![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fanfiction || Dead Man Walking 03
Title: Dead Man Walking
Fandom: Bleach
Main Character: Hitsugaya Toushirou/Shimizu Kouryuu
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General/Adventure/Suspense/Mystery
Warnings: Sporadic gore, language, author's inability to stay consistent with a single genre
Timeline: This story follows the manga's timeline. It takes place after the war with Aizen has begun.
Summary: Hitsugaya's disappearance left Seireitei with plenty of unanswered questions, but when a boy identical to the supposedly late taichou appears on Earth, to what lengths will everyone go to find out why? And when the answer does come, will it be too late?
~*~
“The only thing I'll ever ask of you
You've got to promise not to stop when I say when”
-Everlong, Foo Fighters
~*~
Chapter Three
Into the Hype
~*~
“Who the hell are you?!”
Kouryuu stared as she seemed to tense, eyes wide. But it didn’t last long. Before he could even blink, she was back to being a crazed and clearly confused woman with a voice that just didn’t seem to quit.
“What?!” she whined playfully. “Don’t say you forgot my name already, Taichou! That’s so cruel! It’s me, Matsumoto Rangiku! Your fukutaichou! I didn’t think you hated me that much!”
He took another step back. If he had seen that figure before, he would have definitely remembered it! “Listen, ma’am, I don’t know who you think I am, but I can assure I’m not him,” the boy muttered from behind a grocery bag.
“Oh yeah?” She was smirking now. “Then why do you look exactly like him, sound exactly like him, and blush exactly like him? Hm?”
“I … I’m not blushing! And I’m not taichou of anything!” he shot back, stuffing his face deeper into the recesses of the grocery bag. “So I’m obviously not the person you think I am.”
“You’re Hitsugaya Toushirou, taichou of the Tenth Division, and my commanding officer!” she shouted in return. Now she was beginning to sound a little desperate. His frown deepened. Hitsugaya Toushirou…?
“Now I know you’re mistaken. I’ve never heard that name before in my life.”
“Then tell me, oh-smart-one, how you got that scar across your eye!” Matsumoto countered, pointing at the faint, pink line that ran jaggedly down from his brow to his ear.
This time it was Kouryuu’s turn to seize up. He hastily turned away, eyes narrowed as they stared determinedly at the ground. “Car accident.”
The buxom woman’s arm dropped limply to her side. “Ah, ah. I see. You’re right,” she mumbled under her breath in a measured monotone. “You just look so alike…. I was so sure…. But you’re right. I was too hasty. I’m sorry.”
Against his better judgment, he found his gaze rising back up to see her expression. The intensity of her stare hadn’t lessened in the least, but the feeling of that intensity had changed. It felt almost as if all of her excitement had been sucked out of her, like she had become some empty shell, just playing dead until she could escape. Like she was…? She bowed, her motions mechanic, before she began to walk away.
Kouryuu couldn’t believe his eyes. She was just going to walk away? After all of that, she was just going to leave? It felt almost as if something erupted from inside his gut. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t let her. He couldn’t lose sight of her. Not again.
Never again.
“The hell?! You’re just going to-! You can’t just harass people and then leave it at that!” he shouted.
She stopped and turned back, but the sad smile adorning her lips only made him more uncomfortable. “You’re right again,” she sighed. “I can’t leave without knowing your name, right?”
That wasn’t what he had meant at all, but that strange feeling in his stomach wouldn’t leave him, and despite the ridiculousness of it all, his mouth spoke the words of its own accord. “Kouryuu. My name is Shimizu Kouryuu.”
The woman turned her back to him once again and disappeared into the crowd.
“That’s a nice name.”
~*~
“So? Soooo?” persisted the familiar, nagging voice as its owner leaned forward excitedly from his position on a wooden bench. “How’d it go, my dear actress?”
Matsumoto Rangiku stepped listlessly to the bench before plopping down beside the man and sprawling herself out like a worn out dog. When she spoke, her voice remained monotonous. “He didn’t respond to any of the key words, not even his own name. He said he’d never even heard the name before, and he wasn’t lying.”
“Well, we knew he wasn’t going to bounce right back at a couple of choice words,” the man countered, not the least bit troubled by his companion’s obvious distress.
“It’s more than that!” she suddenly exploded, grabbing her hair and yanking it in frustration. “He really didn’t recognize me at all! He said he got the scar across his eye from a car crash! And even though the scar was there, he had two eyes! Both of his eyes were just fine! This isn’t right! What the hell did Aizen do to him?!”
“So, then, are you still sure it’s him?”
Rangiku went limp once again, letting her fingers slide down past the edge of her golden lockes. “I’m sure,” she repeated the mantra that had kept her going for so long. “I know it’s him. There’s no doubt.”
“You know, this means that our plans will be much more difficult to pull off than we originally believed. Not only is he alive just as he would be as a reincarnation, but he has the memories of a reincarnation as well,” the be-hatted man smirked knowingly.
“He said his name was … Kouryuu.”
A single brow rose beneath the cover of his hat. “Now, isn’t that something. It seems even Aizen has a sense of humor.”
“‘Kouryuu’ can mean ‘rain dragon,’ and it can also mean ‘hidden genius,’ right…?” Matsumoto trailed off.
“That’s right.”
Her hands clenched into fists. “There’s no way I’m going to let those bastards turn him into some sick joke! I don’t care what it takes or how hard it’ll be! I’ve told you all this before, dammit! I am his fukutaichou, and I will do anything for my taichou! If you-!”
“Calm down,” the man sighed, bonking her lightly on the head with the end of his cane. “You’re making a scene.”
“A scene? A scene?! I’ll show you a scene!” she shrieked, grabbing the end of her companion’s cane and yanking it out of his hands. She stood up on the bench, high heels forgotten on the ground, and brought the cane right down on his head. “I, Matsumoto Rangiku, hereby swear by the Soukyokuu that I’ll do anything you damn well please if it’ll get me my taichou back! Howzzat?!”
A Cheshire grin grew across the man’s lips as he stood up and bent down to pick up the striped bucket hat that Rangiku had toppled clear off his head. “Oh dear,” he sighed, brushing dirt off the fabric before placing it back atop unkempt, blonde hair.
“Then I guess I, Urahara Kisuke, had better get back to work.”
“Damn straight!” Matsumoto huffed, jumping down from the bench. “Or I’ll tell Yoruichi you’ve been slacking off!”
“Hey, now that’s just cruel…” Urahara smirked in return. “Besides, Yoruichi is off on an important errand for me. She won’t be back for a while.”
“And what sort of errand would that be?”
Urahara turned to her for a moment, expression blank, before growing a large, mischievous grin. And, without saying a word, he walked off. She could only stare at his retreating back even as he began to hum, twirling his cane once more. He stopped, looking expectantly back at her. “Well, are you coming or not?”
She pouted indignantly, puffing her cheeks in frustration. She didn’t know how much longer she could stand this. Urahara Kisuke: the man who had helped Kurosaki, the man Seireitei had exiled, the man who had invented and engineered the very gigai she was walking around in. He never told her anything about what he was planning, was always asking questions that made her doubt everything she believed to be true, and, worst of all, hadn’t let her touch an ounce of alcohol since she had woken up. But he was the only man she could turn to for help. Urahara Kisuke: the only man in any of the worlds who knew that Matsumoto Rangiku was alive.
And he knew that because he was the man who had saved her life.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming,” she pouted. “I told you, didn’t I? I’ll do anything for my taichou.”
“Indeed,” he smirked. “That you did.”
~*~
“You have to go see her again!”
“Why would I do that?! I don’t ever want to see that insane woman again!”
Shimizu Akane glared when her younger brother dismissed her so fiercely. He had come out and told her the whole story only to say that? “Yeah? Well, I don’t believe you!” she huffed before grabbing for the television remote.
“What is there not to believe?” he huffed right back as he shuffled through his homework. “She was insane. She mistook me for someone else and admitted herself that she was wrong. It’s thanks to her that the eggs all cracked, running around and hugging strangers like an idiot. Why the hell would I want to see her again?”
“I know you want to see her again. Why else would you volunteer to do the grocery shopping again tomorrow? You’re too obvious, Shirou-chan. Really. It would be easier on you if you just admitted it,” Akane smirked in triumph.
“My volunteering to shop for groceries has nothing to do with her. Okaa-san’s been really busy lately. I’m just doing her a favor. It’s not as if I have anything better to do.”
Akane promptly raised the volume of the television. Kouryuu glared at her over his homework, and she raised the volume even higher. He tried ignoring the extra noise, but every time his gaze strayed back toward his sister, she’d smirk and raise the volume yet another notch. Any longer and the neighbors would be knocking on the door asking whether they were okay.
“Alright, fine!” he finally succumbed. “I thought that if I went shopping again tomorrow, I might see her again! Now shut that thing off before my eardrums explode!”
She couldn’t resist flashing a victory sign before turning the television off and bouncing up next to him on the couch. “Sooo?” she beamed, nudging him playfully. “What makes you want to see the crazy lady again?”
“I told you I don’t ever want to see her again,” he grumbled, using his homework as a shield to separate them.
“I’ll turn the TV back on,” she threatened with a pout.
“I’m telling the truth, okay!” Kouryuu hastily countered. “I don’t want to see her again. But I thought that if I did, I might be able to ask her something.”
“What?”
Kouryuu looked away, staring hard at the ground. “I don’t know….”
“I don’t get it,” Akane cocked her head so that she could see his face. His expression was stern and steadfast. So much so that she could automatically tell he was trying to look that way on purpose. “Did she do something to you? Something you haven’t told me?”
“No, nothing like that,” he amended, narrowing his eyes. “It’s just… The way she was looking at me, after I told her about the accident. It felt like she didn’t believe me at all. Even though she said she had the wrong person, she didn’t really believe it. It wasn’t that she was upset because I wasn’t who she was looking for. It was more like she was … scared. Like a deer caught in the headlights.” He slumped down into the sanctuary of his homework. “I’m the one who doesn’t get it.”
Akane sighed and offered a single pat on the head. And then she was right back to business. “Oh, yeah! I almost forgot! Nyoko called while you were out!”
“W-What?” Kouryuu shot straight up. “Nyoko-kun? Why-?”
“Don’t call her Nyoko-kun,” she interrupted, pinching him on the arm. “That’s just rude.”
“I’ll call her what I want!” he grunted, jerking his arm from out of her grasp. “Why did she call?”
Akane grinned mischievously. “She just said she wanted to talk to you about something. So I told her you two could meet up tomorrow after school! Tomorrow’s the day when you buy flowers, right? She can go with you!”
“Baka-nee-san!” he shouted, tossing the nearest pillow in her face. “How can I take her with me for that?! You know I talk to-!”
“I think that’s what she wants to talk to you about,” she interrupted once again, catching the pillow with ease. “She sounded kinda worried, so I thought you could forgo chatting with dead people just long enough to hear one living person out.”
Kouryuu paused in the middle of grabbing another pillow. He turned around, an anxious frown lining his lips. “She sounded … worried? About me?”
“Yup. So it would be best for you two to talk in person, ne? And after that, you can look for your crazy lady.”
Grudgingly, he sat back down and retrieved his homework. “Fine. But you’re still a jerk.”
“And you’re still a know-it-all. I guess we’re even.”
“I guess so.”
And Shimizu Akane grinned at yet another victory.
Fandom: Bleach
Main Character: Hitsugaya Toushirou/Shimizu Kouryuu
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General/Adventure/Suspense/Mystery
Warnings: Sporadic gore, language, author's inability to stay consistent with a single genre
Timeline: This story follows the manga's timeline. It takes place after the war with Aizen has begun.
Summary: Hitsugaya's disappearance left Seireitei with plenty of unanswered questions, but when a boy identical to the supposedly late taichou appears on Earth, to what lengths will everyone go to find out why? And when the answer does come, will it be too late?
“The only thing I'll ever ask of you
You've got to promise not to stop when I say when”
-Everlong, Foo Fighters
~*~
Chapter Three
Into the Hype
~*~
“Who the hell are you?!”
Kouryuu stared as she seemed to tense, eyes wide. But it didn’t last long. Before he could even blink, she was back to being a crazed and clearly confused woman with a voice that just didn’t seem to quit.
“What?!” she whined playfully. “Don’t say you forgot my name already, Taichou! That’s so cruel! It’s me, Matsumoto Rangiku! Your fukutaichou! I didn’t think you hated me that much!”
He took another step back. If he had seen that figure before, he would have definitely remembered it! “Listen, ma’am, I don’t know who you think I am, but I can assure I’m not him,” the boy muttered from behind a grocery bag.
“Oh yeah?” She was smirking now. “Then why do you look exactly like him, sound exactly like him, and blush exactly like him? Hm?”
“I … I’m not blushing! And I’m not taichou of anything!” he shot back, stuffing his face deeper into the recesses of the grocery bag. “So I’m obviously not the person you think I am.”
“You’re Hitsugaya Toushirou, taichou of the Tenth Division, and my commanding officer!” she shouted in return. Now she was beginning to sound a little desperate. His frown deepened. Hitsugaya Toushirou…?
“Now I know you’re mistaken. I’ve never heard that name before in my life.”
“Then tell me, oh-smart-one, how you got that scar across your eye!” Matsumoto countered, pointing at the faint, pink line that ran jaggedly down from his brow to his ear.
This time it was Kouryuu’s turn to seize up. He hastily turned away, eyes narrowed as they stared determinedly at the ground. “Car accident.”
The buxom woman’s arm dropped limply to her side. “Ah, ah. I see. You’re right,” she mumbled under her breath in a measured monotone. “You just look so alike…. I was so sure…. But you’re right. I was too hasty. I’m sorry.”
Against his better judgment, he found his gaze rising back up to see her expression. The intensity of her stare hadn’t lessened in the least, but the feeling of that intensity had changed. It felt almost as if all of her excitement had been sucked out of her, like she had become some empty shell, just playing dead until she could escape. Like she was…? She bowed, her motions mechanic, before she began to walk away.
Kouryuu couldn’t believe his eyes. She was just going to walk away? After all of that, she was just going to leave? It felt almost as if something erupted from inside his gut. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t let her. He couldn’t lose sight of her. Not again.
Never again.
“The hell?! You’re just going to-! You can’t just harass people and then leave it at that!” he shouted.
She stopped and turned back, but the sad smile adorning her lips only made him more uncomfortable. “You’re right again,” she sighed. “I can’t leave without knowing your name, right?”
That wasn’t what he had meant at all, but that strange feeling in his stomach wouldn’t leave him, and despite the ridiculousness of it all, his mouth spoke the words of its own accord. “Kouryuu. My name is Shimizu Kouryuu.”
The woman turned her back to him once again and disappeared into the crowd.
“That’s a nice name.”
“So? Soooo?” persisted the familiar, nagging voice as its owner leaned forward excitedly from his position on a wooden bench. “How’d it go, my dear actress?”
Matsumoto Rangiku stepped listlessly to the bench before plopping down beside the man and sprawling herself out like a worn out dog. When she spoke, her voice remained monotonous. “He didn’t respond to any of the key words, not even his own name. He said he’d never even heard the name before, and he wasn’t lying.”
“Well, we knew he wasn’t going to bounce right back at a couple of choice words,” the man countered, not the least bit troubled by his companion’s obvious distress.
“It’s more than that!” she suddenly exploded, grabbing her hair and yanking it in frustration. “He really didn’t recognize me at all! He said he got the scar across his eye from a car crash! And even though the scar was there, he had two eyes! Both of his eyes were just fine! This isn’t right! What the hell did Aizen do to him?!”
“So, then, are you still sure it’s him?”
Rangiku went limp once again, letting her fingers slide down past the edge of her golden lockes. “I’m sure,” she repeated the mantra that had kept her going for so long. “I know it’s him. There’s no doubt.”
“You know, this means that our plans will be much more difficult to pull off than we originally believed. Not only is he alive just as he would be as a reincarnation, but he has the memories of a reincarnation as well,” the be-hatted man smirked knowingly.
“He said his name was … Kouryuu.”
A single brow rose beneath the cover of his hat. “Now, isn’t that something. It seems even Aizen has a sense of humor.”
“‘Kouryuu’ can mean ‘rain dragon,’ and it can also mean ‘hidden genius,’ right…?” Matsumoto trailed off.
“That’s right.”
Her hands clenched into fists. “There’s no way I’m going to let those bastards turn him into some sick joke! I don’t care what it takes or how hard it’ll be! I’ve told you all this before, dammit! I am his fukutaichou, and I will do anything for my taichou! If you-!”
“Calm down,” the man sighed, bonking her lightly on the head with the end of his cane. “You’re making a scene.”
“A scene? A scene?! I’ll show you a scene!” she shrieked, grabbing the end of her companion’s cane and yanking it out of his hands. She stood up on the bench, high heels forgotten on the ground, and brought the cane right down on his head. “I, Matsumoto Rangiku, hereby swear by the Soukyokuu that I’ll do anything you damn well please if it’ll get me my taichou back! Howzzat?!”
A Cheshire grin grew across the man’s lips as he stood up and bent down to pick up the striped bucket hat that Rangiku had toppled clear off his head. “Oh dear,” he sighed, brushing dirt off the fabric before placing it back atop unkempt, blonde hair.
“Then I guess I, Urahara Kisuke, had better get back to work.”
“Damn straight!” Matsumoto huffed, jumping down from the bench. “Or I’ll tell Yoruichi you’ve been slacking off!”
“Hey, now that’s just cruel…” Urahara smirked in return. “Besides, Yoruichi is off on an important errand for me. She won’t be back for a while.”
“And what sort of errand would that be?”
Urahara turned to her for a moment, expression blank, before growing a large, mischievous grin. And, without saying a word, he walked off. She could only stare at his retreating back even as he began to hum, twirling his cane once more. He stopped, looking expectantly back at her. “Well, are you coming or not?”
She pouted indignantly, puffing her cheeks in frustration. She didn’t know how much longer she could stand this. Urahara Kisuke: the man who had helped Kurosaki, the man Seireitei had exiled, the man who had invented and engineered the very gigai she was walking around in. He never told her anything about what he was planning, was always asking questions that made her doubt everything she believed to be true, and, worst of all, hadn’t let her touch an ounce of alcohol since she had woken up. But he was the only man she could turn to for help. Urahara Kisuke: the only man in any of the worlds who knew that Matsumoto Rangiku was alive.
And he knew that because he was the man who had saved her life.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming,” she pouted. “I told you, didn’t I? I’ll do anything for my taichou.”
“Indeed,” he smirked. “That you did.”
“You have to go see her again!”
“Why would I do that?! I don’t ever want to see that insane woman again!”
Shimizu Akane glared when her younger brother dismissed her so fiercely. He had come out and told her the whole story only to say that? “Yeah? Well, I don’t believe you!” she huffed before grabbing for the television remote.
“What is there not to believe?” he huffed right back as he shuffled through his homework. “She was insane. She mistook me for someone else and admitted herself that she was wrong. It’s thanks to her that the eggs all cracked, running around and hugging strangers like an idiot. Why the hell would I want to see her again?”
“I know you want to see her again. Why else would you volunteer to do the grocery shopping again tomorrow? You’re too obvious, Shirou-chan. Really. It would be easier on you if you just admitted it,” Akane smirked in triumph.
“My volunteering to shop for groceries has nothing to do with her. Okaa-san’s been really busy lately. I’m just doing her a favor. It’s not as if I have anything better to do.”
Akane promptly raised the volume of the television. Kouryuu glared at her over his homework, and she raised the volume even higher. He tried ignoring the extra noise, but every time his gaze strayed back toward his sister, she’d smirk and raise the volume yet another notch. Any longer and the neighbors would be knocking on the door asking whether they were okay.
“Alright, fine!” he finally succumbed. “I thought that if I went shopping again tomorrow, I might see her again! Now shut that thing off before my eardrums explode!”
She couldn’t resist flashing a victory sign before turning the television off and bouncing up next to him on the couch. “Sooo?” she beamed, nudging him playfully. “What makes you want to see the crazy lady again?”
“I told you I don’t ever want to see her again,” he grumbled, using his homework as a shield to separate them.
“I’ll turn the TV back on,” she threatened with a pout.
“I’m telling the truth, okay!” Kouryuu hastily countered. “I don’t want to see her again. But I thought that if I did, I might be able to ask her something.”
“What?”
Kouryuu looked away, staring hard at the ground. “I don’t know….”
“I don’t get it,” Akane cocked her head so that she could see his face. His expression was stern and steadfast. So much so that she could automatically tell he was trying to look that way on purpose. “Did she do something to you? Something you haven’t told me?”
“No, nothing like that,” he amended, narrowing his eyes. “It’s just… The way she was looking at me, after I told her about the accident. It felt like she didn’t believe me at all. Even though she said she had the wrong person, she didn’t really believe it. It wasn’t that she was upset because I wasn’t who she was looking for. It was more like she was … scared. Like a deer caught in the headlights.” He slumped down into the sanctuary of his homework. “I’m the one who doesn’t get it.”
Akane sighed and offered a single pat on the head. And then she was right back to business. “Oh, yeah! I almost forgot! Nyoko called while you were out!”
“W-What?” Kouryuu shot straight up. “Nyoko-kun? Why-?”
“Don’t call her Nyoko-kun,” she interrupted, pinching him on the arm. “That’s just rude.”
“I’ll call her what I want!” he grunted, jerking his arm from out of her grasp. “Why did she call?”
Akane grinned mischievously. “She just said she wanted to talk to you about something. So I told her you two could meet up tomorrow after school! Tomorrow’s the day when you buy flowers, right? She can go with you!”
“Baka-nee-san!” he shouted, tossing the nearest pillow in her face. “How can I take her with me for that?! You know I talk to-!”
“I think that’s what she wants to talk to you about,” she interrupted once again, catching the pillow with ease. “She sounded kinda worried, so I thought you could forgo chatting with dead people just long enough to hear one living person out.”
Kouryuu paused in the middle of grabbing another pillow. He turned around, an anxious frown lining his lips. “She sounded … worried? About me?”
“Yup. So it would be best for you two to talk in person, ne? And after that, you can look for your crazy lady.”
Grudgingly, he sat back down and retrieved his homework. “Fine. But you’re still a jerk.”
“And you’re still a know-it-all. I guess we’re even.”
“I guess so.”
And Shimizu Akane grinned at yet another victory.