windroars: (hitsugaya; frozen glare)
Wind ([personal profile] windroars) wrote2011-05-18 12:51 pm

Fanfiction || Treading Icy Waters 11

Title: Treading Icy Waters
Fandom: Bleach
Main Character: Hitsugaya Toushirou
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General/Action/Suspense
Warnings: Occasional language, violence, gore.
Timeline: This story follows the manga's timeline. It begins directly before the Hueco Mundo arc and diverges from there.
Summary: The board has been laid out. The pieces have been set and moved. The pawns are scattered across the floor, and Ichimaru’s fingers are wrapped around a stark white bishop. “That’s another check, little taichou.” The game has only begun.


~*~

“God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.”

-William Shakespeare


~*~

Chapter Eleven

Signal Flare

~*~


Urahara Kisuke leaned back from his desk, admiring his latest masterpiece. Well, technically it was only a prototype as of now, but once he tested it and smoothed out any rough edges in the design, it would be perfect. He expected no less from himself. And this particular design was going to be very fun to test. After all, nearly all of his lovely test subjects had returned to him within the last week. Maybe Renji would be the best to test this particular one out on….

His sadistic musing was cut short by a curt knock on the warehouse door, which was then opened without consideration as to whether he was indecent or otherwise. It was the door leading to the inside the house, and seeing as Renji and Hitsugaya-kun were at school and Yoruichi had taken Nell to the park, that left only one person.

“Rangiku-chan,” he grinned without looking up from his latest invention. “Or perhaps you’re the new Freeloader-san, ne?”

“So you enrolled Taichou and Renji in school again?” he heard her casually ask as she leaned against a nearby counter.

“Yup. This place was just getting way too crowded. And it was getting hard trying to work with little Hitsugaya-kun staring over my shoulder all the time. It was the perfect way to get them out of the house,” he exalted gleefully.

“You want someone keeping an eye on him at all times, even when you can’t be bothered to,” came her matter-of-fact reply, her seriousness a large contrast to Urahara’s gaiety. She was bating him, he knew, beating around the bush as she crept closer and closer to what she had really come here to say. Well, it would be rude of him not to play along at least a little bit.

“I take it you talked with Hitsugaya-kun then. What all did he tell you?”

As she summarized the recent events that had taken place, he had to marvel at the strange complexities of the former Tenth Division taichou. He had the courage to stand up against the vaizard, the arrancar, and even Aizen, but he couldn’t bring himself to give his own fukutaichou the whole story. It seemed he had skipped out on one rather important detail.

Not once did Matsumoto Rangiku mention Ichimaru Gin.

Once she finished, she stared expectantly at him a moment before plopping down onto a cushioned chair. “You knew, didn’t you?” she asked after a time. He raised an eyebrow in reply, leaning a noticeable distance forward as he did so. “That’s why you sent him off. You knew that they’d be able to find him much easier if he was out in the open. It’s not like he can hide himself with his reiatsu out of his control. You knew about the vaizard from the very beginning.”

“Well, of course I did, silly,” he beamed. “Even Rukia and Orihime knew about them.”

“You knew it wasn’t poison.”

The salesman’s grin grew shadier, though it did not waver in the slightest. “And now he knows,” he said simply.

“You’re using my taichou.”

“He came to me, Rangiku-chan,” Urahara tsked, wagging his finger at her. “And we struck up a deal. I’ve been keeping my end of the bargain, and so has he. That’s all there is to it.”

“I don’t care. He’s my taichou, and I don’t like it,” she huffed. “He doesn’t have a choice but to accept your help. I, on the other hand, do.”

“No.”

“What?” the buxom fukutaichou asked, perplexed.

“You came down here to say you want to re-enroll in school as well. And I’m saying that that would be a very stupid idea.”

Matsumoto frowned, folding her arms tightly below her breasts. “And why is that?”

“What is your mission?”

Her frown turned into a pout as she realized where he was headed. “I was sent under orders to warn the shinigami substitute and his friends about Taichou’s supposed betrayal. Yamamoto-soutaichou decided that those in the living world should be made aware of it as well, just in case.”

“Let me rephrase that. What is your real mission? What’s the reason they chose you?” Urahara disregarded her reply.

Matsumoto sighed. She must have been debating whether to tell him or not. But he knew she would inevitably choose the former, everyone did, so he remained patient. “As Hitsugaya-taichou’s second, it was decided that I would be the most likely to know where he would be hiding and would therefore be the most likely, even out of the nine remaining taichou, to find him without his noticing me. Unofficially, I’m supposed to search for him. When I sense his reiatsu, I’m to report to Yamamoto-soutaichou immediately. I’m … not to make contact.”

“All the rules you’ve already broken aside, there is one thing that they truly expect you to do. As his fukutaichou, they expect you to be searching for him, yes?” Matsumoto’s pout became more defined. “Now, with this lovely device hanging from your waste,” he slyly held up the pouting shinigami’s denreishinki and her eyes widened as she tried to snatch it back, “your every move can be tracked by the Twelfth Division. Believe me, I know.

“So staying in one spot like, say, a school or here for that matter would make your stuffy, uptight bosses rather suspicious, no?”

“Then what should I do? Wander around aimlessly until Taichou dies?!” she shot back as soon as she retrieved the cell phone. “I went through hell to prove I am loyal to him over all else, and I’m not about to ruin that! If a couple of self-appreciating taichou don’t like it, they can just go eat dirt.”

“As well as any chance you might have of using them to your advantage,” Urahara replied. “I’m sure you’d like some help from Jyuushirou and Shunsui too, ne? If you lose your authority, you lose your connection to them as well. And seeing as there’s no doubt that their influence is the only reason you’re here at all, I’d say that’s a very bad idea.”

“So I should just waste what little time I have here away, pretending to look for Taichou instead of helping him?”

“Not exactly,” the salesman smirked, leaning back once more. “You want to help Hitsugaya-kun, right? Well, I’ve got a few things I need to get to some choice contacts who may be able to do just that. But I’m far too busy to take them there myself.”

Matsumoto slumped back into her chair with a sigh. “Fine, but I won’t like it.”

“Yay! I’ve got myself a sexy, new delivery girl!” The instinctive bashing of her fist over the top of his head quickly left him with a sheepish grin. “And by that I mean, of course, an intelligent and capable business partner.”

Dusting off his flattened hat, he stood up and began walking out of the room. “It’s the little box labeled ‘With Love,’” he told her in all seriousness, pointing to the far corner of the warehouse with his cane. “Oh, and can you give that little toy on the desk to Abarai-kun for me?” he added before tossing her a camera. “If it blows up in his face, be sure to take a picture!”

Matsumoto watched as he disappeared through the door before turning back to look down at the device. It looked a little like … a yoyo. A red yoyo with a black skull and cross bones on each side. With a shrug, she picked it up and stuffed it between her breasts. Then she grabbed the package.

At least it was something.

~*~


“You will not tell anyone anything, understand? Not Abarai, not Kuchiki, not anyone. Not even Matsumoto.”

“Yeah. Yeah. And for the millionth time, yeah. I promise,” Kurosaki grinned. “I swear I won’t say anything, on penalty of becoming giant ice dragon feed.”

“And that’s exactly what will happen,” hissed Hitsugaya. His second day of school had been just as bad as his first, made all the worse because they really weren’t his first or second days, and he was in no mood to take Kurosaki’s jokes.

He entered the shop to see Matsumoto assaulting a none-too-pleased Abarai, Rukia giggling from a short way away. Abarai didn’t look too happy either. Their sensei had called them both in after school and asked that they meet with her sometime next week … along with their current guardians. And watching Matsumoto pull something out from between her breasts and stuff it into the redheaded fukutaichou’s hands before turning to him with a titanic smile upon her face only served to deepen his doubt in how that particular meeting was going to work out.

“Taichou!” she shouted as she caught him up in yet another back-breaking hug. Kurosaki snickered as he trotted over to Abarai and Rukia, who were now eyeing whatever it was that Matsumoto had given him. “Did you have a good day?”

“Hardly.”

“Do you want something to eat? Drink?”

Hitsugaya looked up at her, a single eyebrow raised in suspicion. Matsumoto was never this nice, not until she’d had a good five to ten minutes to tease him first. After a moment, he sighed. “What do you want, Matsumoto?”

His fukutaichou leaned down so that her eye level matched his own, and her expression was surprisingly serious. Then she stood straight once again, grabbed his wrist, and hauled him out of the room, away from the others. As soon as they were alone, she held her hands up to him as if she were praying. “I want you to start teaching me bankai again. Please, Taichou. Pretty please?”

“You were awfully lousy at it last time,” the young boy huffed in response to her pleading.

“That wasn’t my fault!” she whined. “Haineko wouldn’t listen to a word I said! Whenever I started talking, she sang the next verse of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall at the top of her lungs! She got all the way down to fourteen bottles before I finally gave up!”

Hitsugaya quirked a brow. Matsumoto did realize that a zanpakutou’s personality reflected its wielder's, right? “Besides, it generally takes ten years to master bankai,” he added, deciding it would be best not to bring it up.

“We don’t have years,” Matsumoto replied, a rare frown embedded in her full, red lips as she looked down on him. “We have weeks. Besides, you learned bankai in less than ten years. So I’ll just have to master it faster, won’t I?”

Hitsugaya could see she was serious. He could also see her determination, her pride, and her unshakable loyalty. Even after everything that had happened, after everything he’d done, she had still done everything in her power to follow him every step of the way. Just as she’d always done. What was she, anyway? His shadow? He smirked.

“Good. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear,” he announced, much to her apparent surprise. “I’ve done more than just read since I arrived in this dump. Ever wonder how Kurosaki mastered his bankai so quickly?”

“Then the rumors are true,” she whispered in awe. “Urahara really found a way to master bankai in just three days.”

“But it’s not easy, and it’s not safe,” he continued. “It won’t be like last time, trying to hold some half-cocked conversation with a sword. It won’t be just another game.”

“If Kurosaki can manage, I shouldn’t have anything to worry about, ne, Taichou?” she grinned.

His smirk slowly melted into an even rarer smile. “Of course,” he agreed. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll be sure to sway that idiotic salesman if Kuchiki is backing me up.” Matsumoto laughed as he headed back to the store, looking to be in much better spirits than he’d been in before. That was definitely a good sign.

“So?” came a voice from behind her. She jumped in surprise, whirling around to face none other than the aforementioned idiotic salesman. “Did you take the picture like I asked?”

“You … were serious?” she asked, both surprised and yet not surprised at the same time. It was just about then that Hitsugaya returned, his far-away expression one of a person who had just seen something he really shouldn’t have and yet couldn’t figure out exactly why he felt that way.

“Of course I was serious!” Urahara huffed in that disturbingly playful way of his. “I prefer to have visual documentation when my inventions actually work like they’re supposed to!”

“You mean to say that you actually intended to coat your storefront in a layer of expired mayonnaise?”

Matsumoto quickly understood the reason for her taichou’s awkward expression. The very thought of Kurosaki, Renji, and Rukia buried in old condiments made her giddy. Both Urahara's and her eyes lit up, and they ran past Hitsugaya, bursting through the door so that they could laugh in their unfortunate friends’ faces.

His shadow, indeed.

Hitsugaya sighed as he slowly and reluctantly followed. But he supposed there was no harm in enjoying the spectacle just a little bit. As long as he wasn’t the one who would have to clean up.

~*~


Hitsugaya Toushirou knew where he was, even though his eyes were shut tight. The emptiness surrounding him, the atmosphere so devoid of air, and Hyourinmaru’s eerie silence made it obvious enough. But he refused to open his eyes. He would not be toyed with like one of Kurotsuchi’s play things. He was a (former) taichou of the Gotei 13, dammit! He was not going to play this game.

He was not going to crack.

When the all-too-familiar spiritual pressure tightened his muscles and restricted his lungs however, he finally lifted his eye lids. Ichimaru Gin stood in front of him, looking down with mild curiosity. Hitsugaya didn’t look him in the face, instead focusing his sight on his stark white robes. “Ya look kinda tired, Hitsugaya-kun. Havin’ trouble sleepin’ lately?”

Hitsugaya did not reply, and the fox-faced man before him seemed to enjoy the fact. “Aw, are ya mad at me?”

Finally, the smaller of the two managed to croak, “You can … drag me here at will?”

“How didja think I did it last time, ne?” Ichimaru sneered playfully. “It’s amazin’, the things yer capable o’ when ya’ve watched a man like Aizen long ‘nough.”

“I see,” his guest deadpanned.

“Just thought I’d tell ya that yer a pretty borin’ person ta watch. Even when somethin’ interestin’ does happen, ya always halfta pretend yer still in charge. Ya always hafta pretend yer okay. It’s really no fun at all.”

Hitsugaya’s frown deepened. “Then why not find someone else to antagonize in your free time?”

“But I dun want someone else, little taichou,” Ichimaru Gin drawled as he ran a finger up Hitsugaya’s throat and under his chin, lifting his head so that their eyes finally met. He felt his teeth grind together as those masking slits parted to reveal fierce, neon orbs. “I wanna play with you an’ only you. I wanna finish what we started back in Soul Society.”

“If it’s a fight you want, I’d gladly accept,” he snarled, pushing Ichimaru’s hand away.

“Not yet,” the host smirked, retracting his arm back into its sleeve. “Not yet. Not ‘til the end o’ the game.”

“You still call it a game, even after you lie about the rules.”

“Ah. So ya are mad then. But, ya know, I was more surprised that ya listened ta me at all,” Ichimaru replied.

Hitsugaya’s frown escalated to a grimace. “I had no choice,” he growled. He did not like this. At all. He did not want to think about this.

“But ya did have a choice, little taichou. Ya chose ta believe me. And tha’s all part o’ the game.”

Again, Hitsugaya did not reply.

“Ara. Yer still in such a bad mood, Hitsugaya-kun? Even after Ran-chan came all the way down ta find ya?”

The younger of the two defectors immediately tensed. “Ichimaru…”

“Aw well, I guess there’s nothin’ I can do ‘bout that, ne? Ya are what ya are, after all.”

“Stay away from her. She is not a part of this. None of them are.”

“The real question, little taichou, is how long ya can keep it that way. And whether it was ever truly that way at all.”

Matsumoto had already suffered through enough where Ichimaru was concerned. She’d mourned, she’d drowned herself in sake, and she’d finally pulled herself back together. Hitsugaya was not about to let that all go to waste. It was an old wound that he was determined to let heal, and he knew very well that if Ichimaru came back into the picture, she’d fall right back into stage one.

He knew Matsumoto was strong. He knew she would be able to handle it. But he couldn’t do it. This was his fight, his fault, and his problem. Dragging Matsumoto into it, forcing that pain on her, he couldn’t do it. He had already made his mistake with Hinamori. He had pulled her into the dark spiral the moment he'd tried to warn her … just as Aizen had wanted him to. Never again.

“If you so much as…”

“Hn? Is that really smart? Ya tried all this before, an’ look how that ended up,” Ichimaru countered, raising a single, silver brow. When Hitsugaya said nothing, his expression seemed to soften though the treacherous smirk never wavered. “But ya don’ hafta worry. I won’ touch yer pretty fukutaichou.”

Hitsugaya stared at the former Third Division taichou without really seeing him, feeling particularly disturbed. Ichimaru had placed a daunting emphasis on the word “I” that he wasn’t quite ready to decipher.

“Well, if yer just gonna stand there all dumb like that, I might as well take off, ne?” finally shook him from his inattention as the lanky shinigami began to turn away, white robes rippling in a nonexistent breeze.

Hitsugaya instinctively felt himself jerk after him, reaching out his hand to snag the man’s trailing sleeve. He wasn’t going to let it end like this! He wasn’t going to let him have his way! “Ichimaru!”

When he turned to face Hitsugaya once more, the tension in his overwhelming reiatsu intensified to wholly new heights. Sweat broke free of his pores unwillingly as he stared back into angry blue eyes, any sign of the chronic smirk wiped from existence.

“It ain’ smart ta go lookin’ for fights,” he hissed. “They’ll come ta ya on their own soon ‘nough.”

~*~


Eyes bursting open, Hitsugaya’s pupils darted left and right in an attempt to regain his bearings. A blurry hallway sharpened into view. Urahara’s. He was back at Urahara’s. Hastily, he tried to get up.

The young boy realized too late however, that he was already standing up, and he only succeeded in losing his balance and falling backward into a shelf. His head was pounding where he’d hit it the day before, but he ignored it as well as he could. That was not the issue right now. The issue was how loud his little crash had been. And it had been very loud.

He could hear footsteps over the sound of the still-vibrating shelf, and soon Matsumoto peeked her head out the door to look down at him. Abarai was right behind her, still covered head to toe in mayonnaise. Some detached, unaffected part of his mind told him that this was good. If Abarai and the others hadn’t had time to clean up yet, then he hadn’t been zoned out for too long. And it didn’t look like anyone had noticed.

But the rest of his brain, not to mention his entire body, was on fire. He could only stare up at the two other shinigami, wide-eyed and nearly hyperventilating in the heat of it all. Only when he felt the cooling tendrils tighten around his muscles and Hyourinmaru’s icy breath fill his over-active lungs did he begin to calm down.

By then, Kurosaki and Kuchiki had joined Matsumoto and Abarai at the door. Urahara didn’t show up, though Hitsugaya wasn’t surprised. That man probably knew what had happened already. They’d be having a nice, long talk about it this weekend; that was for sure.

Well aware of how uncharacteristic he must seem at the moment, he slowly, carefully pulled himself up. He turned to face them at an equally measured pace, folding his arms across his chest and doing his best to assume his usual indifferent expression. “What? Haven’t you ever seen someone trip before?”

“But Taichou…” his fukutaichou trailed, taking a step forward.

“But what, Matsumoto?” he growled, cutting her off. “I’m fine. But I’m beginning to wonder whether all of you are, gawking at me like that when you’re the ones who look like a batch of onigiri molded by a blind three year old.”

Matsumoto seemed to take the hint as she didn’t protest when he turned around and began walking in the opposite direction, toward the farthest restroom. But he could see in her frown that she too would be causing him trouble for this later.

When he made it without mishap, he stepped inside, locked the door behind him, and promptly puked into the toilet.

~*~


“Is Hitsugaya-taichou alright?” Rukia asked, wiping some of the bad smelling condiment from the tip of her nose.

“You call that alright?” Renji huffed. “There’s definitely something wrong.”

“Well, of course there’s something wrong!” Matsumoto spat back. “Why else would he have left Soul Society in the first place?!”

“I mean there’s something wrong with him.”

“He's just ... a little moody is all.”

“Matsumoto-san…” Rukia spoke up again, her voice laced with concern. “Did he tell you anything last night?”

Matsumoto was quiet for a second or two before she sighed. “No. Nothing I couldn’t already figure out on my own.”

Kurosaki Ichigo watched as the others talked, not in the best of moods after having Renji’s freaky yoyo-thing explode in his face. But he didn’t yell or throw any insults. He only scowled. “Leave him be,” he finally muttered as he stocked off to Urahara’s other restroom. “If Toushirou needed our help, he’d ask for it, right?”

He kicked at the ground as he walked, frowning.

Idiot.

~*~


Gulping deep breaths of stale air, Hitsugaya wrinkled his nose at the smell and flushed the toilet. He ignored the wretched taste in his mouth and leaned in against the wall, the cool tile like an ice pack for his heated forehead. He could feel Hyourinmaru coiling about his chest, but again, the dragon was silent.

“Even when somethin’ interestin’ does happen, ya always halfta pretend yer still in charge. Ya always hafta pretend yer okay.”

“I am okay. I’m fine.”

“But ya did have a choice, little taichou. Ya chose ta believe me. And tha’s all part o’ the game.”

“Leaving was the option that offered the greatest probability of survival. I had no choice.”

“It ain’ smart ta go lookin’ for fights. They’ll come ta ya on their own soon ‘nough.”

Hitsugaya turned around, letting his back slide down the bathroom wall.

“Dammit,” he laughed wryly, the helpless sarcasm all-too-apparent in his choked-up voice.

“I’ve got a headache.”

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