• Chapter 3
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    Sunday came.

    Where is that church of hers?! Hitsugaya was about to scream in frustration. He had almost sort of not quite made a promise to someone who didn’t believe he existed, and he wasn’t about to let her down – if, of course, he could find her in the first place.
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    He had been searching since sunup, but there were so very many churches here! Even when he tried the old fashioned radius method – damn it all, he had already done five miles and hadn’t found a trace of her. And too much farther out on one side just gives the ocean. Where did that woman go?

    If only I had a way to track her. If only I had found a way to track her and could have planted it the other night. If only, if only, if only. I could keep beating myself up or I could just –

    He felt sick.

    And his contact phone from Soul Society was ringing.

    “Taichou! Do. Something. Now!”

    “Unohana?!”

    “You heard me, Hitsugaya. The 4th is entirely under sound blackout and everything within a mile of here is frosted. Did you hear me? Frosted. Iced over. And she’s unconscious. I thought sedation would be enough to dull the effect, but evidently not.” He could hear – what, anger? – in Unohana’s voice. Anger? Calm, unflappable Unohana, angry? This really was getting out of hand.

    “If the 4th is under blackout –“

    “I’m at the 12th under, ahem, special invitation from Kurotsuchi. Seems he is more interested than ever in what he terms his ‘best research specimen ever’ that he politely requested from you, and a bit miffed that you never responded. Better connection from here anyway. Have you found anything, anything at all, that will stop this from happening?”

    Just then, he felt it. A blast of ice. From… there!

    “Sorry Unohana, catch you later, bye!”

    He hung up before hearing her ear-blistering retort. Boy, was she mad. He’d just have to make it up to her (somehow) later. When he got back to Soul Society. After dealing with the woman.

    Not very subtle about this, is she? I can’t believe nobody around her notices this.

    He found it. A large church at the end of a road, and there in the main building, in a large room, filled with people…

    There. Up in a loft. She said she was in the choir. There on the end of the third row.

    And her face had that death look again.

    This time he heard the music.

    And he understood why she was so upset. Here, he was getting images, colors, sensory information that was overwhelming in its complexity, its despair, its irony.

    What was supposed to be this… this comfort… this concept of being accepted and loved, “no more a stranger or a guest, but like a child at home.” It had been so perverted for so long, she could not bear to hear the words, much less sing them. And they were repeating that last line, over and over.

    He couldn’t get to her. Not really. The most he could do was reach out to her, try to pull close to her… he couldn’t break through… he rested his cheek gently against hers.

    No words would come. He just stayed there until all the singing stopped. He could smell the salt. She must have been crying, before.

    Damn it all.

    Hitsugaya felt so helpless. This was a grief too large for him to understand. What do you tell someone who has never quite been mishandled “enough”? Abused, for certain, tortured, driven to the edge of sanity time and time again, but always just within the limits of normalcy. Just within the border of what could be reliably reported and proven to an outsider. No help, no recourse, no advocate. They didn’t have fundraisers for this, or telethons. There wasn’t some big bad problem that you could put a name on that would get her the help she so desparately needed. Just weak labels like “depression” or “chronic pain”. Years of long days and longer nights. Of sadistic psychological and emotional abuse, first from her parents and siblings and then from her husband. And nobody to love. Damn it all, indeed. He understood now that even her own son, for some reason he could only get as the label “autistic spectrum”, wouldn’t let her use the word “love” in his presence. She couldn’t even kiss her own son. And she was so conscious of the boundaries, she wouldn’t kiss him, even though she desparately desired to do so, simply because he didn’t want her to.

    And he had been worried that she had wanted to hug him.

    He now knew he was in no particular danger of that. Simply because she believed he didn’t want it, she wouldn’t do it.

    She was incapable of rising in her own defense. And her environment was eating her alive.

    No wonder the dragon within was not at all pleased.

    Once she was safely seated and listening to the preacher, he beat a hasty retreat. He had some apologizing to do…
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    Matsumoto really, really wanted to know what had taken her taichou all the way to a place like America. She had only the information that the woman in 4th had practically silenced half of Seireitei and frozen a good bit of her present locale as well. And Unohana! She had never seen her like that. Unohana, mad? No, furious. Unohana, who never lost her temper, for anything, not even when Kurotsuchi made ridiculous suggestions for her patients. Damn him and his “research specimens” and the trouble he causes! But you just don’t go interrupting her patient care randomly like that. For that, for her patients, she was angry.

    So Matsumoto was going to see for herself.

    “So, taichou, I can get the same information you can from 12th if I ask reeeeeeally nicely and slip them a bit of sake, ne?” She chuckled and made her way to the same place Hitsugaya had located a few days before.

    This… woman. She looked her over. Not much to look at, could seriously use a makeover… that hair, though, auburn red kind of color, we could do something with that. Matsumoto was musing like she did when she was helping one of the lady shinigami with a love life problem. Somehow her fun-loving nature gave them the idea that she knew what it took to attract men. She shrugged to herself. Not like I’d get a chance to help her with that – she’s already married and has a son. Doesn’t do to go messing around breaking up couples, even if they aren’t exactly suited for one another. It wasn’t hard to see from the condition of the apartment that the reports were true. The cane was no fake. She was in pain, and with nobody around at home, she didn’t have to hide it. That the apartment was a mess was an understatement – the living area cluttered with toys and papers, most likely from her son. The bedroom, things piled atop one another, even on what looked to be some kind of small bed next to the large one. And then the woman’s room, the “work room”, she called it – a glorified storage room with computers in it.

    ”Another one?”

    Matsumoto was visibly startled. Nobody had mentioned that she could see them.

    “My imagination is obviously working overtime. First the handsome young man, and now you.”

    “What do you mean, ‘the handsome young man’?”

    “From last week. Said his name was Toshiro, or something like that. Dressed in robes like yours. Well, almost. His had some white robe on top of the black ones. White hair, gorgeous blue-green eyes. Looks like you’re both out of some manga story. Which means I’ve been watching entirely too much anime lately.”

    “You called him Toshiro.”

    “That is what he said his name was.”

    “Why not ‘Shiro-chan’?”

    “Excuse me?”

    “I can tell by the way you’re mooning and what you said that you like him. So why didn’t you call him by a nickname?”

    The woman blinked visibly. “Because when I pointed out that I figured the ‘shiro’ part of his name was Japanese for ‘white’ and it may have been a reference to his hair, he winced. Kinda clues a body in that he’s sensitive to it. So, whatever name he chose to use is the one I will use. Which in this case is Toshiro.”

    That was obviously not what Matsumoto had expected. Some human woman, causing trouble up and down Soul Society without even a thought for it, was deliberately choosing to show respect to someone she didn’t even believe really existed, simply because she thought it would hurt his feelings. She had no clue about his rank and importance. She just respected him as a person.

    Definitely not what she had expected to find.

    Which meant she had no clue about Soul Society, or her effect on it.

    “So, what is your name anyway?”

    “Matsumoto Rangiku. Yours?”

    “You can call me Sharon. Been a pleasure, but I have to work now. If I get too distracted, the reports won’t get done.”

    “Paperwork?”

    “Remote transcription. They talk, I type. The hospital I work for is miles from here, but I get the voices and type the reports from home and have ever since my son was born.”

    Matsumoto shook her head. “Huh. I understand paperwork. Tons of it where I come from.”

    The woman chuckled. “It is said that we flow on a sea of paper. I wonder every so often how many trees I’ve killed for all the reports I generate. They do get printed out on the other end eventually, before signing, after signing, copies, faxed copies to doctor’s offices, duplicate, triplicate…”

    Matsumoto laughed aloud. “Tell me about it! And just about when I think the paper flow has slowed, my taichou has another pile for me!”

    This was met with a grin. “So ‘taichou’ must be equivalent to ‘supervisor’ or ‘director’, ‘cause I know exactly what you mean. In spades. If it’s not imaging, it’s pathology, or stats, or backlog, but it never ever ends. The only reason there’s a limit is because corporate doesn’t want them paying overtime – it would screw up the productivity stats.”

    “Try telling that to my taichou.”

    “Try telling him to recruit some help.”

    “Feh. Some things can only be handled by the ones at the top of the food chain.”

    “Sorry to hear it. Makes me glad I’m an underling and not a supervisor. I have enough trouble of my own.”

    “I think I like you. A shame I can’t take you out for a drink. You like sake?”

    “Sorry, I don’t do alcohol. My body is screwed up enough as it is. My poison of choice is Coca-Cola – Classic original Coke, not that nasty diet or caffiene free stuff. Helps settle my stomach.”

    “And sake helps settle my head. Oh well.”

    They traded a smile that was almost warm friendship.

    “I’ll have to tell him I entirely approve of you.”

    “Tell who?”

    “Taichou, of course. You called him Toshiro.”

    “You mean he’s your boss?”

    A raised eyebrow met Matsumoto’s smile.

    She just sat there shaking her head. “Entirely too much anime lately. I need a vacation.”
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    Back in Soul Society, Hitsugaya was getting his ears burned by Unohana.

    “You said you were going to do something about her. I can’t let her leave – she’s in no condition to go anywhere but here – but I can’t let her stay if she’s going to make life difficult for every. Other. Patient. In. My. Care!” Unohana was, for her, shouting, in that way she had without even raising her voice. A shiver went down Hitsugaya’s spine. Remind me to never ever get on her bad side again…

    “I told you, I did do something, I calmed her down, all right? Correlating the time lines shows that the silence and ice receded when I made contact. She’s been badly abused and got triggered. That’s all. She even warned me – “

    “She what?”

    This time he did blush. “Well, I was scouting her out and discovered that she could see me. No gigai, just me. And she spoke to me. She thought she was imagining things, and I didn’t disabuse her of the notion. And she tried to tell me but I couldn’t find her and then when I found the ice I found her and – “

    “What do you mean you couldn’t find her? Didn’t you just say you were talking to her?”

    “This church thing. There are so many of them, and I didn’t expect her to be at one so far away from her home. It was a good twenty miles and more from where I found her when we spoke, and by the time I got there she was already iced over, on the spiritual plane at least. The best I could do in the midst of the ongoing event was to touch her. That’s all. But it must have been enough to break it.”

    Unohana was deep in thought.

    Hitsugaya tried again. “I haven’t gone back yet. I don’t know what I’ll find, and I don’t know what to say.”

    Unohana looked at him with something resembling her usual compassion. “You really care about this woman, don’t you.”

    He couldn’t look her in the eyes after that.

    “I don’t know what to tell you, Toshiro. You are well aware that such a relationship couldn’t exist between a living human and a shinigami. And you are also well aware that as a sitting taichou, you can’t spend all your time in the living world with her either.”

    “Yeah, I know,” he muttered, more to himself than to her.

    “So for now, we find a way to get and keep her calmed down. As in not triggered. At least until we can find out why she manifested here, now, and get things under control on the Soul Society end.”

    Hitsugaya scowled again, eyes shut tight.

    And listened for dragons.