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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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.

Momo's voice was low and a bit eerie. "Strong enough to try to kill the slimy snake I hate or was it simply a means to follow after Aizen-sama without cutting my own throat?"

She paused, opening her eyes to look up at Hitsugaya. "I don't know the answer to that question. My death was my own fault."

She...she thought she was dead again? Hadn't they solved that? Aizen must have dragged the question back from the grave. "You didn't die, Momo. You're still with us, we're all just trapped in this hellhole."

"How do you know we aren't dead? You think we aren't, I know that, but how do you know? Do we know what happens to shinigami when they die? Do we know what happens to a soul between reincarnation and birth? We don't. Maybe this place is what happens."

She shook her head, a little frantic. "You don't know what happened in the Chamber back then. You don't know what's going on here." She pulled on his shirt. "You can't give me anything to hold onto."

"I'll give you whatever you need if you'll just believe in me," Hitsugaya said, his voice a mixture of sternness and desperation. "I saw you after Aizen...I saw you better and well and in the care of Yamamoto. You don't make that up. They're playing tricks on us here, but we're not dead. We just aren't."

Momo raised her hand to Hitsugaya's face and caressed his cheek. "No... you won't," she said sadly. "I do believe in you; that's why you're here." She was referring to this mental prison she may have fabricated him into, not Landel's itself, though he had no way of knowing that fact.

She let her hand fall back to her lap and she bowed her head. "Ne, Shiro-chan? You know, I'm never going to be the girl I was before." Her eyes moved back and forth a couple times. "I think, in a way, she might really be dead."

The feel of her hand against his cheek made him feel uncomfortable, but he wasn't about to let that be known to her. He still wasn't sure about how he felt about her, and he wasn't entirely comfortable dealing with it while in this prison. Still, she needed him, and he wasn't going to shun her now.

"We all have to grow up sometime," he said. "I don't know what Aizen did to you. I never knew him like you knew him. And I don't know what it's like to be betrayed like that. But you're going to get through this, damnit. Stronger, maybe, but you're going to learn how to deal with this."

"Maybe," Momo echoed.

"I'm... broken, Shiro-chan. Little jagged pieces. I'm sorry if you get cut on them," she told him, her gaze down.

"I'll still do what needs to be done. Don't have much else left."

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