Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Seireitei Monogatari ❯ Inevitable ( Chapter 21 )

Title: Inevitable

Pairing: Gin/Hitsugaya

Characters: Gin, Hitsugaya, mentions of Aizen, Matsumoto, Kira, Tousen, and Hinamori

Rating: T

Warning: Angsty, Male/Male

Words: 938

Description: No one had ever known. It was an inevitable lie that wasn't meant to last. That didn't make the pain any easier to accept. That didn't keep him from breaking inside.

 

 

No one had known, of course. It was smarter that way. They couldn't tell anyone, especially not Matsumoto since he was sure that he never would have recovered from being smothered to death. Besides, he would have gone deaf from her constant fangirlish chirping.

 

The both of them had kept it the strictest of secrets.

 

It was funny how things turned out that way.

 

Everyone had thought it was Kira. Everyone believed that Kira was the one who bore the brunt of Ichimaru's affections. Hitsugaya supposed it was better that way, more easily acceptable to the masses.

 

Everyone also thought he was too young to understand anything about sex or love or romance really, not that they always had to go hand to hand. He was a child to them, a boy to their all knowing minds, and it was strange that Ichimaru with his unopened eyes could know him more for who he was than anyone else ever had. Even Matsumoto and the blind captain of the ninth division saw him in the same fashion as everyone else.

 

Humph! Everyone was foolish.

 

He couldn't honestly remember how it happened or even when and why. He couldn't explain if someone asked him to. Hell, he couldn't even answer the question himself. He simply knew and accepted, and that was enough for both of them.

 

Ichimaru didn't question it either, oddly enough, especially since he was always so full of questions.

 

Hitsugaya had known that there was always a tiny piece of himself that Ichimaru always kept hidden, kept to his own. He hadn't known Ichimaru's plans with Aizen and Tousen, but he had suspected something, not that it prompted him to do anything about it.

 

There was a level of unspoken… not trust, but there was something along those lines lying between them. It was enough to keep him from saying or doing anything preemptively. It was enough to ease his mind as he slept at night, Gin's arms wrapped around his waist, his head on the man's chest

 

Still, he hadn't expected the betrayal.

 

And when everyone was looking, he had played the part perfectly, just like they had always done. Even if the smile everyone else saw on Ichimaru's face was different than the one Hitsugaya's heart was privy to. As strong as the both of them were, it was strange how no one ever questioned how little damage they had actually done to one another or even the buildings around them.

 

Bizarre that no one wondered why Hitsugaya wasn't dead. After all, Aizen's attack was enough to kill him. No one knew why the traitor had been lenient, why he had held back just enough to leave the boy captain alive.

 

No one knew but Hitsugaya, and he wasn't talking.

 

It was inevitability in the making that the very lies they had been hiding behind would eventually come to betray them in the end. It was the line that had always separated them, the one thin and barely discernable line that kept them from having a complete hold on each other. Hitsugaya could no more stop Ichimaru from leaving than Ichimaru could have taken him along.

 

He wouldn't have gone.

 

At least, that was what Hitsugaya tried to tell himself. Deep in his heart, in the secret parts of himself, he knew that he just might have followed had he been given the choice.

 

It was his duty as a captain to uphold the law and order of Seireitei, but duty wasn't everything. It didn't smile at him, encourage him to laugh more often and to enjoy life. It didn't take him on secret picnics or leave little notes in his paperwork that always brightened his day. It didn't accept him as he was, ice and draconic temperament and all the rest.

 

It certainly didn't love him.

 

Still, Matsumoto had been the one to weep, the one to curse her best friend, her brother of the heart, for walking away as he had always done. Hitsugaya had sat at his own best friend's bedside, watching her breathe with the help of a machine. He couldn't find it in himself to do anything more.

 

He couldn't break because they couldn't know. At least, he couldn't break on the outside; he had already shattered within.

 

He knew it was a war. Hitsugaya was well aware of this fact. It was looming on the horizon, a dark shadow of the Arrancar and a madman's bid for power. And he knew that at some point, some time in the future, that rotten little thing called Fate would intervene once more.

 

He would be standing face to face with the man that had taught him to enjoy the little things, the little smiles that he had never looked twice at before. He would see the man that no one had ever known could make him melt with just a touch, with a gentle kiss.

 

And the age-old dance would begin, a dance of skill on skill and on opposite sides of an insurmountable crevice.

 

It would hurt; he was sure that it would destroy him in a way he couldn't even fathom now. Perhaps his wounds would heal one day in the distant future; maybe his heart would mend, leaving a scar that would always remind him.

 

Yet, in the end, he couldn't escape, not that he would try. He clung to his duty with every ounce of his remaining strength; it was the only thing keeping him sane at the moment, the only thing keeping him from unraveling completely.

 

Besides, Hitsugaya had learned long ago to accept the inevitable.

 

- - - - -