Winter War - Hanatarou: Signs Of Life
Title: Winter War - Hanatarou: Signs Of Life
Authors: incandescens
Characters: Hanatarou, others in Hueco Mundo
Rating/Warning: PG-13.
Notes: This is a dark AU co-plotted with sophiap and liralen. The war against Aizen's forces went very badly. Nothing is sacred and no one is safe.
Summary: In which Hanatarou is probably the most stable and professional person around.
Index of Links
[...]
20. Ensemble: The Day Before
21. Nanao: Going Down
22. Hisagi: In Too Deep
23. Ensemble: First Contact
24. Byakuya: Necessity
HANATAROU: SIGNS OF LIFE
Hanatarou pushed the mop along the corridor. There was little actual effort involved. The corridors were as smooth as ice and as white as bone, and he suspected -- in fact, he was sure -- that the chore was unnecessary, and had been assigned merely to keep him busy and to remind him of his position here as a lowly servant.
Of course he and the others were putting maps together, based on where they'd been sent to clean or to heal, but the problem with that was the usual problem of trying to outguess Aizen. He had to know that they'd be working out the place's layout and planning escape.
So far the most popular theory (Hanatarou didn't gamble, so he hadn't taken an interest in the odds, but he gossiped as much as anyone else from Fourth Division, and what else was there to talk about? And even if they didn't actually have any possessions to gamble, everyone had agreed that it was the principle of the thing) was that Aizen was just waiting to catch someone in the wrong place or doing the wrong thing, and that it was all a big elaborate set-up so that they'd become over-confident. To which some of Fourth Division pointed out that Aizen could do what he wanted to them anyhow, but others (and Hanatarou with them) felt that Aizen was the sort of clinically psychotic sadist who would like to trick them into "earning" their punishment because that made it more fun for him.
He slopped the mop along, swivelling it from side to side with a slow efficiency that allowed him to keep half an eye out for Arrancar in a bad temper, escaped specimens, or worst of all, Kurotsuchi or Szayel looking for new experimental subjects. This particular corridor was close to Kurotsuchi's laboratories. He didn't always ask permission from Aizen before taking people away. He just sent dry little notes afterwards giving the names of the people who were gone, and Hisagi Shuuhei would come to hand the papers over before disappearing again, with a thinly closed mouth and eyes like hard stones.
Before Iemura's death, Hanatarou and some of the others had at least tried to speak to Hisagi; to chat with him, to try to gather information, just to find out what was going on. Now they simply nodded to him politely and let him leave as fast as possible. It wasn't just the disgust. It was not wanting to be next. Everyone still alive here, all of Fourth Division who hadn't given up yet, they all wanted to live.
Hanatarou wanted to live very badly indeed.
Unohana-taichou hadn't given up. She had believed there were still chances. She'd parleyed with Aizen and surrendered to him because she thought that there was still a chance of beating him, rather than fighting to the end or committing suicide. If she had honestly thought that there was no way of winning, then Hanatarou firmly believed she would have kept on fighting and hurt Aizen so very badly that he'd never have recovered from it. But she had chosen to stay alive, play for time, smuggle the wounded Captains out of Seireitei, all those things and more. She might have surrendered, but she hadn't really surrendered. Hanatarou knew there was a difference. He hadn't surrendered either.
Humming tunelessly to himself, he turned the corner and ran into an arm like an iron bar which picked him up and slammed him against the wall.
"Hanatarou, right?" Madarame Ikkaku snarled at him, keeping his voice low. "Don't squawk. We're here to help."
Through tear-blurred eyes, Hanatarou took in the group surrounding him. They were all in proper shinigami black, except for -- the Sixth Espada Grimmjow? He recognised Madarame, and Ogidou from his own Division, and Ise Nanao, and an older man he didn't know personally from Sixth. There was a younger man with them, a total stranger, but in shinigami uniform. "You're here," he whispered. "Thank you so much --"
"Yeah, yeah, we'll do that bit later," Madarame snapped. "We need information. Where's the closest place we can talk?"
"Down that corridor and the second door on the left is a storeroom," Hanatarou said, pointing confidently. "It's not very large, but it doesn't get used often so it should be safe."
---
It was indeed not very large. There was only just room for seven people, let alone a mop and bucket (it would have been far too obvious to leave them out in the corridor), but it had a door which could be shut.
"The situation is this," Ise-fukutaichou said briskly. "We are here to rescue anyone we can and to attempt to kill Aizen. We need to make contact with the following people. If they are still alive. Inoue Orihime." The still unintroduced young man perked up at that. "Yadomaru Lisa. Hisagi Shuuhei. Possibly Kurosaki Ichigo. Can you tell us their current status?"
Hanatarou rubbed at his forehead nervously. "Inoue-san will be in her quarters. She often has Ulquiorra with her. He's the Fourth Espada -- well, he was before everyone died, so I suppose now he's the first or second technically, depending on what Kurosaki counts as, but everyone just calls him Ulquiorra-sama. Except for us, because we don't talk to him."
Ise-fukutaichou nodded. "As Grimmjow said." She glanced at the Sixth Espada, who was totally out of place there. In fact, he was so out of place in the group that Hanatarou hadn't actually noticed so far that --
Hanatarou gasped. "He doesn't have a hole!" he said, pointing at Grimmjow's visible and very normal-looking abdomen.
"Yeah," Grimmjow growled. "So I have this little problem. Wanna fucking make something of it?"
"No, not at all," Hanatarou said frantically. "I'm sure it looks very good on you and there's a perfectly good reason for it. Does it itch? Do you need antiseptics?"
Grimmjow gave a low purring growl, and Hanatarou decided that the patient was obviously in good health and didn't need any medical care. "Um!" he said brightly. "Yadomaru-san wanders around a lot. I can show you where her quarters are. I don't think she has any actual guards on her."
"Is there any general surveillance?" Ise-fukutaichou asked. "Cameras, remote viewing, that sort of thing?"
"We don't think so," Hanatarou said. It was something which Fourth Division had done their best to find out. "I mean, there are cameras and stuff which can be used to watch, but we don't think Aizen uses it very much. Some of the Arrancar who've talked about it said that it was Ichimaru's favourite thing and that Aizen doesn't want other people touching it unless he feels it's necessary."
"Told you," Grimmjow said.
"Yes, yes," Ise-fukutaichou said, "but we had to check. Very good, let us try not to give him reason to turn it on. Hisagi? What about him?"
Hanatarou looked at the ground. "He's probably in his office or his quarters," he said tonelessly. "He doesn't have any actual guards on him, but he does have an Arrancar servant assigned to him."
"Something the matter?" Madarame asked.
Hanatarou shuffled a little. "Since he killed Iemura, none of us have tried to talk to him," he said. "We did hope that perhaps he might see he'd made a mistake siding with Aizen, but . . ."
"Killed Iemura?" Ogidou exclaimed. "How? Why?"
Ise-fukutaichou and Madarame were giving each other tense looks. "Give us the facts," Madarame said. "What happened?"
"We don't know," Hanatarou admitted. "We knew that Iemura was going to talk to him. He'd got a list of supplies to requisition, but he had said to some of us that he was going to try and reason with Hisagi. He actually sounded, well. Hopeful. Then a few hours later, Aizen had the body brought in. He said that Iemura had been foolish, and that he hoped none of us would be so foolish." He could still taste the slow burn of bile and terror and fury in his stomach. Why, why hadn't he done something, said something? But they had all of them lowered their eyes, all of them kept silent. "He didn't say anything about who'd killed him. But it had been a sword thrust. And there's only one person here who would have killed him with a sword."
The others exchanged glances. "I'll be clear with you," Madarame said. "Part of why we're here is that Hisagi got Boy Blue here and the Sado boy out of Las Noches, and he sent us word that he was running under fucking secret orders from Yamamoto-soutaichou and Komamura-taichou together, and that they told him to fake going over to Aizen. Course, thing is they're both dead now, so he could have been telling the truth, or he could have been lying. Now you tell me, Hanatarou. You've seen him recently. You know about Iemura. Would you think it could be true?"
Hanatarou shifted his weight defensively from one foot to the other. "I don't know," he said slowly. "I suppose that if he was playing a part well enough to fool Aizen, then he'd have to have been doing it very well. Maybe well enough to fool Iemura. Certainly well enough to fool us all. If Iemura did something like threaten Aizen or attack him, in front of Aizen, and if Hisagi had to defend himself . . ." He broke off, and touched the collar at his throat. "I don't know," he said again.
"What is that thing?" Ise-fukutaichou asked. "I can see there's some sort of kidou in it -- some sort of binding?"
Hanatarou drooped again. "They explode," he said, feeling as if he ought to apologise for it. "They put them on all of us. If we go outside our assigned areas, or if we disobey orders -- it happened to Sato --"
Ogidou swore, losing his smile for a moment.
Hanatarou shrugged weakly. "We've been trying to analyse them," he said. "It seems to be a shaped charge linked to a kidou trigger. It's not important, Ise-fukutaichou, really it isn't. You stopping Aizen, that's the important thing."
Ise-fukutaichou adjusted her glasses, took a deep breath, and nodded. "Thank you, Hanatarou. Grimmjow, why didn't you tell us about this?"
"Aww, who notices shit like that?" Grimmjow muttered. "Not as if I ever needed to go find a healer. Why should I be expected to know what kinda shit Aizen's pulling with them?" He did look vaguely uncomfortable, though.
"We'll get it fixed," Madarame said firmly. "Where's the Kurosaki kid hanging out these days?"
"At his quarters," Hanatarou said quickly. "Or in the sparring areas, most of the time. He kills a lot of Hollows that way. We don't see him in our area. And he's so different these days --"
Ise-fukutaichou nodded, cutting him off. "Hisagi first, I think," she said to Madarame. "We're going to have to risk it --"
"Hey, you got me," Grimmjow said. "I can still handle that Kurosaki kid. Maybe it's what I need. A proper fight to get the juices flowing again --"
"We need Inoue Orihime too," Ise-fukutaichou said. She blinked at a sudden thought. "Hanatarou, is the girl ever called to help with healing emergencies? Has it happened in the past?"
"Once or twice," Hanatarou said. He could see where she was going with this. "But Ulquiorra might come with her."
"But if we can swing Hisagi first, he can bodyguard her," Madarame said with satisfaction. "Then we have a nice little chat with her."
The unknown young man was smiling happily. Hanatarou was glad that someone here was happy. He was still too much in shock and disbelief to be anywhere near actually happy. Oh, certainly he would like to be happy, but he still felt that he might pinch himself and wake up to find that it was all a dream.
And he desperately wanted to say something unfair, something cruel and hurtful like Why didn't you come earlier? Why couldn't you come earlier? Before so many of us died? Before Unohana-taichou herself . . .
Madarame must have caught something in his expression. He clapped Hanatarou on the shoulder. "You've done a good job," he said. "I know we've got no fucking idea what sort of crap you've all been going through. We need one more push out of you and your friends, and then it's going to be over for good."
Hanatarou wished, just a little, that it had been Ogidou who had spoken like that to him, who'd remembered that Hanatarou was his own Division and colleague, instead of looking at him with an air that suggested he would never have lowered himself to pushing a mop down here, but Ogidou had never been that sort of person. In fact, Ogidou had been more the sort of person who --
He pulled his mind away from those thoughts, and nodded to Madarame with gratitude. "Thank you," he said. "We'll all do what we can."
"How safe is this area?" Ise-fukutaichou put in. "Can we stay here much longer, or should we move on?"
Hanatarou blinked thoughtfully. "Kurotsuchi-taichou must be busy with something. We'd normally have heard some guards outside go by on the regular patrol route by now. Did you cause some sort of distraction?"
"Shit, I hope not," Madarame said. "We got in there -- Urahara Kisuke made a gate and dumped us down there in those corridors -- and we got out again as fast as oil in a hot pan. Didn't run across anyone, and I'm glad of that." But he didn't even glare at Hanatarou, in the way that any member of Eleventh would have done before.
"Maybe he's busy spying on Szayel again," Hanatarou guessed. "The two of them are paranoid about each other. It's very unhealthy."
Madarame shrugged. "All good by me. Maybe we'll get real lucky and they'll stab each other in the back while we're dealing with the real business."
"Third Seat Madarame," Hanatarou said nervously, "Ise-fukutaichou . . . where are the Captains? Are they following along once you've got a staging point secure?"
Everyone was looking at each other meaningfully, and Hanatarou felt a cold sweat of dread begin to pool down his spine.
"We are the mission force," Ise-fukutaichou said gently. "Ukitake-taichou is drawing out Ichimaru from Seireitei and dividing Aizen's forces. Soifon-taichou is heading the assault to retake Seireitei. Both of them are disabled. Urahara and Shihouin Yoruichi are preparing for attacks on Karakura." Her mouth twisted as if she was tasting something bitter. "We're all there is, Hanatarou."
"Way to make the guy feel depressed," Grimmjow said. He leaned over and punched Hanatarou in the shoulder. "Don't worry, kid. You've got me on your side."
Hanatarou sank back into his usual state of mildly optimistic depression. It was almost a comfort. "We've managed to map most of Las Noches and the tunnels beneath it, Ise-fukutaichou," he offered. "Me and the rest of Fourth, that is. We've been comparing notes."
"Are you sure that Aizen hasn't been messing with you?" Madarame asked. "You know. His --" he waggled his fingers. "Thing."
"We compare notes," Hanatarou said. That was one of the first things they'd thought of. "We know which of us have seen his shikai in the past, so we're fairly sure of the maps that we've produced. While he can move the corridors round, we don't think he does it randomly." This didn't seem to be having quite the effect that he'd wanted. "So we're fairly sure of the current layout," he finished limply.
"So you can get us to Hisagi's quarters?" Madarame demanded.
"I coulda done that," Grimmjow muttered.
"I can," Hanatarou said proudly. "I'll go first down the corridor. That way if I run into anyone you'll have some warning." He looked around at them all. "Actually -- I could just say you're all from Fourth too, if we stick together and if you keep your reiatsu down, Ise-fukutaichou, Third Seat Madarame. Most of the Arrancar don't bother getting to recognise us. And if we run into --"
"Yeah," Madarame said, breaking that train of thought off before it could get any more depressing. "If we do run into someone who recognises us, then we're all screwed anyhow. Okay. All together, by the numbers. Inoue-kun, you're carrying the bucket."
"I could carry it," Hanatarou protested.
"New kid's job," Madarame said with a cheerful grin that brought back memories of Eleventh, and Fourth, and . . . Hanatarou almost blushed to admit it, but, well, happier times than these.
---
After a nerve-wracking trip through the corridors of Las Noches, in which they didn't quite meet any Arrancar but came very close to it, Hanatarou led the group of shinigami (and Grimmjow) to Hisagi Shuuhei's office door. With a glance behind to make sure that this was all right with Ise-fukutaichou and Madarame, he knocked on the door.
It was yanked open ferociously by a young-looking female Arrancar. Like a lot of the ones Aizen produced, she was wearing a miniscule outfit of white leather. Her hair stood up from her head in pale spikes. "He's busy," she snapped.
"But it's really very important --" Hanatarou tried.
The Arrancar folded her arms, and for a moment Hanatarou was strongly reminded (not that he would ever mention it, especially not with her standing two feet behind him) of Ise-fukutaichou on days when Kyouraku-taichou had a sudden attack of the morning after the night before. "Unless it's something that Aizen-sama himself has requested, then the answer is no. He's busy."
"But it's really very, very important," Hanatarou said.
"What part of 'no' don't you understand?" the Arrancar demanded. She sniffled and tried to make it look haughty. "I am the personal servant of Hisagi-sama, who is the personal servant of Aizen-sama, and therefore I outrank you. Go away and, um, do something else instead."
"Um." Hanatarou wished that someone else was at the front of the group. "You mean you hadn't been told that we are here by Hisagi-sama's personal request?"
The Arrancar stared at him and sniffled again. "You are? But why would he want all you healers here? He's not ill!"
Inspiration struck. "No," Hanatarou said. "We're not here to see him. We're here to see you. At his personal request. Honestly, if you go in and tell him that the healers are here at his specific request which --"
"Ah, fuck it," Grimmjow said, and walked out from where he'd been hidden by the rest of the group. "You, what's your name, girl?"
The Arrancar paled, as far as it was distinguishable, and stiffened her knees. "Pagally, Grimmjow-sama."
"I'm here to see Hisagi in person, 'cause he asked me to, and these healers are with me. Now you can either let us all in and make Hisagi happy, or you can try standing there, in which case I am going to put my hand through you and make a big fucking mess all over the place with you, which is not gonna make your 'Hisagi-sama' happy. Hop to it, kid, or I'll give the boy here some real fucking reason to use his mop and bucket."
The Arrancar went sheet white. "I'll ask Hisagi-sama," she whispered, and vanished back into the room at a speed which rivalled Captain-level flash step, shutting the door in their faces.
Grimmjow smirked, and shrugged one shoulder. "You just gotta know how to talk to them," he informed the group.
Madarame glared at Grimmjow. Ise-fukutaichou was fiddling with her glasses, but her expression suggested that she would like to be glaring.
The door opened again nervously. "You can come in," the Arrancar murmured. She held it wide open for them to enter, which allowed her to stand behind it as if to shield herself from all of them, and particularly from Grimmjow.
Hanatarou had been in Hisagi's office before: nothing had changed. There were no windows: the room was, like most of Las Noches, lit solely by the pale walls. A single niche in the far wall stood empty, not even holding any sort of decoration. The only pieces of furniture were the large desk, a chair, a rubbish bin, and a filing cabinet. The sword stand on the desk was empty, and Hisagi was sliding the sheath of his zanpakutou back into his sash as they entered.
He hadn't actually thought how Hisagi might react to seeing them all here like this. If he had done, he'd have got out of the way faster.
"Hello, Hisagi-fukutaichou," Madarame said. He swaggered forward into Hisagi's personal space, leaning one fist on the desk. Ise-fukutaichou had quietly shut the door and thrown the bolt.
"H-Hisagi-sama?" the little Arrancar quavered. "These people --"
Grimmjow picked her up by one shoulder and held her close to his face. "Quiet," he told her, and put her down again with a thud.
Hisagi turned away from Madarame to look at the Arrancar. "Pagally, it's all right," he said hastily, before she could do more than blink. "This is -- ah, Grimmjow here has been on a very secret mission here for Aizen-sama, and it has to do with these people. None of the other Espada are briefed to know about it."
Pagally hesitated. It sounded plausible enough to Hanatarou, and he hoped that she would accept it. "But -- will you be all right -- that is, do you need me for anything, Hisagi-sama?"
Hisagi closed his eyes for a moment. Hanatarou could guess that he was weighing up risks. "Aizen-sama won't want anyone discussing this, Pagally, so for the moment I want you to go and wait in my quarters. I want to be able to tell him that you haven't heard any of this, if it comes to it." He nodded to a door on the other side of the room. "Please. I'll call you when I need you."
Pagally gave a determined little nod. "Yes, Hisagi-sama. Please do call if you need me." Looking at Grimmjow and the shinigami with eyes that combined fear and a strange sort of protectiveness, she shuffled across the room, taking the route that kept her farthest from Grimmjow, and through the door. It shut behind her with a little slam.
Madarame rolled an eye in the door's direction. "You figure you can trust her?" he asked Hisagi.
Hisagi was silent for a moment. "You know how many of the Arrancar here actually want to be here?" he asked. "Not many. Not many at all. A lot of them just wanted to stay Hollows. Or maybe they wanted to be just a little bit more, just for one thing more than they already had, and now they're stuck here, and they're terrified of Aizen, and they're hungry, and they don't know what to do about it. She'd run back into the desert if she thought she could get away with it."
"Yeah, well." Madarame shrugged. "So we kill Aizen, they get to go back to being Hollows, everyone's happy. Incidentally, you look like shit."
Hisagi ran his hand through his hair. Hanatarou had noticed the white streak there before. It seemed to have grown larger, these last few weeks. "You live down here, you wouldn't look any better. So you trust me?"
"So far the evidence is in your favour," Ise-fukutaichou said crisply. "But I do have one question."
Hisagi raised an eyebrow.
"Iemura," she said.
Hisagi stiffened and his hand sank to the hilt of his zanpakutou. "I didn't have a choice," he said, too quickly, too easily. The words sounded rehearsed. "He came in here to try to get me to join his resistance. There were more of you, weren't there, Hanatarou?"
"There were," Hanatarou said. Carefully, he added, "There still are."
"He couldn't keep a secret." Hisagi's hand tightened around the hilt till his knuckles stood out white. "Look at you all, standing there, judging me. Iemura guessed that I'd been sent in as a spy, and I still don't know how the hell he guessed, but he'd have killed me if he'd said anything, and for pity's sake, he could not keep a secret to save his life!"
"No," Hanatarou said, and he could see Ogidou nodding as well. "But you didn't have to --"
"He'd have killed me doing it," Hisagi said, and the rising reiatsu around him hummed like a whirlwind. "Me and himself and all of you as well. I didn't have a choice."
Ogidou's smiling face set like steel, and his hand fell to his own zanpakutou hilt. "I have a right to settle this for my Division," he said. "I claim --"
Ise-fukutaichou's own reiatsu flared up in a precise blast of chill power, as smooth and edged as glass, and she stepped between the two men. "Ogidou, stand down and hold your tongue."
Hanatarou held his breath. Ogidou's eyes were very nasty as he stared at Ise-fukutaichou, but after a long moment he nodded and his hand fell to his side.
Ise-fukutaichou gave him a brief nod, then turned to Hisagi. "We accept your reasoning," she said. Her reiatsu smoothed down again, flattening to a tight surface, controlled and close. "For the moment, this matter is closed. We will submit it to Ukitake-taichou's judgment once we are all done here. Is this acceptable?"
Hisagi looked at her with an odd sort of dull surprise, as if she had given him some sort of mercy he didn't deserve, and then nodded. "Acceptable," he said. "Thank you, Ise-fukutaichou." He released his own grip.
"Acceptable," Ogidou echoed, but with that same ugly twist to his tone that Hanatarou had seen in his eyes. "Thank you for the judgment, Ise-fukutaichou."
"Alright, alright," Madarame said. "So we know where we are with that one. Let's get down to the real business. You got a way to kill Aizen?"
Hisagi slumped. "No. I was hoping you would."
Madarame looked disappointed, but not very surprised. "Figures," he said. "In that case, we were planning to turn some of the other people here. The Inoue girl. Yadomaru Lisa. The Kurosaki brat. Then we break into Aizen's private labs and get out whoever it is he's holding prisoner in there. Then we figure out what to do next. How does that sound?"
Hisagi opened his mouth, and for a moment Hanatarou just knew he was going to say that it all sounded very vague. But instead he said, "It sounds good. I think Inoue Orihime would cooperate if we can get her away from Ulquiorra. But Yadomaru Lisa's easy. I've spoken to her just recently. She wants in on any sort of strike against Aizen. I'll tell Pagally to go and fetch her, say that I want to talk to her."
Madarame leaned against the desk. "You figure you can trust her?"
"Aizen took her and her friends captive by force," Hisagi said. "I got the real details over lunch a while back. He likes to have someone to talk to." There was a sort of withdrawal to his face, a kind of numb resignation like a trapped animal or a man who'd just been given a diagnosis of a fatal disease. "There wasn't even any sort of surrender. Some of them died. And he did that thing, the Vizard-creation, to her and the others in the first place. They're holding one of her friends hostage elsewhere --"
"Which one?" Ise-fukutaichou demanded.
"Ushoda Hachigen," Hisagi said. "I think he's in Aizen's private labs. They've both been told that if one of them misbehaves, the other . . ." His shrug made it obvious. Hanatarou winced at the thought. "But if we're doing a quick strike on Aizen's labs anyhow, we can get him out in the process. He was a kidou expert, you know. Perhaps he'd have some idea about how to kill Aizen."
"Right," Madarame said firmly. "He's on the list. You send your Pagally girl to go fetch Yadomaru Lisa, and then we'll figure out how to get hold of the Inoue girl."
"I could go and fetch her," the shinigami whom Madarame had called Inoue-kun said tentatively. "Nobody here will recognise me, and I could claim to be a healer, and --"
"And the moment she sees you and she recognises you, it all goes up the creek without a paddle," Madarame said firmly. "I know you're her brother, kid, but keep it under control for the moment. I met the girl. She's a sweetheart. But if she sees you and one of the Espada's watching her at the time, we are all blown sky high. Sit here and chew on it, and that's an order."
"Yes, sir," the young man muttered.
"Inoue Sora," the shinigami from Sixth muttered in Hanatarou's ear. "Her brother."
Hanatarou nodded quietly. He remembered now, Kuchiki-san telling him about how her brother had turned Hollow and how cleansing him had been one of Kurosaki-san's first real battles. It was comforting to be able to remember when things had been simpler. When they had worked.
Hisagi walked across to rap on the door that Pagally had vanished through. "Pagally," he called. "I have a job for you."
The little Arrancar appeared without a moment's hesitation. She might not have actually been listening at the door, but she couldn't have been far from it either. "Yes, Hisagi-sama?" she asked eagerly.
"Go and fetch Yadomaru Lisa," Hisagi told her. "Tell her it's about the discussion we had the other day. She'll know what that means." He gave her a deliberately meaningful look. "If you see other people, act normally, but don't stop to talk with them. This is a high-level meeting and is secret from everyone except those at the very highest level. You understand?"
Pagally nodded again. She seemed reassured that she was part of the charmed circle of high-level meetings and important secrets, even if only peripherally. Hanatarou couldn't really blame her. "Yes, Hisagi-sama!" She almost saluted, then dashed for the outer door, taking care to avoid Grimmjow.
"Should I go back and alert the rest of Fourth?" Hanatarou asked. The thought of actually being able to give all his friends some sort of concrete news, genuine help, almost lifted him off the ground.
Madarame shook his head. "Not till we know what's going on for sure, and then you'd better keep it to people you know can keep their mouths shut. We don't want any more . . . situations." The look he gave Hisagi wasn't quite an open challenge, but it wasn't friendly.
"Yes, Third Seat Madarame," Hanatarou said with a sigh. "But about these collars --"
"Let me look at it," Ise-fukutaichou said. "I know that Fourth are usually kidou-proficient, but I may have more practice in using it in a combat situation or with timed delays. Sit down here," she nodded to Hisagi's chair, "and stay still. Ogidou, I'd appreciate your opinion as well."
Ogidou's expression remained smiling and helpful. "Of course, Ise-fukutaichou," he said. He stood to Hanatarou's right as Hanatarou sat down, and began prodding at the collar thoughtfully, faint scratches of light crawling across the back of his hand.
"Please don't try to take it off!" Hanatarou said nervously. "We tried, and --" He couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence. Surely they must understand.
"Please try to relax, Seventh Seat Hanatarou," Ise-fukutaichou said firmly. "This is going to be strictly non-invasive."
Hisagi looked at his occupied chair, then looked away again, and wandered over to Grimmjow and Madarame. "So," he said. "Did Sado get through all right?"
Grimmjow nodded. "Tough kid. Not real tough, but not bad for a human. We left him with Bitch-sama --"
"Shiba Kuukaku," Madarame translated for the rest of the room.
"-- so she's probably feeding him up. That sort of bitch from hell always gets motherly if you don't smack them down hard." Grimmjow smirked.
"How are the others?" Hisagi asked. Hanatarou focused on him. It took his attention off the way that Ise-fukutaichou and Ogidou were leaning over him and prodding at his collar. "Matsumoto-fukutaichou . . ."
He trailed off. Madarame was looking at him with the sort of quiet detachment that only went with one sort of news these days. "I thought they got her away safely," Hisagi said softly.
Madarame shook his head. "Sorry," he said.
Hisagi jerked his head to one side. He didn't say anything. Despair boiled off him like heat in a desert, tasting of salt and blood.
"Hey," Madarame said quickly, "keep it down, for fuck's sake. We can't afford anyone coming in here."
"You think they'd notice?" Hisagi snapped. "That's how everything tastes down here. But I suppose you wouldn't know, running around in Seireitei and still damn alive while she --"
He caught himself. "Forget it," he said roughly. "Better dead than some of the things that have happened."
Hanatarou lowered his eyes. He understood how Hisagi felt, really he did. But he hadn't expected Hisagi to be quite so harsh about it. It didn't help anyone, and he didn't think they'd ever been that close that he'd heard of . . .
Madarame shrugged. "You weren't to know," he said. "And that bastard Ichimaru doesn't know, either. He's chasing a rumor of her at the moment. That's how Ukitake-taichou is luring him out into the trap."
"I can understand why he wouldn't believe she's dead," Hisagi said. "I . . . find it hard to as well."
The office door opened with brisk authority, as though the person on the other side of it had thought about slamming it but decided not to at the last moment. Yadomaru Lisa (Hanatarou had seen her from a distance but not been introduced) was standing there, splendid and underdressed in white, with Pagally hovering a nervous yard behind her.
"I am constantly at Hisagi-sama's disposal," Yadomaru Lisa began very formally, clearly having already prepared her sarcasm. Then she took in the rest of the room. She barely even reacted, but her eyes glinted narrow and sharp behind her glasses. "Isn't this a nice little get-together," she said, kicking the door shut behind her and Pagally, "and isn't this a -- NANAO-CHAN!"
She flung herself across the room and embraced Ise-fukutaichou in a wildly exuberant hug that had her miniskirt flying out far too much for Hanatarou's comfort. "Oh, you clever girl," she was saying, "you're all grown up and I always knew you had it in you to get all the way to the top. Didn't I tell you when I used to read to you --"
"Nanao-chan, huh," Madarame said, smirking.
"Used to read to her," Hisagi said, looking at the ceiling. "No wonder she got into bad habits so fast."
Ise-fukutaichou tried to glare at them, but it was clear that her heart wasn't in it. She shut her eyes and swallowed, throat working. "Yadomaru-fukutaichou," she said. "It's -- it's very good to see you, to see you again . . ." She gave up on talking, and returned the embrace shyly. "I thought . . ." she murmured into Yadomaru Lisa's shoulder. "I thought you had died, he said that you had died and that you had been very brave . . ."
"It wasn't his fault," Yadomaru Lisa said, releasing Nanao and giving her a pat on her shoulder. "Don't you worry about him. Now I'm assuming this is rescue plan go go go, am I right?"
Pagally swept a trembling gaze around the room. "Hisagi-sama . . . is this really a secret mission for Aizen-sama? Or is it something different?"
Hisagi gave Yadomaru Lisa a dirty look. "It is a very secret mission," he said unconvincingly. "Now if you'll just go into my quarters again --"
"But they're real shinigami!" Pagally pointed at everyone. "And -- and Grimmjow-sama doesn't feel like an Arrancar! And he doesn't even have a proper hole any longer!"
"Kid, when they picked you for this guy's fraccion, they sure didn't do it for your fucking perception," Grimmjow said.
Hisagi took a step forward. "And what are you going to do about it -- Pagally-kun?"
Pagally bit her lip. "I'm . . . going to ask you what you want me to do next, Hisagi-sama."
"Are you sure?" Hisagi asked.
She looked around again nervously. "I suppose I could run away if you want. I could get quite a long way into the desert and they might not catch me. But you know that even if I did try and tell someone about this, they'd kill me alongside you. It's not because I like you." She glared up at him with big pale eyes. "I want -- I want --"
"You want Aizen gone," Hanatarou surprised himself by saying.
"Yes!" She put one hand to her mouth, horrified at the blasphemy. "I want Aizen-sama -- Aizen-s -- I want Aizen gone."
"Do a lot of the others feel like you 'bout that, kid?" Madarame asked.
"I don't know," Pagally answered. "I think maybe -- but nobody would dare say it." She looked around again, losing a little of her confidence.
Hisagi patted her on the shoulder. "Pagally-kun, if you want, I'll give you a sealed set of orders that'll get you past the guards and let you get out into the deep desert. They won't find you there. But if you are truly on our side --"
"I said I was, didn't I?" Pagally snapped. "What do you want me to do?"
"The next thing we need to do is get hold of Inoue Orihime," Ise-fukutaichou said. She was adjusting her glasses more than necessary. "Yadomaru-fukutaichou --"
"Call me Lisa," Yadomaru Lisa said. "Can't have two vice-captains of Eighth. It's not the done thing."
Ise-fukutaichou paused and swallowed again. "Yadomaru-sempai, how do you think we can best get hold of Inoue Orihime?"
"Not a problem," Grimmjow said. "I'll go challenge Ulquiorra. While I'm keeping him busy, you get the woman out of the way." He grinned. There was something a little febrile and desperate about the way he showed his teeth.
Ise-fukutaichou and Madarame exchanged glances again. Ise-fukutaichou was the one to speak. "But if he sees you as you are now, and if you can't kill him, then there's too much risk of Aizen being alerted. I'm not sure that risk is acceptable."
"You challenging me, woman?" Grimmjow demanded.
"He was Fourth Espada, you told us," Madarame said a little wearily. "I'm guessing you couldn't take him before, or you'd have been Fourth and he'd have been Sixth. Right?"
"I'm different now," Grimmjow muttered. His fingers ran over the hilt of his sword, stroking it as a man might absently stroke a cat's head.
"I could go ask for her," Yadomaru Lisa suggested. "I don't have any orders about speaking to her, so Ulquiorra shouldn't have any reason not to let me take her for a walk around the place. Then we can meet up with you and take things from there."
"W-what about the others?" Hanatarou asked nervously. "Kurosaki-san and -- and Ayasegawa-san?"
He knew that was going to get a reaction. He just hadn't realised quite how bad it would be. Madarame gave him the sort of glare that stripped flesh from bone. "You think I've got anything to say to Ayasegawa? Sure I want to know why he turned traitor, but --"
"Oh, I know that," Hisagi said with a great weariness. "I worked that out a while back."
"You did?" Madarame said. "I guess Aizen told you in one of your little chats?"
"No." Hisagi gave Madarame a look that Hanatarou found hard to interpret. "He never told you, then? Never told you what his zanpakutou really did?"
"Stop fucking around," Madarame said. "What are you trying to get at?"
"His zanpakutou sucks energy," Hisagi said flatly. "He tried it on that Arrancar. He got screwed. He's half Hollow now. He thinks like a Hollow. He moves like a Hollow. He can't think straight when he's away from that Espada. Shame he tried sucking the wrong person's energy for once, isn't it?"
Madarame stared at him. "Come on," he said. "Quit it. That's just --"
"How do you think I know?" Hisagi was practically spitting out the words. "He never did it where anyone else would see. He never did it to anyone who'd tell. He didn't want people finding out." His voice made something obscene of the words. "He did it to me once, and left me just lying there, that day when Aizen revealed himself, because he knew that I wouldn't want anyone else to know about it. He was afraid that you lot in Eleventh wouldn't want him round any more if you knew what he could do. And you know what? He was right."
"Fuck you, asshole," Madarame said, and swung a punch at Hisagi's belly. Hisagi dodged and slammed his elbow into Madarame's face. Madarame barely slowed, grabbing at Hisagi's jacket, and the two of them went down on the floor, slamming blows at each other. Their reiatsu flared in uncontrolled spurts, too bitter to be controlled, too angry to be focused. Pagally hopped around the edges of the fight, her hands waving helplessly.
Ise-fukutaichou was frowning at the air in front of her, not bothering to watch the men. "No wonder Aizen let him live," she said. "It'd be one more step on his way to his ultimate goal of combining Hollow and shinigami. But that would imply that if this current energy flow could be stopped, if Ayasegawa's own spirit could be purified, maybe even --"
"Hold it," Yadomaru Lisa said sharply, sniffing the air. The light laid a cold sheen across her face like porcelain. Suddenly urgent, she stepped forward to kick the men apart. "Get off each other, you morons! Can't you feel --"
Then Hanatarou felt it too, and so did the others in the room. It was a cold ripple of reiatsu, not icy like Hitsugaya-taichou's had been, but the sucking chill of the depths of the sea. Something moved in that heavy darkness, an approaching hunger that slid through it in passionless detachment.
The door burst open, fragments of it flying to embed themselves in the walls. Tia Harribel stood there, the air shifting round her in thick currents, and Ayasegawa Yumichika was a step behind her, smiling happily, his eyes lost in dreams.
"Hello, Ikkaku," he said, and waved a floppy hand. "I always knew you'd come."
---
Authors: incandescens
Characters: Hanatarou, others in Hueco Mundo
Rating/Warning: PG-13.
Notes: This is a dark AU co-plotted with sophiap and liralen. The war against Aizen's forces went very badly. Nothing is sacred and no one is safe.
Summary: In which Hanatarou is probably the most stable and professional person around.
Index of Links
[...]
20. Ensemble: The Day Before
21. Nanao: Going Down
22. Hisagi: In Too Deep
23. Ensemble: First Contact
24. Byakuya: Necessity
HANATAROU: SIGNS OF LIFE
Hanatarou pushed the mop along the corridor. There was little actual effort involved. The corridors were as smooth as ice and as white as bone, and he suspected -- in fact, he was sure -- that the chore was unnecessary, and had been assigned merely to keep him busy and to remind him of his position here as a lowly servant.
Of course he and the others were putting maps together, based on where they'd been sent to clean or to heal, but the problem with that was the usual problem of trying to outguess Aizen. He had to know that they'd be working out the place's layout and planning escape.
So far the most popular theory (Hanatarou didn't gamble, so he hadn't taken an interest in the odds, but he gossiped as much as anyone else from Fourth Division, and what else was there to talk about? And even if they didn't actually have any possessions to gamble, everyone had agreed that it was the principle of the thing) was that Aizen was just waiting to catch someone in the wrong place or doing the wrong thing, and that it was all a big elaborate set-up so that they'd become over-confident. To which some of Fourth Division pointed out that Aizen could do what he wanted to them anyhow, but others (and Hanatarou with them) felt that Aizen was the sort of clinically psychotic sadist who would like to trick them into "earning" their punishment because that made it more fun for him.
He slopped the mop along, swivelling it from side to side with a slow efficiency that allowed him to keep half an eye out for Arrancar in a bad temper, escaped specimens, or worst of all, Kurotsuchi or Szayel looking for new experimental subjects. This particular corridor was close to Kurotsuchi's laboratories. He didn't always ask permission from Aizen before taking people away. He just sent dry little notes afterwards giving the names of the people who were gone, and Hisagi Shuuhei would come to hand the papers over before disappearing again, with a thinly closed mouth and eyes like hard stones.
Before Iemura's death, Hanatarou and some of the others had at least tried to speak to Hisagi; to chat with him, to try to gather information, just to find out what was going on. Now they simply nodded to him politely and let him leave as fast as possible. It wasn't just the disgust. It was not wanting to be next. Everyone still alive here, all of Fourth Division who hadn't given up yet, they all wanted to live.
Hanatarou wanted to live very badly indeed.
Unohana-taichou hadn't given up. She had believed there were still chances. She'd parleyed with Aizen and surrendered to him because she thought that there was still a chance of beating him, rather than fighting to the end or committing suicide. If she had honestly thought that there was no way of winning, then Hanatarou firmly believed she would have kept on fighting and hurt Aizen so very badly that he'd never have recovered from it. But she had chosen to stay alive, play for time, smuggle the wounded Captains out of Seireitei, all those things and more. She might have surrendered, but she hadn't really surrendered. Hanatarou knew there was a difference. He hadn't surrendered either.
Humming tunelessly to himself, he turned the corner and ran into an arm like an iron bar which picked him up and slammed him against the wall.
"Hanatarou, right?" Madarame Ikkaku snarled at him, keeping his voice low. "Don't squawk. We're here to help."
Through tear-blurred eyes, Hanatarou took in the group surrounding him. They were all in proper shinigami black, except for -- the Sixth Espada Grimmjow? He recognised Madarame, and Ogidou from his own Division, and Ise Nanao, and an older man he didn't know personally from Sixth. There was a younger man with them, a total stranger, but in shinigami uniform. "You're here," he whispered. "Thank you so much --"
"Yeah, yeah, we'll do that bit later," Madarame snapped. "We need information. Where's the closest place we can talk?"
"Down that corridor and the second door on the left is a storeroom," Hanatarou said, pointing confidently. "It's not very large, but it doesn't get used often so it should be safe."
---
It was indeed not very large. There was only just room for seven people, let alone a mop and bucket (it would have been far too obvious to leave them out in the corridor), but it had a door which could be shut.
"The situation is this," Ise-fukutaichou said briskly. "We are here to rescue anyone we can and to attempt to kill Aizen. We need to make contact with the following people. If they are still alive. Inoue Orihime." The still unintroduced young man perked up at that. "Yadomaru Lisa. Hisagi Shuuhei. Possibly Kurosaki Ichigo. Can you tell us their current status?"
Hanatarou rubbed at his forehead nervously. "Inoue-san will be in her quarters. She often has Ulquiorra with her. He's the Fourth Espada -- well, he was before everyone died, so I suppose now he's the first or second technically, depending on what Kurosaki counts as, but everyone just calls him Ulquiorra-sama. Except for us, because we don't talk to him."
Ise-fukutaichou nodded. "As Grimmjow said." She glanced at the Sixth Espada, who was totally out of place there. In fact, he was so out of place in the group that Hanatarou hadn't actually noticed so far that --
Hanatarou gasped. "He doesn't have a hole!" he said, pointing at Grimmjow's visible and very normal-looking abdomen.
"Yeah," Grimmjow growled. "So I have this little problem. Wanna fucking make something of it?"
"No, not at all," Hanatarou said frantically. "I'm sure it looks very good on you and there's a perfectly good reason for it. Does it itch? Do you need antiseptics?"
Grimmjow gave a low purring growl, and Hanatarou decided that the patient was obviously in good health and didn't need any medical care. "Um!" he said brightly. "Yadomaru-san wanders around a lot. I can show you where her quarters are. I don't think she has any actual guards on her."
"Is there any general surveillance?" Ise-fukutaichou asked. "Cameras, remote viewing, that sort of thing?"
"We don't think so," Hanatarou said. It was something which Fourth Division had done their best to find out. "I mean, there are cameras and stuff which can be used to watch, but we don't think Aizen uses it very much. Some of the Arrancar who've talked about it said that it was Ichimaru's favourite thing and that Aizen doesn't want other people touching it unless he feels it's necessary."
"Told you," Grimmjow said.
"Yes, yes," Ise-fukutaichou said, "but we had to check. Very good, let us try not to give him reason to turn it on. Hisagi? What about him?"
Hanatarou looked at the ground. "He's probably in his office or his quarters," he said tonelessly. "He doesn't have any actual guards on him, but he does have an Arrancar servant assigned to him."
"Something the matter?" Madarame asked.
Hanatarou shuffled a little. "Since he killed Iemura, none of us have tried to talk to him," he said. "We did hope that perhaps he might see he'd made a mistake siding with Aizen, but . . ."
"Killed Iemura?" Ogidou exclaimed. "How? Why?"
Ise-fukutaichou and Madarame were giving each other tense looks. "Give us the facts," Madarame said. "What happened?"
"We don't know," Hanatarou admitted. "We knew that Iemura was going to talk to him. He'd got a list of supplies to requisition, but he had said to some of us that he was going to try and reason with Hisagi. He actually sounded, well. Hopeful. Then a few hours later, Aizen had the body brought in. He said that Iemura had been foolish, and that he hoped none of us would be so foolish." He could still taste the slow burn of bile and terror and fury in his stomach. Why, why hadn't he done something, said something? But they had all of them lowered their eyes, all of them kept silent. "He didn't say anything about who'd killed him. But it had been a sword thrust. And there's only one person here who would have killed him with a sword."
The others exchanged glances. "I'll be clear with you," Madarame said. "Part of why we're here is that Hisagi got Boy Blue here and the Sado boy out of Las Noches, and he sent us word that he was running under fucking secret orders from Yamamoto-soutaichou and Komamura-taichou together, and that they told him to fake going over to Aizen. Course, thing is they're both dead now, so he could have been telling the truth, or he could have been lying. Now you tell me, Hanatarou. You've seen him recently. You know about Iemura. Would you think it could be true?"
Hanatarou shifted his weight defensively from one foot to the other. "I don't know," he said slowly. "I suppose that if he was playing a part well enough to fool Aizen, then he'd have to have been doing it very well. Maybe well enough to fool Iemura. Certainly well enough to fool us all. If Iemura did something like threaten Aizen or attack him, in front of Aizen, and if Hisagi had to defend himself . . ." He broke off, and touched the collar at his throat. "I don't know," he said again.
"What is that thing?" Ise-fukutaichou asked. "I can see there's some sort of kidou in it -- some sort of binding?"
Hanatarou drooped again. "They explode," he said, feeling as if he ought to apologise for it. "They put them on all of us. If we go outside our assigned areas, or if we disobey orders -- it happened to Sato --"
Ogidou swore, losing his smile for a moment.
Hanatarou shrugged weakly. "We've been trying to analyse them," he said. "It seems to be a shaped charge linked to a kidou trigger. It's not important, Ise-fukutaichou, really it isn't. You stopping Aizen, that's the important thing."
Ise-fukutaichou adjusted her glasses, took a deep breath, and nodded. "Thank you, Hanatarou. Grimmjow, why didn't you tell us about this?"
"Aww, who notices shit like that?" Grimmjow muttered. "Not as if I ever needed to go find a healer. Why should I be expected to know what kinda shit Aizen's pulling with them?" He did look vaguely uncomfortable, though.
"We'll get it fixed," Madarame said firmly. "Where's the Kurosaki kid hanging out these days?"
"At his quarters," Hanatarou said quickly. "Or in the sparring areas, most of the time. He kills a lot of Hollows that way. We don't see him in our area. And he's so different these days --"
Ise-fukutaichou nodded, cutting him off. "Hisagi first, I think," she said to Madarame. "We're going to have to risk it --"
"Hey, you got me," Grimmjow said. "I can still handle that Kurosaki kid. Maybe it's what I need. A proper fight to get the juices flowing again --"
"We need Inoue Orihime too," Ise-fukutaichou said. She blinked at a sudden thought. "Hanatarou, is the girl ever called to help with healing emergencies? Has it happened in the past?"
"Once or twice," Hanatarou said. He could see where she was going with this. "But Ulquiorra might come with her."
"But if we can swing Hisagi first, he can bodyguard her," Madarame said with satisfaction. "Then we have a nice little chat with her."
The unknown young man was smiling happily. Hanatarou was glad that someone here was happy. He was still too much in shock and disbelief to be anywhere near actually happy. Oh, certainly he would like to be happy, but he still felt that he might pinch himself and wake up to find that it was all a dream.
And he desperately wanted to say something unfair, something cruel and hurtful like Why didn't you come earlier? Why couldn't you come earlier? Before so many of us died? Before Unohana-taichou herself . . .
Madarame must have caught something in his expression. He clapped Hanatarou on the shoulder. "You've done a good job," he said. "I know we've got no fucking idea what sort of crap you've all been going through. We need one more push out of you and your friends, and then it's going to be over for good."
Hanatarou wished, just a little, that it had been Ogidou who had spoken like that to him, who'd remembered that Hanatarou was his own Division and colleague, instead of looking at him with an air that suggested he would never have lowered himself to pushing a mop down here, but Ogidou had never been that sort of person. In fact, Ogidou had been more the sort of person who --
He pulled his mind away from those thoughts, and nodded to Madarame with gratitude. "Thank you," he said. "We'll all do what we can."
"How safe is this area?" Ise-fukutaichou put in. "Can we stay here much longer, or should we move on?"
Hanatarou blinked thoughtfully. "Kurotsuchi-taichou must be busy with something. We'd normally have heard some guards outside go by on the regular patrol route by now. Did you cause some sort of distraction?"
"Shit, I hope not," Madarame said. "We got in there -- Urahara Kisuke made a gate and dumped us down there in those corridors -- and we got out again as fast as oil in a hot pan. Didn't run across anyone, and I'm glad of that." But he didn't even glare at Hanatarou, in the way that any member of Eleventh would have done before.
"Maybe he's busy spying on Szayel again," Hanatarou guessed. "The two of them are paranoid about each other. It's very unhealthy."
Madarame shrugged. "All good by me. Maybe we'll get real lucky and they'll stab each other in the back while we're dealing with the real business."
"Third Seat Madarame," Hanatarou said nervously, "Ise-fukutaichou . . . where are the Captains? Are they following along once you've got a staging point secure?"
Everyone was looking at each other meaningfully, and Hanatarou felt a cold sweat of dread begin to pool down his spine.
"We are the mission force," Ise-fukutaichou said gently. "Ukitake-taichou is drawing out Ichimaru from Seireitei and dividing Aizen's forces. Soifon-taichou is heading the assault to retake Seireitei. Both of them are disabled. Urahara and Shihouin Yoruichi are preparing for attacks on Karakura." Her mouth twisted as if she was tasting something bitter. "We're all there is, Hanatarou."
"Way to make the guy feel depressed," Grimmjow said. He leaned over and punched Hanatarou in the shoulder. "Don't worry, kid. You've got me on your side."
Hanatarou sank back into his usual state of mildly optimistic depression. It was almost a comfort. "We've managed to map most of Las Noches and the tunnels beneath it, Ise-fukutaichou," he offered. "Me and the rest of Fourth, that is. We've been comparing notes."
"Are you sure that Aizen hasn't been messing with you?" Madarame asked. "You know. His --" he waggled his fingers. "Thing."
"We compare notes," Hanatarou said. That was one of the first things they'd thought of. "We know which of us have seen his shikai in the past, so we're fairly sure of the maps that we've produced. While he can move the corridors round, we don't think he does it randomly." This didn't seem to be having quite the effect that he'd wanted. "So we're fairly sure of the current layout," he finished limply.
"So you can get us to Hisagi's quarters?" Madarame demanded.
"I coulda done that," Grimmjow muttered.
"I can," Hanatarou said proudly. "I'll go first down the corridor. That way if I run into anyone you'll have some warning." He looked around at them all. "Actually -- I could just say you're all from Fourth too, if we stick together and if you keep your reiatsu down, Ise-fukutaichou, Third Seat Madarame. Most of the Arrancar don't bother getting to recognise us. And if we run into --"
"Yeah," Madarame said, breaking that train of thought off before it could get any more depressing. "If we do run into someone who recognises us, then we're all screwed anyhow. Okay. All together, by the numbers. Inoue-kun, you're carrying the bucket."
"I could carry it," Hanatarou protested.
"New kid's job," Madarame said with a cheerful grin that brought back memories of Eleventh, and Fourth, and . . . Hanatarou almost blushed to admit it, but, well, happier times than these.
---
After a nerve-wracking trip through the corridors of Las Noches, in which they didn't quite meet any Arrancar but came very close to it, Hanatarou led the group of shinigami (and Grimmjow) to Hisagi Shuuhei's office door. With a glance behind to make sure that this was all right with Ise-fukutaichou and Madarame, he knocked on the door.
It was yanked open ferociously by a young-looking female Arrancar. Like a lot of the ones Aizen produced, she was wearing a miniscule outfit of white leather. Her hair stood up from her head in pale spikes. "He's busy," she snapped.
"But it's really very important --" Hanatarou tried.
The Arrancar folded her arms, and for a moment Hanatarou was strongly reminded (not that he would ever mention it, especially not with her standing two feet behind him) of Ise-fukutaichou on days when Kyouraku-taichou had a sudden attack of the morning after the night before. "Unless it's something that Aizen-sama himself has requested, then the answer is no. He's busy."
"But it's really very, very important," Hanatarou said.
"What part of 'no' don't you understand?" the Arrancar demanded. She sniffled and tried to make it look haughty. "I am the personal servant of Hisagi-sama, who is the personal servant of Aizen-sama, and therefore I outrank you. Go away and, um, do something else instead."
"Um." Hanatarou wished that someone else was at the front of the group. "You mean you hadn't been told that we are here by Hisagi-sama's personal request?"
The Arrancar stared at him and sniffled again. "You are? But why would he want all you healers here? He's not ill!"
Inspiration struck. "No," Hanatarou said. "We're not here to see him. We're here to see you. At his personal request. Honestly, if you go in and tell him that the healers are here at his specific request which --"
"Ah, fuck it," Grimmjow said, and walked out from where he'd been hidden by the rest of the group. "You, what's your name, girl?"
The Arrancar paled, as far as it was distinguishable, and stiffened her knees. "Pagally, Grimmjow-sama."
"I'm here to see Hisagi in person, 'cause he asked me to, and these healers are with me. Now you can either let us all in and make Hisagi happy, or you can try standing there, in which case I am going to put my hand through you and make a big fucking mess all over the place with you, which is not gonna make your 'Hisagi-sama' happy. Hop to it, kid, or I'll give the boy here some real fucking reason to use his mop and bucket."
The Arrancar went sheet white. "I'll ask Hisagi-sama," she whispered, and vanished back into the room at a speed which rivalled Captain-level flash step, shutting the door in their faces.
Grimmjow smirked, and shrugged one shoulder. "You just gotta know how to talk to them," he informed the group.
Madarame glared at Grimmjow. Ise-fukutaichou was fiddling with her glasses, but her expression suggested that she would like to be glaring.
The door opened again nervously. "You can come in," the Arrancar murmured. She held it wide open for them to enter, which allowed her to stand behind it as if to shield herself from all of them, and particularly from Grimmjow.
Hanatarou had been in Hisagi's office before: nothing had changed. There were no windows: the room was, like most of Las Noches, lit solely by the pale walls. A single niche in the far wall stood empty, not even holding any sort of decoration. The only pieces of furniture were the large desk, a chair, a rubbish bin, and a filing cabinet. The sword stand on the desk was empty, and Hisagi was sliding the sheath of his zanpakutou back into his sash as they entered.
He hadn't actually thought how Hisagi might react to seeing them all here like this. If he had done, he'd have got out of the way faster.
"Hello, Hisagi-fukutaichou," Madarame said. He swaggered forward into Hisagi's personal space, leaning one fist on the desk. Ise-fukutaichou had quietly shut the door and thrown the bolt.
"H-Hisagi-sama?" the little Arrancar quavered. "These people --"
Grimmjow picked her up by one shoulder and held her close to his face. "Quiet," he told her, and put her down again with a thud.
Hisagi turned away from Madarame to look at the Arrancar. "Pagally, it's all right," he said hastily, before she could do more than blink. "This is -- ah, Grimmjow here has been on a very secret mission here for Aizen-sama, and it has to do with these people. None of the other Espada are briefed to know about it."
Pagally hesitated. It sounded plausible enough to Hanatarou, and he hoped that she would accept it. "But -- will you be all right -- that is, do you need me for anything, Hisagi-sama?"
Hisagi closed his eyes for a moment. Hanatarou could guess that he was weighing up risks. "Aizen-sama won't want anyone discussing this, Pagally, so for the moment I want you to go and wait in my quarters. I want to be able to tell him that you haven't heard any of this, if it comes to it." He nodded to a door on the other side of the room. "Please. I'll call you when I need you."
Pagally gave a determined little nod. "Yes, Hisagi-sama. Please do call if you need me." Looking at Grimmjow and the shinigami with eyes that combined fear and a strange sort of protectiveness, she shuffled across the room, taking the route that kept her farthest from Grimmjow, and through the door. It shut behind her with a little slam.
Madarame rolled an eye in the door's direction. "You figure you can trust her?" he asked Hisagi.
Hisagi was silent for a moment. "You know how many of the Arrancar here actually want to be here?" he asked. "Not many. Not many at all. A lot of them just wanted to stay Hollows. Or maybe they wanted to be just a little bit more, just for one thing more than they already had, and now they're stuck here, and they're terrified of Aizen, and they're hungry, and they don't know what to do about it. She'd run back into the desert if she thought she could get away with it."
"Yeah, well." Madarame shrugged. "So we kill Aizen, they get to go back to being Hollows, everyone's happy. Incidentally, you look like shit."
Hisagi ran his hand through his hair. Hanatarou had noticed the white streak there before. It seemed to have grown larger, these last few weeks. "You live down here, you wouldn't look any better. So you trust me?"
"So far the evidence is in your favour," Ise-fukutaichou said crisply. "But I do have one question."
Hisagi raised an eyebrow.
"Iemura," she said.
Hisagi stiffened and his hand sank to the hilt of his zanpakutou. "I didn't have a choice," he said, too quickly, too easily. The words sounded rehearsed. "He came in here to try to get me to join his resistance. There were more of you, weren't there, Hanatarou?"
"There were," Hanatarou said. Carefully, he added, "There still are."
"He couldn't keep a secret." Hisagi's hand tightened around the hilt till his knuckles stood out white. "Look at you all, standing there, judging me. Iemura guessed that I'd been sent in as a spy, and I still don't know how the hell he guessed, but he'd have killed me if he'd said anything, and for pity's sake, he could not keep a secret to save his life!"
"No," Hanatarou said, and he could see Ogidou nodding as well. "But you didn't have to --"
"He'd have killed me doing it," Hisagi said, and the rising reiatsu around him hummed like a whirlwind. "Me and himself and all of you as well. I didn't have a choice."
Ogidou's smiling face set like steel, and his hand fell to his own zanpakutou hilt. "I have a right to settle this for my Division," he said. "I claim --"
Ise-fukutaichou's own reiatsu flared up in a precise blast of chill power, as smooth and edged as glass, and she stepped between the two men. "Ogidou, stand down and hold your tongue."
Hanatarou held his breath. Ogidou's eyes were very nasty as he stared at Ise-fukutaichou, but after a long moment he nodded and his hand fell to his side.
Ise-fukutaichou gave him a brief nod, then turned to Hisagi. "We accept your reasoning," she said. Her reiatsu smoothed down again, flattening to a tight surface, controlled and close. "For the moment, this matter is closed. We will submit it to Ukitake-taichou's judgment once we are all done here. Is this acceptable?"
Hisagi looked at her with an odd sort of dull surprise, as if she had given him some sort of mercy he didn't deserve, and then nodded. "Acceptable," he said. "Thank you, Ise-fukutaichou." He released his own grip.
"Acceptable," Ogidou echoed, but with that same ugly twist to his tone that Hanatarou had seen in his eyes. "Thank you for the judgment, Ise-fukutaichou."
"Alright, alright," Madarame said. "So we know where we are with that one. Let's get down to the real business. You got a way to kill Aizen?"
Hisagi slumped. "No. I was hoping you would."
Madarame looked disappointed, but not very surprised. "Figures," he said. "In that case, we were planning to turn some of the other people here. The Inoue girl. Yadomaru Lisa. The Kurosaki brat. Then we break into Aizen's private labs and get out whoever it is he's holding prisoner in there. Then we figure out what to do next. How does that sound?"
Hisagi opened his mouth, and for a moment Hanatarou just knew he was going to say that it all sounded very vague. But instead he said, "It sounds good. I think Inoue Orihime would cooperate if we can get her away from Ulquiorra. But Yadomaru Lisa's easy. I've spoken to her just recently. She wants in on any sort of strike against Aizen. I'll tell Pagally to go and fetch her, say that I want to talk to her."
Madarame leaned against the desk. "You figure you can trust her?"
"Aizen took her and her friends captive by force," Hisagi said. "I got the real details over lunch a while back. He likes to have someone to talk to." There was a sort of withdrawal to his face, a kind of numb resignation like a trapped animal or a man who'd just been given a diagnosis of a fatal disease. "There wasn't even any sort of surrender. Some of them died. And he did that thing, the Vizard-creation, to her and the others in the first place. They're holding one of her friends hostage elsewhere --"
"Which one?" Ise-fukutaichou demanded.
"Ushoda Hachigen," Hisagi said. "I think he's in Aizen's private labs. They've both been told that if one of them misbehaves, the other . . ." His shrug made it obvious. Hanatarou winced at the thought. "But if we're doing a quick strike on Aizen's labs anyhow, we can get him out in the process. He was a kidou expert, you know. Perhaps he'd have some idea about how to kill Aizen."
"Right," Madarame said firmly. "He's on the list. You send your Pagally girl to go fetch Yadomaru Lisa, and then we'll figure out how to get hold of the Inoue girl."
"I could go and fetch her," the shinigami whom Madarame had called Inoue-kun said tentatively. "Nobody here will recognise me, and I could claim to be a healer, and --"
"And the moment she sees you and she recognises you, it all goes up the creek without a paddle," Madarame said firmly. "I know you're her brother, kid, but keep it under control for the moment. I met the girl. She's a sweetheart. But if she sees you and one of the Espada's watching her at the time, we are all blown sky high. Sit here and chew on it, and that's an order."
"Yes, sir," the young man muttered.
"Inoue Sora," the shinigami from Sixth muttered in Hanatarou's ear. "Her brother."
Hanatarou nodded quietly. He remembered now, Kuchiki-san telling him about how her brother had turned Hollow and how cleansing him had been one of Kurosaki-san's first real battles. It was comforting to be able to remember when things had been simpler. When they had worked.
Hisagi walked across to rap on the door that Pagally had vanished through. "Pagally," he called. "I have a job for you."
The little Arrancar appeared without a moment's hesitation. She might not have actually been listening at the door, but she couldn't have been far from it either. "Yes, Hisagi-sama?" she asked eagerly.
"Go and fetch Yadomaru Lisa," Hisagi told her. "Tell her it's about the discussion we had the other day. She'll know what that means." He gave her a deliberately meaningful look. "If you see other people, act normally, but don't stop to talk with them. This is a high-level meeting and is secret from everyone except those at the very highest level. You understand?"
Pagally nodded again. She seemed reassured that she was part of the charmed circle of high-level meetings and important secrets, even if only peripherally. Hanatarou couldn't really blame her. "Yes, Hisagi-sama!" She almost saluted, then dashed for the outer door, taking care to avoid Grimmjow.
"Should I go back and alert the rest of Fourth?" Hanatarou asked. The thought of actually being able to give all his friends some sort of concrete news, genuine help, almost lifted him off the ground.
Madarame shook his head. "Not till we know what's going on for sure, and then you'd better keep it to people you know can keep their mouths shut. We don't want any more . . . situations." The look he gave Hisagi wasn't quite an open challenge, but it wasn't friendly.
"Yes, Third Seat Madarame," Hanatarou said with a sigh. "But about these collars --"
"Let me look at it," Ise-fukutaichou said. "I know that Fourth are usually kidou-proficient, but I may have more practice in using it in a combat situation or with timed delays. Sit down here," she nodded to Hisagi's chair, "and stay still. Ogidou, I'd appreciate your opinion as well."
Ogidou's expression remained smiling and helpful. "Of course, Ise-fukutaichou," he said. He stood to Hanatarou's right as Hanatarou sat down, and began prodding at the collar thoughtfully, faint scratches of light crawling across the back of his hand.
"Please don't try to take it off!" Hanatarou said nervously. "We tried, and --" He couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence. Surely they must understand.
"Please try to relax, Seventh Seat Hanatarou," Ise-fukutaichou said firmly. "This is going to be strictly non-invasive."
Hisagi looked at his occupied chair, then looked away again, and wandered over to Grimmjow and Madarame. "So," he said. "Did Sado get through all right?"
Grimmjow nodded. "Tough kid. Not real tough, but not bad for a human. We left him with Bitch-sama --"
"Shiba Kuukaku," Madarame translated for the rest of the room.
"-- so she's probably feeding him up. That sort of bitch from hell always gets motherly if you don't smack them down hard." Grimmjow smirked.
"How are the others?" Hisagi asked. Hanatarou focused on him. It took his attention off the way that Ise-fukutaichou and Ogidou were leaning over him and prodding at his collar. "Matsumoto-fukutaichou . . ."
He trailed off. Madarame was looking at him with the sort of quiet detachment that only went with one sort of news these days. "I thought they got her away safely," Hisagi said softly.
Madarame shook his head. "Sorry," he said.
Hisagi jerked his head to one side. He didn't say anything. Despair boiled off him like heat in a desert, tasting of salt and blood.
"Hey," Madarame said quickly, "keep it down, for fuck's sake. We can't afford anyone coming in here."
"You think they'd notice?" Hisagi snapped. "That's how everything tastes down here. But I suppose you wouldn't know, running around in Seireitei and still damn alive while she --"
He caught himself. "Forget it," he said roughly. "Better dead than some of the things that have happened."
Hanatarou lowered his eyes. He understood how Hisagi felt, really he did. But he hadn't expected Hisagi to be quite so harsh about it. It didn't help anyone, and he didn't think they'd ever been that close that he'd heard of . . .
Madarame shrugged. "You weren't to know," he said. "And that bastard Ichimaru doesn't know, either. He's chasing a rumor of her at the moment. That's how Ukitake-taichou is luring him out into the trap."
"I can understand why he wouldn't believe she's dead," Hisagi said. "I . . . find it hard to as well."
The office door opened with brisk authority, as though the person on the other side of it had thought about slamming it but decided not to at the last moment. Yadomaru Lisa (Hanatarou had seen her from a distance but not been introduced) was standing there, splendid and underdressed in white, with Pagally hovering a nervous yard behind her.
"I am constantly at Hisagi-sama's disposal," Yadomaru Lisa began very formally, clearly having already prepared her sarcasm. Then she took in the rest of the room. She barely even reacted, but her eyes glinted narrow and sharp behind her glasses. "Isn't this a nice little get-together," she said, kicking the door shut behind her and Pagally, "and isn't this a -- NANAO-CHAN!"
She flung herself across the room and embraced Ise-fukutaichou in a wildly exuberant hug that had her miniskirt flying out far too much for Hanatarou's comfort. "Oh, you clever girl," she was saying, "you're all grown up and I always knew you had it in you to get all the way to the top. Didn't I tell you when I used to read to you --"
"Nanao-chan, huh," Madarame said, smirking.
"Used to read to her," Hisagi said, looking at the ceiling. "No wonder she got into bad habits so fast."
Ise-fukutaichou tried to glare at them, but it was clear that her heart wasn't in it. She shut her eyes and swallowed, throat working. "Yadomaru-fukutaichou," she said. "It's -- it's very good to see you, to see you again . . ." She gave up on talking, and returned the embrace shyly. "I thought . . ." she murmured into Yadomaru Lisa's shoulder. "I thought you had died, he said that you had died and that you had been very brave . . ."
"It wasn't his fault," Yadomaru Lisa said, releasing Nanao and giving her a pat on her shoulder. "Don't you worry about him. Now I'm assuming this is rescue plan go go go, am I right?"
Pagally swept a trembling gaze around the room. "Hisagi-sama . . . is this really a secret mission for Aizen-sama? Or is it something different?"
Hisagi gave Yadomaru Lisa a dirty look. "It is a very secret mission," he said unconvincingly. "Now if you'll just go into my quarters again --"
"But they're real shinigami!" Pagally pointed at everyone. "And -- and Grimmjow-sama doesn't feel like an Arrancar! And he doesn't even have a proper hole any longer!"
"Kid, when they picked you for this guy's fraccion, they sure didn't do it for your fucking perception," Grimmjow said.
Hisagi took a step forward. "And what are you going to do about it -- Pagally-kun?"
Pagally bit her lip. "I'm . . . going to ask you what you want me to do next, Hisagi-sama."
"Are you sure?" Hisagi asked.
She looked around again nervously. "I suppose I could run away if you want. I could get quite a long way into the desert and they might not catch me. But you know that even if I did try and tell someone about this, they'd kill me alongside you. It's not because I like you." She glared up at him with big pale eyes. "I want -- I want --"
"You want Aizen gone," Hanatarou surprised himself by saying.
"Yes!" She put one hand to her mouth, horrified at the blasphemy. "I want Aizen-sama -- Aizen-s -- I want Aizen gone."
"Do a lot of the others feel like you 'bout that, kid?" Madarame asked.
"I don't know," Pagally answered. "I think maybe -- but nobody would dare say it." She looked around again, losing a little of her confidence.
Hisagi patted her on the shoulder. "Pagally-kun, if you want, I'll give you a sealed set of orders that'll get you past the guards and let you get out into the deep desert. They won't find you there. But if you are truly on our side --"
"I said I was, didn't I?" Pagally snapped. "What do you want me to do?"
"The next thing we need to do is get hold of Inoue Orihime," Ise-fukutaichou said. She was adjusting her glasses more than necessary. "Yadomaru-fukutaichou --"
"Call me Lisa," Yadomaru Lisa said. "Can't have two vice-captains of Eighth. It's not the done thing."
Ise-fukutaichou paused and swallowed again. "Yadomaru-sempai, how do you think we can best get hold of Inoue Orihime?"
"Not a problem," Grimmjow said. "I'll go challenge Ulquiorra. While I'm keeping him busy, you get the woman out of the way." He grinned. There was something a little febrile and desperate about the way he showed his teeth.
Ise-fukutaichou and Madarame exchanged glances again. Ise-fukutaichou was the one to speak. "But if he sees you as you are now, and if you can't kill him, then there's too much risk of Aizen being alerted. I'm not sure that risk is acceptable."
"You challenging me, woman?" Grimmjow demanded.
"He was Fourth Espada, you told us," Madarame said a little wearily. "I'm guessing you couldn't take him before, or you'd have been Fourth and he'd have been Sixth. Right?"
"I'm different now," Grimmjow muttered. His fingers ran over the hilt of his sword, stroking it as a man might absently stroke a cat's head.
"I could go ask for her," Yadomaru Lisa suggested. "I don't have any orders about speaking to her, so Ulquiorra shouldn't have any reason not to let me take her for a walk around the place. Then we can meet up with you and take things from there."
"W-what about the others?" Hanatarou asked nervously. "Kurosaki-san and -- and Ayasegawa-san?"
He knew that was going to get a reaction. He just hadn't realised quite how bad it would be. Madarame gave him the sort of glare that stripped flesh from bone. "You think I've got anything to say to Ayasegawa? Sure I want to know why he turned traitor, but --"
"Oh, I know that," Hisagi said with a great weariness. "I worked that out a while back."
"You did?" Madarame said. "I guess Aizen told you in one of your little chats?"
"No." Hisagi gave Madarame a look that Hanatarou found hard to interpret. "He never told you, then? Never told you what his zanpakutou really did?"
"Stop fucking around," Madarame said. "What are you trying to get at?"
"His zanpakutou sucks energy," Hisagi said flatly. "He tried it on that Arrancar. He got screwed. He's half Hollow now. He thinks like a Hollow. He moves like a Hollow. He can't think straight when he's away from that Espada. Shame he tried sucking the wrong person's energy for once, isn't it?"
Madarame stared at him. "Come on," he said. "Quit it. That's just --"
"How do you think I know?" Hisagi was practically spitting out the words. "He never did it where anyone else would see. He never did it to anyone who'd tell. He didn't want people finding out." His voice made something obscene of the words. "He did it to me once, and left me just lying there, that day when Aizen revealed himself, because he knew that I wouldn't want anyone else to know about it. He was afraid that you lot in Eleventh wouldn't want him round any more if you knew what he could do. And you know what? He was right."
"Fuck you, asshole," Madarame said, and swung a punch at Hisagi's belly. Hisagi dodged and slammed his elbow into Madarame's face. Madarame barely slowed, grabbing at Hisagi's jacket, and the two of them went down on the floor, slamming blows at each other. Their reiatsu flared in uncontrolled spurts, too bitter to be controlled, too angry to be focused. Pagally hopped around the edges of the fight, her hands waving helplessly.
Ise-fukutaichou was frowning at the air in front of her, not bothering to watch the men. "No wonder Aizen let him live," she said. "It'd be one more step on his way to his ultimate goal of combining Hollow and shinigami. But that would imply that if this current energy flow could be stopped, if Ayasegawa's own spirit could be purified, maybe even --"
"Hold it," Yadomaru Lisa said sharply, sniffing the air. The light laid a cold sheen across her face like porcelain. Suddenly urgent, she stepped forward to kick the men apart. "Get off each other, you morons! Can't you feel --"
Then Hanatarou felt it too, and so did the others in the room. It was a cold ripple of reiatsu, not icy like Hitsugaya-taichou's had been, but the sucking chill of the depths of the sea. Something moved in that heavy darkness, an approaching hunger that slid through it in passionless detachment.
The door burst open, fragments of it flying to embed themselves in the walls. Tia Harribel stood there, the air shifting round her in thick currents, and Ayasegawa Yumichika was a step behind her, smiling happily, his eyes lost in dreams.
"Hello, Ikkaku," he said, and waved a floppy hand. "I always knew you'd come."
---