A/N Dedicated to Chupaca and Capitalstories and all Gin/Hime fans out there. This is for you.
Tears for my Sins: a Requiem for Gin
It took a lot to unnerve Gin.
He was never the type to be easily shaken. Few situations fazed him to the point when he revealed his eyes from their closed fox slits or when his smile wavered or, during the truly rare circumstances, turned into an actual frown.
Such exceptional situations could be counted on one hand:
…when he saw Aizen holding the Hougyoku, taken from an abused Rangiku's body.
…when the mini taichou Hitsugaya Toushiro managed to encase his arm in ice during their fight over the bleeding Hinamori-chan.
…when Rangiku had chosen to block Shinsou's attack from fatally striking Hinamori-chan with Haineko, when she chose to stand by her Hitsugaya-taichou as his Lieutenant and disregard their former relationship of friendship and much more…
But this situation is truly odd… and really discomfiting.
Salty water droplets continued to rain down on his face and haori as a pair of small hands frantically pressed against his chest, desperately trying to stem the blood flow from the slash delivered by Aizen mere minutes ago. Gin caught those pair of hands with a surprising gentleness.
"Sunshine, it's no use. Save ya healing for the others. I'm a goner-"
"Ichimaru-san, don't speak like that. I'll heal you! I can! I can! It's not too late! Please, Ichimaru-san!"
Gin tilted his head upwards to meet the grey tearful eyes of one Inoue Orihime. How surprising it is that she of all people would be here with him, comforting him in his dying moments. How surprising indeed that in the little time, less than one month, she has been kept captive at Hueco Mundo, she had slipped past all his defenses to take a place in his heart – a heart which he formerly thought to be dead and rotting and containing only room for Rangiku.
He's not sure how she is beside him at that moment. The last thing he knew Aizen had left her in the throne room with the Cuatro Espada, but knowing Kurosaki Ichigo, who has just made his entrance a moment ago with a completely strange reiatsu level but incredible strength, Ulquiorra was likely dead and Las Noches in ruins.
They say a person's life flashes by before their eyes as death approaches. It's true, well at least partly true.
Gin us reliving moments of his life, but they were moments which involved her rather than Rangiku.
He remembers when she had healed him after a particularly nasty episode with an unusually tempestuous Aizen, how she had stained her innocent hands red with his blood when she had to remove glass shards embedded in his cuts, how she had disinfected and sewed his wounds when she was ordered by the God-wannabe not to use her fairies to heal Gin. In the following silence, he had seen her tears, had seen her cry over him as she is doing now. He did not understand why.
Why should she empathize with, sympathize, for people who have hurt and manipulated her? Why feel for such people who could care less about themselves, about her? People who would not even understand such notions as friendship, kindness, and love?
He remembers how he told her to fill the silence, and how she sang a simple tune "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are grey.
You'll never know, dear, how much I love you.
Ah yes, Rangiku will never know how he did all this for her, all his sins, crimes and betrayals, to retrieve that part of her that had been stolen. He had knocked her out on the roof when she had stubbornly come too close. A stubborn quality which this girl-child, who has powers that trespass into the realm of God, shares.
"Ichimaru-san. Stay awake! You must. You need to tell Rangiku-san about why, why…" Gin watched, fascinated, as her sobs cut short Orihime's breath and words. "You're not a traitor, Ichimaru-san! Rangiku-san, they, everyone in the Seireitei, needs to know!"
Gin did not have the strength to tell her that even if he survived, the Gotei Thirteen would likely execute him, that one good deed is not enough to atone for a lifetime of sins. As things rest, he only reached up to cradle her cheek, to catch another falling tear.
How odd indeed. No one has ever cried for Gin Ichimaru before. Sure, Rangiku had cried about him, had wept tears that he left her behind again and again. But no one has ever until now ever cried for Gin Ichimaru. Except for her.
This innocent, younger version of Rangiku, who is completely her own person, and so unlike Rangiku in all ways possible.
"I'll heal you Ichimaru-san even if it costs me my life."
Now this caught Gin's attention. He sees and hears the piercing diamond conviction in her now solemn, calm voice. Those grey stormy pools strongly holding his gaze, and her hands, her glowing hands, were fast approaching him.
Using the remainder of his strength and reiatsu, he caught her hands once more, briefly felt her healing touch and soothing reiatsu surge through his broken body, before throwing her to a familiar blur of black and blonde on the edge of his peripheral vision.
"Hold her steady, Izuru. Don't let her go." His former vice-captain stared at him in surprise. "If ya let her go, she'll heal me. And ya don't want that now, do you?" There was hurt, there was understanding as the other shinigami trapped and locked Orihime into place. "Make sure you tell the rest that she's no traitor."
Gin could have almost smiled at Orihime's surprised face in echoing her words. "My last orders as your former capt'n." he could see Izuru nod. Loyal to a fault still…
"No, let go of me! Let go of me! Izuru-san, if you don't, he'll die. Ichimaru-san will die!"
So please don't take my Sunshine away."
Gin could his Sunshine struggling in vain as she tried to claw her way out of the iron-like arms holding her, struggling to reach, come back to him. Such a sweetheart his Sunshine was…
Her love for him is not the lover's kind. No, such a strange love, a rare kindness which she would give to anybody, everybody no matter how they wronged her.
And she'll never know how he had reached for her one night, but stopped himself in time. How in the moonlight streaming in through the window, he was struck by her own beauty, so different from Rangiku's, and shame-facedly retracted his hand.
You'll never know, dear, how much I love you…
"Gin!" Goodness, is that Rangiku's voice, approaching from so far away? Gin is losing his sight now, his last vision being Sunshine's tear-stained face as she is crying, crying for him to stay, just a moment longer, and continuing to tell Izuru to let her go so she can heal him.
When Rangiku reaches him, he can no longer speak, no longer open his eyes though he could still sense her.
It was in that final moment when oblivion beckoned, crooking its finger at Gin, that he realised how truly lucky he was, a lucky bastard as his critics so liked to say. To be on the brink of death, and to have two beautiful women - in body, mind and spirit - to love him in their own ways was
truly…
lucky…
indeed…
A/N So what do you think? PR – no, it is not Public Relations! :P It stands for 'Please review!'
I do not own Bleach.