Serpents
A snake's skin is shed whenever it grows and becomes wiser, but Gin's skin has not been shed for hundreds of years. The scales are constricting and suffocating him. He feels the last remnants of the human gradually falling from his grasp. But no, he does not regret it. It is not blackness where he can see an end. And he may not remember the life he led as a human, but he remembers, "…and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
And only Aizen has the power to shatter his illusions.
For the first time, in that place where nothing reminds him of home, (of blue skies and stormy eyes, of the familiar dried persimmon), he feels his smile tightening at the edges. Sometimes it slips, but only the open eyes in the mirror see that.
Gin's will is strong. Though others have called him a genius, he knows that it is not mere intellect that makes him strong—neither is it his sinewy limbs, or his flashing zampakuto—it is his will that fixes his smile in place, that pushes him until he breaks, that gives his actions conviction.
And so they may call him what they like, a prodigy, a creep, an unnatural creation, but the words roll off the hard edges of his mouth like blood rolls off Shinsou. The spirit inside is never touched.
In his dreams a lonely boy stands by the edge of a broad, tumultuous river. The boy holds a spear that glints silver in the moonlight, and his is fishing. The boy watches the flashes of black and grey pass beneath the semi-opaque water, and cocks his head, the spear raised and poised. And in a brief gasping second, he has stabbed the spear into the water and lifted it out again. But there is no fish at the tip of the spear, only a long, long chain of human skulls.
Once when he was captain, he had been sent to the place with the wizened tree and gap-planked walls. But a hollow had been there. By the time he had got there, the blue-walled hut had been reduced to a pile of ruins, and the tree was broken, snapped cleanly in two, by a clumsy swipe from the hollow. After he had dispatched the hollow in a single, rather vicious blow, he had picked through the rubble, and found an old scrap of pale pink silk, a tiny remnant of a child's yukata.
The next spring, he returned to plant persimmon trees.
Rangiku came to him only once when she was drunk. She had stumbled into his captain's quarters quite deliberately, a half empty bottle of sake still in her hand. He had been sitting and waiting, quite still, allowing himself to sense the ebb and flow of her spirit pressure as she approached.
As she threw open the doors, she asked, "Won't you drink with me, Gin?"
She had said his name quite deliberately. The word hung in the air, bare and laid-out before them like a body to be dissected.
His smile grew, even as he produces two small dishes from a drawer of his desk, and sets them lightly down.
"Well, perhaps just one," he said with an undertone of mockery that she could not have missed, "for old times, Rangiku?"
Her hand shook as she attempted to pour the sake. His smile widened further as he reached out and tried to grasp her wrist in order to steady her hand. But she was already retreating, coiling away from him and dropping the bottle with a clatter. In the end, only his fingertips brushed the pale and unbearably warm skin of her wrist.
"Tonight is not the night for us, ne?"
He opened his eyes, only to see her flushed and confused face. His smile died on his lips. He leaned forward to whisper against her ear.
"Soon."
Whatever else Aizen may be, he is a wonderful actor. It is from this man that Gin learns the ways of the moulting snake, even as he nurtures and kindles that bitter hatred deep inside.
Gin learns, because his half-shut eyes see everything and nothing. Aizen is a snake that sheds its skin wherever he goes. Other eyes see the smiling man, the easy-going, soft-spoken captain of the fifth division, a division that is noted for nothing in particular. But Gin knows that the impression he leaves is merely a layer of dead skin, having all the shape and texture of the real being, but empty, insubstantial and a lie.
Gin recognises lies so easily that he is always surprised when others cannot.
He had been at a gambling den. She could tell. The smell of smoke and dirty money clung to him. But he was empty handed—no food and no money either, even though they had not eaten in a week. He slunk in through the porch, not looking at her.
She had built a small fire in the pit at the centre of the room, and was huddled as close to it as possible without burning herself.
He felt his prize scorching a hole in his hand as he knelt down beside her. Her eyes were wide, but not with accusation, rather, he could see in them a certainty, a trust that burned brighter than the fire. Wordlessly, he held out his hand. Lying there in his palm, twisted like a demented sea-snake, was a silvery gold chain, threaded around a small ring.
"What is this?" she asked as she reached out and plucked the long necklace from his hand.
He shrugged and smiled.
She held the ring up to the light and traced it slowly with her finger: it is a snake that was eating its own tail. The scales are so faded, and the ring so old that the head and fangs are almost indistinguishable. From far away, the ring appeared featureless.
She seized his hand then, and bound them with the fine chain. They fell asleep, still hungry, and their hands still joined, and in their dreams, the snake ate its own body and was born again.
And in the human world above, a silver-haired boy is born to a smiling mother. When he opens his eyes, they are the clear, delicate blue of a robin's egg. He stares through the hospital windows to the sky above, grey-blue with the fading storm, and in that fraction of clarity he knows he has finally found peace. The flash of familiar faces burns and fades to black in his mind, scouring his soul clean.
The baby begins to squall.
The mother names him Gin, for the peculiar colour of his hair, and he is always a happy child.