Pain.

He had felt so many types of pain before.

He'd been cut, stabbed, sliced, hit, beaten, bruised, crushed, and the least consequential of all of them; he had been the brunt of many a 'short' joke.

Toshiro Hitsugaya, however, had never known true pain until he saw his childhood friend on the ground in a puddle of her own blood, quite possibly murdered by the man she had always admired and perhaps even loved.

Helpless.

The young captain of the Tenth Division had felt helpless before - haven't we all? - but never more so than he did at that time. When it was clear that she was not going to die, it was hard for him to watch. She was tormented in her dreams, depressed in all of her waking moments. She never teased him anymore - she hardly even looked at him - and there was no more of the twinkle in her eyes. The girl hardly ate; it was all the young Toshiro could do to stay sane throughout it all.

Hate.

Never before had he hated anyone as much as he hated that man. Sosuke Aizen. Aizen had betrayed all of Soul Society, along with Gin Ichimaru and Kaname Tosen. But it was still Aizen who drew the full force of Toshiro's hatred, because her condition was all his fault.

There were a lot of firsts when it came to what Aizen had caused. The pain it had caused her in turn caused Toshiro to hurt worse than ever before; the first time he'd ever felt like his very essence was being torn apart at the seams. He felt, for the first time, completely and utterly helpless - the most helpless man in the Soul Society. And it caused him to truly understand for the very first time what it means to hate someone with every fiber of one's being. The one first, however, that he realized would always stay, even if the others should fade, was that she was his first love. First and only.

And all he had to do, Toshiro told himself, was sit and wait until Momo Hinamori finally realized that he would never, ever leave her.