damned_institute | Day 29: Courtyard

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Day 29: Courtyard

Hiei easily grew sick of the same walls--not to mention the same idiots always within those walls--and while not perfect, the chance to go outside was better than lingering in the boundaries of that damned prison. So when the chance came, the demon was quick to leap on it, heading outside almost quick enough to make a nurse wonder if he was attempting escape.

Almost.

But there were things Hiei had to take care of before he left this place, and first came sorting through his thoughts. Kurama was gone; the demon was sure of it, even without the use of his Jagan. The fox was one of the people Hiei was closest to, one of the few Hiei would admit being close to, and his presence weighed heavily on the demon, nearly as heavy as his absence.

It made him angry, that Kurama had vanished. Be it by escape or some other circumstance (which Hiei barely considered possible, only by his own refusal), the fox should be there with him, fighting with him. That was how they worked, supposedly. As a team.

Now Hiei would have to do without. And he would be fine with that, eventually. For now it was annoying, but that would pass. Perhaps quicker with a nap, and the demon moved under one of the trees. He didn't care that it was colder in the shade; his contrasting origins mixed with his stubbornness kept the weather from bothering him too much. Closing his eyes, he relaxed against the bark, as much as he could given the circumstances, and hoped for a lack of bothering.

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He heard the nurse approaching long before she addressed him, and one eye opened in irritation at being disturbed from his nap. That was until he saw it was Momo, and saw that something didn't seem quite right about her. She seemed quieter than normal, her expression strangely distant and unlike the normal bright and cheerful shinigami.

Hitsugaya raised up from the bench and swung his legs back over so that they rested comfortably on the ground. He brushed his hair back into place with one hand, glaring up at the nurse with a fierce and deep loathing. "Just leave us..." he said, but stopped his sentence once he noticed that the nurse had already turned to leave. "Damn nurses," he grumbled.

He glanced back over in Momo's direction, feeling discomfort at her being so near. Things since the bus had felt so awkward, he wasn't sure what to make of it...but more than that, something was off. It wasn't in any one peculiar way she acted, it was the whole, some unidentifiable sensation he felt that told him Hinamori wasn't entirely herself. He leaned forward to get as good a look of her face as he could, hoping maybe for one brief moment that she would glance in his direction. He couldn't describe why, but it seemed important that she look at him. "Momo..." he addressed her quietly. "What's wrong?"

Momo did not move upon hearing Hitsugaya's voice. She was hearing voices of familiar people again. Was she just manifesting thoughts of the people close to her as her mind coped with the dying of her body?

Her eyes moved a couple times from side to side, though her gaze was still unfocused and toward the ground. Maybe she was dead, just as she'd originally thought. They didn't know what happened between reincarnation and birth.

It was better she not contemplate these things.

His instincts were right...something was off with Hinamori. She wasn't angry with him, or else she would have protested with the nurse when she sat her down. She wasn't angry at anyone else, or she would have been complaining to him about it...even after the awkwardness of the bus, she would have found him to complain. Something was wrong, and it threw him off entirely.

He knelt down in the grass beside her and rested one hand on her shoulder gently so as not to injure her any further, a look of concern and even a little fear in his eyes. "Momo..." he repeated her name again, hoping with the physical contact she might at least react. Look at me, damnit!

Someone was touching her. She blinked her eyes and shrunk back minutely from the contact. She didn't want to be touched now that she'd sat down and the one that had been there with her and him had gone away. She'd thought for a moment that maybe, just maybe, she'd be on her way to reincarnation.

But, she wondered, did she deserve reincarnation? She was dead and her death hadn't been anything more than an act of pity. No... no... no... She couldn't think about that. She didn't know what was real and what had been fabricated anymore.

It was safer inside. Safer.

This wasn't good at all. Something was wrong here, the way she seemed to ignore him entirely. He reached out and placed a hand on her cheek without thinking of how such an intimate move might appear and raised her face to his. If she could just look at him she...

He pulled his hand back in surprise at the sight of her face. "What the hell did those bastards do to you, Momo?" he asked through gritted teeth. He very much wished he had his zanpakuto right now...the things he would do to whomever had caused such damage to her pristine face. He'd make them pay.

Momo slowly blinked her eyes as she was forced to look at someone, though it wasn't as if she'd resisted at all. It was easier to just let them do what they wanted to her body. Her body was inconsequential and her mind was hidden away, safe from the horrors of what had happened before she died and what would come.

She saw something white, and it was familiar, though she didn't actually focus on it. She couldn't make her left eye work properly when she tried and she gave up on both. Vaguely, she heard the question and shook her head a little. Her lips parted, as if she might say something, but then they closed, not a sound forthcoming.

She missed the constant warmth of her other half. She must be dead too.

Words seemed to rest for brief moments on her lips, but they were gone. Just say something, he protested in his head. ~anything~ at all.

Wounds of the flesh he could deal with. Her injuries he could heal if he had to. Whatever was causing this wasn't on account of the wounds, though. "Please," he said, feeling uncomfortable just uttering the words. "Please...just...tell me what's wrong. Tell me anything. It's me. Shiro-chan." He hated that nickname, but if she was going to recognize anything, it would be that. "Your friend."

She blinked slowly again, something in his words causing her to actually shift her gaze up from just in his direction to his actual eyes. Her own still wouldn't focus, but she saw the green. She looked for a long moment before her gaze drifted back down again.

"Ai...zen...sama," came the ghostly whisper from her lips.

Hitsugaya turned pale as the words escaped her lips. Had his original hypothesis been correct, that he was somehow involved in all of this, and was Momo an unfortunate victim in his schemes yet again? "He's here?" the captain asked, feeling sick to his stomach. Even at full power, Hitsugaya hadn't been able to even cut Aizen. Now, as weakened as he was and without his zanpakuto, there was nothing he could do to protect her from the man.

He couldn't be sure what Aizen had said to make Momo act like this, but it didn't matter. It was just one more note on the list of reasons former Captain Aizen had to die...

...but whatever he had done to her left her this empty shell. She was lost again, or maybe she had finally just given into the hole of doubt and despair she had been feeling ever since Aizen's blade pierced her chest.

It hurt to wonder if she would ever be whole again. It hurt to think about these things, but there wasn't any alternative he could take and still look himself in the mirror. "What happened?" he asked, wishing he didn't have to.

"No more," she said, her voice not changing. "Visitor to see... Jehna... not well. World of Dead..." Her brow furrowed a little. "Not real... or too real?"

Lethargically, she raised her hand from her lap to rest upon her breast, over her heart. "Never to be told."

The visitors...Aizen had come as one of the visitors that Martin had talked about on the intercom. The bastard...

"You're not Jehna," Hitsugaya said insistently, taking her other hand into his and placing his free hand on her good shoulder. "Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, not even Aizen. You're Hinamori Momo, lieutenant of the 5th division of the Gotei 13. I know this because we grew up together. I've known you longer than I've known just about anyone...I should know who you are a hell of a lot better than Aizen."

He hated saying these words, hated trying to reach her by opening up himself...but he was willing to do just about anything for her.

Focusing on his words was hard. Her mind wanted to stay hidden, stay where it was protected, but the voice talking to her could find it's way painstakingly through the barriers and obstacles if only its bearer had the patience and will to do so. Forming words was even harder.

"Not Jehna... not her, but no... missing. Rest missing." She blinked her eyes and looked up at Hitsugaya, momentarily recognizing him. A tear formed at the corner of her good eye. "Vice captain or just... a doll? W-who... what is she?" Her brow furrowed again. "No... no... already know. Gone. No more left."

"So sorry," she whispered as that tear finally slipped down her face.

"You're not a doll, Momo," he said quietly, hating still having to do this every step of the way, but all the while knowing that he had to. "You worked damn hard to become a shinigami, to become a vice captain. You're not just some tool of Aizen's. You've got more to you than that." He lowered his eyes to avoid looking at the tear as it slipped down. "Don't go apologizing to me, either. I'm not going to abandon you here, and I'm not going to let you lose yourself. You mean too much to me, damnit."

And there it was. The words he never bothered to say to anyone...it was shocking that he let something like that out, something be never wanted to even think about. But he wasn't going to let anything harm her. Not even herself if he could help it, and certainly not Aizen.

Momo didn't know if she was alive and trapped as a prisoner of a powerful madman or dead and trapped as a prisoner of her own mind. What she did know, was that if this was a prison of her mind, she wasn't going to let her own mind keep her from the one person who meant more to her than she ever admitted to, one that hadn't betrayed her - one that cared for her.

The shinigami lethargically moved her hand from over her heart to Hitsugaya's cheek. She tried to focus on his eyes when they were visible again, a small amount of life returning to them. "Shiro-chan," she whispered and then folded into him, her face pressed against his neck. "Shiro-chan..."

The tears came then, all of them, hot and wet as she cried against him. Her hand slipped from his cheek to his shoulder, clutching at his shirt. It was a pathetic sight to see, really, but she needed to cry all the tears out. Hitsugaya was the only one she wanted there to hold her. Maybe, just maybe, he'd be strong enough not to get cut on the broken pieces.

The feeling of her hand against his cheek under normal circumstances might have made him pull back uncomfortably, but he couldn't allow himself to do that. He refused to pull away when she so clearly needed him. He didn't know what to say as she pulled herself close to him. All he had to do was hold her...and for once he wasn't going to ask why. He wrapped his arms around her and just held her as she cried. As uncomfortable as it was, in some part of his mind, it just seemed right.

And cried she did. The tears fell hotly down her face and pooled onto Hitsugaya's neck and shirt collar. Momo sobbed, the sound eventually catching in the back of her throat, choking her momentarily before she coughed it away.

Her hand fisted in his shirt relaxed as she continued to cry, the tears having lasted long enough. She had needed to cry like that, broken things she was, and her mind still wanted to hide in it's sheltered harbor deep inside, but Hitsuagaya was there and he was holding her. Dead... alive... whatever was really gone, it almost felt like he was really there, that her mind wasn't fabricating him to placate it before her soul was born back into the land of the living.

He was ice and she... she was fire. He was naturally so cold and she was so emotional. She acted with her heart more than her head, going on what felt right. This felt right, his arms around her, but he didn't think like she did. He said he cared, but even she really didn't know if he cared enough to change the way he was in her projection.

Momo was afraid, so afraid that everything around her was just a creation of this coping mechanism her mind came up with to deal with the her death at Aizen's hands, that it was hard for her not to believe it. To know that she failed so much that she died because she was too pathetic to see anything that had actually been going on, cast aside because she...

Hadn't been needed anymore. Did the people here really need her, even if they were just existed until each has been born back into the world of the living? that would explain why there were so many different types with different powers. She didn't want to believe they were all made up by her fantastical mind. Which was true? Which was true?

"There isn't a scar," she whispered after her sobs had died down. "There should be a scar... should be a scar..."

"A scar of what?" he asked, wishing earnestly for once that he could get inside Momo's head and figure out what was wrong with her. Whatever Aizen had done to her Hitsugaya would repay on Aizen a hundredfold, even if it took his own life in the process. It couldn't have been regarding when Aizen stabbed her, or she would have dealt with that over and over again. Had Aizen convinced her that his own stabbing her was a lie?

He wouldn't put it past the viper.

Still, he held her, wishing there was something more he could do.

"A scar... where the blade pierced me," she whispered. "By Kyouka Suigetsu or by Tobiume... even by common knife."

Momo whimpered. "Especially if by Tobiume..."

"We have healers," Hitsugaya answered her, resisting the urge to yell at her for being stupid. That definitely wasn't the best answer now. "There wouldn't be any sign of the wound..."

And why did she speak of Tobiume? Her blade never would have pierced her own skin. He didn't like the thought of it. "Momo...when would Tobiume have struck you?"

"She'd..." Momo squeezed her eyes shut. "If I'd really... like he said... she would have." The shinigami started shaking again. "If I'd wanted it bad enough..."

She would never be able to deny that for one moment, she had wanted it bad enough that her zanpakutou might have allowed her. The blade must have felt the pain as well.

"I want there to be s scar."

He didn't like the words she was using. And he didn't know any other way around saying what he had to say. Yamamoto had protected Hitsugaya from facing the truth the last time he spoke with Momo. Now there was no one to pull her away from him.

"Momo...Aizen lied."

Her hand gripped Hitsugaya's shirt again, the words from her quiet but harsh. "How do you know?"

Her tone turned more desperate. "How do you know I didn't..."

"...because I know you," Hitsugaya cut her off. "And I saw what Aizen did to you. I was there, damnit. I saw the blade wounds, and those weren't Tobiume's. Aizen dealt a similar blow to me after you fell," he added.

"No!" Her words were firm. "You don't know what happened there. You don't know!"

Momo then curled up within herself again. "Never know. Can't know. Won't t-- Can't."

"I know you," he insisted. "And you're stronger than that."

He didn't know what else to say, but backed off as she curled within herself. He wouldn't force her out when she wasn't ready.

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