Characters: Hitsugaya, Hinamori.
Pairings: HitsuHina, onesided HinaAizen.
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Soul Society arc.
Timeline: Between Soul Society arc and Hitsugaya and Hinamori's conversation in 224.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

He still had nightmares, of finding her the way she had been.

She had been face down on the ground, blood washing out towards the tips of his waraji and staining his tabi a deep crimson color, the liquid lapping like a red sea. It was a miracle Hinamori hadn't drowned on her own blood.

Her eyes had been open, fixed in a frozen expression that Hitsugaya couldn't even begin to describe, a bleakness that had swallowed him up.

Surprise.

Betrayal.

Anguish.

The look that came when dreams were destroyed.

And then, Hitsugaya had gone down too, in a rain of ice and black blood, and all he could think was that he had failed her, and he was going to die in the place that had already become a tomb for forty-six men. It would soon become forty-eight.

Hitsugaya woke up to a dark ceiling, and wondered why he wasn't dead.

.

His bandages itched. Hitsugaya wore his collar loose and open all the way to his waist to make the arduous process of changing and reapplying his bandages performed by one of the Fourth division every six hours easier for all involved parties. It had been two since the last.

There was a small black line appearing from beneath the bandages. Hitsugaya had been healed but was still weak and the least amount of stress was enough to cause a small amount of blood to appear. In four hours, the line would be a blot, and Hitsugaya would be lightheaded again.

She was unconscious, lying as if dead. The darkness of night somehow impressed itself upon the room, weighing down heavily on Hitsugaya's thin shoulders, like gnarled, bony hands. The tick-tock of a clock sounded from the wall as Hitsugaya sorted out his jumbled, screaming thoughts.

I always said I'd protect her…

…Even though she was five years older and half a foot taller…

I vowed that anyone who cut her skin would end up dead.

But here she is. She might as well be dead, and I couldn't stop it.

Her eyes didn't flicker; no blush of life appeared on her pale, sunken cheeks. If not for the fall of her chest, a faint reverberation like the toll of a bell, Hinamori would be dead.

Hitsugaya's breath caught in his throat; his heart hammered uncontrollably in his chest.

His entire arm shaking, Hitsugaya reached out and caught one of Hinamori's limp hands in his own. "Get well, 'kay, Hinamori?" His light voice was soft and hoarse, and cracked on her name like ice thawing momentarily only to deep a second later.

Hitsugaya cursed the helplessness that made him incapable of doing anything but speak, as she laid there dying.

.

Almost as soon as the beseeching words, supplications sent up to an unaware god, left his mouth, Hinamori started to stir.

The air dropped a good twenty degrees in the room, freezing and stagnant, as Hitsugaya struggled to breathe.

Her eyelids were twitching like shutters or the lens cap of a camera clicking on and off, on and off. Hinamori's head tipped slightly to one side.

"Hinamori?" Hitsugaya whispered, shaking uncontrollably. "Are you awake?"

Hinamori's heavy lashes started to rise off of her skin; bleary brown irises and onyx pupils took a long time to focus but then settled on Hitsugaya's face, slow to register the presence of another near her, slow to recognize the soft pressure on her hand.

"Sh-Shiro-chan…" Her voice came like a whisper of a breeze on a long, lonely summer night. Her loose black hair fell over her face like strands of pure ebony silk.

Hitsugaya felt a lump lodge in his throat, as a strangled, shaking smile appeared on his face. He couldn't speak.

But Hinamori could. The rasping whisper rose again, bringing with it promise of an early winter that year. "Where…am I…"

Hitsugaya remembered to breathe. "You're in the hospital, Hinamori," he explained in soft tones. "You're being treated for your injuries."

The next question made Hitsugaya's blood run cold.

"Where…is Aizen-taicho…"

Hinamori whispered the question maybe two or three more times. Always in the same tone, soft, anguished, hopeless. It might have indicated denial, but at the same time, Hitsugaya had to wonder if maybe Hinamori did know the truth after all.

The words maddened Hitsugaya, reached in and ripped at his insides with a lack of mercy that made the cruelty all too breathtaking. Nothing could be more inhumane in its methods of driving them both into madness.

He hated Aizen for what he had done to Hinamori.

And he hated Aizen even more for what he was still doing to her.

.

The hallway was silent. There wasn't even a clock to drive away ticks and tocks. Everyone else was asleep, and it still wasn't time for Hitsugaya to have his bandages changed. Nothing but the silence to keep him company.

A creak on the floorboards alerted Hitsugaya. He wasn't alone in the hall anymore.

His light blue eyes turned round, and his face went even paler white than before.

Hitsugaya hadn't been aware that Hinamori, in her condition, could walk.

Her long hair was unkempt and down over her shoulders; the loose white kimono swayed and swished around her, quivering in a non-existent wind. Hinamori's eyes were wide open but glazed. They saw but they did not see.

"Hinamori…" came a choked whisper. Hitsugaya gulped and wondered if he was having another nightmare. It certainly had the feel of his nightmares.

Hinamori was walking towards him, unevenly, her slight legs quaking and her skinny knees trembling, like a palm tree in a thunderstorm. She lurched dangerously from side to side, as though she would topple over at any moment like a top-heavy ship on the wide blue sea.

The seconds passed by as though they were years instead. Hitsugaya thought he had spent an interminable eternity watching Hinamori stumble and trip towards him, numb, his feet rooted to the ground as if they were made of lead.

Finally, Hitsugaya persuaded himself to move one foot forward. At that point, Hinamori collapsed.

She had been just in front of him when it happened; Hitsugaya's knees buckled under Hinamori's greater weight as he caught her, his hands around her back. His injured ribs ached under the pressure.

Hinamori was limp in his arm, her head on his shoulder. Dead weight, flaccid with no sign of life. For a moment, Hitsugaya considered calling for help.

In the end, he half-carried, half-dragged Hinamori back into her room, her right foot dragging on the ground as he went, a soft, scraping sound made by toenails against wood.

.

The moon was an especially luminescent white that night, pure and pristine. Hitsugaya couldn't remember the last time it had been so white.

He knelt by the low window, staring up at the moon and the twinkling star in all their red, white, blue and yellow glories, providing him for no answers to his questions. His elbows were crossed on the sill, his head against his arms.

The phantom memory of the feeling of the bare flesh of her arms still registered on his skin, like a spring rain or the sensation of plum blossoms, soft and smooth, being drawn across his mouth.

Hinamori had hated plums.

A soft mumbling drew Hitsugaya's attention.

Hinamori was whispering softly, on the low bed. Her eyes were closed, her limbs unmoving, but her lips moved in the darkness, shadows rippling across her face from the epicenter of the activity, like a rock into a pond.

The whispers were just beyond Hitsugaya's ability to understand, like Hinamori was speaking in a language that was close but not quite what he could comprehend. Like she had suddenly begun speaking a foreign tongue.

With a painstaking slowness, Hitsugaya rose from his sitting position. He closed the distance between himself and Hinamori's bed, and lowered his head over her mouth, one arm braced on the close side of the bed frame and the other on the far side, his ear perked.

Her words were starting to become more clear. Hitsugaya could understand here and there, but it didn't make any sense.

She was saying…

A hand gripped his shoulder. Hitsugaya jumped in shock, whirled round, and glared.

The fourth division member smiled apologetically at him. "Hitsugaya-taicho? It's time to change your bandages."

As Hitsugaya left with the young woman, he realized that he had forgotten what Hinamori had been whispering to the unknown spector conjured by her mind.