Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Resilience ❯ Part IV ( Chapter 4 )

Disclaimer: Bleach and all affiliated characters and settings are the creative property of Kubo Tite and his friends at Jump Comics. Not mine.

 

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Warnings: language, violence, major SPOILERS up to some of the more current manga chapters (despite the fact that this is technically a divergence piece, there still will be references to the current arc of the manga)

 

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Part IV

 

Matsumoto hadn't said a word all week about the conversation in the bathroom, or about how he hadn't been eating or sleeping nearly enough for what he knew was considered healthy. Sleeping just brought on more fuddled nightmares and headaches, and anything he ate tended to be revisited soon after. But he wasn't going to let the worried looks and whisperings behind his back worry him. He still was doing his job as well as ever; he gave no reason to the others in the earth-bound outpost to question his abilities. Even if he questioned them himself.

 

The timing could have been better, too. Lately, there were almost triple the usual number of Hollow sightings than the last month, and Hitsugaya was just waiting for any sign of Arrancar. He had a feeling that it was only a matter of time before Aizen sent his minions to cause more trouble, and he knew for a fact that he wasn't ready to face them. Hopefully some of his current subordinates had been training - he knew now that both Ichigo and Renji had achieved bankai, which was useful - and would be more prepared to handle the trouble. Part of him secretly hoped that he would have a little more high-powered back-up soon, especially with Orihime's safety at large. He'd issued an order just after her near-kidnapping to have an escort with her at all times. Though he really didn't have any jurisdiction over Urahara, he'd asked him to keep an eye out for the girl as well. Urahara had agreed, much to his relief. The man was a powerful ally, even if his motives were on the questionable side.

 

And even if some of his scientific practices were rather off the wall. Hitsugaya shuddered, recalling the nasty black concoction Urahara had him drink months ago to replenish his low reiatsu levels. He'd never wish that kind of torment upon anyone, though it had worked. He sipped his green tea, hoping that the taste would help wash back the nasty recollection.

 

He got his wish, but not in the way he'd hoped it would happen. Matsumoto was at his door, looking wide-eyed and worried and out of breath. Wasn't she supposed to be on patrol?

 

“Hitsugaya-taichou - the eastern patrol…” she began.

 

She'd been part of the northern patrol. Renji and Yumichika had gone east. Something was wrong. He abruptly stood, grabbing Hyourinmaru and strapping its long sheath to his back in one smooth motion.

 

“Arrancar?” he asked, following Matsumoto down the corridor of the apartment and to the porch.

 

“Hollow,” Matsumoto corrected. “Maybe vastrode level.”

 

“Shit,” Hitsugaya muttered, not pleased with the news. “Renji and Yumichika…?”

 

“Both fighting, though Yumichika sustained minor injuries last I checked. They requested backup. I came here first.”

 

Good thinking, on Matsumoto's part. The less energy they expended on these invasions, the better, he decided as they quickly leapt from rooftop to rooftop, heading towards the east. Hitsugaya could already sense clashing levels of reiatsu in the distance, and was relieved to notice that there were at least three beings involved in the conflict. Hoping that Yumichika's injuries were indeed minor, he picked up speed.

 

“Have you heard back from Rukia, Ikkaku, or Ichigo?” Hitsugaya asked suddenly. He had to make sure at least one of them was available to keep watch over Orihime, or to be free to come assist if necessary.

 

“Orihime is with Urahara right now.” Matsumoto knew what he was really asking, for which he was grateful. “Rukia's in the south with Ikkaku - haven't heard back from them yet - and Ichigo has covered west and is headed our direction.”

 

Hitsugaya nodded curtly in acknowledgement, relieved that Ichigo would be coming to back them up. If this Hollow was going to cause trouble, it was better to use all-out power, which Renji had plenty and Ichigo had in droves. He too was no slouch in the power department; though at this point he wasn't sure how well synchronized he was with Hyourinmaru.

 

The ground shook beneath them, and a puff of debris mushroomed out of a spot between two houses in the distance. Hitsugaya resisted the urge to swear as he thought of how much clean-up work they'd have to do afterwards.

 

“We're almost there,” he muttered.

 

Matsumoto nodded, placing a hand on Haineko's hilt. Hitsugaya reached up to grab the hilt of his own zanpakutou, and after two more shunpo brought them to the edge of the battle. Looking down, Hitsugaya saw Renji with Zabimaru fully extended, fending off a smaller-looking Hollow than he was expecting, though it was definitely at vastrode level. Then again, these things were unusually variant in size and shape, so it didn't really surprise him that much. He was more surprised by the fact that Yumichika had indeed been wounded - he sat over to the side trying to tie off a bandage around his middle with shaking, blood-coated hands. Another sudden presence attracted Hitsugaya's attention, and looking down the road a ways he saw yet another - larger - vastrode-level Hollow approaching, its intention clear. It was going after Yumichika.

 

Shit.

 

Hitsugaya took one more look to verify that Renji was doing alright on his own for the time being before he unsheathed Hyourinmaru and leapt off the building, landing in front of Yumichika in a low crouch.

 

“H-Hitsugaya…taichou,” Yumichika managed. Hitsugaya nodded his greeting.

 

“You going to be alright, Yumichika?” he asked.

 

“Yeah. This… is just a scratch,” Yumichika said, a grim smile on his prettied face.

 

“You'd better move out of range if you're able,” Hitsugaya warned. Yumichika nodded, and grunted as he pulled himself to his feet and staggered to what he hoped would be a safer spot. With some measure of relief, Hitsugaya saw Matsumoto take a position that allowed her to guard Yumichika while he was trying to heal himself enough to get back to Keigo's.

 

The Hollow slowed when it saw Hitsugaya standing in its path, and then seemed to cock its head to the side as it regarded its next enemy.

 

“You're small for a captain,” it noted with some amusement.

 

Hitsugaya glared at the Hollow, but let the remark slide otherwise. He watched without a word for a while, trying to gauge the beast. It wasn't as small as the other Hollow that Renji was currently entangled with, but it wasn't huge, either. It had lanky limbs and a hunched back, a young face with a cruel grin. Crouching low into a stance with Hyourinmaru, Hitsugaya waited as the Hollow seemed to look him over as well. He shuddered, wishing life was simpler as it was not so long ago - when not so many Hollows were as intelligent as these damned vastrodes.

 

“Quiet, too,” it noted after a moment. “I think this should be interesting. You're Hitsugaya, right?” Hitsugaya's eyes widened, but he quickly narrowed them further and tensed, ready to spring. “Surprised I knew your name? Heard you killed Shawlong. Not bad.”

 

Hitsugaya grit his teeth, and began to summon his reiatsu to bring out Hyourinmaru. He faltered, however, when the Hollow simply grinned, unmoving.

 

“Gin told me I should tell you my name, but I don't really see the point. You're going to die, anyway. It's useless to give one's name to a dead Shinigami.”

 

At the name `Gin,' Hitsugaya's face twisted into a scowl, and he heard Matsumoto gasp - she must've heard it, too. Swallowing the bile that was slowly making its way up the back of his throat, Hitsugaya prepared to end this ridiculous vastrode's monologue before it said anything further. It was getting rather annoying as it was.

 

“But since he ordered me, I have to obey. Name's Yori. Nice to meet you, Hitsugaya.”

 

Yori. The world suddenly went white before Hitsugaya's eyes, and a familiar face drifted across his vision. A young-faced man with lanky limbs, smiling, dark hair pulled back in a low ponytail, wearing dirtied, tattered farmer's clothes. Laying in a bloodied heap on a dirty wooden floor, several uniformed policemen standing over him with his blood on their swords, grins dirtier than the floors upon their faces. Red seeping across his image - blood and rage, and then more blood.

 

“Sato Yori was a good friend,” he heard his own voice saying, but it wasn't coming from his own lips, but from the lips of the black-haired version of himself. His mirror had tears in his eyes as he stood before a woman and her two children, who were all crying openly.

 

“Sato Yori died because you couldn't protect him, and now his family will die because you can't protect them either. You've doomed them to death, Murae. You're their executioner.”

 

“Gin was right; you're nothing once we've exchanged names. You're even weaker than I thought you'd be.”

 

“Hitsugaya-taichou!”

 

“Goddamn it, shorty!”

 

Instinct had him scrambling for a shikai - he had to avenge Masao, keep his family safe, stop them from hurting Yumichika and his heart was pounding in his ears and making it difficult to hear or see… Everything blurred into such a dizzying whirlwind that he could no longer hold onto either reality or dream, until he really did smell blood and felt it splashing across his face and hands and arms and sword. Reality slowly came back into the clear, and he was surprised as Renji's blurred but strained face was suddenly right in front of his own, loose red hair framing his sweaty face.

 

“Thank… the gods,” Renji breathed when Hitsugaya's eyes finally focused and met his. He winced, and then his eyes rolled and showed only whites. Hitsugaya barely managed to drop his zanpakutou from his shaking hands - hadn't even realized he'd been holding it - and scrambled to catch the much larger man as he fell.

 

Eyes wide in alarm, Hitsugaya tried piecing back together what had just happened, but every time he started to try to remember, sharp pain stabbed into his skull and refused to let him wander there. Had he been the one to strike Renji? Where were the Hollows? He flinched when a hand touched his back, then he looked around wildly to find Matsumoto's horrified face staring down at him, at Renji's blood coating his hands. Looking past her, he saw Ichigo - when had he arrived? - deliver a final blow to the other Hollow; the one that had tried to fight him was nowhere in sight. Rukia was running towards them with a fearful look on her face, and even Ikkaku was helping Yumichika was trying to limp his way over. He looked back down at Renji's torn back, the blood coating Hyourinmaru, and then back up at Matsumoto.

 

“Did… did I…?” Hitsugaya said hoarsely, breath catching in his throat painfully.

 

Matsumoto knelt down beside Hitsugaya and helped lower Renji to the pavement on his back. She shook her head in response to Hitsugaya's question.

 

“No,” she whispered. “He… stepped between you and the vastrode when it tried to attack you, and you… you didn't move.”

 

A sick feeling twisted Hitsugaya's stomach, hot prickles tingling down his spine and along his arms as he looked down at the now-unconscious Renji. He had stood there. He was a captain, and he freaking stood there. And now one of his subordinates - one who was depending on him - had been badly hurt because of it.

 

“Renji!” Rukia exclaimed, kneeling down next to them and trying to find the source of the blood. “Help me roll him over.”

 

Hitsugaya could only watch numbly as they worked to roll the much larger man onto his stomach, as Ichigo came to help them, as Rukia began chanting the words for healing kidou with her hands hovering over the deep wound in Renji's back. The blood slowed, and drops of sweat broke out on Rukia's face. And then Hitsugaya realized that if he didn't get his act together - and soon - there would be hell to pay, either in lives or his own pride.

 

No matter that he hardly had any pride left to speak of.

 

“We need to get Abarai back to the office,” Hitsugaya said suddenly, forcing himself to speak evenly and with authority. “We'll need to get Inoue-san to come and take a look at him, and Yumichika as well.”

 

When nobody moved or said anything, Hitsugaya suddenly felt afraid that they were all angry at him, as if he had been the one to deliver the blow to Renji. Not that he blamed them; he might as well have cut Renji himself with all the good he did standing by while it happened, but it still hurt all the same. He was surprised, however, when he looked up and saw that everyone seemed to be more relieved than angry. Perhaps he had misjudged them… or himself.

 

“I'll get Orihime,” Rukia volunteered, worrying her lip. It was the right choice; she was too small to help carry either Renji or Yumichika. Hitsugaya nodded curtly.

 

As Rukia ran back towards Inoue's apartment, and as Matsumoto supported Yumichika on his good side and Ikkaku and Ichigo struggled to support Renji's dead weight between them, Hitsugaya tried to put on a stern mask as he took guard and led the group back to the office. And yet, he couldn't help but feel like more of a failure than he'd ever felt in his short career as a captain, or even as a shinigami.

 

--

 

The world seems much bleaker now that the sword police are in town. They have a wicked glint in their expressions that sends shivers down the spines of any villager who dares look them in the eye. A reputation for bullying and corruption only adds to the long list of reasons why civilians avoid them at all costs. The police know it. It's a survival tactic, one that the police treat as a game, even if it means life and death to the others.

 

But for a blacksmith like Murae Masaru, it is impossible to avoid the sword police entirely with his line of business. He puts on a brave face for the others, and calmly takes in the swords from the police and tries hard to resist the temptation to destroy or weaken the blades during maintenance. He doesn't dare, however; he knows that he is under harsh scrutiny by the division's leader. He isn't sure why, but he has a feeling it has something to do with the fact that he is ex-samurai, or perhaps it has something to do with his father's death.

 

Either way, he isn't up to taking on the entire division himself. He is only one man, and he cannot expect the others in the village to bring out swords in a new era in which they are illegal. It would be suicide for everyone. While he no longer is samurai, he cannot help but have a sense of duty to the others in the village. To act out is to condemn them.

 

The police have yet to kill anyone, he rationalizes. They can put up with annoyances as long as there is no bloodshed. The war is long over, and this is supposed to be a new era of peace. The new government promised that much.

 

But part of him knows that the peace won't last long, and that he is going to be involved somehow. The thought unnerves him, to the point of distraction at which his wife begins pleading him to sleep more and to take care of his health.

 

It is this realization that causes the unrealism of the whole situation - one that should not exist, by all rights - to unravel, and then he finds himself dying, and then hearing the news of his father's death in a blaze of futility in honor of his samurai heritage, and then…

 

And then he awakens, and the world is no longer comprised of fishing boats, dirt roads, or sword police; it is a place where the dead are trying to regain power from the living… and once again, he's caught in the middle.

 

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“Yumichika-kun is fine now, and Renji-kun is resting,” Orihime reported as she walked back into the office, offering Matsumoto a small smile. Matsumoto breathed a relieved sigh, nodding back at Orihime and smiling in return, but Orihime didn't catch the gesture. She was peering around the office as if she was looking for something, and when she didn't find it, she frowned and asked, “Where is Hitsugaya-taichou? Shouldn't I report this to him, too?”

 

Matsumoto sighed again, a gesture of frustrated defeat this time. “Don't worry about it. I'll relay the message to him. Thank you for your hard work, 'Hime-chan.”

 

Orihime nodded uncertainly, and seemed to want to say something but couldn't quite figure out what it was. She left regardless, and Matsumoto massaged her temples with her fingertips once the girl was out of sight. To tell the truth, she was easily as worried about the taichou as she was pretty sure everyone else was. He'd been increasingly distracted, and it was as if he hadn't even realized how much of an issue it was becoming until Renji had delivered an eye-opening lesson like a hard slap across the boy's face.

 

She could have told him that he wasn't fit to work in this condition, but he never listened to her on that count anyway. Always shrugging it off as a mother-hen complex, or excessive and needless worrying because of the Parasite Hollow incident. It made her a little angry, thinking of it in those terms. The arrogant little twit was either overestimating his recovery rate, or something new was wrong that he refused to admit - even to himself. Well, she hoped he'd figured it out on his own by now. He almost deserved it.

 

But he'd been off brooding for more than three hours now. She could sense his reiatsu up on the roof; it hadn't moved in quite some time. He rarely spent more than twenty minutes away from his work unless he was either sleeping or forcibly detained somewhere. This was a problem. Not only did she hate doing all the paperwork associated with work-related casualties, but it worried her that he was so upset. Maybe if she went up on the roof… just maybe he would let her in on what was going on. She deserved some kind of explanation, at least - she was his fukutaichou, and she had to be able to speak to the others on his behalf. She wouldn't be able to do that much without some help on his part, after all. Shuffling the several half-filled reports into a neat stack, she pushed them aside and stood, then headed to the roof.

 

As expected, she found Hitsugaya sitting on the tiles of the slanted roof, knees tucked up under his chin and his thin arms wrapped around his legs as he stared blankly out over the city skyline. The image he painted sent a shiver down Matsumoto's spine, but she steeled her resolve and quietly walked over to him and sat down beside him, joining him in his city-gazing. The fact that he said nothing wasn't unusual, but he hadn't so much as batted an eyelid to even acknowledge her presence.

 

“What were your first memories at Soul Society like?” She jumped when his quiet, low voice broke the silence suddenly, and she cast him a wide-eyed look before she frowned in thought.

 

“I… I don't really remember too well,” she replied uncertainly, trying to figure out what the taichou was trying to get at. “It's been a really long time since then, but I think I do remember Yamamoto-taichou was there.” She smiled wryly. “I think it was pretty weird waking up and knowing you'd died, but you couldn't remember when or how, or what your life was like before then. As if you'd been reincarnated somehow into a new body, you know?” He was silent for a moment before she added thoughtfully, “I wonder sometimes if I looked the same way then that I do now, or what I was like when I was alive. It's kind of weird knowing that you were once somebody else, but you don't know who that person is.”

 

Hitsugaya grunted neutrally, almost as if he disagreed, and seemed to hug his legs even closer to chest. Matsumoto scowled when he didn't say anything for a few more minutes. Opening her mouth to demand answers, she was surprised - again - when he beat her to it.

 

“I know I've been… distracted lately,” he said, and though his face didn't change expression, Matsumoto caught deep emotion shining in his eyes as he struggled to speak. “I… I probably owe you a few explanations.”

 

Matsumoto snorted and resisted the urge to say, “no shit!” but she held her tongue.

 

“You see… well…” He paused again; the uncertainty was unnerving, but she forced herself to be patient. He might not speak at all if she tried to press too hard. “I'm having these… bad dreams, but… well… they seem more real than any other dreams I've ever had. Like I've lived them out before, but not as… as me.”

 

She nodded slowly even though she didn't completely understand what he was saying, urging him to continue, but she frowned; if this had to do with his memory, part of her wondered if it had anything to do with the damage the Parasite Hollow inflicted on his mind. If it had knocked something loose…

 

Oh god. And then she realized what he was aiming at. Her stomach dropped. Yes, that would cause more than a few problems.

 

Hitsugaya paused, finally giving her a sideways glance to gauge her reaction. He must've seen something in her face, because he immediately buried his face into his knees.

 

“I must be going crazy,” he muttered, the words muffled by his hakama.

 

“How much do you remember?” she asked suddenly.

 

He flinched and waited a moment before he replied. “More than I should, but not all of it.”

 

She drew in a sharp breath. If Yamamoto-taichou caught wind of this…

 

“How much do you remember?” she asked again, more insistently this time, but careful to keep her tone positive. She had to support him, no matter what.

 

“Names. Faces. Occupations, and maybe even a location,” he said, the words still muffled with his face pressed against his knees.

 

A lot more than he was letting on, apparently.

 

“How long…?”

 

“Bits and pieces since Hyourinmaru got fixed… though I didn't make many connections until today,” he said in almost a whisper. “I still don't remember all of it, or what order… but I remember enough.”

 

“Taichou…”

 

“I know,” he hissed, suddenly looking up at her with a frustrated glare. Sighing, he looked away again. “Yamamoto-taichou will want me to go back there so he can fix the problem.”

 

She swear she could hear the “but” a mile away, so she said it for him. “But…?”

 

“I—” He paused, almost choking on the word, massaging his brows with his fingertips as if he was fighting off a headache. “I'm not sure I want to forget them again.”

 

And that surprised her more than anything else had.

 

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.continued in part V.

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So, um. I actually uploaded this chapter several months ago to FFnet, and have since finished a new chapter. I completely forgot I hadn't uploaded this chapter here. I guess there is at least one person who's keeping up with it at this site, so I'll try to stay a little more on top of posting it here. I apologize.

 

To Uniasus: MediaMiner's setup does not allow us to see if our stories make it onto any particular favorites lists, nor does it provide statistics beyond what is viewable to the public (besides chapter-by-chapter hit counts). All we can see are hit and review counts. We all know that hit counts are pretty much crap, so up until you'd said something, I'd assumed that nobody was reading this here. XD; Thank you for the clarification, and for the support. ^__^