Characters: Gin, Rangiku
Summary: It's easy, from this standpoint, to see where he went wrong. But that doesn't mean he would change what went wrong if he could.
Pairings: GinRan
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Deicide arc, chapters 412-415
Timeline: Post- chapter 415
Author's Note: It might be easier if you read Cut Loose before reading this.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

Schemes rarely go entirely as planned, and even more often than hitting a snag in some way, they fall apart entirely, crashing to the schemer's feet in a spectacular mess of wood and iron and ideas, and hopes and dreams.

Or, in Gin's case, a mess of flesh and blood.

It's all gone so terribly wrong. Of course it has. How could it not? For all of Gin's foresight, for all of his planning, for all of his skill, he has never taken into account that Aizen is always a step ahead of everything, no matter how unseen developments might appear to be. One has to wonder why anyone bothers trying to plot against him.

She lays crumpled at his feet, blood spilling like mutable veils from the open seam in her throat, the black-crimson river having slackened off to a trickle. The loss of so much blood has rendered her unconscious but not dead; Gin sees the faint but present rise and fall of her chest, and knows that she is not dead. Rangiku is too tough to die like this.

At least, that is what Gin tells himself, as his knees start to give way and he bends down and kneels beside her. He is weak himself, bleeding freely, and he really doesn't care what happens now, now that he's tried and failed. The ploy has failed, and Gin didn't have a back-up plan.

Gin is telling himself that Rangiku won't die from the wound he's inflicted upon her throat, telling himself that very calmly, very rationally and, he hopes, very correctly. He can hope, but doesn't give much credence to hope anymore. Hope deserted him a long time ago, and he doesn't pay her court anymore. Better to trust in what his eyes can see, and trust no further than that.

And his eyes are telling him that Rangiku is in bad shape. Her skin, fair by nature, has grown pallid and waxen, marble-white with the tracery of blue veins vivid as a spider web laden down with dew in the early morning sunlight. Her closed eyelids are deep indigo blue, unnatural and not lifelike. If not for the presence of her pulse, Gin wouldn't be able to tell that she was still alive, still breathing.

One responsibility Gin doesn't want on his shoulders. One guilt he doesn't think he would be able to carry as a burden. He wasn't trying to kill her, but now she may well die from this, and it's not what Gin wanted.

"This might be it," he remarks to one who can't hear him. His back is bowed, his head craned low. He's willing Rangiku to open her eyes again. To glare, smile, scream, shout, cry, do anything that would tell him that she is going to live. No more fitting punishment than to have his silent, imploring prayer go unanswered. Nothing ever goes the way it was intended to. "I don't suppose you really expected this any more than I did."

Gin tracks all the parts that went wrong, wondering, if he went back, could wipe the slate clean and start all over again, if he could fix all his mistakes, undo all the things that weren't supposed to happen.

There's the part where Aizen wasn't supposed to be able to control the Hougyoku without it resting within his body. That's what has driven Gin to this place, bleeding freely, weak at the knees and growing dizzy and lightheaded.

There was the part where the poison of Kamishini no Yari was supposed to work, but didn't.

Then there's where Aizen wasn't supposed to force Gin's hand, wasn't supposed to advance on those kids. Gin's gotten tired of there being so many casualties where there shouldn't be, so many bodies racked up because he hasn't done his job yet.

Rangiku wasn't supposed to show up in the real Karakura Town, and Gin wasn't supposed to have put a gash on her throat. He had underestimated her ability to run and come while weak and injured. She wasn't supposed to have come back into Gin's life, still kicking and putting a painfully familiar, sharp pain in his stomach.

Aizen wasn't supposed to have moved on Karakura Town so soon. He was supposed to have used that human girl's powers to fully awaken the Hougyoku, and bought the Gotei Thirteen and Gin a little more time.

Aizen wasn't supposed to have chosen to move operations over to Hueco Mundo, exposing all of them as traitors and making Gin's job so much harder.

The Vizard should never have been born. It's only thanks to Aizen that the Hollowification process was used upon eight officials of the Gotei Thirteen, and that those eight officials along with Urahara Kisuke, Shihoin Yoruichi and Tsukabishi Tessai were all forced to go into self-imposed exile.

Gin wasn't supposed to have lost his objectivity and forgotten the importance of the success of his mission.

Gin wasn't supposed to have come to care for Rangiku, grown as close to her as he had ever been to anyone in his entire life, eventually fallen hard, and come to hate Aizen for what had been done to her.

Gin was never supposed to have met a little girl with wheat gold hair, starving, beaten, violated and dying that day in autumn so many years ago, when he laid eyes on Aizen for the first time, the gentle smile Gin came to find so hateful affixed upon his face, as he cradled a small round orb in his hands.

And Gin was never supposed to have given a damn about anyone on the outside.

"Sorry, Rangiku." With the hand that still has all of its flesh, he pulls her smaller hand, fingering the cool, smooth skin, bereft of the breath of life. "I tried. It wasn't enough."

After they all are gone, Gin goes down the hill and leans down over the little girl in a purplish-red yukata. There's a shiny black bruise on her face, her yukata splattered with black blood and twisted haphazardly, left half-open in the front. She's breathing, though just barely.

Good, good. Gin isn't sure why he's so relieved, as he pulls a persimmon out of the front of his dark blue yukata.

Ice blue eyes open, wide and soft in their shape, as the girl shifts and groans softly. Gin holds the persimmon out to her. She needs much more than food, he can tell, but for now, that meager piece of fruit will have to suffice until whatever injuries she has can be treated.

"Eat up."

At least she had opened her eyes that time.