damned_institute | Day 37: Sun Room

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Day 37: Sun Room

Joe had read some of the larger notes stuck up on the bulletin board when the announcement came on the intercom. All things considered, this Landel guy didn't even seem so bad. Even if these people were held here against their will, he was certainly nice about it.

Apparently, the new patients - including Joe - were to hang around in the Sun Room or go to Arts and Crafts with the kids. Well, there was plenty of information on the board, including maps and descriptions of monsters, for Joe to prepare for the nighttime, when he could seriously get going on fighting his way out. He could look for where the boss would probably be waiting, or where his V-watch might be, and figure out how to fight the monsters. In fact, he had plenty of time to work all that out... but this the first time he'd had to really relax since he got his powers. So it couldn't possibly hurt to enjoy the calm period, could it?

The red-head stepped back from the board, and hopped back onto a comfy-looking couch to digest in the sunlight. He reached up to pull his cap down, and sighed when he realized it wasn't there. "Oh well, nothing's perfect. I still wouldn't call this hell."

[free!]

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When her arms went around him, and her cheek pressed against his back, and her voice reached his ears - soft and apologetic, as if she had been the one who tried to kill while not lost in grief, as if she had known everything ahead of time and had let what happened happen - every inch of Kira's body went absolutely still, shocked by a numb and frozen horror.

Hinamori was ... apologizing to him.

But for what?

It took him nearly a full minute to regain control of his voice to the point where he could speak without it breaking. He couldn't bring his hands up to take hold of her wrists and try to pull her away, nor could he disentangle himself from her just yet. He wanted to, and at the same time didn't want to. How could he let her do this when ... why was she doing this?

"Hinamori," he managed, his voice still strained, "I ... you don't have to ... apologize." I should be the one saying that. I should be begging your forgiveness for what happened, for what I knew you would go through, for ever thinking they would keep their promise, for pulling my blade on you when you had no idea.

When Kira went still, Momo tightened her hold on him.

"Yes, I do." She swallowed. "Please, Kira... please don't be like everyone else and absolve me from the wrongs I committed." She felt tears well up, but they did not fall. "I know I was manipulated, but... the things I did, they were all conscious choices I made."

She was dangerously close to losing control over those tears. "So, please... let me apologize. Let me accept responsibility for my actions. Please..." She squeezed her eyes shut. "I'm sorry, so sorry, for releasing Tobiume on you. For not seeing what was going on. For letting Aizen-sa---- for letting myself be blinded to his intentions."

These were not words Kira had ever expected.

The Hinamori he had left behind - the one he had seen only once since she nearly died - had thought she was manipulated by Gin. She had though Aizen was Gin's puppet, not the other way around - the right way around. She never doubted her captain, not for an instant, even after he had stabbed her and left her for dead. Please save him, she had said, her eyes still honest but frighteningly desperate.

He couldn't see her again after that. And now here she was again, apologizing, begging him to let her accept the guilt that he had been ready to shoulder and take revenge for.

Stronger than she had been before.

It was a strange sensation that welled up in him then - awed horror, or relief, or anger, or none of the above, or all of the above. He kept still, staring out the window because he didn't want to look at her just yet. She was apologizing and he hadn't expected it. She was being so different from the girl he'd sworn to kill the traitorous captains for. He still would, of course, but -- but he had to know why she was so different.

"Why?" he asked, then caught himself and spoke again. "You were ... Hinamori - " her name sounded almost strange to him, that's how long it had been since he last said it " - I thought you still ... believed in him." His voice was even more strained than before. Could it be that she had realized everything? That she was aware of what had happened - really aware?

Momo was silent for a long time before she answered. Signum, and the time she'd spent here remembering who she had once been, had helped her greatly in understanding and accepting what had happened. No, she couldn't say that she really understood what happened and she may never know why Aizen did the things he'd done, used her so, but she did understand one very important thing.

"The man I believe in... only ever existed in my own mind," she said, her voice quite hesitant as it was hard to actually voice, but there was a certainty underlying it. "Aizen-sa---" When was she going to be able to not call him that? When was she going to stop thinking of him as her captain. An enemy, surely, but when he had his facade up, he'd been a good captain. It was so hard...

"That man... the one that... almost ended my existence... is an enemy of Soul Society." The tears finally slipped free this time, soaking the back of Kira's shirt. "As the current ranking officer of the 5th... this makes him... my enemy as well." Her voice did finally waver and her words died off as she tried to hold back the sob that was threatening.

So ... maybe she still wanted to believe in him, but she knew she shouldn't. Couldn't. She wasn't driven to have him brought back alive and "freed", to have him saved. She wasn't broken inside, repressing the truth so hard she couldn't sleep and barely ate.

He could feel the back of his shirt getting wet, right where her cheek was pressed against him. His hands tightened into fists as he struggled to figure out what to do, how to respond to her. This wasn't the girl he remembered - but was it the girl he wanted to?

What could he say?

"When I saw you ... you weren't like this." He kept his voice quiet. "Nobody said you were doing better." It was almost too sudden, seeing her like this. "What happened?" Had there been just enough time for her to realize, to come to terms with it? No, she'd had nearly a year ... so why now? Why here?

"...so I've been told," Momo replied, her voice barely audible.

"I don't know what happened, Kira. After he... in the Chamber of the Central 46... I woke up here. I thought I was dead for a while, but then there were the others. All the other shinigami are from a time further in the future than me, so I know, in a way, what everyone thinks of me. Kuchiki-taichou was even here and he ripped me apart verbally, then struck me."

"I don't know what happened, Kira, but I've... I've changed here. This place has changed me." Her arms tightened almost painfully about his waist. "I'm not the girl I used to be," the tears were flowing freely now. "I'll never be that stupid, naive girl again. I-I don't want to be her again."

Her words caught in her throat and she had to pause as she regained her breath. "Aizen-sa-- he came to visit me here. I am tired of the tricks, the lies..."

There could have been a sense of relief in the air for Kira - for knowing that Hinamori was no longer lost and naive - but instead, he only felt hollow and ill. She was hurting, and that was enough to make him feel terrible on the spot. It was only made worse when she said she was from the moment after her near-death - pulled from the past? How could the be possible? And then her tales of this place - that it had changed her. That she had been badly hurt, both physically and mentally. That Aizen, of all people, had been here, visiting her, deceiving her. Again.

The knowledge that she had learned should have made him feel better. Feeling her pressed against him, hearing her breaking voice, made his despair rise up in his throat, threatening to choke him and steal away his voice.

Did she know what had happened, afterward? Had the others told her, or were they from too far back as well?

"Hinamori," he started, trying to find the right words and wondering if he ever could. "I never ... " Never what? Never thought she was stupid and naive? Blind? Deceived? "Have they told you what happened?" He assumed they had, but how much?

She shook her head as it rest against Kira's back. "Not really..." She sighed. "I think they're too afraid. Yamada-san said he had been in Hueco Mundo and that there was a large battle, but that was the best I've gotten. It seems he's from further in the future than any of us, myself being furthest in the past."

Momo finally let go of her friend. "It's very... confusing. I do knwo that I have not been stripped of my rank as I've fears, that I was placed under Yamamoto-soutaicho and that he's been overseeing my division since I'm apparently... unwell." She wiped at the tears on her face.

Unwell was putting it lightly. Regardless, Kira could see why the others would want to avoid telling her as much as possible. He, too, kept his mouth shut for the moment, unwilling to tell her that the entirety of Soul Society went into chaos, that it had only settled down just in time for the arrival of Aizen's Espada. The battle she spoke of was one he hadn't participated in, but he heard of their successes - that the captains who went defeated their enemies but wound up trapped there, leaving the rest of them to protect the living world.

... perhaps he was the only one in the present - furthest in the future. And Hinamori was from the furthest in the past.

It kind of figured.

Now that she had released him, Kira finally turned most of the way around, taking one step back and feeling the windowed wall behind him. She looked terrible, but at least the light was still in her eyes - a determined one, dulled by loss and confusion, but a light nonetheless. It wasn't desperate, and that alone gave him the tiniest possibility for hope.

"There was chaos," he said. "It hadn't really been solved even when I last heard." Months and months ahead of her time ... if he had come from then, would he even be sane? After a brief pause, he continued. "There was never any talk of removing you from your position." Maybe it would comfort her. Maybe not. It had been a valid fear for him as well - after all, hadn't he been right there, knowing nearly as much as they did?

The knowledge that they hadn't been debating stripping her of her rank was a comfort to Momo. Small it may be, she still felt like she had rightfully earned it. She managed a small smile at that, but it didn't last long.

"I think... part of the reason I may be better here than... when everyone is from... is because I've had time on my own to think things through. I haven't been interrogated by the 2nd, I haven't been seeing the looks, hearing the whispered comments among the other divisions," she said. Her gaze dropped. "I've also had others, those who have become friends and aren't shinigami, to talk to. Ones that had no idea what I'd done. What Aizen-sa-- what he'd done." She looked back up. "They know now, because I've told them or they overheard Kuchiki-taichou's reprimand, but I wasn't... judged immediately."

She reached out to take Kira's hand. "Let's sit, okay?" She looked over at an empty seat. "Oh... stay on my right side, please? I want to be able to see you."

So this place had actually helped her. Kira could see why as she spoke. With time to think, other things to focus on than a future full of emptiness and despair, and people who wouldn't judge her immediately, of course she would be able to make realizations and steel herself. And so she was healing now - slowly but surely - among so many others, and among those that she could hopefully trust.

He wondered, very briefly, if it would have been any good for him to have come from that time. But no, just like he'd thought before, he would have likely been mad with guilt. Even if he did recover, the sight of Gin would have ...

As she took his hand and carefully lead him away from the window, Kira frowned a bit. Her eye was that badly damaged? She was blind? He sat down after she did, on her right side as requested, and looked at the damage he could see.

"What happened?" he asked, immediately concerned. Her injuries had worried him before, but now, in such close proximity, he could see the full extent. Her eye looked terrible. What did this place do to her?

Remorse stirred in Momo's stomach as she thought back to that night where she killed Rhode. Best for her to get used to explaining what happened; eventually, Signum was going to question her about it. She could only avoid the knight for so long.

"Two nights ago, a confrontation between another patient and myself escalated. This person, a non-human type called a Noah, had insulted myself, Shiro-chan and the shinigami and effectively threw a gauntlet down before me. I admit, Kira, this place has also made me a very angry woman. I couldn't let the matter go, not when this Noah had already been blacklisted by the shinigami for her continued assault on the other humans here." She sighed and rubbed her temple. "The confrontation or words turned into one of blows and I'm honestly not sure if she kicked me first or if I grabbed her collar before she did that."

She gestured to her cast, emblazoned with the firebird she drew on it, and then motioned to her torso. "With the injuries that I still carried, she got an upper hand before I was able to use my demon arts and regain my sword." A sad look washed over her face. "I lost control of the situation when a human interfered, trying to break it up. He ran right between us as I was attacking and I left myself open to the Noah as I averted my strike so as not to skewer the boy. She took advantage of it and knocked me to the ground, clawing at me. I'd lost a lot of blood,my sword trapped under me and she was going to tear me apart." She closed her eyes. "It was my life or hers. I killed her."

Momo's hand went to her deadened eye. "She destroyed this eye. The only reason it's intact at all is because of the many healing spells I was given. I can see changes of light in it, but that's all." A tear formed again. "I think... I think it's just this gigai that's damaged and I'll have its sight back once we're freed of them, but... I'm not sure."

Kira had never doubted Hinamori's fighting ability - okay, maybe once or twice back in the academy, but did that even count any more? - and so to know that she had succeeded in a battle here when she was weakened against an enemy who had no restraint was a bit of a relief. But to see her so injured afterward - half-blinded, her wrist broken, possibly worse hidden under her clothes - gave him enough worry to override that relief. Even if it was just the gigai, she still couldn't get out of it here. The only way for her to heal completely was to get out of here altogether.

That was their goal anyway, wasn't it? He looked at the damage around her eye forlornly, then down at the cast on her wrist.

"It has to be," he said, trying to convince himself as much as her. "And even if it's not ... maybe the Fourth could help." Could they fix blindness days after the fact? More? He knew they were good at what they did, but he wasn't sure if they were that good. "You did what you had to do. If she was a threat, there was no choice." She'd protected her honor, and a human. He would have done the same, he imagined. He hoped.

"Not everyone is going to see it as that," Momo replied, quietly, pulling her legs to her, seeming smaller than she normally was. "I have a good friend, one that's not shinigami, who is a knight, that is going to have issues with this because the Noah was another patient. I don't know what her reasoning is, but I know she's going to have words and... I don't like having her disapproval."

Momo then sighed. "And the other Noah, the one named Tyki, is going to attempt to get revenge. I don't know when, but I know he's going to try." And with her eye she wasn't entirely sure she could fend him off, but she wasn't going to say that. "I'll find a way, so please don't worry, even though I know you're going to."

She sighed and looked across the room, her gaze finding Ichimaru among the others. "You know... it's only because of Hitsugaya's orders that I haven't killed him. I swear to you, Kira, if he tries to harm you, in any way, I will end him. This truce he and I have had... it's over. I'm not going to let him do to you what he did before."

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Day 37: Sun Room

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