AN: All right so here is the last chapter of Awakenings. It is, unfortunately, not betaed. Though I have combed over it several times myself, if anyone wants to go back over it for me, I am more than happy to accept the offer. My current beta is overloaded with schoolwork and real life things and so it would be several more weeks and possible Christmas break before we would be able to sit down and go over it together. Because of this, I am looking for another beta to help her with the workload of my writings if anyone is interested.

It has been a long journey, far longer than I had originally thought it would be. A big thank you to everyone who has commented, reviewed, offered suggestions, and put up with the delays in updates. The constant comments and encouragement are what got me through this monster and kept me going.

Thank you so much and I hope you all enjoy this last installment to Awakenings.

Chapter 9

He stayed with her through out the night. Unohana and the healers had worked with quick efficiency and besides a few bandages along her arms and underneath her sleeping yukata, Hinamori looked normal. Her skin was a bit pale from her fresh blood lose but otherwise it was as if it was a regular night's sleep that she was rising from instead of one brought on by the drugs and lack of blood.

For all of that he was comforted by the steady rise and fall of her chest as he had not been before during her long coma.

Things were changing again.

He wasn't sure where these changes were going to take him. He had not given it any thought. Everything since her awakening had been set in discovering what held her captive in her mind even as her body healed, before it had been riddled with the thoughts of when she would wake, if she would wake.

He was no longer completely sure of the path that he would walk. He had no direction, no goals. He had been putting his life on hold as awaited her return to it. Now she was awake and things were finally starting to look as if they would change. He was not walking out on blind faith. Hinamori still had miles to walk before he would consider her healed. He wasn't even entirely sure if she would ever completely heal. At least now, however, he knew she was willing to try. With that, in time, perhaps she would let herself live again.

That was all he could allow himself to hope for.

He had watched with careful eyes as the healers had diagnosed her and had only left her long enough for them to clean the wounds that lay under her robes. The chair that he spent so much time in during his rare free hours during and after the war was settled besides her bed once more.

Here in the quiet of the fourth division and within the protected walls of her hospital room he allowed himself to think and to plan. He had brought several outlines to work on; things that would help him and Matsumoto plan the division's future. They had dreamed and thought of what they would do once the war was over and now that the last pieces of the puzzle were falling into place, he felt as if he could reliably work towards those goals. Where they wanted to take the division, what they needed to work on, their strengths and their weaknesses the still remained even two years after the war. The last two years had been focused on recovery and survival after the war but now that was changing.

But even the quiet scratch of the pen in the still silence of the room had distracted him. The outline was half formed thoughts and plans that they had only started to put together before he had set his paper aside. Instead, he folded his hands in his sleeves and returned to watching her rest. She looked peaceful, for all the stress she had to have placed on her body that night. It was a pleasant change from the deathly quite of her coma.

She woke slowly, her hand moving to cover her eyes as she groaned softly in the pre-dawn light. He set aside his pen, pushing aside the papers that he had been steadily working through once he had managed to put his restlessness aside several hours earlier.

He watched as she blinked several times before groggily peeking around the room. She turned to face him. Her breath hitched for a moment before she tried to push herself up. He went to stand but she shook her head rapidly, eyes widening in warning, and he settled himself back into his chair. She tried again and finally managed to push herself up on her shaking arms and settle against the headboard.

They watched each other for several moments before he stood. He moved the chair to a position directly in front of her and sat once more. She swallowed before offering him a hesitant smile. He watched her carefully. They were on even ground now and that seemed to ease the tension in her.

"What happened last night?" He might as well be the icebreaker. She had all the information that he wanted and he was through with games.

She sighed and looked down, gently rubbing the material of the blanket between her thumb and forefinger. He let her distract herself for several minutes, her gaze thoughtful. He wanted to give her the time to think that she needed but he didn't dare leave the unanswered questions between them any longer.

"Hinamori," he broke the silence again.

She sighed before looking up. Her eyes were clouded with the various emotions that were running through her, the most prominent of them being fear. It was his turn to sigh. He reached forward and caught her hand, pushing aside his own inhabitations to offer her what little comfort he could.

He was surprised when she slid her fingers through his, her grip tightening to an almost desperate hold. She swallowed again, "Hitsugaya…. I," she stopped, her voice cracking on the last note her expression tense.

"Take your time."

"When Matsumoto left I started to think," she said quietly, this time she was the one who broke the silence. Her gaze was locked firmly on their joined hands as she refused to look up and meet his gaze. She looked up for the briefest of moments her gaze skittering across his, before ducking her head once more. "Things always hit me harder when I am alone and …,"she sighed, "I was tired of making you all worry so much."

His eyes narrowed in displeasure.

She sighed, "I… I can't explain it," she said after a few moments hesitation.

"Last night you said you could never reach me, what did you mean?" He could read her nervousness, could read the signs of tension in her small frame but even after half a night of wondering he could not pull the information he needed to understand that cryptic comment. There were too many variables.

He knew she was scared. The fear in her eyes and the slight tremble of her hand told him that much. But he was not certain if it was him she was afraid of or herself. The tug on his fingers and the way she was doing her best to anchor herself to him by holding to his hand as tightly as she was told him that she was willing but not sure which step to take. He could read the signs but he could not completely understand the message.

She looked up startled, her eyes going wide with surprise. "I did?"

He nodded.

She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment before sighing, "I dreamed a lot of things Hitsugaya, some of them I remember quite clearly and some of them I don't remember at all." She looked down, "they are vague senses and shapes that only appear when something triggers the memory. Captain Unohana said I was repressing them as a form of defense against the knowledge. I… I am not sure." Her breath hitched for the briefest of moments. Her fingers tightened on his hand and he ran his thumb across the soft skin of her wrist in reassurance, "there was one dream in which you were running away from me," her voice got lower with each word. The further she got to the end of her sentence the more he was forced to lean forward to catch her words, "and no matter how hard I chased you I could never really catch you."

She paused for a few moments, her eyes lowering so he couldn't see whatever emotion she was concealing from him, "there was also a dream where I chased Aizen as well but I always fell into a pool of blood screaming just as my fingers grasped the sleeve of his robe."

This time it was his fingers tightening around her smaller hand in offered comfort. This was what the haunted shadows in her eyes had meant.

"Aizen is dead Hinamori." His voiced remained gentle but he could not hide the steel that creped into his voice with that man's name. She looked up, startled. "Ukitate and Ichigo were the ones to finally bring his treachery to an end. I was there but my contribution was more of a distraction to those who would interfere with the actual battle."

She swallowed, "was it a fast death?"

He reminded himself that he had been her captain. That she had not seen the carnage the man had caused or the lives he had taken. She remembered the kind man who had made her tea and talked about his dreams with her. It had been a lie. But it was what she had known. "As fast as Ukitate could make it at that time." Which was the truth or as much of it as he would give her. Ukitate has chosen the manner in which Aizen would die, had carried out the plan to the letter. In the end he and Ichigo had destroyed a man who had ruined so much of their worlds.

It had not been a pretty death but it had been a just one. And it had been quicker than he would have made it had he been given the choice.

"The war… how many did we lose?"

"Too many, half of the ranks were wiped out early on and even as they were filled we continued to lose many." She was not the only ones who was haunted by dreams.

"I dreamed of battle sometimes," she admitted, "but it was never anything like what that must have been."

"Battle?"

Se nodded, "yes. I dreamed of attacking you again," her eyes lowered, "only sometimes I would actually attack you and win." Her free hand clutched the bed covers; again, she refused to look at him. "In those dreams I would have your blood on my hands and there was nothing I could do to remove it… others… others I failed and Ichimaru got to you before I could stop him."

"Why Ichimaru?" he could only wonder how much she had known before Aizen had stabbed her.

"He killed my captain," she looked up with watery eyes, "why not you to?"

"I am not dead Hinamori."

She nodded using her free hand to wipe at her eyes, "I know."

He reached up with gentle fingers and brushed at her tears when her fingers faltered. "Do you?" he questioned. She looked at him startled though at his touch or his words he did not know. He drew his fingers back, "Aizen did not kill me in any world, in this one or in the next. I am sorry that the man you knew is gone," again, he let his fingers trail gently over her wrist offering comfort. "But I am not sorry he is no longer among us."

She hesitated for a moment, her mouth opening and closing several times. He watched it play across her features, the hesitation, the warring within herself. "Do you know why he…" she hesitated again, chewing on her bottom lip, "why he did what he did?"

"At best we can tell? He wanted what power he could gain and he found a new way to gain it, he was after the Royal City," he said sitting back a bit, to give himself time to explain. "He wanted the power that comes from the hollow, death god fusion, and he wanted the god-like status that control over such a place would give him." She looked stricken, her face paling a bit more with each word; he wanted to comfort her, to keep this knowledge from her. He could do neither. "And as far as we can tell, he wanted to destroy the death gods."

A single tear slid down her cheek, she reached up and wiped it away quickly, her motions jerky and full of anger, her reiatsu spiked and he squeezed her hand. "I am sorry."

"I should have seen," she murmured, her gaze moving past him and out to the window beside her bed, "I should have realized something was off."

"No one could have predict…"

"He was my Captain," she cut him off, jerking her hand from his to motion angrily; "I spent hours with him a day." She sniffed, wiping at her red eyes, "I should have known something was wrong," her voice dropped to a low whisper.

"And what of those who knew him longer than you? Of Ukitate who trained him and led him to be the captain we thought he was?" He would brook no argument with her on this. She looked up, startled, her eyes wide, hands frozen in position around her face as she gaped at him. He gentled his tone, "Hinamori you did all you could have done. You trusted and believed a man who by all accounts deserved that trust. You are not to blame."

She dropped her hands and her eyes lowered, "I didn't trust you," she whispered. She hiccupped then.

He hesitated a moment, before reaching out and grasping her hand once more, again her fingers slid through his willingly curling around his larger hand. "Do not trouble yourself over the past.'

She shook her head, refusing to meet his gaze, "I… I attacked you," she curled her free hand into a fist, "with my own two hands."

"And I forgave you the moment you did so."

Her head shaking became more violent, "how could you? I… betrayed what friendship we had."

"Look at me Hinamori," he coaxed, tugging gently on her hand to get her point across. "Hinamori," he said again when she refused to look up. Her wet lashes parted and she peeked up at him, her eyes cautious.

"Do not trouble yourself over something that happened so long ago. I did not blame you then and I do not blame you now."

"I am so sorry," she whispered. "How could you even look at me when I woke?" Her voice cracked then and the tears she had been holding back slipped down her face, forming fresh tracks down her cheeks. He froze, uncertain as to what he should do. She pulled her hand from his, using her hands to hide her face as her shoulders shook against the oncoming assault.

"Hina… mori…" he didn't know what to do. He had thought, naively, that she had spent all the tears that her small body had to cry.

She leaned forward and he reached up to awkwardly pat her shoulder, she peeked between her fingers and he hesitated a moment longer before shifting forward in his chair and moving to sit on the corner of her bed. "Don't cry," he said, reaching up to pat her head with a gentle hand.

She leaned forward and rested her head on his shoulder, a bold move for her, and he continued to pat her back. He shifted a bit and she fell forward a bit more, using him for a rest, he wrapped an arm around her back holding her awkwardly.

Her tears slowly ebbed and when they were nothing but mere sniffles he began to talk. "I spent two years wishing for nothing more than you to wake," he said carefully, choosing his words slowly. "There were some days when I wondered if you would come back at all. It was not a pleasant time, watching you slowly waste away to nothing, knowing that I could have done something to stop this but was unable to."

She looked up, eyes red, and her lashes wet with her tears, again he gently wiped the tears from her cheeks. "As I said, I forgave you long ago. It was never your fault. Both of us were played by a man who knew what he was doing. I cannot blame you for following your instincts and trying to revenge the man you loved as your captain. The blame was long ago placed at Aizen's feet and there it will stay."

Fresh tears pooled in her eyes and she ducked her head again. "Thank you."

He grunted in return, not entirely sure that he liked her thanks, not here. "Why did you run?"

She sniffled once, before sighing and looking back up at him. She watched him for several moments before reaching up and smoothing the lines between his brows, he blinked at her, startled. "Because I was putting lines here," she said softly, letting her hand drop away from his face, "because I was nothing more than a burden to everyone. A child they could not leave alone for any period of time for fear she would hurt herself."

She swallowed, "because I do not have the strength to fight off the worst of my dreams. I am not strong enough."

"You are stronger than you think you are."

She shook her head, "once I might have been. But something changed while I was asleep, I can't find the fire that was once so prominent. I am just a shell of the girl that used to be here."

He was the one shaking his head this time, "you have lost sight of yourself that is all."

"You sound so sure," her tone was almost wistful and he felt the first stirrings of a smile start. She was trying so hard to keep everything in perspective now, to understand, when all she needed to do was concentrate on healing. The rest would come with time.

"I am." And he was. He could sense in her reiatsu, hear it in Tobiume's call to her each day. She was hiding behind her fear and her uncertainty. As soon as she allowed herself to step out from behind her shields, when she embraced the woman that was starting to peek out from behind the fear, she would know it to.

She frowned, "how can you be so certain?"

"Tobiume still calls to you," he motioned to her soul slayer, which hung on the wall next to her bed, "she would not if you no longer held the fire that calls to her."

She did look wistful then, "I can't hear her anymore."

"You're not listening." He would be blunt in this, the captain coming to the fore before the man. The captain held the knowledge she needed now even as the man held the comfort she clung to.

She frowned, "you don't think I have tried? That I want to go through life without being able to hear her cry any longer?"

"Stop trying." It was such a simple solution that he had used for so many of his subordinates who were struggling with the call of their soul slayer. When they stopped trying, when they let themselves relax and listen to the call that had always been there, they would finally reach the understanding they needed.

Otherwise, they were just fighting what was already there. Hinamori was doing this now.

Her fingers twitched and her eyes narrowed, "you are very frustrating."

His lips curled up in a small smile. Her eyes lit up at the look before she looked back down at her lap. "Will you send Matsumoto my apologies for worrying her?" her words were low and soft with uncertainty once more.

He leaned back, settling in his chair once more, letting her reclaim her hand he crossed his arms and shook his head, "you may tell her later this morning."

She looked up startled. He frowned. "Did you think we were going to make you stay here?"

Her expression turned sheepish.

"For better or worse your part of the tenth division now and while that may change once your strong enough to move on, you can not escape Matsumoto." Her lips twitched up into a small smile and he felt his own curl upwards. "Though as your vice-captain she will have plenty to say to you tomorrow."

She nodded, her expression easing a bit further as she leaned back into her pillows, her eyes dropping slightly with exhaustion. He frowned; she had worn herself out again. It was partly his fault but he would have to fetch Unohana now. He sighed.

"Unohana wanted you to drink some stuff if you woke," he said, standing, "I will see if I can find her."

She nodded, "thank you," she said again, her expression turning serious.

He shook his head, "don't thank me Hinamori," his words were soft. He gave her just enough time to let them sink in, her eyes widening slightly before he moved out of the room, his captains cloak trailing behind him.

Unohana was working on paperwork, a steaming cup of tea sitting on her desk, her graceful fingers sliding through the papers neatly. "Hinamori is awake."

She looked up, her expression serene though he was certain that he had startled her. "I will be there shortly," she assured him, standing and moving across the room to grab a bag of something. "I will need a few minutes to examine her."

He nodded, following at a slower pace.

"Is everything all right now?"

He turned in time to see Matsumoto walk through the doors.

"It will be."

"Good." She moved to stand next to him, arms crossing as she adopted the same posture of waiting that he was in.

He frowned for a brief moment. She had known and she had thrown it in face. He had not expected her to know, had not prepared himself for the knowledge that she would be able to read him so clearly, for all that he had lost the ability to read what she did not let him see. Had not expected her to notice the silent clues that had only become visible since she had gone into her coma, did not know exactly how he felt about her knowing how felt towards her. His brows lowered further in thought, he would have to deal with it later.

It was unusual. He had always known, from the moment they had first met, what was going on behind her brown eyes. What thoughts were troubling her. She had kept so much from him, done her best to protect him even as she destroyed herself in her quest. They would have to start anew.

That didn't bother him as much as it might have once. As long as she was willing to give them all the chance that they needed to help her heal, as long as she was willing to stay and to try, he was confident he could manage whatever she asked of him.

Unohana's examination was quick. She walked out a few minutes later and offered them her serene smile before disappearing around the corner. He turned to his vice-captain and quirked a brow at her in question, she shook her head. "I will see her later today."

She smiled. "She doesn't need me right now." She called over her shoulder as she followed Unohana's footsteps out the door.

He joined Hinamori in her room once more, settling his tall frame into the chair beside her bed. She looked at him, her eyes full of sleep. "Hitsugaya," she said, softly, turning to face him, tucked under the covers as a small child would have been.

He let his brow rise in answer to her question.

"About last night," she started and he shook his head to interrupt her.

"I already said that you shouldn't worry about the past."

She frowned, "I said some things… I …"

"I do not expect anything from you," he said, leaning back in his chair watching her carefully.

She watched him for several long moments before nodding, her eyes sliding shut with his words. "Thank you."

He sighed, "Stop thanking me Hinamori."

Her lips curled upwards into a small smile, but she made no other noise, her breathing softening and deepening. He watched her for several moments before standing; he tucked the blanket a bit more firmly around her shoulders before turning. He was startled when her hand shot out and caught his wrist.

He looked down, eyes widening with shock.

She didn't open her eyes, keeping them firmly shut, "stay," she whispered, her voice soft with the need to sleep.

"You need to rest."

Her eyes cracked open then, "please."

He settled back in the chair, "I will stay," he agreed.

She curled her fingers back into his, her grip tight, as if assuring herself that he would keep his word. He watched her sleep, her small frame rising and falling with each breath as her dreams finally caught up with her.

He hoped that this time, at least, they would bring her peace.

He stayed there for the remainder of the night. It was only two or three hours until dawn and he was certain that the sedative that she had been given would only last for a few hours. She was peaceful this night, her body never moving from its position, her fingers curled under her cheek where they had strayed once her grip on his hand had relaxed in the night.

He stood just as gray light began to pour into the small room. He moved to the window, his eyes taking in the ever-gradual lightning of the sky.

The sun was rising.

He looked up beyond the treetops. It would be a beautiful sunrise. The gentle hues and colors that would soon follow the rising of the sun would become a signal that it was time to rise and start the new day.

It had been a long time since he had been able to appreciate the beauty of the morning.

A small hand slipped tiny fingers between his and he looked down, both brows rising in surprise. She laid her head against his arm, a soft sigh escaping her lips. She was too short to rest her head against his shoulder as she once had. She relaxed against him in sleepy contentment.

"Its morning," she said, tightening her fingers around his.

He squeezed her hand in return. "So it is," he agreed, content to simply stand with her, her fingers curled around his, he felt his lips move into his first real smile since before the war had started, "so it is."

The morning had finally come.

- The End