Breath By Ncfan

Characters: Gin, Rangiku
Summary: The art of getting blood on your hands. Spoilers for 416-417.
Pairings: GinRan
Warnings/Spoilers: spoilers for Soul Society and Deicide arcs
Timeline: Deicide arc in the present; occupied by multiple flashbacks
Author's Note: Another Gin death scene. Woo-hoo. This one is a bit more drawn out, though.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

The drip, drip, drip of blood splashing over rock is, to Gin's ears, highly disturbing and unnatural. An artificial sort of waterfall, that shouldn't be there, shouldn't have to be there, should never have been there at all.

And it wouldn't have been there too, had he not miscalculated.

It wouldn't be there, had Gin had a little less pride, a little less anger, a little less hate, and had been willing to get Aizen in the back with Shinsou while he still could, while evolution had not progressed to the point that Aizen could heal from the poison that should have brought him down to dust.

Back down against the rock, broken body exposed to the sunlight and the wind and all the staring, gawking eyes, Gin feels the sunlight, the real sunlight, for what seems to be the first time in ages. No more hanging in the shadows; no more thriving in darkness. Pale gray stretches of sky so pale they seem white and watery winter sunlight expose his shadows. He feels just a little warm for the first time in years.

And Gin realizes that this will be the last time he ever experiences warmth blooming like the roses of summer across his skin.

A scream splits the still air.

"Eat up." It's all Gin can do to paint over his shock and disturbed mien with a bright smile, holding out the persimmon to her and keeping the rest at bay. He supposes he has to smile; it wouldn't do to frighten the girl, in the state she's in.

Gin has seen the sight before: a traveler lying prostrate on the ground, too weak to move. He can't pretend, however, that he's ever seen a traveler in this state after having been assaulted; Gin has seen a lot, but that much at least he has been spared. At any rate, given how thin she is, bones sticking out from this little arms, she probably would have collapsed from hunger soon enough.

Once Gin gets past the sight of blood and dirt and grime and the bruise on her cheek, he can see that for all that she's even more emaciated than he is, she's actually a very pretty girl. Her hair's pale gold beneath the dust coating it, and the unfocused eyes that gaze blearily on him are a vivid shade of blue.

"Come on," he tries to coax her when she doesn't answer, shaking her slightly bloodied shoulder a little bit. The girl barely seems to know what's going on around her—not a good sign. "You must have spiritual energy if you can get like this—" let her think that he thinks she's collapsed from hunger "—so you've got to eat, otherwise you'll just die again."

The girl doesn't hear anything past the words "spiritual energy". She starts to show a little more interest in what he's saying. "You too?" she croaks through cracked lips and a parched mouth.

Gin nods and flashes another smile, trying to hide concern behind it. "Uh-huh. The name's Ichimaru Gin. And I'm here to make you eat, so you won't die right in front of my house."

Pale blue eyes fix tiredly on his face, as Gin hands a persimmon off to the girl with hands now sticky, both with the juices of the fruit and the girl's own blood. "Gin," she murmurs, almost to herself. "That's a weird name."

Gin decides not to take offense to that.

Gin had hoped Rangiku would take the hint from that kido blast and just stay away. She doesn't need to be here. Here, she's only in danger and Gin, Gin knows he isn't worth that. He isn't worth her dying.

But Rangiku is, as ever, incapable of taking a hint from anyone.

He can hear her angry shouts, her fury pounding the air around them like the sea at high tide against exposed rock. Rangiku's anger has always been nothing short of spectacular.

He wishes she hadn't come in the first place.

"So how long have you been here?"

After a few days, Rangiku's cuts and bruises have healed up enough and enough of her strength has returned after Gin's fed her a steady supply of persimmons that the curiosity Gin is later to learn to be a cornerstone of her personality has returned enough for her to start asking questions.

Gin frowns a little bit at the question, letting slightly long strands of watery silver hair fall over his half-closed eyes as he tilts his head. "Could you say that again, Rangiku? I didn't hear you."

Rangiku rolls her eyes playfully—they're already comfortable enough with each other for this sort of display—and reiterates her question. "I was asking you how long you've been here, Gin."

A little uncomfortably, he shrugs, and settles down onto the earthen floor near where Rangiku's sitting—her legs are still a bit weak for walking. This shack, Gin knows, doesn't keep out the elements very well; he can clearly see the outside through gaps in the wooden planks that make up the walls. It's going to get highly unpleasant in here when winter comes, even with wood burning in the little wood-burning stove for warmth.

"A couple of months," the small boy answers vaguely, tracing patterns in the earth with long fingers. "And you?"

Rangiku is just as vague when she answers. "About a month. I lost track when I started to get really hungry." She blinks shyly, and a spasm passes over her fair-skinned, round-cheeked face. "I miss my parents," she admits in a whisper, as though it's some sort of secret shame.

Gin winces. "So do I," he's able to answer honestly.

But of course she came. Rangiku's always shown up in places where Gin wishes she wouldn't. Sometimes he thinks his life would have been a lot less complicated if he had never met her in front of his shack, after watching the Shinigami flee. Yes, she would have died, but then Gin would never have had this ache, this attachment to Seireitei.

But he's glad he met her. He's glad he's known her, loved her, and all. Gin thinks that though his life would have been much simpler without Matsumoto Rangiku in it, it would always have been incomplete. It would have always been a little empty, a little hollow.

Nothing would have seemed as bright as it did with her in it.

For Rangiku, Gin tries to smile, one more time.

This is the coldest night Gin thinks he has ever experienced, and he has known many cold nights. It is the darkest stage of night; there is no light except for the full moon and that is shadowed and slightly veiled by a sea of gray snow clouds.

A flurry of snow flutters about his face and catches in his hair and on his shoulders, as the snow crunches beneath his feet on the way home. The black linen shivers around his slight frame as though it lives and feels the cold as keenly as he does, the bitter cold biting his cheeks and peaking them raw, chapped red, though no one would be able to see it in the darkness.

Gin has never killed anyone before. The strange, detached feeling in the bones of his fingers has not yet left him (or maybe that's just the feeling of the blood withdrawing from his extremities), just like there's still a thick smear of blood present on his cheek, giving witness to this thing that he has done. The visceral elation he felt at being able to kill one of the men who hurt his friend so many long months past has left and gone. Now, Gin only feels the emptiness.

The dead Shinigami's outer shihakusho is very warm, however, even with the weight of blood making it heavier on Gin's shoulders than it should be, and damp to the touch. He's glad he took it off the body before returning here.

"Gin! Is that you? Gin! Where have you been, Gin?"

Rangiku has sensed (not seen, but sensed) his approach, and come dashing from the rickety shack they share in the Sixty Fourth district. She looks as cold as he feels, shaking in the winter night, shivering as she wraps a thin shawl tight over her shoulders and her threadbare yukata. Neither can possibly give her much in the way of warmth, and she may as well be naked and totally exposed to the cold.

Gin doesn't answer her right away, giving her time to drink in the sight of the shihakusho swirling over his slight frame, puckering and shaking again at the ankles.

"Those are Shinigami clothes." Rangiku's voice is hushed, her eyes open wide. Her lips shudder for a moment, as blue as her eyes, before she goes on. "Where did you get them?" Almost self-consciously, she brushes a strand of hair bleached stark white under the moon out of her eyes.

Gin turns his back to her, not quite able to meet Rangiku's eyes. He stands, perfectly straight and still, with the shihakusho billowing over him. "I've decided." His voice is closed off and miles away, and Gin realizes that even though he does this to protect her, he's afraid of the way she might react if she could see inside him and know his deeds and thoughts. "I'm going to become a Shinigami. Become a Shinigami, and change things."

The cold is especially piercing now. Finally, Gin manages to turn and look at her. He isn't smiling; for once, he can't force a smile on his face. Rangiku's eyes widen when she sees the blood streak on his face. "So that they'll end," he murmurs, "without Rangiku having to cry."

Gin can remember vividly the cold night when he killed the Third Seat of the division he would later enter. He had stolen a shihakusho that fit him from the laundry so he would be able to enter the division barracks undetected. As for how he had gotten into Seireitei in the first place, well, Gin had his secrets, and he wasn't going to divulge them.

It had been quite easy, really. He'd found other ones beforehand, and killed them too (it was the first of those whose shihakusho he had been wearing when he returned to Rangiku that winter night), before looking for the others.

And when Gin found himself face to face with the Third Seat, it had been ridiculously easy to kill him. Even though he had been a graduate of the Academy of exactly one month who didn't even know the name of his zanpakuto, it had been all too easy. This, Gin found, was the consequence of fighting with revenge in his heart.

He had forced the dying man to tell him exactly what he and his compatriots had done to Rangiku before he died, as well as the name of the one he hadn't found yet. When he found out exactly what had happened, Gin knew what had to be done.

And when he turned around after making sure the Third Seat was dead, he had found himself face to face with the ring leader.

"Aizen-taicho?" Gin starts, and stares innocently up at the man at the inquiry.

That smile Gin has seen so many times before, one gentle and mild but hiding something far more incisive beneath it—this is what Gin has discovered: he's not the only one who hides things behind his smiles—appears readily on Aizen's face. "I don't think, Gin, that your friend and I have been introduced."

Gin just barely manages to hide a wince. Rangiku's standing just behind him, plainly unaware of the silent battle going on between him and his captain. What if they recognize each other?

Oh, well. Nothing to be done. If he refuses, it will only rouse suspicion. "Rangiku," Gin gestures her forward, and she smiles prettily up at the bespectacled captain. "This is Aizen-taicho. Aizen-taicho, this is Matsumoto Rangiku."

The introductions are passed and Gin is amazed when no sign of recognition seems to go between either of them. Aizen might have been hiding it, of course, but Gin is very good at picking up even the smallest hint of such things and if he had recognized Rangiku, Gin would have known. Rangiku is the same.

After all is said and done and Aizen has gone, Gin blinks a little bit, and then tentatively asks, "Rangiku? Have you and Aizen-taicho ever met before?"

She shrugs. "No, not really. He seems familiar, though." A cold, hard weight settles in Gin's stomach. "Has Aizen-taicho ever lectured at the Academy?"

With this question, the weight in Gin's stomach goes away and, more than a little relieved, he nods. "Yes, he has. I don't think either one of us ever attended those lectures, though. You probably saw him in the hall or something."

Or something, Gin thinks gloomily.

Gin had known better than to try and kill Aizen then and there. He had no doubt that this man, with his deceptively mild smile and glinting eyes, the frightening knowledge contained there that only Gin felt like he could see, was far more dangerous than the Third Seat of the Fifth division could ever be.

So, instead, he did what he thought to be the smart thing, and insinuated himself into Aizen Sousuke's confidence. He always stood by him, plotted and connived with him, committed acts of treason and conspiracy with him. There was nothing Gin wouldn't have done, to throw Aizen's suspicions off of him.

There was nothing he wouldn't have done to have his chance to kill him.

Nothing.

Feeling the cold metal of Rangiku's zanpakuto Haineko against his flesh, Gin tries not to regret this, and finds it disturbing how easy it is for him to sublimate his guilt and his regret.

He doesn't want to leave her. He's never wanted to leave her. But Gin has been preparing for this day for a very long time, and there can be no stopping what's about to happen. Gins' regret means nothing in the grand scheme of things.

So when the brilliant shaft of light splits the sky and separates him from her, Gin doesn't feel like anything can be a more solid representation of what's been happening for decades.

But he can't leave without words. Rangiku, Gin knows, doesn't deserve that, won't stand for that.

So he speaks.

"Too bad…" Most of the cadence, that of genuine regret, in Gin's voice is lost to the din like rushing water all around them. "It would have been nice if my capture lasted a little longer. Farewell, Rangiku."

Gin turns, forcing himself to drink in the sight of Rangiku's startled, shocked, angry, sad face. This is what he's leaving behind. This is what he'll probably never see again. This is what he has to forget, if he ever wants to do what he has to without a distraction to remind him of how hard everything is.

He paints a smile on his face, so false that he's sure everyone can tell. "Sorry."

Something wet is hitting his face. Gin thinks it might be rain, but the sky was so clear when he last saw it.

And when some of the water dribbles into his mouth, he tastes bitter salt upon his lips.

So she can still cry for him, despite everything.

"Listen, Rangiku." Gin draws Shinsou, directing it straight at Rangiku. The smile on his face is practically predatory, though inside nothing could be further from the truth.

Shinsou is like quicksilver in the air, brilliant against the watery light of the winter sun.

"You're in the way."

The kido is fired within a fraction of a second and Rangiku has collapsed upon the ground. The blood trickling down her neck, a single shallow nick made by Shinsou to distract her, is a dark splash against her ivory throat, and Gin can feel that blood congealing on his hand as he steps away.

There can be no room for regret now.

He hadn't asked her how she got there. He'd asked her why she was there when she could barely stand. Rangiku, of course, hadn't answered, though her reason had been obvious—to both of them. This relationship that was once dysfunctional but loving has now become parasitic and even faintly masochistic, harmful to them both.

Gin had never meant to have Rangiku's blood on her hands, nor her tears on his face. He had never wanted to make her cry; he had been willing to have anyone's blood on his hands, anyone's but hers. And maybe that was the problem.

If Gin had been a little more ruthless (or maybe a little less ruthless), a little more clear-seeing, and had abandoned that last scruple as well, this might have all ended differently. And he might not have ended up dying on a slab of rubble.

But what would have been the cost, one even greater than the one he paid taking the path he ultimately chose?

Now, at the last, he just wants to say "sorry", one more time.

Her… I failed her. I couldn't get back for her what had been stolen; I couldn't put her fragmented soul back together.

I failed her. I'm glad I said sorry.

But I wish… I wish I could say it again.

And he can't.

Because Gin can't find one more breath with which to say the word.