Gin wasn't supposed to be in the tenth division's headquarters – or rather, he had no reason to be there, especially at half past four in the morning. If a late-working shinigami stumbled in, Gin would have no excuse to give. That was fine. No one was going to come, and even if someone did, he could just order them away.

Rangiku lay sprawled on the couch, one hand trailing along the floor and dead asleep. A number of sake bottles of varying degrees of emptiness formed a haphazard ring around the couch. She was probably cold, sleeping in only her uniform, and she would probably wake by rolling off the couch by accident and tumbling on to the floor. Gin could prevent this. He could shift her back fully onto the cushions; he could find a blanket. He did nothing. He stood in the corner of the room, as still and silent as the death he embodied, and watched.

The soft gray-pink rays of the rising sun, not quite yet over the horizon, slowly crept along her body. They tangled in her mess of hair, stroked her long neck from delicate jaw to gently sloping shoulders, smoothed the black folds that, during her sleep, had slipped from her body. The predawn light touched her so gently, so adoringly, touched her in all the ways he longed to but never could. Never would be able to, now. Aizen was ready. In a few weeks time Gin would be branded a traitor, but that would not be the end of his deception. He would continue to lie to the world, as he had for centuries, and wait for the perfect opportunity to take back what wasn't his.

It didn't matter if she didn't understand his motives; it didn't matter if Soul Society locked him up forever; it didn't matter if she hated him. If she was alive, somewhere, alive and smiling and lazing about and sleeping drunk in the tenth division headquarters, then nothing mattered.

He didn't care what happened after, as long as she was whole.