Chapter Twelve
"Rangiku," Shuuhei interrupted the shouting redhead, his voice cold and deadly as his dark eyes glared holes into the woman. "Hitsugaya is not Captain Ichimaru."
~*~
Chapter Twelve
Pretending
~*~
It was warm. Warm and comfortable.
His head was pounding, but the lights were dim and the warmth wrapped around him helped to ease the headache. He wondered how he’d gotten on the floor, but in the end, it didn’t really matter. He was used to waking up in unexpected places. What he wasn’t used to was waking up in unexpected places with someone else.
“Hina…?”
But just as he opened his mouth, strong arms pulled him closer, and his face was enveloped on all sides by two very familiar lumps of flesh. “Five more minutes…”
Just hold your breath, he hissed to himself. Hold your breath, and count to ten.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Screw it.
~*~
For a second after he awoke, Hanatarou thought he might be back at the palace. Hitsugaya’s voice was as loud as it had always been, like he was shouting at one of the other servants or guards for messing up and making him fix their mistakes. Or like he used to always shout at him. Oh. Was Hitsugaya shouting at him again? If he was, than he really needed to start paying attention.
Still half asleep and helplessly rubbing his eyes, he strained to listen, and it became very obvious that Hitsugaya was not yelling at him.
“Are you mad?!” he shouted at the top of his lungs as Rangiku Matsumoto shamelessly picked at her ear.
“Of course not. I slept really well, so I’m in a great mood.”
“Gah! You’re impossible!”
“I am not! I was just tired, was all!” The lady captain was whining, of all things. There wasn’t a single hint of the angry, grudging woman that had first greeted them and taken them prisoner.
“So tired you had to collapse right there?”
“No! I was tired, so I wanted to sleep somewhere comfortable!”
The twitch in Hitsugaya’s brow was almost painful to watch. “…I’m your damn pillow?”
“How can you think so little of me?!” the woman shot back, looking appalled. “I told you: you’re no pillow, you’re a bunny!”
“Damn it!”
“Oh, loosen up those tense shoulders, Hitsugaya! I wasn’t comfy, and you weren’t very comfy either, all scrunched up into yourself like that. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone.”
“What makes me comfortable is not for you to decide!” Wait. Hanatarou squinted. Was Hitsugaya … blushing?
“Maybe it’s not for me to decide, but it’s pretty easy for me to figure out, when you’re waking up this energized. You must have slept well, hm?”
And suddenly Hitsugaya was frozen, green eyes wide in shock. This time Yamada knew he wasn’t imagining it. His companion’s whole face was beet red.
Without another word, Hitsugaya whirled around and stomped out of the room. Hanatarou hastily scrambled to his feet and followed after him. The last thing he heard from within was Miss Rangiku’s loud laughter.
~*~
“Pfffft!” Rangiku cracked up. Having to hold it in for so long was harder than she thought it would be, and seeing the poor guy marching out of the room finally broke her resolve. “Trying so hard to hide that adorable blush! It’s so typical! Just like-”
And then it was her turn to freeze in her tracks.
Slowly, mechanically, she looked over the passed out crew members, some just now waking up with bad hangovers, until she found who she was looking for. Not wasting any time, she strode over to the three young men and kicked each one right in the shins. “Renji, Shuu, Izuru! The crow’s nest! Now!”
They didn’t look any happier as they settled into the crow’s nest fifteen minutes later, glaring up in obvious discontent as their captain paced before them. They definitely didn’t look any happier after she revealed her reason for calling them there.
“I have a question, and I want to hear the absolute truth,” she warned them, stopping her pacing to stare down at all three of them, her expression the epitome of seriousness. “Why do you think I love Gin?”
Renji was rendered incapable of sentient speech, and Izuru was still trying to digest the question, so Shuuhei was stuck with the sorry task of asking, “This is what you wanted to talk about?”
“I have a point! Just answer the question!”
“Well…” Izuru hesitated slightly before taking a deep breath and plunging onward. “He took care of us ever since we were little, even though he wasn’t that much older. He taught us everything he knew, how to survive in an atmosphere like this. Without him, we’d probably be dead.”
Shuuhei was still reluctant and not at all thrilled, but he figured it was best to just play along for now. “It was as if you were always sharing a private joke that no one else could understand. Everything was funny to you two.”
Finally, Matsumoto turned her sights on Renji, the one who had been with them the least amount of time. “You just did. I don’t know. You guys were just happy.”
“Wrong!” she shouted, plopping down to the floor like the rest of them for emphasis. “You’re all wrong! He didn’t take care of me; he tried to figure me out. We weren’t sharing a joke, we were writing it. And we definitely weren’t happy. For Gin and I, it was always, always the puzzle, the enigma!”
“What do you mean you weren’t happy?” Izuru interrupted. “Then why would you-”
“Because we weren’t happy! Don’t you get it? We wanted to find out why. Gin is my big puzzle, and I was finally beginning to figure him out. You see, he wanted to convince himself that he was happy, that he was having fun. So he smiled, even when he wasn’t. Soon enough, he really was having fun. He enjoys raiding towns and burning down ships, he loves it when the Loyals get what’s coming to them. But the smile is still fake. So I swore I’d either figure out why, or make him smile for real.”
“Right,” grunted the tattooed redhead. “And next you’re going to tell us Hitsugaya runs around punching and insulting people because he’s trying to convince himself he’s an ass.”
“Exactly!” she exulted, happy to see that someone had caught on so quickly.
The crow’s nest was deathly silent for all of two seconds. Then came the storm.
“What the hell?! I was joking!”
“Argh! Don’t you get it? The whole reason I brought up Gin is to prove that I’d be able to spot something like this better than anyone else, don’t you think?” their temporary captain fumed. “Renji, you were there! When we called on Isshin, you saw how the two of them were.”
“Sorry for being too busy making sure he didn’t bolt to notice him getting friendly with a - oh. Oh, hell.”
Izuru and Shuuhei were instantly alert. They weren’t about to miss something that even Renji understood. “What? What are you talking about?” Izuru pushed.
“Hitsugaya knew Isshin. He knew we were going to meet Isshin even before we got there; that was the whole reason he went along with it,” Rangiku explained. “He said it was because Isshin’s son serves under him in the Loyals, but I’ve met Isshin’s kin before. He hates the damn navy just as much Isshin does, if not more!”
“So either Hitsugaya was lying, or there were at least two Loyals in the palace who knew exactly where a wanted man was staying…” Shuuhei began.
“…And neither of them turned him in!” the busty woman interrupted with a flourish.
“No shit,” Renji swore. “The brat’s a traitor. That must be what Kuchiki meant. I don’t know what the hell they were talking about, but Kuchiki was sure that Hitsugaya wasn’t who he said he was.”
“Now that I think about it, Urahara was saying something a little like that. He was talking to Shihouin, and he said something about the prince being in on something. Do you think the prince knew about Isshin too?” the blond frowned. The very implications of that question were too monumental to ignore.
“Really? I knew Hanatarou wasn’t half bad! Then that means I’m not the only one catching on. That settles it then.” Rangiku Matsumoto folded her arms across her chest and spouted what was arguably the most ridiculous assertion she’d made yet. “I want him on our crew.”
“The hell are you-?!”
“Rangiku,” Shuuhei interrupted the shouting redhead, his voice cold and deadly as his dark eyes glared holes into the woman. “Hitsugaya is not Captain Ichimaru.”
“How dare you!”
Izuru hastily intervened before Rangiku could hit anyone. “Calm down! He just meant… Well, we’re trading him for Captain Ichimaru. And he wouldn’t agree to being separated from the prince; you were the one who said that. Captain Ichimaru should be the top priority, right? We can deal with everything else afterward.”
Grudgingly the woman backed off, making sure to show just how discontent she was with the situation. “Allies then. Having allies inside the palace might even be able to bring back our old success and inspire people to start fighting back against Hueco Mundo again.”
“Well, why not ask them?” Renji grunted, pointing down. From their spot in the high crow’s nest, it was easy to spot Hitsugaya and Yamada above board.
“Maybe I will.”
~*~
“H-Hitsugaya…” Hanatarou trailed off as he finally caught up to his companion at the bow of the vessel. It wasn’t too often he’d seen Hitsugaya storm out like that, dodging the issue and just running away. It wasn’t the way Hitsugaya faced things. Running away was what Hanatarou did. But Hitsugaya certainly had been doing it more often recently. Could it be, he… “You’re not really mad.”
“Of course, I am,” the white haired Loyal huffed. “She doesn’t think about anything. She just dives in and expects everything to go the way she wants. It’s beyond aggravating.”
“But it’s not her you’re mad at.”
“Tch!” Hitsugaya denied the statement with a turn of his head, glaring out into the water below.
Silence followed for some time. Hanatarou never knew what to do in these situations, and he silently berated himself for being so stupid as to bring it up at all. Hitsugaya didn’t like talking about this sort of thing. He always bundled it up and refused to let anyone else help. But there was a reason for it, and Hanatarou knew that reason better than anybody. So all he could ever do was follow the other young man through hell and high water and hope it was enough.
Apparently it was. “Yamada… I owe you an apology.”
Those words completely startled him from his musings. “F-For what?”
“A lot,” Hitsugaya replied vaguely. He was obviously uncomfortable. “And last night. I mentioned the throne room.”
“Eheh,” Hanatarou half smiled. He’d almost forgotten all about it, and now Hitsugaya was actually apologizing. “I… It didn’t really bother me, as much as I thought it would,” he finally managed to reply. “It was actually a little nice, when everybody laughed like that. In that setting, it felt like maybe for the first time it was okay. Something good came out of it because we made somebody happy. Um…”
“She looked so stupidly excited and impressed,” Hitsugaya unexpectedly cut in, catching Yamada off guard again. “It… Somehow it made me feel … vindicated. As if it were possible…” He released a low, mirthless snort. “I said I wouldn’t pretend, but with her… I almost wish I could.”
He hadn’t dared to say anything more up until now, not since the way Hitsugaya had reacted in the sick bay. But with the way his companion was now, Hanatarou thought maybe this time he’d get away without a bruise. “Maybe … we already are pretending….”
When no yelling or hitting was forthcoming, he swallowed and trudged onward. “We were wrong about Kuchiki, and … and I think they really are good people. They don’t know about … everything, but they know a lot, and they’re trying to make things better in their own way. If we keep pretending that we’re enemies, I don’t know…”
“We are enemies.” The reply was stiff but only half-hearted.
“But they’re enemies that could be allies…” Hanatarou amended tentatively.
“Because they want the same thing as we do?” the white haired servant bit out mockingly, recalling Yamada’s earlier words.
This time, however, the prince just shook his head. “Because they’re the same as us.”
And as Yamada smiled his naïve, clueless, happy little smile, Hitsugaya could only stare blankly on. Why? It was really beginning to bother him. Why was he finding it harder and harder to disagree?
“Ah. What’s wrong?”
And why was Yamada reading him with more and more ease every damn time?
“Oh, oh! I know what it is. I understand,” the dark haired prince suddenly answered his own question. “That’s so like you.”
“What is?” he grounded out, turning away once more.
“You’re not angry with the pirates or Miss Rangiku or any of these things that are going wrong. You’re mad that, despite all of that, you’re still enjoying yourself.”
Even though Yamada couldn’t see it, or perhaps because he couldn’t, Hitsugaya’s eyes widened in surprise, and he very nearly toppled over onto the deck. Enjoying himself? That was the most preposterous-
Was it really? Was it really that preposterous? Hitsugaya knew the answer. He just didn’t like it. He’d been doing everything to avoid it ‘til now. But after that morning… After that morning, he didn’t think he could any longer.
“She was right,” he finally sighed, his voice so quiet it was almost nonexistent. Yamada frowned, waiting for the rest of the explanation, and against all odds, his companion delivered. “I slept … very well.”
“No lie?” Hitsugaya didn’t answer, but Hanatarou could tell in his posture. It wasn’t a lie. If it was, he’d be much more comfortable with it. “Hitsugaya, it’s-”
But before he could say anything more, Rangiku Matsumoto herself marched in between them. As soon as she stopped, she turned a steady glare toward Hitsugaya, and Hitsugaya in turn moved to match it. It wasn’t surprising to Hanatarou, how quickly his friend had regained control of himself, but he didn’t like the look on either of their faces at all. Hesitantly he stepped away, only to bump into Abarai and two others.
“You bastards took Gin away from me.”
“You pirates murdered an entire ship of Loyals on a drunken whim.”
Yamada found his eyes rolling frantically back and forth between Miss Rangiku and Hitsugaya until an unexpected hand landed on his shoulder and steadied him. He looked up to see a dark haired man with a tattoo and three scars, but just as soon as their eyes met, the other man was looking at Hitsugaya and Rangiku again. Hanatarou gulped; he could practically taste the tension in the air.
And then, suddenly, the tension just evaporated.
“I let them.”
“I ran away.”
A long, drawn out silence followed, but it wasn’t nearly as oppressive as it had been up ‘til then.
Finally, Rangiku held out her hand. “I have to save Gin. I can’t do that without you and Hanatarou, both of you. I shall return both of you safely, and I won’t go back on my word. I never go back on my word. But I can’t do that on my own; I can only do it if I have your cooperation. Do I?”
Slowly but surely Hitsugaya raised his hand until their palms met in a firm grasp. “I’d rather not send your crew to the gallows just yet.”
Just like that, the two shook hands, and Miss Rangiku left along with the men who had followed her. Hanatarou, for one, was thoroughly baffled.
“Why would she…?” he trailed off before casting a hopelessly confused frown at his companion. “Why would you…?”
“Because,” Toushirou Hitsugaya replied for the second time, “she was right. And so were you.”
The white haired Loyal moved to look out upon the open waters once more, a rekindled fire lighting his eyes in a way that Hanatarou hadn’t seen for days.
“She can’t do it on her own.”
Hanatarou’s eyes widened. And he knew.
Hitsugaya wasn’t talking about Matsumoto.
~*~
Chapter Twelve End
~*~