Tsugi no touji *Next witner solstice*
Title: Tsugi no touji (Next winter solstice)
Series: 50scenes Prompt Table No.2 (#029-Benevolence)
Author: HeukYa
Genre: Romance/Angst
Rating: G
Pairing: Kurosaki Ichigo x Hitsugaya Toshiro
Disclaimer: Bleach sovereigns over me, not the other way round.
Distribution: Fanfiction and LJ
Summary: Winter was never coming back for him.
Spoilers: None
Warning: Character death
Author’s Note:
Tsugi no touji means the next winter solstice. And for those who don’t know, the first kanji for Toshiro’s name is 冬 which means winter. I got the title from Tsuki_no_Kurogake’s LJ username XD
:::::Tsugi no touji by HeukYa:::::
Usually, in this kind of scene in films and dramas, he was pretty sure that nothing but silence existed for the stunned nakamas that had arrived too late, even air not daring to shift in the paralysed doom.
How wrong it was.
He had never realised just how loud those tabi-clad feet could sound against the polished wooden floor. Now, they shook and thundered his ears as blurs of blacks ran past and around him.
He had never realised just how piercing Unohana’s quiet sigh could be even in the thickest of shouts and calls. Now, it cut through his heart sharper than anything that had ever touched him in his whole life.
He had never realised just how irritating those pained groans and remorseful sniffs could be even though nothing else can be expected from the relief station filled with injured and half-comatose shinigamis. Now, his fingers curled into tight fists and his knuckles lost all blood as he gritted his teeth because those groans and those sniffs, it meant the issuers were alive.
Unlike the one that laid in front of him.
Unlike the one clad in torn and bloodied shihakushou.
Unlike the one that did not moan in suffering or cough bloods.
Unlike theone that did not breathe.
Various pitched voices were still packing the urgent atmosphere. Various levels of reiatsus raked against his freely exuding one as the medics pressed into the wounds with the best of their energies everywhere but in front of him.
Here, there was certainly no silence for the grieved to indulge in.
The wide-open brown orbs flitted up for the briefest of moments to the busty woman completely barricaded by a bunch of frantic shinigamis, transparent rubber-gloved hands flying around above her. The pale silvery eyes had been about to lose their focus but once the unkempt orange mob entered her view, she had managed to grip his sleeve and utter a few broken words, her usually beautiful face horrifyingly wrecked with sweat, blood, and streaming tears.
‘…Sorry, Ichi… go… Taichou… tr… protect… subor… dinat… es… I… too late…’
The fickle words had been soon lost in the chaos, the croaked voice ruined with gasping chokes, and medics had instantly blocked the unconscious, wrecked form of the vice-captain out of his view, but he had got it.
A hand that had been frozen at his side slid through the hectic air slower than a feather falling through it until the tips of the long fingers touched the fine sheet of sands mingled with blood covering what he knew to be so soft, so smooth, so sweet. For a few seconds, he did not dare even totwitch his fingers, the coarse sensation too foreign for him to register the fact that he really was touching the one in front of him.
-x-
‘Three days, right?’
‘Yes, baka. You’ve been asking that every minute!’
‘I’m just pissed we’ve got to go to different places! For three days!’
‘Kurosaki, stop being a whining blockhead and just come back in time. God knows what kind of senseless stunt you are going to pull again.’
‘Give me some credit, Toshiro.’
‘Right, and the day I do that will be the day you call me Hitsugaya taichou.’
‘Damn. Well, make sure you come back in time too. I don’t need your tendo brilliance acting up at the last minute. Don’t make me wait.’
‘Idiot. I’ll be back long before you do, no thanks to your stupidity.’
‘Wanna bet? How about, if I win, I get to do whatever I like with you for 24 hours? If you win, I’ll do whatever you say for 24 hours.’
‘You’ll never win.’
‘Are we on?’
Snicker.
‘Fine.’
-x-
A thumb pressed against the dirtied cheek and glided across it, clearing a path through the crimson-specked sands. What met the fingers that trailed after it was ice cold and stiff, making him unintentionally flinch at the initial touch, but soon, the familiar feelings that had been buried underneath the roughness tingled and invited him again. It always used to remind him of milk-coloured, top-quality satin; it still did, even in its frostiness.
After what felt like an eternity, he carefully cupped the rigid cheek, the temperature far lower than usual on his callused palm.
“Toushirou… You lost the bet.”
Quietly, silently whispered words did not stand any chance in the midst of deafening commotion. Did they at least reach the still boy in front of him?
“My name… it should have been given to you, maybe… You never knew anything other than protecting your people even if you didn’t show it.”
It was almost automatic that his thumb headed for the pale lips and it had been already too late when the touch relayed the harrowingly rigid iciness he had never tasted in those petals before.
“You are winter, Toushirou… Winter never leaves us forever… It always comes back…”
It was most likely to be a fickle figment of his imagination that the snow-topped head turned a little towards him in his hand. After all, the shinigami was-
“You are not supposed to leave us forever… leave me forever… You were supposed to always come back…”
Something clear plummeted through the air onto the back of the minutely trembling hand and he blinked with a startle, the hazel eyes leaving the other’s firmly closed eyelids that now hid the enchanting emerald jewels from the world for eternity. When he recognised what it was, the other hand that had been idle at his side moved up and cautiously touched his face as if it was something foreign. He blinked again when wetness soaked his fingertips; he had not realised that tears had long escaped their wells. The ends of his digits glistened in the bright light and for a while, he merely stood there, one hand resting on the unmoving boy’s face, the other hovering in midair for his blank inspection.
Someone screamed for Kotetsu from the other side of the bustling room while another nameless face brushed past him, their shoulders colliding. He did not turn around. The mumbled apology was hurried and only half-hearted at the most. It did not matter.
“Kurosaki-san.”
A gentle, sympathetic voice alerted him of the braided healer’s presence on the other side of the bed he stood next to. He did not yet dare to look at her eyes. The tear-wet hand dropped limp back to his side.
“…We have to move Hitsugaya taichou out of here to another room.”
“…I see.”
Yet, despite the response, he did not move.
“…Kurosaki-san.”
“…Unohana-san.”
“Yes..?”
“…’Ichigo’… is the protector.”
He finally tore his glassy eyes away from the shinigami that no other word except ‘dead’ fittingly described. Again, he was not aware that his face had taken up on a fragile smile that made the healer furrow her eyebrows in sadness.
“…But I’ve failed.”
“Kurosaki-san, it’s not-“
“Winter… is never coming back, is it?”
Silence was the reply. That was fine, too. He knew the answer.
No length of reckonable waiting was going to give him the promised 24 hours of bliss.
Winter was never coming back for him.