disclaimer: I wouldn't be writing fanfiction if I owned the series. And I wouldn't have patience to continue the series for as long as it has (sadly).

author's note: my take on Hitsugaya/Matsumoto, post-Winter War. inspired by Seynee's beautiful fanfic Antebellum.
slightly miffed that has messed up my formatting.
and hoping that dear reader, you will like this. comments and criticism are welcome!

fast-forward

and I've been a fool and I have been blind / I can never leave the past behind

one.

The first two days after the Winter War, sleeping only at odd hours by her Captain's bedside in the Fourth Division, Matsumoto distracts herself from thinking about one silver-haired man by listening to the muffled gasps for air of another, assuring herself that he, at least, is alive. When he finally awakes – just in time, she thinks, almost selfishly – mumbling Hinamori's name groggily, she reaches over and squeezes his hand lightly.

"She'll be alright." He isn't convinced. She catches a glimpse of despair in his half-glazed turquoise eyes before he rolls over away from her, in a bed that is much too large for his frame. "It isn't your fault, taicho," she whispers, but all she sees is the back view of a child's body, half-broken by guilt, and that threatens to break her again.

Later that night, she allows Unohana-taicho to convince her to return to the Tenth Division barracks to rest. Her eyes are dry and her body demands sleep, but instead she sits listlessly beside her empty bed, a bottle of sake in her hand that she doesn't touch. She barely notices that the hand gripping the bottle is trembling, that her clothes are reeking of dried blood and sweat, and that her hair is matted, uncombed and uncomfortable. There were nights – much too long ago – nights when he had held her until she fell asleep in that bed. She cannot remember the feeling of his arms wrapped around her body, only the sadness that pervades her when she wakes up the next morning to find herself alone. This is no time for grief, she tells herself, half-lost in memory, but she opens her eyes blearily several hours later to dried tears on her cheeks and sunlight glinting through a gap in the curtains.

She washes out the grime and sweat from her hair and puts on a fresh set of clothes. When midday arrives, she watches along with the rest of Soul Society as he is given a traitor's funeral three days after the Winter War, as per the laws of Soul Society. Only Kira, stoic, tight-lipped and understanding by her side, is a comfort to her in the midst of a throng of people who hated him. She fights to hold back the tears which blur her vision so badly that it distorts her last view of him. In the end, she has nothing at all to remind herself of a man that she, at least, had loved for much of her life.

Matsumoto decides that she is done with tears.

She tries to go through the humdrum of life much as she used to do, and rather thinks that she has quite convinced herself to move on. She busies herself with the running of the Tenth Division (although she still skives off paperwork at every opportunity she can), watching over Hinamori when her Captain is absent, and making sure that the self-same person did not kill himself with his atrocious training sessions with his zanpakuto. She has known the two of them long enough to understand something of the relationship between her icy Captain and his icier Dragon. At the best of times, Hyourinmaru drives Hitsugaya Toushirou to the very furthest he can go; at the worst of times, the latter simply breaks, from physical and spiritual exhaustion. Unohana-taicho is not pleased with his state of affairs; neither is she, for that matter.

Nevertheless, she is still there to pick him up from the Fourth Division, every single time.

The training sessions (and their inevitable aftermath) occur often enough that she wonders if Hitsugaya-taicho even notices her at all, beyond his usual grumpiness at her tardiness and her determined avoidance of paperwork at all cost – especially after Hinamori finally awakens from her coma, disoriented and angry that the news of Aizen Sosuke's sentence.

She is forced to change her mind on her birthday, the birthday that they had picked out for her, all those years ago. Gin hadn't remembered – or pretended not to – for years and if he didn't, she certainly couldn't expect anyone else to.

Her birthday was hers and Gin's alone, after all.

Reminding herself not to mope, she hobbles over to her office in the Tenth Division barracks with her usual dreadful hangover and is more than pleasantly surprised to find that Hitsugaya-taicho's orderly office has been swallowed by chaos, in the form of a birthday cake, plenty of cups of sake, and what looked like a quarter of the Tenth Division all vying to join in the celebrations alongside Abarai Renji, Kuchiki Rukia, Hisagi Shuuhei and several other close friends. Her Captain is there as well, but using his height (or lack thereof) for once, has tucked himself safely away into a corner of the cramped office to avoid the general disorder. Later, Matsumoto realizes that Hinamori is absent from the party, but she doesn't mind; it will be a long while before the younger girl can lay her demons to rest.

"I don't remember telling anyone about my birthday," she laughs to Renji a few hours later, half-drunkenly. Almost everyone who had joined in the massive celebrations – including what seemed like the entire Tenth Division – is equally drunk, or halfway there. Except for the Tenth Division Captain, she notes, who has predictably whisked himself away unnoticed in the midst of the chaos.

"Really? I remember you telling us about it before," Renji slurs over his seventh cup of sake. "Couldn't remember the exact date though. He reminded us yesterday though."

"Who?" She asks, astonishment cutting through the buzz of intoxication.

Renji, half drunk, fumbles with his drink instead. Thankfully, Kira, who had dropped in after clearing what he had described as a vast swathe of paperwork, rescues her piqued curiosity. "Hitsugaya-taicho," Kira tells her primly, "made sure that we all knew." His words are tinged with a sadness that doesn't escape her – she has no doubt that Rojurou Ootoribashi is a good Captain, but Kira had known and worked together with Ichimaru Gin for a good many years, and familiarity that is only borne through decades – even centuries – of working together cannot be so easily replaced.

Instead of dredging up memories that are still too recent and bitter at the thought of Kira's previous Captain, she decides to focus on her own Captain – he who hated chaos, noise, and any form of fanfare, but had allowed a day off from work to celebrate her birthday, in the Tenth Division office. In fact, she had never even realized that Hitsugaya-taicho even remembered the date. He would give her an off-day, offhandedly, every year, but she'd always assumed that was simply because she had whined him into complaisance, the way she always did.

The realization sobers her.

She waits till most of the partygoers have passed out or are too inebriated to remember what they are celebrating before she sneaks away to find him. There are three places she suspects he could be; mercifully, she finds him at the second, perched on his favourite evening rooftop spot after stopping by the Fourth Division. Predictably, it is cold as she plants herself a little unsteadily next to him. Equally predictably, he ignores her as she tucks her knees to her chest, complaining a little at the cold.

"I just wanted to say 'thank you', taicho," she says quietly to the sunset.

"Hmmm," he finally responds, and she suspects that is all she will ever get out of him about the matter.

They sit comfortably on the rooftop for several long moments before he unexpectedly breaks the silence. "Matsumoto," he says, and something in his tone – serious but oddly comforting at the same time – prompts her to tilt her head to look at him.

"You'll be alright," he tells her quietly in that rare moment of raw honesty, the determination she sees in his turquoise eyes a far cry from the despair that has lurked beneath the veneer of calm he has hidden behind during the past few months. As though his words could miraculously right the world.

She chokes a little, then.

As she finally allows herself to weep, snorting unbecomingly as mucus clogs her nose; as her Captain pretends that he doesn't know that she is crying, but she feels the air becoming a little chillier, the wind a little gustier; as she sits in the cold on a rooftop that seems many miles away from the rest of Soul Society, she thinks that one day, everything could be alright after all.

"It was never your fault," he mutters, almost indistinctly, echoing her words back at her.

She starts to smile, the fuzzy reddish hues of the sunset hazy through her tears. "I know, taicho. I know."

six.

Matsumoto never realizes how much Hitsugaya Toushirou has grown over the years until the day he leans over to wake her from a blissful nap in the Tenth Division office. It is not a strange occurence; Hitsugaya-taicho has exasperatedly woken her up from countless naps since the start of their partnership as Captain and Lieutenant.

But as she opens her eyes blearily, this time she observesthat the shadow looming over her seems largerthan usual, somehow. "Ara, Taicho," she remarks chirpily. "Are you going through a growth spurt? Now that I think about it, you've really grown these few months!"

He growls indistinctly. "Whatever, Matsumoto." He tosses a sheaf of papers on her ample bosom – long years of enduring what he considered monstrosities and the rest of the male population abundance having made him immune to any consideration of propriety at such an action. (Matsumoto knows – she once took him to task at his habit of doing that, but he'd simply crossed his arms and ignored her.)

She whines as she sits up, carefully plucking the papers from her chest. "Taicho, I'm concerned as your lieutenant! Growing boys need to be taken care of! I need to know if your clothes size has changed!"

Crossing her fingers, she grins snidely to herself as her Captain simply lets the comment bounce off him. She has gotten used to getting away with comments about his height and age that, uttered by others, would get Hitsugaya-taicho's hackles up. Score one to me, she thinks triumphantly, as her slightly red Captain picks up brush and inkpot and continues signing documents in a refusal to entertain her question. He didn't nag about the paperwork again!

But as she watches him put brush to paper, she traces the planes of his face with her eyes. The stubborn set of his chin, borne from years of ridicule and mockery at his age, height, and inexperience, is still there; but his jaw is sharper, and his face has lost more of the roundness of youth. He has grown much taller, too, much to the whispered relief of his subordinates in the Tenth Division (Matsumoto had been tickled to death when she'd caught a few of them placing bets as to how tall he'd be at the end of the year).

The sight of hand moving over paper is familiar. Yet, seated the way he always is behind his desk, green scarf wrapped loosely around his neck and silver bangs falling petulantly into his eyes, he has never looked more like a stranger.

Her breath momentarily hitches at the sight.

She only tears her gaze away from her boy-turned-man Captain at a sudden, ferocious glare cast in her direction, but something has unexpectedly changed in that few minutes and, suddenly blushing, she finds that she doesn't want to put a reason as to why.

In the days after, she doesn't vocally admit to observing her Captain to gauge what has changed beyond his physical appearance. However, she does privately acknowledge that two things have not.

One: that Hitsugaya Toushirou has never stopped averting his eyes from the truth, not after acknowledging his zanpakuto and the lonely road to Captaincy he had decided to walk all those years ago. Matsumoto admires that in her Captain, as she always did – from when he was still the third-seat of the Tenth Division and had acknowledged the limits of his strength as compared to Isshin-taicho; to his acknowledgement all those years ago in Ichigo's room, when he had admitted Soul Society's grave inability to face up to Aizen Sosuke's espada; and even to his failure and defeat to Aizen in the Winter War because of his recklessness and their difference in skill, when he had unknowingly stabbed Hinamori after taking her for Aizen.

Two: that he stubbornly continues in his attempts to prove his capabilities to Soul Society, the Tenth division, and himself. She understands why, even though it usually leads him down paths she hates to see him take. As evident from his single-minded resolve to achieve bankai as quickly as possible, accelerated by the urgency of the need to have a Captain to head the Tenth Division after Isshin-taicho's disappearance all those years ago, and from his relentless training to get stronger after all those instances of defeat at Aizen's hands.

It is because of that that she rather suspects that Hitsugaya-taicho – for all that he has been called tensai – knows as well as she does that the chasm yawning between himself and Hinamori Momo is too broad for him to bridge. Hinamori will continue loving Aizen Sosuke, desperately and blindly, because she has loved him through the centuries she has served as his Vice-Captain and even before, as a student in the Academy.

That doesn't stop him from attempting to open her eyes to the truth, time and time again.

So Matsumoto thinks nothing out of the ordinary when the Fifth Division's quivering fourth-seat drops by Matsumoto's office to inform her that Hitsugaya-taicho stomped out of the Fifth Division Barracks after an intense fight with the Division's Vice Captain. Again.

"What happened?" She asks, although she can picture it in her mind – Hitsugaya-taicho's scowling face, faint hope that Hinamori will listen to him warring with his impatience, juxtaposed against Hinamori's tear-stained one, hands curled into fists to stop herself from striking him outright. Their verbal spars – not even sparring, she muses, they were all-out shouting matches – are infamous to everyone in Soul Society except the two involved. Gossip runs wild in such an unchanging place.

She is right. "Except that Hitsugaya-taicho simply… he simply walked out. Matsumoto-fukutaicho, I don't remember him ever doing that before!" The Fifth Division's fourth seat is easily excitable, she knows. But this is strange, and she leans forward, pushing the detestable paperwork out of the way to regard the quivering girl in front of her more closely.

Hitsugaya-taicho wouldn't turn his back on Hinamori, would he?

"What do you mean, he 'simply walked out'?"

"Exactly what I meant, Matsumoto-fukutaicho!" The high-strung girl babbles. "It was weird, actually. Usually Hinamori-fukutaicho doesn't look to pick a fight with Hitsugaya-taicho… it just happens, right? Like Hinamori-fukutaicho will say something about… A-Aizen… and you know, how she's been appealing to Central 46 about his release and that gets Hitsugaya-taicho frustrated and before long, he's trying to tell her that the situation's not what she thinks it is… Goodness knows, Shinji-taicho's been trying too but Hinamori-fukutaicho's just all quiet around him, she just does her work and keeps her mouth shut, she isn't even trying for Shinji-taicho's sake… Our Captain has his hands full – it's not that Hinamori-fukutaicho isn't reliable, it's just that… sometimes it's just hard to know what she's thinking…"

"Ayame." Matsumoto snaps, reeling in the younger girl's train of thought. She sighs, and says more gently. "I know that it's been hard for everyone, especially Shinji-taicho, but right now I want to know why what happened between my Captain and Hinamori is important enough to drop by the Tenth Division. You were saying that Hitsugaya-taicho just walked out?"

"I'm sorry!" Flustered, the girl wrings her hands wildly. Matsumoto silently hands her a cold cup of tea that she had originally kept aside for her Captain. She leans back as Ayame sips her tea and continues her story.

"Well today, she looked like she was itching to pick a fight. Hinamori-fukutaicho, I mean. It wasn't intentional – Hitsugaya-taicho wasn't even looking for her. He'd just been walking with Shinji-taicho back from a meeting and they just bumped into Hinamori-fukutaicho and she just sort of sarcastically asks them if they've been having fun without Aizen-ta… Aizen. And it just escalated from there like it always does – the same old arguments, you know, until Hitsugaya-taicho… It became so cold and suddenly he stops shouting and walks away! His reiatsu was so strong…"

Matsumoto has heard enough. She would never have thought Hitsugaya-taicho would ever attempt an action so remarkably akin to giving up on the girl he loves, which means that something must have happened in that exchange which pushed him to the limits of his tolerance. But what?

She bites her lip. Hitsugaya-taicho certainly wouldn't tell her. Anger stirs slightly at that thought (she was his lieutenant, dammit!) and something – something – beyond that which she pushes away for now. She soothes Ayame with a little more soothing words but after the girl leaves the office, she slumps into the chair that her Captain has apparently vacated for the day, her mind buzzing with questions, and astonishingly, a fleeting, queer sense of hope.

seven.

Matsumoto's head throbs savagely when she wakes, but somehow the first thing that she registers is not the splitting headache, but the silhouette that slips past the doorway, tousled silver hair catching in the dim sunlight flickering through half-drawn curtains that momentarily transports her to another time, and another person who had walked away from her.

With a faintly growing sense of alarm, however, she takes stock of the aftertaste of sake at the back of her throat and her state of undress. She snaps her eyelids shut again and moans, throwing an arm across her eyes while furiously trying to recall what had transpired the previous night. The sparse memories she dredges up, though - the hard glint of his turquoise eyes directed away from her, his cold hands roughly tightening around her waist – don't comfort her.

Captains do not simply drunkenly barge into their subordinates' rooms in the middle of the night. Neither do they share a bed with their subordinates.

But subordinates do not just allow Captains into their beds either.

She sighs, rubbing her temples, suddenly despondent.

Two hours later, she finds herself tiptoeing outside the office that she shares with Hitsugaya-taicho, holding a tray of hot green tea and mochi. It is a quiet morning at the division office; she wonders if she should confront him about last night. But her plotting ends before it even begins as soon as she hears him barking from the office.

"Oi Matsumoto, stop skulking around and do some work for once!"

She flinches, momentarily unsure, but opens the sliding door with one hand anyway, a questioning gaze fixed on the man behind the table. He in turn looks up from signing documents, returning her gaze with a bold, direct glare, and her response is decided in that split second.

"Ne taicho," she complains as she always does, "I'm so hungover. I'm sure that we don't have to do all the paperwork today, right? Plus! I brought taicho his favourite tea! Even in my condition!" Plastering a bright smile on her face, she slides the tray smoothly onto his desk without a tremor.

"Hmph," he mutters, and he still sounds like the same Captain he has always been. And a moment later, he mutters quietly, but not insincerely, "Thanks."

Returning back to his paperwork, he doesn't bring up the events of the previous night at all, and following his lead, she bites her tongue.

This time, she will wait.

But even as she dutifully skims through the paperwork so as not to incur his wrath, she finds herself distracted by every move he makes. She is aware that her cheeks are flushed – and as she briefly sneaks a glance in his direction, she finds that, astoundingly, underneath his bangs, so is his.

Hitsugaya quietly slips into her room that night, and every night after that. She doesn't turn him away. She thinks of Gin, with his perpetual slippery smile that never quite reached his eyes even in their most intimate moments, and how it contrasts with the scowl on her Captain's face. She likes to think that he is, at the very least, sincere in seeking her out for a semblance of comfort that she willingly gives. But that doesn't calm the flurry of emotions that stir restlessly beneath the surface before she falls asleep each night, his arm wrapped casually around her waist and her face pressed to his bared chest, especially after she finds that her memories of Gin are hazier than ever.

Juxtaposed against their days as the two highest-ranking officers of the Tenth Division, marked by barked orders and pleaded excuses that don't differ from any other conversation their subordinates have heard for the last few hundred years, their wordless nights together bewilders Matsumoto. We are so silly, she muses one night, casting a put-out glare at an oblivious Hitsugaya Toushirou slumbering next to her. She brushes a lock of silver hair away from his eyes and sighs, noticing that his eyebrows are knitted together even in sleep. I used to think we were good partners because we both try to be truthful with each other, but now we end up like this and avoid whatever we've become like the plague.

We're both just seeking comfort, a nagging small voice in her head argues, but there is a small part of her that knows that isn't the only reason.

A month and a week after the start of their elicit relationship, he doesn't appear. Puzzled and bewilderingly sad, she wonders if he has, after all, decided to seek Hinamori out instead. Hitsugayahas willfully maintained a frigid silence with her since their last big quarrel in front of the Fifth Division headquarters, one that Hinamori herself doesn't attempt to break, though Matsumoto notices that she stops to watch him stride forcefully away from her each time their paths inadvertently cross.

Fidgeting, she tosses and turns restlessly in her too-empty bed until the candle burns out. Giving up sleep as a lost cause, she pads quietly out of her room to look for him.

But the search is over before it really begins. She senses his carefully-hidden reiatsu first – and curses herself for not realizing earlier that the night feels a tad bit colder than it should for summer – before seeing him leaning tiredly against the wall next to the door of her room, an indescribable look on his face.

She cannot help herself. "Taicho," she hisses softly, "what are you doing outside my room?"

He gapes at her for a moment before he sighs, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "Follow me," he motions with a frown on his face, and without waiting for her reply, turns his back on her and walks down the hallway. His belligerent tone notwithstanding, she cannot hold back a smile at the familiarity of it all.

Hitsugaya makes his way to the rooftop of one of the buildings of the Tenth Division headquarters, where they sit in the shadows of the overhanging branches of a broad tree planted next to it. The air is still and sticky, but chilly – made chillier, she supposes, by the not-very-happy presence of her Captain in the area.

She clears her suddenly dry throat to speak, but Hitsugaya brusquely cuts across her first.

"I'm sorry."

She stares at him, baffled. "What?" She asks stupidly.

He rubs his temple as though annoyed, his turquoise eyes deliberately avoiding hers. "I mean –" he stumbles, and then collects himself with a deep breath. It is obvious that he has been meaning to have this conversation for awhile. "You and me, we…" He pulls his knees towards his chest; he is all-legs now, she notices, not in an entirely awkward and gangly manner though, as most teenagers in the Human World get at this point of time in their life cycle. "Every night, we –"

"Sleep together. I know that, taicho," she smirks, but her tone is serious. She is unsurprised to see him blush faintly. He has grown, certainly, but not that much. "What I want to know is what you are sorry for."

He stares; evidently, he hasn't expected that. Seeing her frown, he responds slowly, "Matsumoto. I'm… I know you still love him. Ichimaru."

Seeing the remote expression that slips over her face like a mask, he continues, "I know you can't forget him so easily, even though it's been years since… since the Winter War." His mouth hardens; some remote part of her brain that is objectively assessing the ridiculousness of their conversation presumes that he is thinking of Sosuke Aizen, still behind bars all these years later. "And I don't know why you still…"

After that brief moment of surprise, she is pleased to realize that she is angry. At the very least, she hasn't quite lost her senses as her Captain apparently has.

She is done with waiting.

"Hitsugaya Toushiro, do you think that I've been doing it as a favour to you?" She turns to face him directly, her angry eyes boring directly into his startled – and guilty – ones. "Do you know how that makes me feel, Toushirou?" He blinks; she has never called him by anything except his title, or even his last name. "You make me sound like some sort of prostitute, collecting favours from you! Do you actually think that you can force me into what I don't want to do?"

She sees him start at her words and open his mouth to speak, but she irately blathers on. "Oh for gods sake. Even after all these years, you think that I'm scatter-brained and silly? Haven't we watched each other's backs all these years? I hope that I've earned at least a bit of your respect after that, Hitsugaya-taicho. You –"

"Matsumoto!" He barks. She shivers; in her burst of anger she hasn't noticed the abrupt fall in temperature. His anger, when inflamed, burns as strongly as fire for all his iciness. She sees him notice her trembling from the cold, senses him visibly trying to rein in his own emotions. Carefully, he wraps a hand around hers, equally stiff and numb with cold, and this time, he seems to consider the effect of his words before speaking. "You should know better than to assume that I don't respect you."

She does, actually; a small part of her has always known that despite his complaints, Hitsugaya Toushirou has always trusted and respected her. But hearing him utter those words relieve her more than she can say. He tightens his grip on her hand, his eyes now unwaveringly intent on hers. "I just want you to know… that I wanted to forget. It didn't occur to me how it must have seemed to you until later. And when I did, it was –"

She thinks she understands. It doesn't make her any less angry, but she softens her words for him. "It's the same for me. It was easier to not say anything. But!"

His grip on her hand is painful, but she ignores it. "But, now that we're here. Taicho…" She smiles, a little painfully. "I like you. I don't want this to end."

A distant, detached part of her is gleefully satisfied as her words sinks in – she watches as the expression on his face flits from sobriety to undisguised astonishment. Yet, another small part of her is thrown into gloom.

She knows that he does not love her.

And that knowledge is what anchors her, her hand trembling and a faint blush on her face, to her spot on the roof as he falters, stumbles for words that are too inadequate and indelicate to reassure her. But as she had so observed all those many years ago, save for avoiding the complications of his starting an illicit affair with his own lieutenant, and even that only for a brief while, Hitsugaya does not avert his eyes from the truth. So while he doesn't say a word, she knows an apology when she sees one. Hitsugaya is not tactful in romance, in friendship – but all he can offer her is gentleness, and this he does.

Matsumoto isn't content, but she has to live with it.

nine.

Hitsugaya-taicho reverts back to formality in the days after her confession. Matsumoto spends her nights restlessly, resorting to sake and the company of her old drinking buddies more often than not, a fact which does not escape their attention. Kyouraku-taicho, for all his laid-back demanour and a dislike for paperwork which rivals her own, is intelligent and observant when he needs to be, but except for an oddly-quirked eyebrow when she lapses into sudden silence during drunken conversations with him and other friends in the Gotei-13, or a swift glance when her thoughts drift towards the uncomfortable situation she and her Captain are now in, he doesn't probe into her affairs. She doesn't think he suspect that anything has transpired between Hitsugaya-taicho and herself; they are still working well together on the surface, in the way that they know best. More likely, he suspects that she is still melancholy about Gin, which she suspects she will always be, in a secret part of her soul.

What she does know is that she doesn't want to give anyone cause for suspicion. She doesn't care, but she knows that Hitsugaya-taicho will.

So she smiles, and laughs uproariously at jokes that aren't even funny, and tries not to think of her Captain's chilly behaviour towards her. If he doesn't reciprocate, she will not force him to; and if his cold words – colder, and rougher than usual – are his way of avoiding her, then she will certainly do her best to keep out of his way outside of work.

Her deliberate avoidance of him is put to a rapid halt after a skirmish in the Human World during a training exercise with a small team of inexperienced recruits. Unohana-taicho allows her to return to her own room to rest after healing and setting her broken collarbone and a nasty gash to her right arm, the sad result of her attempt to save one of her recruits, frozen with fear at being overpowered by an unexpectedly-strong Hollow. She'd made it to the recruit in time, but she hadn't enough time to dodge or counter the Hollow's swift attack entirely. Save for her broken collarbone, she rather thinks that her entire team is lucky to have made it out with minor injuries.

Hitsugaya-taicho apparently doesn't think so. She arrives in her room, half her hakama stained with mud and her body cravingrest, to find her Captain glowering at her irately. He is near enough to her height now to not have to tilt his head too much to look directly into her eyes, and she is startled when she senses equal parts frustration, exasperation and concern beneath lurking beneath anger.

Slightly touched by his worry, she nevertheless rolls her eyes. "Taicho, scold me tomorrow, won't you? I promise I won't skive off the paperwork this time and hand in the report tomorrow."

"Matsumoto," he retorts testily, "I wasn't about to lecture you."

She cocks her head and regards him skeptically.

"Well, a little. But," he scowls a little at her arm, placed in a sling by Unohona-taicho. "I trust that you handled the situation the way you thought best. I do want your report tomorrow, though."

She nods, a weight she doesn't even realize was there all along lifting off her shoulders. She has feared, after making sure that all the recruits in her charge were safe, the censure of her Captain for letting the situation go to pieces, however much out of her control it was.

As she casts around for something apt to say, abruptly, she realizes that they have not been alone together, anywhere outside of the Division office, since that night months ago on the roof. The same thought seems to have occurred to him, because the formidable expression on his face softens, and he gestures to her bed. Wordlessly, suddenly nervous, she complies, sitting on the soft mattress with her back ramrod-straight. He leans against the wall next to her bed.

He closes his eyes momentarily, as though trying to collect his thoughts. "I was going to tell you… Why I did what I did then."

She sucks in a breath, her eyes wide. Why now? She thinks, confused. But she senses from his impatient stance, from how he crosses and uncrosses his arms, as though weighing every single thought in frustration, that this is important to him, and so she holds his tongue.

"That day, when Shinji and I met Hinamori in front of the Fifth Division, we quarreled… I was tired. I wanted Hinamori to admit what the rest of Soul Society already knew, and I knew that she had known all along. Then… That day, I saw her face, and I realized that she doesn't even see me…" He falls abruptly silent.

"You left?" She says. It is a rhetorical question.

He nods wearily, his eyebrows furrowed, resolutely not looking at her. "I used to think she trusted me less because I had stabbed her, that day during the Winter War. But I think that I knew all along, that I'd lost before I'd already begun. Ever since she left…"

She wants to jump up and hug him with all the strength that she can muster, but the sensible part of her holds back at the fierce expression on his face. She has always known that he does not appreciate pity. So she digs her fingernails into the mattress, and waits for him to continue.

The soft smirk that flickers across his face as he tilts slightly to face her surprises her. "You scolded me on the roof that day."

"I did," she replies warily. "You don't ever listen to me."

"I do," he retorts automatically. "Well, I did. Matsumoto," and he pauses, his gaze fixed on the smooth wooden tiles. "You asked me a question that day. I think I have a better answer now."

"What ques- Oh." Scuffling the floor with her foot absent-mindedly, she asks, almost half afraid of his answer, "What are you sorry for, now?"

Hitsugaya-taicho, she reflects in hindsight, has never looked as vulnerable as when he quietly tells her, "Not allowing myself to move on. Being afraid to let go. Hurting someone else… someone important, instead."

There is a rare moment of stupefied silence, where he stares at his feet and she stares at his feet before she speaks, enunciating each syllable slowly, "Why are you telling me this now, of all times?"

That rare trace of a smile on his face makes him look as young as he did all those years ago, she thinks as he walks up to her and kisses her gently on the forehead. "Think about that yourself, Rangiku," he replies, holding her gaze – ash-grey to turquoise – for a moment before leaving her in the bed where they had shared a month of unfettered but guilt-ridden intimacy, confusion and hope warring in equal parts.

ten.

"You never told me why you chose to admit your undying love for me then, taicho!" She teases with a soft poke to his shoulder. "Or admit it, you thought I was grievously injured and couldn't contain yourself!"

A month ago, he would have blushed at such a comment, or, if he were in a foul mood, wouldn't have been able to control himself from brusquely waving her comment aside. But now he merely replies in a level tone of voice, "Matsumoto, I thought you were intelligent enough to figure it out, but apparently not." She can almost hear the smirk in his comment, although he is careful to school his expression to one of neutrality.

Chortling, she gives him a brief one-armed hug. "Well, you know my answer and I'm going to believe that I'm right, ne?"

He gruffly lets out a soft huff – of agreement or rebuttal or annoyance, she doesn't know – but is rewarded with him slipping his hand – always cold – into hers. It has been a month since her collarbone has fully healed, and while neither of them have spoken of love – in and out of bed – they are both comfortable with the way things have been.

They will tell the rest of their friends one day, she thinks, looking down at their entwined hands, a gesture he so freely reciprocates these days. And Hinamori. Just not now, not when everything is still so shaky and puzzling and new for the both of them, when they are still working out how to be partners in work and in romance.

But as she holds his hand, quietly gazing at the sunset with a comfortably chilly breeze from the rooftop, she finds that she is more than content with that.

fin.

author's note (part 2): just in case anyone was wondering, the section headers are relative to the (estimated) amount of time that has lapsed between each 'scene', between one to ten.