Beautiful

By Fatima Natasha

Friday, March 22, 2013

I haven't been beautiful in hundreds of years.

The years change nothing. Not the pain. Not the betrayal and not the emptiness. Someone should have explained this better. They should have told me I'd save the world and lose myself. The world around me hasn't changed. They walk the same streets. The poor are still poor, the privileged are still privileged. So why the lies, I wonder. They should have told me I'd be damning myself. That the weight of my wounds would run into the very fiber of my bones. That the scars would overshadow everything. My dreams. My hopes. My very existence.

And through it all, they would be the only thing I would be able to keep with me. My scars.

"Let her have her own. She has certainly proven herself."

"There is no reason why she should not be considered."

"I recommend her with wholehearted blessings."

The voices from the meeting echoed in my head amid the empty promises, the left over ambition and what was left of my belief. All they can see are the scars. They see the decades of battle and violence and I knew then where I would be another hundred years from now. Here. Alone. Scarred.

"Matsumoto?"

Looking away from the ornate old mirror, that had meant to be a gift and now only a reminder, I looked at the man sitting behind the pristine mahogany desk. In all my years serving under him, I had never realized this day would come. That I'd be faced with such a question. Would it be wrong of me to not answer? To not want to?

The white winged brows drew together. "Rangiku?"

"No." And that one word would never be enough. I could not explain why I refused. I just knew that I had no place crossing this line. There was no place for me around that desk.

The frown darkened until he rose out of his chair, his teal blue eyes more alert and attentive than I'd ever seen. They pierced into the very fabric of my being and he saw past the glossy façade and saw the scarred, dying old woman inside. "Do not do this Matsumoto."

"It's already done."

Disappointment lanced through his handsome face before he looked away, head tilting down almost as harshly as the corners of his mouth.

Taking one last glance towards the mocking mirror I turned and left him behind.

"Stop!"

There were invisible threads that locked every joint in place as I halted in my slow procession out of his office, but even though his command was obeyed I lacked the strength to face him. I did not want to see the disappointment again.

The sudden chill of his presence behind me rocked my bones harder than the door that slammed shut in front of me and locked with kidou. With the dragon at my back and my escape gone, I acquiesced finally and turned to meet the flashing fury of his suddenly stormy eyes. "You are being foolish."

Tired, broken and old, I shook my head. "Trying to get rid of me so quickly Captain?"

"Don't you dare deflect with humor Matsumoto!" Cold unyielding hands wrapped around my biceps and held. "This isn't something you can blow off into the air with your dammed flippancy! This is what I have trained you for. This is the reason you are here."

I should have told him, he was burning me. I should have flinched, but there was a selfish need to finish this. To just let it all go finally. "This is not the reason I am here."

There was a snort before the hands fell away and the arms crossed, his eyes accusing and knowing and completely self-assured."I know how your idiot brain works Matsumoto. You came for him, but you stayed for yourself."

There was little point in hiding this from him now. "No. I stayed for you."

"Don't bullshit me, I am not a child."

Head snapping up at the uncharacteristic expletive I blinked. "I never said you were a child, Captain Hitsugaya."

"Then stop treating me like one. I survived the Arancar War, I survived the massacre and I sure as hell with survive your incessant self-flagellating." I opened my mouth to protest but a hand was raised, halting my voice even before it was strong enough to escape my throat. "I have fought for you and I have fought with you. I will not accept your irrational refusal. You will accept."

My eyes narrowed. "No."

A spark of cold fire ignited in those enigmatic eyes. "Now you're just being stubborn."

"My mind's made up." I tried to step around him, but he was in my path blinding me with the white until something seemed to swell and scream inside me. It suffused heat into every corner of my being; it flooded my head with blood and tore my restraint from my fingers. "I said – NO!"

Steel shrieked against steel and I saw his saddened surprise across the clash of our zanpaktous. For a movement I balked. I didn't want to do this. I had no desire to be on this end of the fight. My place was beside him. Behind him. In his shadow. On his six.

"You're lying to yourself," the centuries old Captain snarled. "You did not stay for me."

"It was always for you," I corrected him, sliding my sword away from his, letting my arm fall to my side and I sighed. "For the longest time Captain, it has always been for you."

"Oh come off it Matsumoto! You are not as benevolent as you'd like to believe." Sheathing his own blade, the man snorted and crossed his arms again. Fury still singing in his veins and turning his reiatsu a shade of vermillion.

Staring at his cold disregard for a moment I wondered if he was joking. Was he serious? Did he never see why I was here? Did he never know how much he'd meant to me? Did he honestly never see me when I stood between him and anything that threatened him? How could that even be possible? Stunned by his lack of depth, I took a staggering step away from him and stared. "You're serious. Did my laughter really fool you that well?"

Rolling his eyes, the youngest captain and now one of the strongest protectors of their world, Captain Toushiro Hitsugaya stepped forward and took my hand with deliberate confidence. "Give me some credit Lieutenant, I see through all your guises."

Brow furrowing, I teetered in the confusing familiarity he seemed to exude, I shook my head. "Then how do you not see the ugly scars? I don't even remember the ones I didn't get for you."

"With me," he amended fiercely as he squeezed my hand with an alarming amount of reassurance. When did this happen? When did he find this much balance? Wasn't it yesterday he was growing and learning to be even a fraction of the man he is now. How many decades passed before I had realized he didn't need me after all? The confused butterflies in my soul exploded into panic as he took a step closer to me, his free hand wrapping around the ends of the pink scarf and pulled.

"What…"

"I didn't think I'd have to remind you, but I guess you're as blond as you look." Slapped, I opened my mouth at the man's sudden gall, but it careened off its kilter when the removed scarf was discarded and the most frigid captain in the Seireitei reached for the top of my uniform. Mouth hanging open, I gawped in trembling surprise as he pulled the already gaping neck open and slid his thumb against my collarbone. So intent he was on his task, his eyes following his smoothing digit that it was only when I felt the waver in his touch that I realized he had found the blade mark. "This one," he murmured almost reverently. "I remember it like it was yesterday." The teal eyes hazed with memory. "Shinso slid through your shoulder here, didn't it?"

Did he expect me to answer? The memory was more than a century ago, but the wound seethed with the pain. Almost like he could feel the throb, he pressed his palm against the scar and lifted his gaze to meet mine resolutely. "This was for you. You chose to stay. You chose to be more than a childhood debt. You always protect the weak and hunt the wicked. It was for you. For your soul. You were a shinigami."

My mouth opened to offer protest, but I didn't know what to say. How could I deny it? Hadn't it also been to stay by his side? "That was different."

A fierce determination darkened his face, lips thinning into a fine line before he took my breath from my lungs as the front of my lieutenant's uniform parted and his hand bypassed the blaring nakedness of my upper body and slid his hand against the taut curves of my ribs and the slightly abrasive reminder of my hardest test. It was then I realized he was recounting all my scars. Cutting me open around each of them. "I…" the confidence wavered before the words were grated out, "cut you here." My breath halted in my chest as he slid cold, icy fingers around the white scar that had closed the gaping wound. "I struggled with my darkest demons and I was blinded. They doubted. They hesitated, but you," he whispered huskily. "You saw past my madness, my evasion, my silence. You trusted me when I scarcely trusted myself. You stood by me. You never wavered. I abandoned you, but you let me cut you down because you believed I would return. For your conviction. You were my Lieutenant."

The ache flared to life in the scar tissue he caressed, bringing with it an awareness that hadn't been there before. I stood half naked and all he saw were my scars, only this time – it was the most refreshing thing I had ever felt. "You were my Captain."

His mouth flickered with a sardonic, almost rueful half smile and the flare of awareness burst into a tidal wave of yearning. It came without warning, he sparked it deep in my gut without any preamble and the force of it was like a fist, as he pulled the belt lose and sword roughened hands pushed the top of my uniform completely off my shoulders. Somewhere in some corner of my mind, something was raising its head with wonder as he slowly guided me to turn my back to him. The tremor came unbound as one hand wrapped around the curve of my waist and the other slid to the crisscross web of white scar tissue between my shoulder blades. "Isn't this where Haineko's claws marked you when our Zanpaktou rebelled?" The hair at the back of my neck stood on end as his icy breath wafted across my nape, fingers slowly tracing each intersecting line with so much care as if he could somehow smooth away the sense of betrayal that still haunted me some nights. Losing her had been like a part of me had died. "I shared your pain that day. I felt as cheated as you did. To fight a fragment of your own spirit. To have to reclaim what should have been yours forever. I still remember your eyes when she wouldn't reply to you. Like you'd lost your will to fight. And I remember how you fought beside her. For her. With her until she was one with you again. For your will. You were the master of Haineko."

Eyes squeezing shut, I let the single tear squeeze down my cheek as the sash that held the rest of my uniform loosened and I was free. Completely bare. My scars my only protection against his cruel, sweet lesson. The sobbing gasp escaped before I could smother it as I felt him kneel behind me, his hand wrapping around my calf, tracing the stress scars, the stretched, torn and rebuilt tissue. I felt the tell tale tremble of his own hand as they smoothed over the curves of my leg. "Captain Unohana said you would have full mobility once again, but she said the strain you put on your leg while fighting the arancars in Karakura Town was too much. I was too far away to help when that fused creature Ayon wounded you. Three against one Matsumoto," the man lamented and I nearly lost my footing as I felt his head lean against the back of my knees, I could feel his helplessness in the clench of his fist around my ankle. "I thought I'd lose you, but you stood without fear. You faced Halibel's Fracciones with Momo. You both moved so well. You fought together. Even till the end. You needed her help and she needed yours as you did during the Zanpaktou rebellion. You were a woman who had friends."

Unable to bear the catch in his voice and the flicker of his snowy hair against my flesh, I turned and dropped to my knees. He lifted his head and I knew where his gaze would go next. Trembling with barely concealed anticipation and hope, I couldn't look away from him as he traced the inch long cut against my left cheekbone. "He wounded you twice. I wanted to rip his heart out," he whispered ferociously, the sudden drop in temperature and his proximity sent a fission of cold heat down my spine. "But you walked past me that day. You faced him. Even when he would not acknowledge you. I saw him cut you down. But more than that," his gaze flickered away from the old scar tissue and met the watery depths of my blue eyes, "I saw your freedom." No longer tracing my scars, he held my jaw in the palm of his hand. "And when you achieved bankai and defeated your demons – you were fit to be a Captain."

Worn out from the onslaught of the memories, I fell into him and he gathered me into his arms without missing a beat. Wrapped there in his arms, completely free of the scars he'd helped define; I basked in the reassuring strength of his belief in me.

"Your scars are not ugly," he murmured into my hair and I burrowed deeper into his embrace. "You share your scars with your friends, the people who have fought beside you, for you. You share them with me," he whispered fiercely against the shell of my ear. "And they are beautiful."

Unable to contain the madness of how much everything changed all of a sudden, I laughed. Gasping, I snaked my arms around his back and buried my face into his neck, until I felt him smile against my temple. "Oh Captain," I admonished with a liquid giggle. "You just wanted to get me out of my clothes now that I'm going to be the same rank as you."

Rolling his eyes, the youngest Captain in the Seireitei unwrapped himself from around me, a soft hue of youthful pink on his cheeks despite how much of a man he was now. "Damnable infuriating flippant woman! And here I'm pouring my heart out trying to tell you…"

Palming his heated cheeks I smiled up into his handsome face, my world opening and growing until I could barely contain it. "I know. Me too."

The corners of his usually straight mouth tipped up, his teal eyes twinkling with a deep rooted happiness that seeped through his skin and into mine. "Great. Then it's settled. You're taking the Captain position." He rose before I could hold him. "You start today."

"No."

Toushiro Hitsugaya froze, and then slowly turned around, a tick in his temple. One nerve, thick and pulsing, he looked at me grinning up to him in my perfectly poised playboy centerfold pose. For his credit, he looked straight into my eyes and I took pity on him as I grabbed his hand. "Tomorrow," I clarified. "I'm I plan to be kinda busy today."

An eyebrow arched in confusion, until my grin exploded into a lecherous smirk and I pulled hard on his hand. "WhaGAH!MATSUMOTO!"

It's true; I haven't been beautiful in hundreds of years.

Until today.

THE END