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The trees are like fire, but the temperature doesn’t match.
He sits, peaceful on the balcony, summer heat washing away into the faint, creeping chill of soft ice and booming thunder. The sky is calm but for a gale of wind every hour or so, one that rustles the cotton clouds and turns them grey with power. Leaves of flame snap from dry stems with every howling breath.
It’s a sign. A sign of change, and of decay.
But not of death. This, he knows better than anyone. There is no death here. Only rebirth, and renewal in the ash of those who came before – those who have left the path strong underfoot. His winter is coming, and he will fall with grace under a curtain of snow, nourishment for the children that will flourish on his old bones in the spring when the warmth returns. When the ice melts.
Perhaps that is why this one troubles him so.
Hands, scabbed by veins of purple and wrinkles deep enough to hide coins, wrap around the staff before him, clutching firmly at the façade of gnarled wood. He stands, leaning deceptively on the cane. The illusion of strength is something he needs not, for while fire bursts in bright colors from every dying branch of the lit trees, the autumn of his life is still bright. Strength is his right now, some soft air that even an aging man can breathe easily. Even if he pretends otherwise, his name and soul proclaim his right to the strength he wields.
It is, however, something this latest prodigy grasps at desperately, like he is trying to wring the life and luster from his own fluttering soul in exchange for power. And this desperation bodes ill.
The sky darkens again, and thunder like a warning breaks the sky apart, tearing the weather asunder for miles. In a single moment, the lingering breaths of summer chill and fade, frost icing over the falling leaves. Deep within the roar of storm, it seems the heavens are crying, crying for help, for solace, for another voice to answer.
There is only silence left in the wake of that howl.
He wonders, for a brief moment, what these autumn years he’s seeing mean. It is true, that as winter draws ever closer his strength begins to seep away, but he is not weak yet, is not so frail that the tottering steps of a child struggling in his own sorrow and loneliness will topple him. He’s a mere child, regardless of the long years he’s weathered or the things he’s seen and done, for his body and power are static. A child so old cannot fell him.
And yet, the boy worries him.
The first time they met, those young eyes were bright. Growing, strong and sharp and fierce. He had been a predator in the making, a young, waist-high thing that could strike fear into the heart of any man. A blade too big for him was in his hands, but the life sparkling in that lake-like green was clear. He had been not yet strong. But the promise was there. He had been wearing blue and cream, in the colors of a student still learning but wielding the sword of a battle-hardened warrior and the mind of a hunting panther.
He had been the coming winter, a storm powerful and full of energy, yet still far in the distance. If that potential had built as he had expected, winter would have come, swift and terrible as it should to bury the life in a sheen of protective white until the world melted, yet within the century.
But something had changed.
He knew whispers of it, of the cruelty a child forced to choose between death and bloodshed at the hands of a man over 30 cm his senior. Of the 46 elders who had sat still watching as the wind screamed in protest and glaciers cracked and fell apart at the seams, the heat of murder a burst of summer too fast, and too soon. He had heard how the doors were locked, the records sealed, leaves of paper frozen shut and hidden from sunshine or warmth. All had been pushed into the darkness and forgotten.
And the storm on the horizon suddenly vanished into a deep chill, bone-breaking and steadily swelling, like the ocean as a tsunami rippled into the bay. The energy of that swelling blizzard was released too early, too soon, and the clouds of potential fell apart into slow snow. At this rate, winter will arrive too slowly to put an end to the lull of decaying autumn, and the storm will disintegrate into nothing, dying in silence as it drives itself to pieces, trying to give everything it has.
He cannot afford for those who are to replace him to be so broken, so used up – especially not so young.
And yet he uses them, because he needs them.
The haori is a weight his old shoulders are used to bearing, the burden never light, but by now a welcome ache. Walking down the hall with this cloth on his back is an old trick, and as he moves toward the high-walled arena currently sheathed in a winter come too early, it is deceptively floaty in the breeze.
A child stands in the center of the exam site, a glare like frozen seawater, glassy and piercing, and as he turns that cruel stare in Yamamoto’s direction, the old man’s haori grows ever heavier. It hurts to see eyes so dead and lifeless in a face so young. But the power he has drawn forth to cling to his body is impressive, even if only superficially.
“Your Bankai is not complete, Third Seat Hitsugaya.”
The ice shatters so fast it seems it was never there, solid winking fragments evaporating into the atmosphere like motes of dust disappearing into shadow. And for a moment, wrinkled hands tighten on the hilt of a blade instead of a gnarled staff.
It is difficult to forget the brief expression of dragging agony on a child’s face, nor sudden burst of relief when the pain lifted. It had always been so, with every young thing who had died wielding a blade against him, or for him. And yet, somehow, for this young boy before him, the child who had passed all the tests and earned the burden of worlds for it – Yamamoto allows a moment of regret, for he knows what he will say, and how this will end.
“I achieved Bankai less than three days ago, Captain Commander.”
He’s quick to answer, despite the clear suffering that was forcing such power out of a soul too young and too undeveloped. The voice is ragged but even, a thin, thready tenor, barely broken along the lines of battle cries and tears of grief. He’s flying too far, too fast, and the storm of his soul is breaking in the fading reaches of a decayed autumn.
And an old man, perhaps, has waited too long to show kindness.
“You have come to be a captain with so little experience wielding Bankai?”
The child’s eyes burn dark and hateful. But at long last, there is a flicker of something beyond pain.
“My division needs a leader. I am the only one capable of Bankai there. I am not...ideal. But I am necessary.”
Hitsugaya Toushiro is a blizzard weakened by haste, the season of winter come weak and slow only to hasten the dying of autumn, and Yamamoto knows this. This is a season that will die young and soon, melting to nothing far before it should. This is yet another who will not see the spring and grow strong.
And yet, it is necessary.
“…You will die young, I think, Captain Hitsugaya.”
It is as close to compassion as he can allow. The child’s eyes are still dead as he slowly rises, the title now his allowing him to stand on equal footing. But his expression does not change. There is no glint of acceptance in the bitter darkness of deep sea green, only a mirthless amusement. Yamamoto says nothing of the discourtesy.
“I know.”
And so the autumn leaves are blanketed in a layer of thin snow.