This can be considered a companion piece to my other oneshot "Hit List."
Gin walked back to the shack after having discovered the identity of the ones who had attacked his best friend, thinking over what he had witnessed between those who had transgressed against Rangiku.
To be honest, he was beginning to have second thoughts about beginning a path of vengeance.
If it were just those three thugs, Gin would have no qualms. They were all low-ranking shinigami, who often got assigned to patrol these areas of the Rukongai. He knew of ways they could meet "accidents" while out in the more disreputable districts.
But their boss was a different story altogether. Gin could tell the head man had power, and he knew how to use it. And Gin was just one poor kid who had enough reiatsu to worry about starvation. Perhaps he just had to realize that some goals were out of reach.
Not to mention the fact that if he took the path that would lead to revenge against the boss of these men, it would most certainly mean that he would have to part with Rangiku for quite a while. And Gin was not sure if that would be right for either of them. Killing off those rats whenever they happened to be in the neighborhood would have to do, and leave the tiger to someone who could kill it.
He let his train of thought end as he entered the shabby little structure he and Rangiku called home.
After discovering her unconscious on the road, Gin had carried her home as fast as he could. As much as he thirsted for drawing the blood of the men who had hurt her, he knew that leaving her there would have just invited more trouble onto her. Fortunately, he had picked up the trail of those men soon after getting Rangiku to safety.
He seemed to have arrived just in time to see her wake up.
"Gin…" she rasped as she roused from her fitful slumber.
"I'm here," he replied quietly as he sat down next to her.
She shuddered for a moment, staring off into space for a moment.
"I'm going to be sick."
With that warning, she rushed outside and dumped her lunch into the bushes outside their shack. Gin ran after her and kneeled by her side, stroking her back as she spit up the last of her vomit.
Finished with her heaving, Rangiku sat back and leaned into her best friend. A moment later, she shifted so that she curled into his chest, and Gin adjusted his arms accordingly. That's when it started. It sounded small at first, like a snapped twig in the forest. But that small escape opened the way for the louder sounds, time increasing the intensity. Gin had heard the sound before, of course, but what gave him such pained surprise was the fact that it had never come from her mouth before.
She was crying.
No, "crying" was not an adequate term for the way she was expressing grief and pain that she should never have known in her young life. She had experienced something horrible, and the only way she could let out was through the salty water from her eyes and wails of pain in her voice.
As the traumatized girl continued to grip him tightly, Gin felt agony akin to a dagger's stab within his chest, being twisted with each moment a tear hit his shirt. He had never seen Rangiku cry before. Not when she tripped and hurt herself, not when he accidentally took his teasing too far and got her mad, and not even when she was starving. Each time she was knocked down, she got up and started walking again, her face full of determination and strength of will. In Gin's mind, the idea of Rangiku crying was as absurd as falling upwards.
What had those men done to her?
The night went on, and she continued to cry long and hard. Every now and then, she hiccupped out what had happened to her, and he listened patiently, giving her the only thing he could offer: his company and reassurances of his presence.
By the time she had fallen asleep, her face streaked and stained by tears, he had gotten the story from her.
And Gin had never been so furious.
Any and all doubts about seeking revenge were trashed, shredded, and burned in his mind.
Those monsters (they did not deserve to be described as "men") had done more than physically assault her. They had stolen a part of her soul away, Gin had already known that much. Likely the only reason she was still alive was due to the fact that she had more spiritual power than the average peasant around, and so the brutes did not think to take it all. But in other ways, they took much more.
Harms to the body healed, given time and the right treatment. But if the act of those scumbags hurt her so much that she cried, then that meant there were grievous scars to her mind and soul, and those would take far longer to recover from.
'Never again,' Gin swore to himself, 'Never again will tears fall from your eyes.'
His promise was more than a simple oath to her happiness. As he just found out the hard way, Rangiku only cried when something horrific happened to her. He might not be able to protect her from everything the afterlife had to throw at them, but he swore that he would shield her from the very worst of it. As long as he lived and breathed, Gin would make sure that Rangiku would never cry again.
Author's Note: Story came to me as I was thinking about Gin's motivation for revenge against Aizen. When he says "I will make things end without Rangiku having to cry," I at first thought it meant he would always keep her happy; a goal that was childish and unrealistic. Then I thought about it: how many times have we seen Matsumoto cry?
When Gin swears revenge, he doesn't say, "I'm going to kill Aizen for hurting her." He swears, "I will make things end without Rangiku having to cry." That probably meant that while we didn't see it onscreen, whatever Aizen's thugs did to Matsumoto was terrible enough to make her cry (considering that I think it was implied that she was raped as well, this counts as very understandable grounds for crying, and for Gin to start a century-long plot for revenge).
When you think about it, this is an echo of how Ichigo described Karin back in one of the earlier episodes.