate, let alone someone you’ve barely met.

Hirako-taicho uses the end of his brush to scratch his head. What on earth is that haircut? Is that fringe supposed to be slanted? She’d been briefed about her captain, but very little could have prepared her for… this.

“Hmm… I like it better up here,” he shrugs, and goes back to his work.

What on earth is she supposed to do with that? Momo takes a deep breath, and steps back out of the room, closing the door. Perhaps she’s hallucinating this encounter. She counts to ten, trying to calm herself enough so she can figure out what to do next. One, two, three. It’s their first day working together. Maybe Hirako-taicho is trying to assert dominance or whatever — she’s heard that other captains do that sometimes. Four, five, six. Either that, or he’s trying to see if she’s a cool person. That she knows how to take a joke. Maybe the goal is just to see if she can ignore it and get on with things as usual. Seven, eight —

Before she even gets to nine, she hears a huge crash come from inside the office.

Momo opens the door again. Hirako-taicho sits there amidst the wreckage of his things, table in splinters, papers still fluttering in the air, a big splotch of ink all down his white robe. At least he has the grace to look a little sheepish.

“Let’s try this again,” Momo says, clearing her throat. “Good morning, Hirako-taicho. It’s very nice to meet you. Can I help you put your office back together?”

They tidy the place up wordlessly. Hirako-taicho strips his stained haori off and he’s down to his black shihakusho, sleeves rolled up. The broken table is removed, but they end up having to share hers until they can requisition a new one for him. The rest of the day, it feels like they’re circling each other like wolves in uncomfortable proximity, trying to get the measure of the other.

His shadow remains, Momo thinks. She knows that returning to the scene where she spent so many years with him will be the most difficult part of all. The hours tick by slowly, punctuated with Hirako-taicho asking her questions about their work, the squad, and herself. It feels like he’s putting up invisible shields against her. She wonders if he’s sizing her up like she’s sizing him. He’s probably wondering if she is as guarded and sneaky as him. She’s wondering if he is as sweet as he once was, only to turn out false. It strikes her that if he is nice, and if he is kind, perhaps he had to model his behaviour on someone. Perhaps that someone was Hirako-taicho.

She feels him watch her at work, and looks up to meet his gaze squarely. The shields drop. He grins, a lazy and easy smile spreading over his face. His teeth are so white they are almost blinding.

“It’s a lil quiet, isn’t it? Yer first direct order of the day is to choose somethin’ ta play,” Hirako-taicho says, sweeping an arm towards the wall of records and CDs he’s moved into the office. “And yes, I will judge ya based on yer choice.”

A month later, they’ve fallen into some kind of uneasy rhythm, still in an awkward box-step. Surprisingly or unsurprisingly, the paperwork and forms haven’t changed that much over the years, so Hirako-taicho’s questions are far and few between. But to Momo’s increasing irritation, he won’t stop talking about this thing called “Microsoft Excel”.

“Ya know, back in the Human World, they’ve got all kinda stuff to deal with work. They call it efficiency. I even did a temp job for a bit, ya know? Learned how ‘ta use all the Microsoft software.”

To be frank, Momo just makes sounds of vague agreement and understanding whenever he goes off on these tangents about how the Human World is more efficient. They have enough to do without introducing a whole new problem into their daily workflow, and the fact that this software sounds like a nightmare to begin with, what with “cells” and “equations”. No wonder the new batch of spirits entering Rukongai in the last ten years have looked so depressed.

The problem is that Hirako-taicho doesn’t just stop at talking about it. By the second month of them working together, he’s wheedled and annoyed some poor grunt at the Twelfth Division enough to get an actual working computer with Microsoft Excel — or some kind of bootleg version of it — and installed it in their shared office.

“Just try it, Momo-chan!” he insists. “There’s nothin’ ta be scared of.”

It’s not just the nickname that grates on her, but the insistence that she change at his whim, when they’ve barely worked out whether they trust each other or not. A part of her, the old Momo, wants to give in to please him. But if she gives in to this one thing, what’s next? Momo feels as if she’s being dragged to the edge of a cliff.

“Fine,” he says. “Let’s have a lil competition, shall we? There’s a buncha uniforms that need orderin’ from the First. You calculate and fill out the forms accordin’ ta your method, and I’ll use Excel. Whoever wins, the other goes along with their method with no fuss. Gentleperson’s agreement.”

He sticks his hand out and Momo eyes it warily. “How will we determine the winner?”

“Speed, obviously. Fastest person wins.”

“You could be typing anything into that,” Momo protests. “I think a time-limit would be better, and we have to check each other’s work, just to make sure it’s completely accurate.”

“Fine,” Hirako-taicho shrugs. “I agree ‘ta ya terms.”

She takes his hand and gives it a firm shake.

They wait until the clock hits the hour mark and then they’re off to the races, Hirako-taicho clacking away noisily at his keyboard and making a big show of moving the mouse around. Momo isn’t worried — exams have always been her strong point, and she doesn’t hold the unbeaten highest score at Sereitei Academy on the written test for nothing. She carefully grinds the ink and wets her brush, then begins.

The uniform requisition form is a fairly straightforward one, but it requires knowledge of the number of officers in the division, an understanding of the current state of the stores, and a rough projection of how many they go through over the course of six months — officers often damage their uniforms due to kido accidents or, more often, field accidents, after all. Their numbers are constantly fluctuating as well, with transfers in and out of the division. But what it comes down to is simple math, and Momo is good at that.

Hirako-taicho finishes around 25 minutes in, and he wastes the rest of his time playing some game on the computer which looks like he’s just moving playing cards around. Near the end of the hour, he comes over to distract her, waving his finger in the air and saying how she could be so much more efficient if she would just let him introduce her to the wonders of technology. She has to try very hard to tune him out, but still finishes with time to spare and to check over her work.

They go through their work together while sat at the computer, her papers held up beside the glowing screen.

It turns out that for all his grandstanding, it’s fairly simple to understand what’s going on in the columns and rows. She has to admit that it’s a much clearer way of presenting information. But where things get tricky is when Hirako-taicho has tried to create some kind of fancy projection for the number of officers joining them and the estimated number of uniforms required. The curve seems to be… exponential, for some reason.

Rather than taking it seriously, Hirako-taicho is already crowing his victory.

“Ahem, taicho,” she says, cutting his celebrations short. “Would you please explain where these 100,000 new officers will be coming from?”

“What?” he narrows his eyes. She taps the screen once, at the numbers in column D.

“I’m sure you very well know that 100,000 officers is well over ten times the people we have space for. Do you intend to house them in the parade grounds?”

“That’s just a small mistake…” he says, and hurriedly sits down, trying to move a few numbers here and there, but the number still stands. Whatever calculations he’s put in, the graph he’s created projects that there will be an addition of 100,000 new officers to the division over the next six months. Which is ridiculous — the total count of the division hardly ever goes beyond three to four thousand people.

She leaves her captain to glower at the screen and tap away furiously. There’s no need to gloat, her point’s been made.

(Later, she does sit down at the computer when Hirako-taicho is away on a mission and figures out how to use Excel with the help of a manual Rukia gets her from the Human World. She has to admit, it’s indeed an efficient processor for data. She might even consider using it in the future, when Hirako-taicho has forgotten about their bet. He seems like the kind of man who would do that.)

A little later, when they are discussing who to send out on a mission, Hirako-taicho suggests that they send a squad of ten to check out the disturbance.

“Only ten, Hirako-taicho?” Momo asks innocently. “I thought we had 100,000 officers coming in soon. Surely we can spare more than ten.”

The pained look on his face makes her turn her face to laugh into her sleeve. “Momo-chan, you’re the cruellest woman alive. You’re breakin’ my heart here.”

Another thing that annoys her about Hirako-taicho — beyond the constant and ever-present vanity, the way he never seems to take anything seriously, or the incorrigible teasing — is the fact that he always seems to be on his phone talking to someone.

She’s learnt to differentiate the tinny voices at this point. The really loud one is Hiyori, and Hirako-taicho loves to shout right back at her. There are two lower drones that are almost identical to each other, but she can usually tell who they are from context clues If it’s Lisa, Hirako-taicho often tells her to stop whatever she’s saying, he doesn’t want to hear such perverted nonsense while he’s at work. If it’s Love, he grumbles a lot more about stuff like hating the tedious ceremony that being a captain requires and wishing he could bunk off work. “You made the right choice, not comin’ back,” he often tells Love. “I wish I was fuckin’ around too right now.” Momo has never been able to discern Hachi’s voice, as they always seem to speak so softly and gently that their voice barely comes out through the phone speakers. But Hirako-taicho seems to have endless patience in listening to and asking about the numerous children that this Hachi seems to be raising. It's only later that she finds out that these are houseplants, not kids.

So maybe it’s strange to be jealous of these disembodied voices. Momo doesn’t want to admit it to herself yet, but she does miss that connection she once had with him. She keeps telling herself that she won’t get parasocial with her captain like last time, that she won’t get too close. She’ll keep it professional, even though Hirako-taicho keeps trying to test her boundaries. She’ll turn down drinks when he offers and she tries not to stay late at work or in situations that could be misunderstood. It really doesn’t help though, when she’s learning so much about him through these calls. How infuriating he can be (which is nothing new), but also how gentle he can be, or how funny. There’s nothing more that can grow between them except the respect of one officer for their superior.

At their monthly lieutenant meeting, Momo has a lot to complain about when it comes to her captain. The lieutenants always end up at a bar after business is taken care of, to blow off some steam and complain about work. She’s just never really had anything to contribute until Hirako-taicho came along.

“Do you know he has a whole collection of ties? Some of them even have names. They’re not even very good ties,” Momo rants, banging her cup down for emphasis. “What the hell is wrong with him? And his stupid tongue ring! Who would willingly do that to their body?”

“I think his ties are cute,” Rangiku slurs, gesturing to her own scarf. “Neckwear is a criminally underrated part of fashion. ‘Sides, I think your captain is kind of cute. He looks like he’d be good in the sack, too. Kissing him with that tongue ring on? Or imagine tying him up with his tie collection, or dragging him in towards you by pulling on his tie —”

“He wrote an entire report backwards the other day. Backwards! As if I don’t already have enough to do, I had to rewrite the whole thing the right way round! It was 5000 words!” Momo continues, pretending not to hear the filth pouring from Rangiku’s mouth.

“I don’t envy you,” Hisagi says. “I mean Muguruma-taicho can be strict and kind of mean sometimes, but I actually like that.”

“Yeah, but you’re actively trying to sleep with him,” Renji jeers. Hisagi whacks him on the back of the head in response, and they both crash onto the floor in a scuffle, with Kira acting as referee and also trying to make sure they don’t get too close to the other bar patrons.

“Please don’t get us kicked out of yet another bar…” Isane says weakly, her head in her hands.

“Speaking of cap’ns, are you and Toshiro still…?” Rangiku asks.

“No,” Momo answers shortly. That’s a can of worms she’s not quite ready to open yet. They haven’t spoken since she returned to work.

“I shouldn’t have to wrangle a grown man down from the ceiling just so we can have a proper conversation,” Momo grouses.

“I have plenty of experience in wrangling captains,” Nanao says. “And to be honest, having a hands-off captain is sometimes a pretty big benefit. You get to handle a lot of the decision-making on your own. It's better that way, sometimes.”

Momo sighs in despair. Nanao pats her on the back gently. “If it’s any consolation,” she tells Momo, “I asked Lisa-senpai about your troubles and she says that Hirako-taicho seems to respond favourably to violence, especially when it comes from women…”

“I’m not going to hit him,” Momo says primly. “No matter how much he annoys me. I’m not some kind of animal.”

Over the next few days, however, after Hirako-taicho has insisted upon practicing his saxophone during office hours and turned up late to three drills in a row, she really, really considers it.

In coming back to her post, she’s prepared herself for some level of gossip, especially among the officers that he cultivated. But her skin isn’t quite that thick — it still hurts. As bad as she has it, arguably Hirako-taicho has it worse. She’s heard them whisper about him being a half-breed, an abomination, another traitor-in-waiting, sometimes right in earshot. She does what she can to chastise them when she hears it, but it doesn’t seem to bother him at all.

It’s harder to stand up for herself. So when, on a bright spring morning, she hears two officers gossiping about her, their words carried on the wind through the open window, she just grips her brush a little harder and tries to drown it out.

“Our division has the worst luck. How do you think she made it back in?”

“Probably slept with someone. Wasn’t she close to Aizen and also Hitsugaya-taicho?”

“You think? It makes sense, out of all the lieutenants she’s probably the weakest. Either that or they’re looking for continuity until they can find a replacement. A change of captain and lieutenant is probably too much.”

Momo gets up to close the window. She wants to throw something, or to set something on fire. Maybe both. Of course she had the option to bow out. An honourable discharge, and the pick of private security assignments with the noble houses. Of course. But she’d wanted to come back for her division, to help bring them through this transition period, to help rebuild the Fifth Division. Perhaps she’d been mistaken after all.

“Ya know, bad-mouthin’ a superior officer is a punishable offence,” she hears Hirako-taicho say. A flurry of apologies come from the invisible offenders.

“If I hear ya do it again, I’ll just cut ya tongues out,” he says cheerfully. “Complain about me all ya like, but I won’t hear a word against my seated officers.”

She leaves the window open and slowly sits back down. He enters the office a few minutes later, whistling.

“You know, they’ll only talk even more now,” she says, trying to be severe. “They already don’t like you very much.”

“Sure, but at least they won’t dare ‘ta do it to my face. Ruling by fear can be good sometimes. Until we manage ‘ta weed out all the bad ones, that’s just how it’s gotta be.”

He sits down at his desk and props his feet up on the desk. “Ya know, I can’t get them all,” he says meaningfully. “Yer more familiar with them than I am. Surely ya might know what works.”

The next day, she arranges for special training with a troop of particularly mutinous officers, and takes a perverse pleasure in beating them into the ground and showing them exactly why she holds the rank of lieutenant. Hirako-taicho has a point, this could be a cathartic exercise. Maybe the division will finally learn to give her some damn respect.

Eventually her captain’s disembodied voices on the phone manifest physically, in the form of frequent visits to their division. She walks into Hirako-taicho’s quarters one Friday afternoon to get him to sign something, only to see him and Otoribashi-taicho cheerfully perched in front of his small basin, taking turns to lather each other’s hair. The air smells of lavender and herbs.

“Ah, Momo-chan,” Hirako-taicho says. A plume of soap bubbles sit atop his head, in the vague shape of a duck. “It’s hair-washing day. Ya want yer hair washed too?”

“Sorry for interrupting…?” she says hastily, backing away.

“Nonsense, you’re not interrupting,” Otoribashi-taicho says, reaching his hands out towards her. “Come, come. I used to work as a hairdresser for a brief time in the Human World. There’s nothing better than a really good hair wash. It restores you.”

“I’m fine, thank you! Anyway here are some papers for you to sign, taicho, let me know if you need anything else!” Momo manages to squeak out in a hurry, then dashes out of the door and leaves them to it.

Muguruma-taicho often comes to spend time with Hirako-taicho, and they smoke outdoors. Sometimes Kuna-fukutaicho joins in too, although she just likes to lie around and read comics half the time. However, whatever it is they are smoking is vile, and the scent lingers. The worst part is that they act like complete fools while smoking, giggling at nothing for hours on end or at the stupidest things. Eventually she has to put her foot down and ban smoking within the division compound, because the smell really lingers. “Yer breaking my heart, Momo-chan,” Hirako-taicho says. “But ya know what? Hachi makes a mean edible. I’m gonna get Lisa to bring us some next time.”

Momo has no clue what an edible is, but as long as the smell goes away, she can put up with a little giggling. Those brownies marked “do not eat” in their shared fridge in the office do look very tempting, though.

Lisa stops by occasionally, and always with a stack of packages that Hirako-taicho has ordered from the Human World.

“I’m not your damn errand girl, Shinji,” she warns him. “The only reason I’m here is to see Nanao, not because of your stupid packages.”

She still comes anyway, even after saying that. Hirako-taicho puts on a record, makes some tea, and they just spend time in silence doing their respective things until Lisa decides she’s ready to go. She reminds Momo a little bit of a cat, in that way.

“Keep an eye on him,” she tells Momo one day on her way out, jerking a finger back at Hirako-taicho. “He’s an asshole, but he’s more fragile than he looks.”

Momo isn’t sure if that’s what Lisa is referring to when Hiyori literally bursts into their division one day and gives Hirako-taicho a flying kick to the face. “Hah! You’re getting sloppy in yer old age, baldy!”

She watches as they wrestle on the floor, resorting to hair-pulling and Hirako-taicho yelps as he gets a knee to the groin.

Surely she should pull them apart… but it is rather satisfying to see him being beaten up like this. Perhaps a minute or two more, then she’ll do something about it.

“So much for being my second-in-command,” Hirako-taicho says sulkily at her as she’s healing his scrapes and bruises. She’d offered to heal Hiyori’s wounds, but the woman remained shockingly bruise-free, and she has already leapt out of their office after snatching up something that Hirako-taicho had been holding for Urahara-san, apparently.

“I’ve heard that a beating is good for morale,” Momo says. “Don’t move, or I’ll mess up the skin-knitting kido and you’ll have a really ugly scar.”

“Wouldn’t a scar give me some character, make me even more handsome?”

“You wish.”

On their first stakeout away from the office, Momo’s nightmares rear their ugly head again. They always happen when she’s particularly stressed or tired, and the change of environment doesn’t help — the thin sleeping bag on the bumpy forest floor covered with tree roots, the murmur of people too close for comfort, even through the relative privacy of her tent.

The dream starts as it always does. Pressed up against him, so close that she can smell his scent, the heat of his body. Her traitorous body reacting to it, opening for him. His smile, like the serpent beneath the flower. Then the hot steel sliding into her. It feels good at first, to have the pain. Then it blooms, growing hotter and more excruciating until all her nerve-endings are on fire and she screams and screams until her throat is hoarse.

“Hinamori, wake up.”

When the confused haze lifts from her eyes, she realises that Hirako-taicho is there above her, and her sword is to his throat. She drops Tobiume like a hot coal, but her captain doesn’t look perturbed. When he sees her awake, he withdraws and sits, crosslegged in the corner.

“I’m sorry, I—” she stammers. A blush rising to her cheeks at having to be woken up, at having threatened a superior officer at sword-point.

“S’alright. Don’t worry about it,” he says calmly. “I’ll stay with ya and wake ya up if it happens again.”

A memory flashes back to her. The final night she saw him alive, when she had crept into his bed and fallen asleep there.

“Unless ya would rather I got another officer to keep ya company?” he says, sensing her apprehension. “I won’t be offended, whatever helps ya sleep better.”

“No,” she says quickly. Not another officer, because she doesn’t want them to see her so weak. But the thought of Hirako-taicho watching over her… well, it doesn’t bother her as much as she thought it would. “It’s alright, captain. I’ll just go and take over the watch. I don’t think I can get back to sleep now.”

He hands her some tea — tea? when did he have the time to brew it, and did he bring the leaves himself? — and a handkerchief that smells like him, of camellia oil, to wipe the sweat from her brow.

“Besides, you must be exhausted,” she says. “Didn’t you take first watch?”

“Ah,” he says, tapping the side of his nose. “Super secret hollow powers, remember? I don’t need that much sleep, not really. I see it as a bonus most of the time.”

“So every time you’re late for drills and you say forgot to set your alarm, you’re lying.”

“Just because I don’t need ‘ta sleep doesn’t mean I don’t like doin’ it. There’s a difference.”

She laughs, and the nightmare is almost forgotten, just a dull sensation at the back of her mind, her body unclenching. Watching him polish Sakanade, his movements are strangely hypnotic, lit by the flickering candle flame.

“Stop resistin’,” he tells her. “Can’t have my favourite lieutenant tired the next day on a crucial mission.”

Sleepily, she replies. “I’m your only lieutenant.”

“So you are,” he says softly.

She can’t remember falling asleep, but when she wakes up, it is bright and the smell of camellias still lingers in the air.

Something that she used to find annoying, but now finds a little bit endearing, is the way that Hirako-taicho dances to his music when he thinks no one’s looking. He’s really not that good at it either, but there is a charm to the way that his limbs flail to the rhythm, his hair whipping back and forth, and don’t even get him started when a good instrumental solo comes up — he’s suddenly the world’s best air guitarist or drummer.

“I can sense ya there, ya know,” he says when he catches her hovering just outside the window to their shared office space. “Join me!”

She’s about to try and slink away when he calls out again. “That’s an order, Momo-chan!”

Curses, why couldn’t she just have left him to it, why did she have to stick around and watch? She reluctantly enters the room and he’s miming holding a microphone, jamming out to the song.

“Let’s see ya moves,” he says.

“We’re still on the clock, Hirako-taicho. Is this really the best way to use our time…?”

“I’m calling this a recreational period. Come on, there’s a really good part comin’ up.”

She has to admit the beat is a little catchy. She starts by swaying from side to side, but he holds a hand out to her, and then they’re jumping to the beat, shaking their heads and throwing their hair around and around. When the song ends, Hirako-taicho looks like his hair has taken a life of its own. She can feel her own slipping out of its usual bun, pins scattering to the floor as she moves.

They look at each other, then collapse on the floor, laughing.

The first time she sees his inner hollow is after a particularly brutal battle with a rogue Adjuchas-level hollow, and he’s forced to bring out the bone-white Pharaoh mask. It changes the flavour of his reiatsu, usually the sensation of a light touch, into something darker and more oppressive. Even though his face is hidden, he seems more raw and exposed than ever.

In a matter of minutes, the hollow is cleanly dispatched of, and the mask is gone, torn off and dissolved. Hirako-taicho is there now, a little battered, but with his ever-present grin.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” he says casually. “Did I scare ya?”

“No,” she says honestly. The truth is, she’s glad to see this side of him. This is the very worst of him, and it is laid bare for her to see. She knows deep down, as part of some primal instinct — and she is working on trying to trust her instincts again — that he will not hurt her.

“Hmm,” he cocks his head as if listening to something. “I think the evil guy kinda likes you.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” she says sincerely. “I hope we have a more fruitful working relationship than I have with you.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you can be really mean, Momo-chan?” he whines.

Her scar always aches when it rains. But the rain also reminds her of Shiro-chan. Of how when they were little, he used to freeze the rain they gathered in their palms into little figurines. Dragons and princesses, soldiers and kings. Something between them still hasn’t healed, after the invasion. The silence between them is like a chasm she doesn’t know how to cross.

She’s distracted by the rain, so much so that she doesn’t notice when Hirako-taicho has called her name three times to get her attention.

“Everythin’ alright?” he asks her. “Ya always seem to get some type of way when it rains.”

“I used to play with Hitsugaya-taicho in weather like this,” she says. “But we’re not really on speaking terms right now.”

“Why not?”

She shrugs.

“Well, ain’t y’all family?”

“We are, but it’s complicated,” she says firmly. Hoping that her tone will indicate for him to drop the subject.

He drops it, but she doesn’t like the look on his face.

A few days later, instead of Hirako-taicho in their office, Shiro-chan is there. She’s so surprised that she lets the childhood nickname slip, then quickly corrects herself.

“Sorry, I know you don’t like me calling you that,” she says.

“It’s alright,” Toshiro says awkwardly.

“Are you waiting for Hirako-taicho?”

“He summoned me here to meet with him, but I’ve been waiting for at least ten minutes…”

The door slides closed behind them. They both turn to glare at it.

“No one gets ‘ta leave until ya work things out,” Hirako-taicho says cheerily, his voice muffled through the barrier. Of course he’s behind this.

At least he’s a shared source of annoyance for them to complain about at first, before they move on to other things. Tears are shed — on her part, and even Toshiro chokes up a little bit. But bit by bit, they close the gap. She knows she has her captain to thank for this, but she really doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

“Well?” he says when they finally emerge. She sticks her nose up in the air and ignores him.

Some time later, over a drink in their office after a long week, she asks: “Back then — did you feel that you would never be able to trust someone again?”

He leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers. “Back then? Sure. I thought so at first too. But I had the others there too. They hate it when I use the word, but we are a family, no matter what.”

“I—” she can’t really find the words. “I want to. But I sometimes don’t even feel like I can do that. There was something similar between Kira and his captain, or even Hisagi and his, but none of them had the same relationship as I did with my captain.”

“Or mine with him,” Shinji nods. “Ya start to doubt yerself. How could you not have seen it? Could ya have done somethin’ to stop all of it? But the simple answer is that we’ll never know. Ya just have to let it all go at some point.”

Momo drains the dregs of her sake. “Maybe someday. But not — not now.”

Taking a deep breath, she gathers the courage to ask something she’s been contemplating for some time. “Hirako-taicho… will you help me cut my hair?”

Hirako-taicho holds a hand to his heart. “Momo-chan… I thought you’d never ask.”

They do it in his quarters, as he has all the equipment for it. He cuts his own hair, of course he does. Can’t be caught dead with his bob two inches longer than it’s supposed to, or his fringe at an incorrect angle. They use his captain’s haori as a makeshift hairdresser’s robe to keep the hair off her clothes.

“How short do ya wanna go?” he asks. She shows him, and his eyes widen. “Wow, the full break-up makeover, huh?”

“Please don’t make me regret my decision to come to you, Hirako-taicho.”

He mimes zipping his lips and throwing away the keys then applies himself to the task at hand. With each lock of hair falling away, her head feels significantly lighter, a weight lifted from her neck. Her captain refuses to let her see the final product in a mirror until he’s done. His tongue sticks out as he’s concentrating, his tongue-ring glinting in the light. She used to find it annoying. Now it’s just a quirk of his that she can’t see him without.

“Alright,” he says at length. “How’d I do?”

She looks so different from her self in her mind that she is startled at first, then the tears start flowing. They’re more cathartic than anything else. She’s survived. She can move on. She can build a new life and that life will be full of laughter and dancing and new friends and old family.

Hirako-taicho isn’t perturbed at all by the tears, putting a hand on her shoulder instead and just letting her cry.

“Cheer up,” he says. “Now we’re matchin’. Ya look like me — and now that’s somethin’ to be happy about.”

“I guess it is,” she snorts, laughing beneath the tears.

Little by little, she begins to let go.