Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Utter Chaos ❯ Losing Sight ( Chapter 5 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

was feeling oddly reckless. He knew it was stupid. He knew he would be punished, set back yet again from his next visit outside, but he couldn’t help it. Seeing the sun always emboldened him, especially to the point where he could not resist at least trying.

And the days after he was reintroduced to the darkness were always horrific. As he had been blinded by the light was he now blinded by the utter dark. The blindness brought hate so deeply intense, that movement was impossible for some hours at a time. It poured through his veins in a toxin more potent than acid. Always, he was struck anew by the unfairness. That he should be locked away in a world of darkness, only to kill and sometimes eat or sleep. This was no life and he knew he was due something better! After seeing the sun shining on dewy grass, he knew what joy was! And he knew he deserved that ecstasy. There was no reason for her to deny him of it! None!

It was irrational. He wasn’t strong enough to stop her yet. She was training him, oh yes, but he wasn’t even close to her level. Especially when he was so blinded by the darkness. But the hate bleeding through his whole body would be satisfied with nothing less.

He could still the image of her body torn apart in the grass and it wanted that vision to become truth. So he would try.

He could feel the doorknob turning through the impossibly still air. The hinges creaked slightly as the door swung partially open. For a moment, there was absolute stillness. Nothing moved. Then, inch by careful inch, the door pushed slowly open. He had never had such patience. Never waited so carefully. He wasn’t even breathing, just in case she might hear and identify his position.

She stepped halfway through.

He moved.

Lightning fast and the door pinched her between the edge and the doorway. Blood burst from her forehead but he was still moving. The door bounced inward once more and he pulled her arm downwards whilst simultaneously kicking the door back towards her. Her head collided with it again as his other hand came down in a slicing chop, shattering her wrist. He yanked her forward, through the doorway, by her broken wrist, but she was much taller than he was. She slid her feet forward, kicking his ankles out from under him, both of them landing on the floor-him on top of her.

“How dare you,” she hissed, rage evident in her every nuance.

Barely taking a breath, she was already rolling on top of him, pinning him to the floor with her sheer weight. He kneed into her inner thigh as hard as he could and gave another hard yank on her wrist. She hissed again, bringing her skull down with ringing force onto his, smashing it painfully into the concrete floor. Stars swam before his eyes and he could have sworn he heard the crunch of bone.

He kneed her again and continued pulling at her broken wrist. With his free hand, he grabbed at her hair, pulling it backwards. Her free hand reached and slid easily around his wrist, grasping tightly. She twisted the whole arm out, flipping him onto his front and forcing him to relinquish the hold on her wrist.

“I will show you what pain is for this.” She was laughing now, a hysterical, maniacal sound that grated on his ears. Her voice was harsh and rough. Ugly. “I won’t kill you. You know I won’t. But you’ll wish you were.” She laughed again. “By the time I’m through with you, you’ll wish you were.”

And that’s when she pulled the delicate hook from her belt loop, smiling manically all the while.

*********************************************************** *********************

Momo was both frustrated and very, very nervous. She had tried to follow Toushirou that very day, but he had already left. She had gone to school the next day, hoping for better luck, only to discover that he wasn’t there! Had he ditched just to avoid her? It was possible, if he was desperate enough. She tried not to worry too much (not very successfully, of course) about him actually being that desperate.

And then he hadn’t come to school the day after. That’s when she’d truly started to worry. What if something had happened? What if she was already too late? She’d struggled against the very idea. Maybe he was just sick. Maybe he needed the time to think. It wasn’t necessarily too bad.

On the third day of his absence, panic set in. Momo honestly could not remember anything coherent about the day, only that Toushirou was not there again.

Something was wrong. Something had to be wrong. There were simply too many coincidences. She had to do something. She’d let it go on too long already. She’d said she would do whatever it took, that she would help him, and she’d done nothing!

She left school, her every thought consumed with what could possibly be happening to Toushirou. She practically ran (though she couldn’t honestly say) to where she knew he lived and ran up to knock on the door. She knocked and knocked and knocked.

No one answered.

“Toushirou? Toushirou, are you there? Toushirou, come to the door!” Momo was half-sobbing, half-yelling at the door, desperate to see him, to know that he was okay. “Toushirou, answer the door right this minute!”

The apartment door across the hall opened. Someone Momo didn’t know stepped out and looked at her a bit worriedly. “Are you looking for Hitsugaya Toushirou?,” the mystery lady asked kindly.

“Yes, I am, have you seen him?” The words burst out of her, hope there for the first time in hours.

“I’m sorry, he moved out of there over a month ago.”

“What?” Momo was staring now, utterly shell-shocked. He had moved? Why? “He moved?!” She was incredulous.

“Yes.” The girl was confused, apparently not understanding Momo’s reactions.

Momo ignored it. “Do you know where? Please, tell me where!”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know. We never did get to talk much. He did seem oddly in a hurry when he left.” She shrugged. “But as far as I know, he didn’t leave a forwarding address or anything.”

“Do you know anyone he might have told? Anywhere he might have gone?” Tears were pricking the corners of her eyes. This had been her last chance! Her only lead and final resort! Now she had no way to find him.

The lady shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more.”

“No, that’s okay. It’s-it’s not your fault.” She hiccupped and stared at the floor awkwardly. She stood there only for a moment before racing off, the tears finally coming.

Day four.

************************************************************ ********************

When she woke, Unohana knew things had gone badly wrong. The best clue was that her voice was horribly raw, followed quite closely by the bandages wrapped in an odd mimicry of Hitsugaya-Taichou’s injuries as sustained from Aizen, traitor.

Ukitake was sitting at her bedside, waiting patiently for her to wake.

“How’s Hitsugaya-Taichou?,” she rasped out breathily.

Ukitake smiled faintly, unsurprised that the patient came first. “The same, mostly. He’s between fits at the moment.”

“And my squad members?”

“All fine, though relatively exhausted. And worried about you.”

“And you? How are you Ukitake-Taichou? And what happened?,” she finished, finally relaxing back against the pillows.

“I’m fine.”

He was obviously lying, if the black rings around his eyes were any indication. And that his front was covered in blood, though that could arguably be from other sources. She filed it away to berate him for later.

“As near as I can tell, you were nearly finished with the procedure and ready to start the investigative part, when Toushirou went into another fit. I don’t know what exactly you were trying but it seemed like he pulled you along for the ride. You screamed right along with him. The other shinigami were really starting to panic when you started mimicking Toushirou’s wounds too. They managed to help you and I staved off Toushirou. They were afraid you wouldn’t wake up and we’d have two of you.”

Unohana sighed. It wasn’t much of a sound, mostly because she didn’t have much of a voice by that point. “Things are much worse than I thought,” she began. “The kidou I was using was brand new and highly experimental. It was my own design,” she added on the end. “The basic idea behind it is to synchronize reiatsu with the patient in order to replicate the state of mind. That way, the doctor, me in this instance, would be allowed entry into the mind in order to diagnose the problem.”

By the end of her speech, Ukitake’s face had gone utterly white, the exact shad as his hair. “Retsu, you idiot!,” he hissed at her angrily.

She blinked at him, surprised. He hadn’t even used an honorary.

“Entering the mind of a possible coma victim and mimicking it?! Were you trying to lose us another captain?! Because you were well on your way to doing just that! You had no idea what the consequences might be! We might be desperate but we’re not that desperate!” All through his furious speech, he’d managed to keep his voice in almost a whisper to prevent being overheard.

Her response was equally swift and just as furious. “You would have done the same and you know it, Jyuushirou-san!” She, at least, would not forget. “What kind of healer do you think I am? To have thought of a possible answer and not tried it? Do you expect me to work so hard only to let him die? You know very well that we cannot afford to lose him! And I will not hold back only because of unknown dangers! Certainly, there could have been consequences and there could just as easily have been none! There was no way to know for sure and even if I suspected, it would not have stopped me.” Her face was flushed and her voice whip-like as both stared ferociously into the other’s eyes.

Silence ensued, broken only by their panting breath. He had no real response to her. There were words he could have said, but he knew that they would not sway her. For now, he relented.

“Well, what did you find out then?”

Unohana gestured towards the pitcher of water first. She didn’t think her throat had ever been so sore.

He sighed, pouring her a glass and allowing her to drink before continuing.

“I was able to see very little. His mind essentially rejected me. I think it’s that he’s a private person who doesn’t share or trust easily. I’m not one of those few. So once he sensed the intrusion-unconsciously, I would say-he kicked me out.”

“So it was a useless venture, then.” Ukitake’s voice was perfectly even, almost a warning.

Unohana narrowed her eyes at him. “No, I would hardly say that. I didn’t say I saw nothing, after all. I was able to narrow down some of the possibilities. The problem is either in his mind or in the soul itself. Whatever it is, it’s like a poison, only less tangible. His mind makes it real and that’s why he has those fits. And now we know that only someone he’s close to, someone he trusts, can enter his mind.” She stared at the bed, before looking up to face Ukitake. “I can only count two that Hitsugaya-Taichou would trust that well. And there’s no guarantee that it would either work, or that they would be able to return.”

Ukitake sucked in a quick breath but held her gaze. “And that’s only to achieve a diagnosis.”

“I’ll ask,” Ukitake finally said.

“Thank you,” Unohana managed to whisper before she leaned back against the pillows, slipping into well-needed slumber.

********************************************************* ***********************

Hinamori felt oddly calm. For some reason, today was different. She knew it was, even if she couldn’t quite pinpoint why it was different. It simply was. And above all, Hinamori trusted her instincts.

Or did she?

Everything was so fuzzy these days. Memories, thoughts, people, everything passed by in an indistinguishable haze. Usually, it irritated her. She was angry at the neglect. She was furious that no one would tell her anything!

She was downright enraged that Aizen-Taichou was, apparently, no where to be found, because he still hadn’t rescued her from this horrible prison. She hated that Toushirou hadn’t come to save her either! He would know better than anyone how devastated she was without her captain! Why wasn’t he here?

Had he betrayed her too?

The thought had her shooting to her feet, adrenaline racing through her entire body. She attacked everything indiscriminately, overturning beds, slamming chairs, shattering glass. Everything fed the rising fury and she cultivated it, destroying her surroundings fairly completely.

She stopped, huffing and out of breath in the center of the room.

Where had the destruction come from? Where was her bed? Her seat? And why didn’t she have any food?

Oddly though, the ruined room seemed to stabilize her and she slid into a sitting position on the floor, admiring it. The day was so peaceful. She couldn’t quite explain why, yet she knew it was…

******************************************************* *************************

Momo endured days four and five in pure torture (it was the weekend). She was positive that Sousuke had stopped by at some point, but she’d refused to see him. The only calls she was taking, the only person she was seeing (other than her mother) was Toushirou. She waited horribly, hearing no word and despairing further as each moment passed. It was the first time she could say that school was truly a welcome change of pace.

She walked into school on the sixth day half trembling with anxiety and the other half dead from exhaustion and misery. Scanning the grounds quickly, she caught no sign of Toushirou anywhere. Her shoulders slumped in discouraged disappointment. She trudged off to class, utterly dejected.

And so it was that she ran straight into someone. Someone with suspiciously spiky white hair.

“Toushirou!,” Momo exclaimed in shock. “Toushirou, you’re ok!” She wrapped her arms around him promptly and hugged him as tightly as she could. And then she was crying again, unable to hold in her relief that she wasn’t too late. “Toushirou, Toushirou, you’re ok!,” she whimpered.

He pushed her off, giving her the strangest look. She didn’t understand it at all. Was it… Was it disgust?

“Of course I’m ok. Silly girl, what did you think, I was dying or something?”

Why was his voice so cold?

His face mocked her. It mocked her whole being down to her very tear-stained cheeks. She realized, with a humiliating blush, that many other students were watching them.

It was exactly what she had thought.

She didn’t answer.

He leaned forward, smiling that horrible smile at her. “Don’t try to follow me again.” He paused and his voice suddenly took on a darkly ominous tone. “Or I’ll punish you worse than this.”

And then she understood with crashing certainty that he had disappeared on purpose so as to cause this embarrassing scene.

She fled, heart breaking yet again.

*********************************************************** *********************

Pain.

Hitsugaya should have known that the answer would have been found in the pain.

But he could do it now. He knew. He knew and he would do whatever it took to keep her safe. And he was.

He had already begun.