Promise

promise noun – 1: a declaration that one will do or refrain from doing something specified 2: a legally binding declaration that gives the person to whom it is made a right to expect or to claim the performance or forbearance of a specified act

(to) promise transitive verb – to pledge to do, bring about, or provide

xXx

It was winter when they came for him.

Hinamori Momo was dying, again. He'd been expecting it, there was no way to pretend otherwise. Too many years had passed since she'd left Seireitei and been reborn for him to fool anyone into thinking that he stood on their hill for any reason other than waiting. Still, the news struck him like Hyourinmaru's claws through his chest.

It was an experience he'd only suffered through once very early in his bankai training, and it nearly felt much the same as he stood in the freezing cold watching his breath congeal into mist hanging in the air. The weight of the dragon was nearly solid against him as his mind turned the words over and over inside of his head. Hinamori-fukutaichou has only a few hours to live. Tensai or no, Hitsugaya Toushirou could scarce understand the words even as he nodded his head at Matsumoto's soft words.

She was gone in a flash, her shunpo carrying her well away from the hillside where the temperature had already dropped lower by half a hundred degrees. Hitsugaya only closed his eyes and raised his face to the weak sun, frozen grass brittle and snapping beneath his feet as his balance shook for a moment. It's not right, was all he could think. Hinamori was dying. Never mind that she wasn't Hinamori anymore, she wasn't Momo and he wasn't her Shirou-chan. She was dying and, wan though it was, the sun was still shining.

"There should be rain," he whispered up at the frozen sky. "There should be clouds and a raging storm."

It would only take a moment for him to reach out with his other-self, to touch the wisps of cloud high above the whole of the Soul Society, to skim the dragon's power across the water in the air and make it heavy, dark and wet and raining down. A little more to turn it to ice and coat the world in ice, just as frozen and numb as he felt inside. But he didn't. he reined the dragon in, reined himself in, and the temperature steadied, rose, leaving him feeling flushed with it.

Frozen was where he wanted to be, but the air around Hitsugaya didn't chill again and stayed on the rise, almost balmy despite the still-cold world, if only because it had nearly frozen around him moments before. He breathed in once, out slowly, and eyes opened, deep and almost bottle green as he stared up again for another heartbeat. Then Hitsugaya turned and found his way back to Seireitei and the promise that waited him there.

xXx

Death was nothing new in the world of shinigami, and yet the murmur that rose in the 10th and the 5th seemed to echo across the city of the death gods. It was always there, Hitsugaya realized as he made his way back to his division. Underneath the clash of zanpakutō, the whisper of robes and haoris, the sweat and the blood, the curses and prayers. It was that they were, death was, and Hitsugaya had never before felt so monstrous.

It was almost ironic that Matsumoto wasn't staring at him in abject fear as he entered the 10th Division's office. At that, it might almost have been preferable to the pity she gave him as he sat down at his desk, one hand reaching out in a habitual caress. Fingers grazed the smooth glass of the picture frame and Hitsugaya closed his eyes, knowing without looking that it was her inside of it. One of the few pictures he'd ever taken since dying, and the only one that he'd willingly smiled for with Hinamori.

If the Hitsugaya in the picture was smiling straight at the Hinamori in the picture it was to be expected.

"Taichou?" It wasn't often that Matsumoto Rangiku was sober, in any form of the word. But when he finally looked at her, clear blue eyes met his back and her lovely face was solemn. "Yamamoto-soutaichou has already sent the Kido Corp to prepare a gate. He said that you already knew about the arrangements."

Hitsugaya nodded once, short and sharp, his eyes dropping. She was his fukutaichou, yes, but she was his friend as well. He was afraid if he saw too much sympathy in her eyes he would fall to pieces before he'd even left Seireitei to keep his promise. "Hai," he murmured. "Tell him that I'll be ready to leave shortly, Matsumoto."

A request to be alone in the form of an order, but the lieutenant didn't mistake it for cold-heartedness. "If you need to talk, taichou…" But he shook his head.

"I'm fine, Matsumoto. I knew it was coming." He sighed, the frame suddenly in his hand and facedown on the desk. "Go tell him, Matsumoto. I have… I have to clean this up."

He didn't wait for her to leave before he had the picture back in hand, and then the small cut crystal peach that had been his paper weight for a century and more, the lamp with glass styled roundabout in plum trees against a fiery orange background. He was careful, never taking the chance that anything would be damaged. But there was no denying what he was doing, or why, and he heard the hasty steps of his fukutaichou out of the office and felt her reiatsu flare into a hurried spate of shunpo. She was well away, probably talking to Yamamoto-sama, by the time Hitsugaya had the most visible remembrances of the girl he loved taken to his quarters put away.

There was only one thing left, but it was the most important thing he had. Far more important than a birthday gift or a lamp bought on a whim. More important still than the picture he'd treasured since she left him eighty-seven years before in too much blood and too much pain and hardly enough time to say goodbye, much less beg her to stay. His face twisted with the memory, the agony ever present as he unlocked the single drawer of his desk that he let no one near with a sharp burst of his reiatsu.

It was a letter. Yellow with age and brittle at the edges, well worn from how many times he'd opened it and read it, the one piece of proof that he hadn't imagine those three weeks. Proof that if those three weeks had never happened then she might well be alive. He might be dead, but Hitsugaya doubted that. No matter that he was no kido master and his hakuda was only adequate for his rank, he was a sword master and there were few who could challenge his blade, shinigami, human or hollow. If she hadn't—

"Bette not to think about it," he murmured absently to himself as he unfolded the letter, slim fingers dancing gently across the familiar creases. It was short, simple, sweet; much like the girl who'd written it to him two days before she'd died and then lived.

I love you, Shirou-kun. x Hinamori

He breathed in once, the air again cooling unto freezing as he folded it back and put it back in the drawer. No matter that he should take it out, put it away where she would never see it. The odds of her ever coming across it were slim to none. Even without Hyourinmaru's assistance no one would be able to get into the drawer short of demolishing it, and then they'd still have to try and cross his own ice for the scrap. The kido he used was powerful and lined as it was with his own reiatsu, Hitsugaya felt safer knowing that if anyone were to read it ever again it would only be him.

He left it there as he headed through the short hall to his private quarters, almost grateful that they were connected to the offices as they were. This way none of his shinigami would see him and ask him the inevitable, "Are you okay's?" that would drive him mad with distraction.

Of course he wasn't okay, who could ever have thought for a moment that he might possibly be? Not anyone who'd lost someone they'd loved, in life or after it. Not any of his fellow taichou's, because the ones that knew what he was going through pitied him and Kurotsuchi wasn't even human enough anymore to begin to understand emotion. Not Matsumoto, or Abarai or Izuru. Her drinking buddies sloshed around often enough to know that he hadn't been okay for years. Decades, really. Almost the entirety of the Gotei 13 could tell at a glance that he wasn't okay. Hell, even Kurosaki would agree that he wasn't okay, and that one was so wrapped up in Kuchiki Rukia that it was hard for him to see past her for anything, including leading the 5th.

But that was unfair and Hitsugaya knew it. Kurosaki had been heading the mission when Hinamori died—Hitsugaya had only gone as backup. And… And he hadn't really been needed. If he hadn't gone, then there was a change that she might still be alive with him, instead of dying from a mortal life span in the real world. Eighty-seven years, and Kurosaki still could barely meet his eyes for the guilt he felt.

Hitsugaya had tried more than once to convince the younger (and how strange, he mused as he shrugged his captain's haori off, that he would call the other taichou younger than himself) taichou that it wasn't his fault. He'd told Kurosaki—Ichigo—that he knew exactly where the blame lay.

With Hitsugaya Toushirou.

Neither of them it seemed, was willing to let go of the guilt, whether they'd earned it or not. It was at his most cynical moments that Hitsugaya knew with all of the intelligence he could muster, logic unfailing as he stared at it straight faced and sober, that it was neither his fault nor Kurosaki Ichigo's—That it was Hinamori Momo's own fault. But that didn't make him feel better, just as he didn't truly expect his assurances of Ichigo's blamelessness to be listened to anyway.

He sighed softly as he shrugged clean robes on and lifted Hyourinmaru to secure the zanpakutō back across back again. His haori remained hanging from the chair next to the wardrobe. He didn't need to take it with him; he hadn't been a captain when he first met her, he wouldn't be a captain this time, either. Of course, he hadn't been a shinigami all those years ago, but he wasn't going to her deathbed just to see her. He had a promise to keep.

xXx

The arrangements included complete privacy at the gate—even the Kido Corp was supposed to be sight unseen. Yamamoto-sama had been understanding when Hitsugaya had asked for it several decades before as Hinamori's mortal life entered its dusk years. But, and he wondered whose idea it was, the gateway was far from empty when he arrived in a few easy shunpo from the 10th division. More along the lines that there were only three people waiting for him, and all of their eyes far too… understanding. He could only assume that Kuchiki or Matsumoto had told Kurosaki exactly what a mortal lifetime did to a shinigami, because those amber eyes were more sorrowful now than they'd been just after her death.

"What are you doing here?" he rasped out as he closed his eyes against the sudden pain washing over him.

Admitting that the other taichou had never known was the closest he'd come so far to truly feeling what sheer, stubborn willpower was holding back. It didn't feel good and he leaned on Hyourinmaru for the icy numbness he needed if he was to survive the next few hours and the results of a simple promise. On the heels of the ice came the fury that was quickly tamped down by the dragon inside. Fury that they would come, fury that they would dare, fury that they would intrude without ever once considering that it was so much easier for him to do this all alone, always alone, with just his otherself there to help him along.

It was Matsumoto who broke the silence. "Taichou," she said, soft and hesitant as she began to realize that it wasn't merely the soutaichou's orders that were keeping Hitsugaya alone in this. The fact that he'd left his captain's haori behind made her stop for a moment, unsure of what to say.

"You could have told me," Kurosaki said, and Hitsugaya looked at him bleakly.

"Why?" he asked, the anger suddenly gone. "So you'd hate yourself even more? So you'd know how much I envy you for what you have?" His eyes flickered to Rukia and then back to the other taichou. "It wasn't your fault," he grated out. "I've told you before, I say it again now. It was not your fault."

Each word was bitten off, and Ichigo flinched a little at the force behind the words. There was a piece of him that believed it, but the greater part of him could only hear the tone of Hitsugaya's voice, the lack of conviction, the need for it, like he was trying to convince himself that it wasn't Ichigo's fault. He would have said something but for Rukia's hand suddenly in his own, holding hard so that he bit down on the urge to speak.

"It wasn't your fault either, Hitsugaya-taichou." There was conviction there, and Rukia's voice was as no nonsense as ever. She believed it, it was evident. "It was more Hinamori's fault and bad luck than anything else. You shouldn't blame yourself—yourselves—for it."

"It wasn't anyone's fault. It was everyone's fault." Hitsugaya was content to leave it at that as he ran a hand through his hair, rearranging the white spikes into something even more messy than they had already been. "What's done is done; there's no need to discuss it."

He made for the gate that was waiting, the gate that would take him to her, and stopped at Matsumoto's hand on his arm. "You don't have to do this alone, taichou," Matsumoto said softly.

"I promised." He didn't meet Matsumoto's eyes, only stared resolutely past her to the gate with empty eyes that darkened by the second.

Still, the frown could be heard. "It's a promise she doesn't even remember."

His body tensed and his eyes shot to hers, reiatsu suddenly flaring there. "I keep my promises," he told her. His voice low and intense and almost like the growl of his zanpakutō. "Especially to her."

He didn't say another word as he shoved past her, her fingers slipping free of his arm of their own accord, as if his words, his vehemence, has driven the very strength from them. He didn't stop walking until he was safe and alone, the doors to the gateway closed behind him and no one able to see the way the very thought of not keeping his promise tore at him inside. But Hyourinmaru was a steady presence at his back and inside of his head, gentle rumbling murmurs that did more to calm Hitsugaya's frayed nerves, numb them into ease and set him on the path to the real world.

xXx

His first thought as he stepped into the outskirts of Kyoto wasn't what he'd expected. He'd thought that there would be hurt, pain, sorrow. Even fear, because he had no idea what seeing her again would do to him, would do to her, if it would do anything to her at all. And he was terrified of being confronted with the evidence of the long and happy life he knew she'd already lived. But it was ironic that it was annoyance and disbelief as he found that the weather continued to defy him on the living plain.

Cold, freezing cold, but clear skies—no storm, no gloom, no nothing but an almost cheerful winter afternoon that was settling to evening.

His mood darkened again in an instant as he turned to orient himself to the hospital where Hinamori Momo was dying. It wasn't far off. In fact it was close enough that Hitsugaya opted to walk instead of using shunpo to flash step his way there. This was not an event he wished to hurry, and weaving his way thought the crowds of mortal beings was almost therapeutic as he reminded himself over and over again that death was the way of life. That every thing on the earth was dying from the moment that it had been born. Hadn't he died, after all? And twice to boot.

It still wasn't the same, and Hitsugaya knew it. With the cold shadow of the hospital cloaking him he knew that it was nowhere near the same. He had died, yes. He'd been born, yes. But none of it was like this, it was completely different because none of those times he'd been leaving behind someone who loved him, someone who would remember him, someone who would miss him. Truth be told, he'd not lived very long in either life, whether the first time he'd been born as a new soul out in the Rukongai or when he'd been born into the mortal coil some three centuries ago.

Thoughts of his own mortality did little to still Hitsugaya's unease. Even as he passed through the doors of the hospital, literally instead of trying to pretend he was something other than what he was, he found his fingers clenched, clutching at his shinigami robes, worrying the midnight dark cloth, as if wearing a hole in it might save him from what he was about to see. What he was about to do.

Lack of corporeal form or not, the acrid medicinal made him wrinkle his nose in distaste. He'd always had a sensitive nose—when he casually told a patrolling squad, "I smell a hollow," he meant it with all seriousness. But this—this—was horrible. Alcohol and machined ozone layered over a miasma of illness and death. Not matter how they tried to cover it, and the many tiny air fresheners scattered on desks, hanging in halls were evidence of the attempt, it smelled nothing like the clean air outside. Instead—flowered death. His lips quirked a little at that, some faint humor could apparently be found no matter what.

Hitsugaya quickened his steps, ignoring the many pluses lingering in the halls, the rooms, the lounges. They weren't his concern and he knew that the stationed shinigami would deal with them. He'd make a point to mention it to one of the Karakura gang when he returned to Seireitei, just to be sure, though he doubted it was neglect on anyone's part. Hospitals always had a higher number of souls waiting to be sent on, and any number of deaths could have happened in the hour since he was notified. There was no fault for that.

He threaded his way into an empty stairwell and ascended quickly, though one step at a time. Too many steps in between the first and sixth floor, but no getting around it unless he wanted to brave being trapped in an elevator with humans and souls alike. Small, metal death boxes. He thought not.

The sixth floor wasn't empty, but it was quiet; a small space of sanity inside the hell that was a hospital. It was clean, softly lit. There were no loud voices, even from visitors. They all spoke softly, voices wafting from bedsides as Hitsugaya passed each room, his eyes never wavering to look left or right. No; he knew exactly where he was going. Her reiatsu was like a breath of sunshine in the middle of so much death, even if it was woven within it anyway. So sweet, he hadn't felt it for so long. A smile broke out on his face even as he had to stifle the sudden sob that welled up in his throat, stopping and staggering for a moment before pressing himself against the wall to his right, hand clutching the material over his chest as he tried to breathe easy, tried to breathe at all around the sudden lump in his throat.

She was dying. Oh, gods, she was dying.

He tried to block it out, to forget what exactly he was doing here. He had to pretend that everything was okay, if only for a little, even if he felt like he were dying inside. Something that a captain of the Gotei 13 would never admit, unless he was Kyoraku Shunsui, drunk on sake and chasing after Ise-san. But something that Hitsugaya Toushirou would ever admit it, to anyone else much less himself. Except that he was admitting, the faint whisper across his lips pleading for death to come for him first before he had to watch her—his best friend, his lover, his beloved—die in front of him all over again.

The spike in her reiatsu was enough to make him lurch away from the wall and in the general direction that he knew she was in. she was dying; it would happen soon.

xXx

There was a time when Hitsugaya had tried to fool himself into thinking that he could prepare himself for her death. It wasn't like he wouldn't know beforehand, even if it weren't very long. It wasn't like he wouldn't get the chance to say his goodbyes—he was the one sending her on, he would always get a chance to say goodbye. There wasn't a single shinigami in Seireitei, much less stationed in Kyoto, that was foolish enough to even think of sending the woman Hinamori Momo had become on to the afterlife. He'd even managed to convince himself that the pain would be fleeting—the sight of her with her human family wouldn't stir him more than to pity their loss.

He was wrong.

If seeing her die again was so close to killing him, it was only salt to the wound to watch her aging husband mourn her bedside, children and grandchildren and even the distinctive wail of a great-grand, each crowded into the small room so that he threaded his way through them like thread through a needle. Better to take extra care not to touch them than to alarm the mortals as they wept. And there, completely oblivious to the people around her, the man who clung to her wither, wrinkled hand, was Hinamori.

Momo. His lips formed her name unbidden. Her eyes were closed and she looked… peaceful. Not dead, but dying, and very close to it. He could taste her heartbeat on the air, a faint flutter that was coming slower and slower as he came alongside the bed, opposite her husband, whom he ignored, and between an older woman and a child, whom he managed to cast sympathetic glances upon before looking back to her.

He'd seen her, one, very much like this. Still and silent, pale and deathly fragile. The last time her life had been held to with machines; this time the machines sat idly in a corner, and he knew that what notice he'd been given was only due to her family's mortal desire to end her suffering. The thought danced around inside of him, cold and angry and sarcastic, and yet he could understand it. He did understand it, easily, because he would never have wanted to prolong anything that hurt her, not even for just a moment.

But choosing her death over her life gave him one more reason to despise the man she had loved, had married. The man she had born children to. The man who had everything Hitsugaya ever wanted. It nearly choked him with anger and envy, except that it wasn't his fault. It wasn't anyone's fault, just pure luck, blind luck, dumb luck, bad luck. Some luck, even if it was different between the two of them.

There was a moment when he thought he'd wait, but it was gone in the time it took him to blink. The chain of fate inside of her snapped with an inaudible sound that he felt more than heard, stretched across his soul until it ripped apart to leave the girl he'd loved standing opposite him on the other side of the bed and body and husband. None of them realized it yet; the machines that had sustained her life had also monitored it, and with them removed it would take someone noticing that she wasn't breathing, that her skin had turned ashen and wax-like, that her flesh was cooling because her heart no longer beat within it.

"You shouldn't be here." Her voice was as clear as a bell and Hitsugaya closed his eyes, holding back a shiver as it washed over him. So long since he'd last heard her speak to him, heard her speak at all. It was like finding heaven at her deathbed.

"Hinamori," he breathed her name as his eyes opened, depthless and shifting green as he watched her. His need was thrown down in front of him, his heart bare and waiting for the answer he wanted so desperately to hear: his name spilling from her lips.

Too much to hope that she remembered—there wasn't even a spark of it in her eyes as she looked at him, and Hitsugaya bit his lips against the sudden pain of it. Rare. Too rare, he knew, for a shinigami to recall how they toiled the mortal coil and then slayed through their afterlife.

He only knew of two shinigami who retained their lives, though it was apparently par for the course in those with such immense reiatsu to burn such mortal things form their minds as they traveled to Soul Society. As far as Hitsugaya was concerned, Kurosaki Ichigo didn't count. Most of his mortal life happened after he became shinigami, and his chain of fate was already so warped by the time he became a permanent resident that there was no comparison between him and the fact that Hitsugaya Toushirou could remember being alive just as well as anyone outside of Seireitei.

He'd theorized about it, once, a long time ago. It had been the strangest thing to find himself wandering the Rukongai for decades, powerless and aimless and no real desire to have either. Then Hinamori had found him and everything had changed. He'd learned that his place in life was at her side, in this one or in any other. She dreamed of being shinigami; what choice did he have but to follow?

He supposed that, if anyone had ever asked him why he could remember it all so clearly, he might have told them that it was simply because his power slept by force of will alone until it was too much to ignore, until something awoke it. But sometimes he thought that maybe it was nothing but that force of will that brought it about. No one could ever claim that Hyourinmaru was like any other zanpakutō in Seireitei, and Hitsugaya often wondered if he'd called the dragon to him when he needed a way to follow the girl to the Academy.

Sheer force of will, and nothing else. It was something that he couldn't see in the eyes of the girl who stood before him now. Maybe there had been once, but it had never been enough. Hinamori's will had always broken in the face of those stronger than hers. Obaa-san's. Aizen's. His.

It wasn't that she wasn't strong, it was only that she was lost, and Hitsugaya tasted blood as he knew that she would remain lost, at least to him.

He smiled gently at her knowing that it would only frighten her more for the unfamiliar expression on his face. "There's no need to fear," he murmured as he drew Hyourinmaru, the seal at the base of the hilt already glowing and demanding to be pressed against the soul to move it on from mortal death to mortal afterlife. "I mean you no harm."

The look she gave him nearly made him laugh, and if his heart wasn't hurting so badly he might have indulged in it, but as it was he could barely breathe enough to stay standing. He twisted his wrist to that the blade of his zanpakutō was angled along his arm and no longer remotely threatening.

"I'm here to help you move on," he told her as he stepped closer, within arms reach.

"I don't understand," she whispered before her eyes rolled to the side and she saw herself lying still on the hospital bed.

Bad luck (and how cruel luck could choose to be) that someone noticed that she was dead just then, and the soul of Hinamori Momo trembled, tears blinding her eyes as they lit upon her own soulless body, ears ached at the rising wails of her family. Hitsugaya knew that being told her life was long and happy would hold no consolation for her, it had never helped with any soul he'd ever performed konsō on. He merely leaned on Hyourinmaru's strength, the naked zanpakutō's purpose forgotten in his desire to protect her from the grief that was rising in the hospital room. The dragon responded without hesitation and, wings or no, Hitsugaya found his reiatsu wrapping around them to lift the two souls higher than the hospital until it set them gently down on the barren roof.

There were tears streaking her face, and Hitsugaya forced himself to let her go. He wanted so badly to comfort her, but he couldn't. she didn't know him, didn't remember him, and he was… threatening. A stranger wielding a katana; it was nothing less than a nightmare for the newly dead soul.

"Hinamori Momo," he said evenly, but the blankness in her deep brown eyes was all that answered him.

She shook her head and brushed at her eyes. "That's the second time you've called me that. My name is Mayumi. Amano Mayumi." She gave a short but precisely polite bow and he took a step back.

It startled him to realize that this was the first time he'd ever thought of her as someone other than 'Hinamori Momo.' Startled, shocked, hurt. Oh yes, hurt, because she was the one asking him to call her this… Mayumi. Hitsugaya's breath escaped him even as she straightened, the dry cheeks making him think of the child she'd been, the red-rimmed eyes forcibly reminding him of the woman she'd become after Aizen's betrayal. So beautiful, still beautiful, stealing his breath away.

"Mayumi, then," he murmured as he held Hyourinmaru in between them. "My name is Toushirou. I'm a shinigami; I'm here to help you move on."

"Move on?" Her voice wavered and he cringed inside at it.

He nodded. "To linger is to ask for danger."

She stared at him, deep, wide eyes steady. "I'm dead, aren't I?" He nodded, the very affirmation killing a piece of him, knowing that Hinamori Momo was forever gone. "That was Kioshi, wasn't it?"

"You husband," he said softly, putting a name to the old man who no doubt still clung to his beloved's hand. "Your whole family is there, Amano-san. They all wished to bid you farewell on your final journey."

It was a very near thing, Hitsugaya found as his lips tried to twist around into his customary smirk, every desire to do so present. Her final journey. Ah, well, he reasoned. The easy lie that might be truth, if only for a time. Anything to convince her to let him send her on so that he could abandon this desolate hospital roof and try and leave the sight of a family of Hinamori's that didn't involve him long behind. He held a hand out and waited patiently for her to take it, but take it she did.

"What's it like? The afterlife?" she asked, and he wanted to press his lips against hers, taste the innocence that clung to her soul like ice to his own.

He smiled and kept his hands on Hyourinmaru, not trusting what he might do if they were given the chance to touch her freely. "Peaceful," he told her with only the barest of hesitations. "It will be peaceful."

He didn't give her the chance to ask anything more, or the forced lies he would have to feed her. Instead he only lifted Hyourinmaru and pressed the brightly glowing seal to Amano Mayumi's forehead and watched as she stared at him with surprised, nearly frightened eyes, and then disintegrated into a dozen, a hundred, a thousand tiny black pieces that coalesced into a butterfly. It trembled on the cracked roof for a moment, wings shivering before beating once, then twice. Then it was in the air, fluttering erratically upward.

Hitsugaya watched it, wondering if it would wing its way swift and sure to the heavens and the tiny gate through the middle dimension. Sometimes they didn't, he knew. Sometimes the butterflies themselves lingered for a time, seconds, minutes. No longer than that, almost as if the souls needed one last chance to say goodbye to their lives, their world. To anyone left behind. Hers promised to be one of them, hovering in the air before him as he watched it, ocean eyes unreadable and dark with pain.

Then it fluttered towards him, making him take a sudden step back. Not towards him, to him, and Hitsugaya held his breath as the delicate creature lit upon his cheek, the soft wings brushing his nose, his brow. He closed his eyes as it lifted after a heartbeat, heading for the sky unerringly, and he lifted a hand to his face to touch the place where Hinamori's soul had touched him. Tiny black feathers clung to his fingers as he looked at them, brushing the bits of her reiatsu and watching as they shifted and glittered into faint specks of light that sifted down through his skin.

He looked back up, searching, but Hitsugaya couldn't find the tiny black butterfly. Instead he found a white speck floating back down to him, and he reached up to touch it thinking that it might be another piece of her reiatsu. It was cold and melted at his touch and his hand fell back to his side as another flittered down in the sky. Then another, and another, and a dozen and a hundred till only Hyourinmaru could be bothered to count the snowflakes as they fell on Kyoto. Snow, finally, he thought as he stood alone on the roof of the hospital. Time enough for the earth to mourn her loss with him, and Hitsugaya lowered his face as the melted snow mingled with his tears.

"Goodbye… Momo," he whispered.

He stepped to the ledge of the roof and stared at the city lights, well lit as night darkened the horizon nd darkness cloaked the world in front of him. Fitting. So very fitting. The night for mourning, the white of the snow for her purity. The cloak of darkness for his final request of Yamamoto-Genryusai: Don't expect me back, I don't know when I'll be able to bear it again.

He looked again at the lights of Kyoto, spread out at his feet and beckoning. The world itself asking him to lose himself in his grief, the promise kept and nothing left to stop him from finally running from the pain. Another look, down at the ground so far below his feet. And he leapt.

xXx

It was some years later when he thought he might be able to survive the vacant stare the shinigami who was once Hinamori Momo would no doubt turn on him. He'd ignored it for so long, the thought of her, the dull roar that was Hyourinmaru locked inside of him, the singing of his nerves when he could sense a hell butterfly somewhere near, the sting of reiatsu from human and soul and shinigami alike. The only times he could bear thinking of thinking on what he'd left behind was when he'd stumbled across stray hollows in the mortal world, and once an Arrancar of middling strength.

No doubt that Seireitei had known where he was, that he was alive and… Alive, at least, if not well. That battle would have screamed any and all of it across the world even if he hadn't bathed a piece of Australia in ice.

He paused as he stepped through the south gate, no one troubling him even though it was midday and shinigami were swarming about Seireitei. It was comforting and familiar all at once. Hitsugaya nearly smiled. He should report in to Yamamoto-soutaichou, but the old man would have known that he was back the second Hitsugaya stepped through the gate into Soul Society. He would be safe enough in returning to his division and learning who had taken command in his absence, or if he was still taichou of the 10th.

A handful of flash steps later Hitsugaya was perched atop his once-office at the tenth, staring down at the near empty courtyard. The shinigami he saw as he descended without a sound weren't any that he recognized, but he was well aware that missions happened and transfers weren't uncommon. With any luck the lack of familiar faces was due to that rather than a hollow getting the better of them.

He set his face into a blank scowl as he entered the office without knocking or making his presence known in any way. Not much had changed. Matsumoto's desk was still overflowing with paperwork, though the still wet brush and half full outbox gave the impression she was actually working. Said impression was destroyed utterly by the open bottle of sake and half empty glass next to it. But she was trying, which counted for something (not that he'd tell her that.)

His desk was clean. And still his, he realized, as he saw the lamp of fire chased plums where it normally sat, the gilt frame with the picture of him and Hinamori in place of honor at the center of the desk. The reminders of the girl who now had only existed and would never exist again.

It hurt, but not as much as he'd been afraid that it would. He would live, he would survive, and one day he would die again and maybe wake up remembering none of this.

He pulled Hyourinmaru from his back, the sash slipped easily off as he laid it on his desk, a visible notice to anyone who entered that the taichou had returned, if the sudden flaring of his own reiatsu didn't. he could feel others' in response to his own. Matsumoto first and foremost, just as he'd expect. She was nearby, but she wasn't headed towards him as he'd half expected. Ukitake and Unahona were the second and third, though he would never be sure whose had flared first, though bother were from the direction of the 4th. Then the rest of the taichou's one by one, Kurosaki's included, and a few others that he vaguely recognized.

Enough of them that he was sure if he remained where he was he would be smothered to death by their well wishes and welcome back's, two things that he truly didn't want to suffer through. He made for his escape, Hyourinmaru left behind, and headed for the roof of the 5th, which was quite probably both the first and last place anyone who knew him would think to look for him. He mostly didn't care, the odds of someone actually coming here were slim, unless it was Matsumoto, and she was one of the few that he thought he might truly want to see.

She never came, though he knew she knew where he was. Matsumoto skirted the edges of his sensitivity, her reiatsu coming near and then flitting away. Too many times for him to think that she was merely running errands, but enough for him to realize that she was actually looking for him. Almost as if she didn't believe he would be where he was. It was amusing, he realized as she disappeared from his blunted reiatsu for the dozenth time only to reappear with a sharp burst moments later.

But the fact that she was farther away than before was annoying, especially at the rising reiatsu coming down the sloping roof towards him. He sat up, the sun shimmering from beyond the gable with just enough force to make him wince once and blink a few times before he managed to see the shadowy figure that had slowed to a stop in front of him.

Hinamori.

Her name seemingly echoed on the air, but he knew that he hadn't said it out loud, and knew that she wouldn't. He could only stare at her, knowing her as easily now as the last time he'd seen her, and the time before that. Nothing had changed, nothing had healed. But the pain didn't cripple him this time, even without Hyourinmaru to lean upon, the dragon's ice to numb himself in.

She spoke first. "Hitsugaya-taichou." A single breath between them that might have broke his heart if he'd not surrendered it a long time ago. He couldn't speak, could barely breathe.

And then she smiled, and he wondered if somewhere along the way he'd managed to die and wind up in the heaven some of the humans spoke of, because Hinamori was smiling at him again.

"Shirou-kun," she said, and then she was kneeling in front of him, one hand warm and alive on his cheek, and looking so pleased, so very happy, and maybe a little put out with him. "You should have waited for me."

"You remember."

She arched one dark brow. "I promised I would, Toushirou, and I keep my promises, too."

xXx

And you all thought it was all about Hitsugaya's promise, didn't you? :P