Anatomy in Ice
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach. I wish I did, the better to suit things around here, but at the moment I'm poor and can't even get myself the entire manga set.
Summary: His hair wasn't always white and graying; his mouth wasn't always smiling. One shot Gin fic.
Note: I'd like to excuse myself for the gore for whatever good it may do me. I can only assure you that this will be a bit dark and that most of the things here are born out of imagination, so if you're not into those things, kindly skip this page.
Once, there was a run-down hut that stood on top of the Black Mountain. It had been there for so long that none of the lower part residents were ever sure when and how it was built. Rumor had been passed around—either as an attempt to draw caution or out of sheer fear----that demons abounded the area, a rumor which had been fortified overtime that people had long since begun to construe it as a fact. This, it wasn't so hard to believe; no sign of life had ever graced the place insofar as the living were aware. From a safe distance, it traced the fragile figure of a weary scene that always seemed to turn its back on the sun. If it could speak, it would certainly have declared its resentment toward light. Even then, it seemed to reject the very elements that made up the earth—wind, fire, water and soil altogether. It stood on its own solitude, even thriving and fearing contact, and shunned the world at large in mere silence. It was a place no living soul would accept as shelter even from the throes of death.
Out of all that had been said about the house, only this much was plain: A man had spent his short-lived childhood there.
The family that used to own the property was of a humble, hand-to-mouth farming kind. Essentially silent and unsociable, the members suitably kept apart from the neighboring camps where inhabitants engaged in what seemed like endless squabbles and delight. Unless necessitated otherwise, the family remained aloof and held contact with others only in terms of matters concerning its duties. The father, a gentle and solitary type, took it upon his shoulder to bring their trade into the market. He would rise at the earliest signals of daybreak to tread the steep path down the hill and return by the time stars had already gathered brightly above him, quite none the richer. Only such hard work could give them roof over their heads and food on their table, he knew this much was true. The mother, on the other hand, not much different from her husband in disposition, cared for the crops each day from dawn to dusk, cursorily attending to the small acre of field without much of an emotion. If at all she was motherly, it was only when she'd sternly remind her children of their fixed responsibilities. The eldest child, a girl of about twelve, mastered the household with such efficiency only a frigid heart and equally frigid hands could ever hope to manage. She, too, exhibited telltale signs to grow up to be exactly like her mother, but this time after a spinster fashion. The middle child, a son, was nine, and as early on in his childhood already knew—and therefore experienced---the great range of human hardships: he helped his mother in the fields.
The youngest, a boy of six, scarcely had anything to say about all this. In fact, barely a word passed from one lips to another within that house. Their eyes had always been dim, but profound and hardened, their minds unfathomed, likely even empty. This boy, who had so little to give and all the world to gain, hardly realized the universe outside. In many ways, the clustered life they made him live was a picture that molded no less the coldest heart. Feelings that are so common to others were continually deprived of him that he neither learned how to imagine nor how to smile. He would go by his days wandering in the nearby woods, listening to animal voices, the only ones he would come to love in those days. And yet, maybe 'love' was a word too loose and inappropriate: perhaps 'understand' was the only one that would fit. As for everything else he might've known, no indication was ever given. He was unlearned, neglected, and couldn't have been more alone.
They referred to him as the dark child, never with his given name. For all the little attention he received, the birth of such title already proved generous, and it was the best he would receive from these petty blood relations he had. He was slender and slight, pallid and often fumbling. His hair, sleek black to the point of glossiness, was a source of wonder in the household; he was the only one who turned out to be dark. But something in its flavor served to muddy his overall appearance, making him more a shadow than ever a flighty child of six. Over everything, it gave him less human attributes than a piece of stone could ever have.
The night the family found itself murdered would arrive on almost the same day the youngest child's childhood would grind to an overwhelming halt. As far as he could later tell, it was the only break in that long stretch of monotony. But in retrospect, it might also be that his childhood vanished precisely because the event took place. The silence that one particular night invited was one that led to many consequences unknown to itself. Outside, the leaves swayed on their branches and the wind hummed with an even deeper melody. None of the members of the family could've foreseen the entrance of the intruders at their doorstep; these intruders weren't meant to be seen in the first place. Laymen called them Hollows, spirits of a gigantic brood that lusted after blood and violence. Three, or maybe there were four of them, suddenly materialized inside the hut, which could only have accommodated six people at most, including the family, and nothing more. Further still, no stranger had ever set foot on those grounds, alive or otherwise. But as time would speedily assure all of them, these creatures were no strangers of the Earth. They terrorized and killed to their will's content, and had walked the grounds in ancient times.
As the night progressed, one horror after another ensued. The youngest child would watch as these monsters ripped the skin off his family without mercy, without stopping. He would come to smell—and suspected himself to appreciate—the raw blood gushing forth from the various holes drilled on their bodies. Their screams gradually weakened, along with the colors on the surface of their eyes. Their bones cracked and produced other sounds that only immense pain could've resulted from it. Their faces broke into sweat, contorting, recognizing the bounds of all sufferings until it was all the expression they could assume. And he stood through the ordeal's entirety, never twitching, or making use of his voice to comment on the vandalized vital organs that very recently just belonged to the people he called his family. He knelt down as if to study the newfangled substance littering his home, and not once, not even for a moment, would he crumble or shiver as he stroked the lividly cold bodies of his parents, sister and brother. In the stark darkness that embraced him, their faces would stand in glowing whiteness, like light, as the Hollows left as quietly as they came.
He then came to the next morning in a trance. The temperature had abated and the wind seemed to sing in an even finer tune. But he would remark on none of this. In the sunlight, the scattered and mutilated corpses around him were lent with a far more graceful solidity, so much so that they seemed to blend in the background like unmoving objects on the dusty concrete. He held them in their gaze, and felt no remorse, shock, spite or whatsoever normal people were capable of. He was breathing shallowly, his heartbeat ever as steady.
Ichimaru Gin was six when all this occurred. The dark child who they thought would never learn how to smile was spared, but rather unjustly, for reasons he didn't know he had to. And from deep black, his hair would suddenly turn to gray in a span of one evening—that evening. Years afterward, this grayness would even appear to lean toward whiteness on occasions where there was intense sunlight. It was a phenomenon yet unexplored in the study of science. He couldn't have known it, however, for the hut on top of the Black Mountain never had a mirror inasmuch as it didn't have any mirror to the outside world. That same afternoon, a man dressed in black would come to fetch him in order to induct him to a certain organization they called Soul Society. The name of the man, whom he would deem to give him salvation, was Sousuke Aizen.
END
A/N: Ah… oh yeah, I think it's hypothetically possible for one's hair to turn to white in a very short time, overnight or something, on account of a serious shock. But maybe I was misreading things. Maybe some sort of acidic chemical does it. Whatever. I'm just on the hunt for an excuse to write about Gin. Bleah.