Fanfiction | Dead Man Walking 2
Title: Dead Man Walking
Fandom: Bleach
Main Character: Hitsugaya Toushirou
Rating: PG13-ish
Warnings: Blood, gore, sporatic Hitsu-whumping, language, spoilers I suppose, author's inability to stay consistent with a single genre
Timeline: This story follows the manga's timeline, disregarding the Bounto Arc completely. It takes place after the war with Aizen has begun.
Disclaimer: I do not own Hitsugaya or Bleach or anything else that I do not own.
Summary: Hitsugaya's disappearance left Seireitei with plenty of unanswered questions, but when a boy, identical to the supposedly late taichou, appears on Earth, to what lengths will everyone go to find out why? And when the answer does come, will it be too late?
~*~
“Made my mistakes, let you down
And I can't, I can't hold on for too long
Ran my whole life in the ground
And I can't, I can't get up when you're gone”
Only One, Yellowcard
~*~
Chapter Two
No Penetration
~*~
“You’re back.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you for always coming,” the woman smiled as she sat down on the small, stone bench overlooking the many plaques embedded into the earth around it. “I really do appreciate it.” The boy next to her waved her words away and set the golden daffodil he held in his hands down on the nearest plaque.
“I don’t come to see you,” he sighed simply.
She only shook her head and turned to face the freshly picked flower that lie on the grave. “I know. But I still appreciate it.”
A comfortable silence followed as the two let the breeze of the afternoon flow against them. She had come to know the boy through his consistent visits to this spot, at least three times a week for the past four or five months. He had come more often at first, but she wasn’t one who could judge his loyalty. She knew she would have stopped coming altogether months ago.
He never said very much, but she had still been able to learn quite a bit about him.
“So no luck today then?” she finally interrupted the quiet stillness.
“No,” he replied, letting free a bitter laugh. “I really should just give up, shouldn’t I?”
The woman frowned, lifting a hand to caress his cheek. “Do you want to give up?” He looked up at her, brows furrowed in question. She sighed, leaning back against the bench and staring into the sky. “If you want to give up, then give up. You’ve waited long enough, right? But if you only think you should give up, then don’t. Because it doesn’t matter what you should do. What really matters in the end is what you want to do.”
The boy was quiet for a time before he too leaned back and gazed up at the clouds. “I don’t want to give up,” he whispered, his voice barely audible above the breeze.
“Then don’t,” she huffed, ruffling his hair playfully. “You keep waiting. And I’ll keep waiting. And, maybe, someday we’ll both find who we’re waiting for.”
“Who are you waiting for?” he asked.
She could tell he was hesitant, but she really didn’t mind answering the question. She just smiled. “I’m waiting for my guardian angel. I want to see her or maybe even his face just once, you know? The person who’s been looking out for me my entire life. What about you? Who are you waiting for?”
“I…” he began, but he was interrupted by a young man in an elaborate tuxedo.
“Um … Kid, would you mind leaving? We’re about to start a memorial service and this bench is going to be part of the seating.”
Kouryuu nodded and turned to finish what he was going to say, but the woman had disappeared. With a sigh, he stood up and allowed himself one last look at the plaque on which he had set the daffodil.
“I’ll tell you later,” he whispered, the smallest of smiles tracing his lips as he walked away.
~*~
“You really want to go through with this, then?” the figure asked one last time, handing his companion the pair of high-heeled shoes that would complete the scrounged together ensemble of modern Earth fashion.
“Yes,” came the quiet reply. “I have no choice. We have to get to him before Soul Society makes a move. And … before Aizen realizes what we’re trying to do.”
“You know, I could always do it instead. I’m a much better actor than you, my dear. And I’ve proved it to you on countless occasions,” he grinned as the second person snatched at the shoes and stuffed them unceremoniously onto unwilling feet.
“Like I said,” the voice huffed before its owner stomped out the door. “I have no choice.”
~*~
“I guess you didn’t get to see them this time either,” Akane sighed from her place in front of the kitchen sink. She handed another newly clean bowl over for her little brother to dry.
Kouryuu dried it and put it away before answering. “No.”
The older sibling looked down at the younger silently as he dried yet another bowl. This whole “big sister” thing was just getting harder and harder, wasn’t it? But… She stared into those teal eyes, alight with mature intelligence and yet still harboring the precious innocence of childhood.
But it was all worth it.
“You know, Kouryuu. Ever since the first time we … met,” she began, hesitating before supplying the last word in place of what she had originally been about to say, “I’ve been thinking a lot more than before, and I’ve been noticing things I never noticed before.” She paused, allowing Kouryuu to put the last dish away as she tried to gather exactly what she was trying to say.
“You’re the best little brother a girl could ask for. You’re smart, strong, caring, and utterly adorable,” she added, grinning as he scowled. “And patient. Very patient.”
When Kouryuu didn’t respond she sighed lightly and sat down on the floor, beckoning him to join her. He did so, though not without a confused frown. She threw an arm around his neck and leaned her head on his shoulder. “There’s nothing wrong with being so patient. In fact, I love that as much as I love everything else about you. It’s just that maybe … maybe it’s time for you to stop waiting and start moving forward again.”
“I don’t want to give up,” he whispered with conviction. “I don’t want to. Not yet.”
Akane snorted as she lifted herself to her feet once more. “Well, then, you could at least let me take you to a florist, and we can get some real flowers for the next time,” she smirked, patting him roughly on the head. “My Shirou-chan deserves only the best!”
“Oi! Don’t call me that with Okkaa-san around!” he groaned as he scrambled up from the floor to chase after her. “Or I’ll never hear the end of it!”
“Shirou-chan! Shirou-chan! Shirou-chan!” she chanted blissfully until Kouryuu tackled her right back down to the ground. The chanting immediately dissolved into a laughing fit, the two teenagers wrestling each other yet again, as they did to solve every problem that came between them.
“Ha! I win again!” cheered Akane, fist flying in the air as she heaved her way up against the living room sofa. Kouryuu was breathing heavily, still laying sprawled out on the floor. “That Karate Club’s obviously doing you no good! You’d probably get farther learning from me!”
“I can do both.”
“Huhn?” she blurted, looking over at her brother as he pulled himself into a sitting position.
“I can wait and move forward at the same time. I can do both,” he stated simply, every bit of his glorious stubbornness shining through.
Her smile widened another notch. “You’re the best multi-tasker I know.”
~*~
Breathing heavily, the boy wiped blood and sweat from his brow before chancing a look down at the devastation surrounding him from his position high up on the rock face. All around, men and women clashed swords to claws as they battled fearsome monsters. A few bodies were strewn broken and bloody on the cold, hard ground, but luckily, those still fighting vastly outnumbered them. He would just have to make sure things stayed that way.
The boy tensed suddenly and growled, a deep, penetrating guttural noise that did not quite fit with his short stature. “Who are you?” he hissed, turning around to face a much taller man who had just appeared behind him.
The newcomer had dark hair and the remnants of a white mask hung from his jaw. An unnatural hole encroached upon his sternum. Somehow it only served to make him seem more menacing. Then again, the feeling could have come from the very deadly-looking weapon he carried instead. The man shrugged noncommittally at the question, looking more bored than anything else. “You can call me Stark, I guess,” he grunted. “I don’t really care, to be honest.”
“You are Espada.”
The statement brought a grin to the man’s lips. “Yeah, but I’m not as into all of this fighting as the others are,” he replied, motioning to the many monsters engaging in bloody battles around them. “I prefer to watch as my enemies are cut down by someone else. It really is refreshing, to see carnage like this right after a good nap. It’s just as thrilling as the actual fight, yet there’s no mess to clean off of my uniform afterward.”
The boy’s teal eyes flared icy blue with righteous anger. Those were his men out there! And this monster had the gall to sit here and tell him to his face that he enjoyed watching as they were slaughtered?! That was worse than if he had been killing them himself! “How dare you!” he yelled in his rage, lifting his sword - no, his dragon - to aim directly between the man’s half-lidded eyes. Energy spewed from his core outward, blowing his uniform into the air with its intensity. The already over-cast sky took on an ominous shift as the clouds grew darker and more condensed.
A single drop of rain fell between the two, soon followed by another and another and another.
“Oh my,” Stark sighed, lifting his own weapon. “Well, if you insist, let’s go somewhere a bit more interesting, ne?”
The boy said nothing. He stood still for just a second longer. Then he charged, leading the wide open jaw of a gigantic, crystalline dragon directly toward the man. He just barely dodged the blade, and the frigid fangs sliced at his shoulder as he jumped to the left and took off in full sprint.
“Catch me if you can,” he called playfully back.
A scowl, and he was off, chasing after the man without even a backwards glance.
“Taichou! What are you doing?!” called an all-too-familiar voice from behind him.
The boy did not answer. It was best if she stayed behind. He had no idea where this man was taking him, and he did not want her by his side if he would only end up leading her into a trap.
~*~
Kouryuu hated when it was his sister’s turn to cook. It wasn’t necessarily the food he hated. Sure, he preferred Okkaa-san’s cooking. But no matter how much he complained about it and insulted it, he really didn’t mind his sister’s either. What he hated was that, whenever it was Akane’s turn to make dinner, she’d send him to go get the ingredients.
She wrote it off as some sort of right of passage. She was the eldest, so she could order him to go shopping for her. Every time he refused, she’d pin him to the floor and administer noogie after noogie until he gave in. And so here he was, rubbing at his sore noggin and shopping for tomorrow night’s dinner. He sifted through the bag, recounting Akane’s requests one by one in his head. Alright then. Here he was, just finished with shopping for tomorrow night’s dinner.
Glad to be done, he paid for his purchases and walked out of the store into the throngs of evening shoppers. Most of them were simply like shadows in the background of his vision. He tended to look at people in that way a lot. They were just there. They had nothing to do with him.
It would not be that way tonight.
“Taichou! What are you doing?!”
Kouryuu whirled around, eyes wide. He knew, for a reason he could not comprehend, that whoever it was, she was calling for him. He saw her immediately; she wasn’t exactly one who blended in to a crowd. Long, wavy, maple-golden tresses; excited, pale blue eyes; and a killer rack. Not to mention the gaudy, neon pink dress and matching high-heels that she was obviously not used to walking in. He could only stare as she ran ever closer to him and finally stopped, aforementioned assets not two inches from his face.
That was when she leaned down and pulled him into a back-breaking bear hug. “I can’t believe it!” she shouted at the top of her lungs as he struggled for his life against her suffocating bosom. “You just disappeared! I didn’t know what happened to you! I can’t believe it! I can’t believe I finally found you, Taichou! It’s a miracle! Just what are you doing in a place like this?!”
Finally she released him, and he struggled to regain equilibrium. He backed away, his eyes never straying from her own: so blissful, so … expectant. It took him quite a while to find his voice, and even after he did he wasn’t sure he should use it.
“You…” he began uncertainly, but soon indignation won out.
“Who the hell are you?!”
~*~
Chapter Two End
~*~
Fandom: Bleach
Main Character: Hitsugaya Toushirou
Rating: PG13-ish
Warnings: Blood, gore, sporatic Hitsu-whumping, language, spoilers I suppose, author's inability to stay consistent with a single genre
Timeline: This story follows the manga's timeline, disregarding the Bounto Arc completely. It takes place after the war with Aizen has begun.
Disclaimer: I do not own Hitsugaya or Bleach or anything else that I do not own.
Summary: Hitsugaya's disappearance left Seireitei with plenty of unanswered questions, but when a boy, identical to the supposedly late taichou, appears on Earth, to what lengths will everyone go to find out why? And when the answer does come, will it be too late?
~*~
“Made my mistakes, let you down
And I can't, I can't hold on for too long
Ran my whole life in the ground
And I can't, I can't get up when you're gone”
Only One, Yellowcard
~*~
Chapter Two
No Penetration
~*~
“You’re back.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you for always coming,” the woman smiled as she sat down on the small, stone bench overlooking the many plaques embedded into the earth around it. “I really do appreciate it.” The boy next to her waved her words away and set the golden daffodil he held in his hands down on the nearest plaque.
“I don’t come to see you,” he sighed simply.
She only shook her head and turned to face the freshly picked flower that lie on the grave. “I know. But I still appreciate it.”
A comfortable silence followed as the two let the breeze of the afternoon flow against them. She had come to know the boy through his consistent visits to this spot, at least three times a week for the past four or five months. He had come more often at first, but she wasn’t one who could judge his loyalty. She knew she would have stopped coming altogether months ago.
He never said very much, but she had still been able to learn quite a bit about him.
“So no luck today then?” she finally interrupted the quiet stillness.
“No,” he replied, letting free a bitter laugh. “I really should just give up, shouldn’t I?”
The woman frowned, lifting a hand to caress his cheek. “Do you want to give up?” He looked up at her, brows furrowed in question. She sighed, leaning back against the bench and staring into the sky. “If you want to give up, then give up. You’ve waited long enough, right? But if you only think you should give up, then don’t. Because it doesn’t matter what you should do. What really matters in the end is what you want to do.”
The boy was quiet for a time before he too leaned back and gazed up at the clouds. “I don’t want to give up,” he whispered, his voice barely audible above the breeze.
“Then don’t,” she huffed, ruffling his hair playfully. “You keep waiting. And I’ll keep waiting. And, maybe, someday we’ll both find who we’re waiting for.”
“Who are you waiting for?” he asked.
She could tell he was hesitant, but she really didn’t mind answering the question. She just smiled. “I’m waiting for my guardian angel. I want to see her or maybe even his face just once, you know? The person who’s been looking out for me my entire life. What about you? Who are you waiting for?”
“I…” he began, but he was interrupted by a young man in an elaborate tuxedo.
“Um … Kid, would you mind leaving? We’re about to start a memorial service and this bench is going to be part of the seating.”
Kouryuu nodded and turned to finish what he was going to say, but the woman had disappeared. With a sigh, he stood up and allowed himself one last look at the plaque on which he had set the daffodil.
“I’ll tell you later,” he whispered, the smallest of smiles tracing his lips as he walked away.
~*~
“You really want to go through with this, then?” the figure asked one last time, handing his companion the pair of high-heeled shoes that would complete the scrounged together ensemble of modern Earth fashion.
“Yes,” came the quiet reply. “I have no choice. We have to get to him before Soul Society makes a move. And … before Aizen realizes what we’re trying to do.”
“You know, I could always do it instead. I’m a much better actor than you, my dear. And I’ve proved it to you on countless occasions,” he grinned as the second person snatched at the shoes and stuffed them unceremoniously onto unwilling feet.
“Like I said,” the voice huffed before its owner stomped out the door. “I have no choice.”
~*~
“I guess you didn’t get to see them this time either,” Akane sighed from her place in front of the kitchen sink. She handed another newly clean bowl over for her little brother to dry.
Kouryuu dried it and put it away before answering. “No.”
The older sibling looked down at the younger silently as he dried yet another bowl. This whole “big sister” thing was just getting harder and harder, wasn’t it? But… She stared into those teal eyes, alight with mature intelligence and yet still harboring the precious innocence of childhood.
But it was all worth it.
“You know, Kouryuu. Ever since the first time we … met,” she began, hesitating before supplying the last word in place of what she had originally been about to say, “I’ve been thinking a lot more than before, and I’ve been noticing things I never noticed before.” She paused, allowing Kouryuu to put the last dish away as she tried to gather exactly what she was trying to say.
“You’re the best little brother a girl could ask for. You’re smart, strong, caring, and utterly adorable,” she added, grinning as he scowled. “And patient. Very patient.”
When Kouryuu didn’t respond she sighed lightly and sat down on the floor, beckoning him to join her. He did so, though not without a confused frown. She threw an arm around his neck and leaned her head on his shoulder. “There’s nothing wrong with being so patient. In fact, I love that as much as I love everything else about you. It’s just that maybe … maybe it’s time for you to stop waiting and start moving forward again.”
“I don’t want to give up,” he whispered with conviction. “I don’t want to. Not yet.”
Akane snorted as she lifted herself to her feet once more. “Well, then, you could at least let me take you to a florist, and we can get some real flowers for the next time,” she smirked, patting him roughly on the head. “My Shirou-chan deserves only the best!”
“Oi! Don’t call me that with Okkaa-san around!” he groaned as he scrambled up from the floor to chase after her. “Or I’ll never hear the end of it!”
“Shirou-chan! Shirou-chan! Shirou-chan!” she chanted blissfully until Kouryuu tackled her right back down to the ground. The chanting immediately dissolved into a laughing fit, the two teenagers wrestling each other yet again, as they did to solve every problem that came between them.
“Ha! I win again!” cheered Akane, fist flying in the air as she heaved her way up against the living room sofa. Kouryuu was breathing heavily, still laying sprawled out on the floor. “That Karate Club’s obviously doing you no good! You’d probably get farther learning from me!”
“I can do both.”
“Huhn?” she blurted, looking over at her brother as he pulled himself into a sitting position.
“I can wait and move forward at the same time. I can do both,” he stated simply, every bit of his glorious stubbornness shining through.
Her smile widened another notch. “You’re the best multi-tasker I know.”
~*~
Breathing heavily, the boy wiped blood and sweat from his brow before chancing a look down at the devastation surrounding him from his position high up on the rock face. All around, men and women clashed swords to claws as they battled fearsome monsters. A few bodies were strewn broken and bloody on the cold, hard ground, but luckily, those still fighting vastly outnumbered them. He would just have to make sure things stayed that way.
The boy tensed suddenly and growled, a deep, penetrating guttural noise that did not quite fit with his short stature. “Who are you?” he hissed, turning around to face a much taller man who had just appeared behind him.
The newcomer had dark hair and the remnants of a white mask hung from his jaw. An unnatural hole encroached upon his sternum. Somehow it only served to make him seem more menacing. Then again, the feeling could have come from the very deadly-looking weapon he carried instead. The man shrugged noncommittally at the question, looking more bored than anything else. “You can call me Stark, I guess,” he grunted. “I don’t really care, to be honest.”
“You are Espada.”
The statement brought a grin to the man’s lips. “Yeah, but I’m not as into all of this fighting as the others are,” he replied, motioning to the many monsters engaging in bloody battles around them. “I prefer to watch as my enemies are cut down by someone else. It really is refreshing, to see carnage like this right after a good nap. It’s just as thrilling as the actual fight, yet there’s no mess to clean off of my uniform afterward.”
The boy’s teal eyes flared icy blue with righteous anger. Those were his men out there! And this monster had the gall to sit here and tell him to his face that he enjoyed watching as they were slaughtered?! That was worse than if he had been killing them himself! “How dare you!” he yelled in his rage, lifting his sword - no, his dragon - to aim directly between the man’s half-lidded eyes. Energy spewed from his core outward, blowing his uniform into the air with its intensity. The already over-cast sky took on an ominous shift as the clouds grew darker and more condensed.
A single drop of rain fell between the two, soon followed by another and another and another.
“Oh my,” Stark sighed, lifting his own weapon. “Well, if you insist, let’s go somewhere a bit more interesting, ne?”
The boy said nothing. He stood still for just a second longer. Then he charged, leading the wide open jaw of a gigantic, crystalline dragon directly toward the man. He just barely dodged the blade, and the frigid fangs sliced at his shoulder as he jumped to the left and took off in full sprint.
“Catch me if you can,” he called playfully back.
A scowl, and he was off, chasing after the man without even a backwards glance.
“Taichou! What are you doing?!” called an all-too-familiar voice from behind him.
The boy did not answer. It was best if she stayed behind. He had no idea where this man was taking him, and he did not want her by his side if he would only end up leading her into a trap.
~*~
Kouryuu hated when it was his sister’s turn to cook. It wasn’t necessarily the food he hated. Sure, he preferred Okkaa-san’s cooking. But no matter how much he complained about it and insulted it, he really didn’t mind his sister’s either. What he hated was that, whenever it was Akane’s turn to make dinner, she’d send him to go get the ingredients.
She wrote it off as some sort of right of passage. She was the eldest, so she could order him to go shopping for her. Every time he refused, she’d pin him to the floor and administer noogie after noogie until he gave in. And so here he was, rubbing at his sore noggin and shopping for tomorrow night’s dinner. He sifted through the bag, recounting Akane’s requests one by one in his head. Alright then. Here he was, just finished with shopping for tomorrow night’s dinner.
Glad to be done, he paid for his purchases and walked out of the store into the throngs of evening shoppers. Most of them were simply like shadows in the background of his vision. He tended to look at people in that way a lot. They were just there. They had nothing to do with him.
It would not be that way tonight.
“Taichou! What are you doing?!”
Kouryuu whirled around, eyes wide. He knew, for a reason he could not comprehend, that whoever it was, she was calling for him. He saw her immediately; she wasn’t exactly one who blended in to a crowd. Long, wavy, maple-golden tresses; excited, pale blue eyes; and a killer rack. Not to mention the gaudy, neon pink dress and matching high-heels that she was obviously not used to walking in. He could only stare as she ran ever closer to him and finally stopped, aforementioned assets not two inches from his face.
That was when she leaned down and pulled him into a back-breaking bear hug. “I can’t believe it!” she shouted at the top of her lungs as he struggled for his life against her suffocating bosom. “You just disappeared! I didn’t know what happened to you! I can’t believe it! I can’t believe I finally found you, Taichou! It’s a miracle! Just what are you doing in a place like this?!”
Finally she released him, and he struggled to regain equilibrium. He backed away, his eyes never straying from her own: so blissful, so … expectant. It took him quite a while to find his voice, and even after he did he wasn’t sure he should use it.
“You…” he began uncertainly, but soon indignation won out.
“Who the hell are you?!”
~*~
Chapter Two End
~*~