Gin x Izuru, Gin x Rangiku

Clean Break

"and I dare you to forget
the marks you left across my neck
from those nights when we
were both found at our best"
- Taking Back Sunday

The wayward Captain had learned something about himself, a long time ago now, that he had never told anyone. He kept it tight to his chest, close to his heart, like the final dream of a dying man. It was his secret; his own, guilty little secret.

When he was young, his mind had been wiped clean of specific personality traits by a slightly inhuman lust for blood and death. He reverted back to the basic instinct of cats toying with mice, and it had been encouraged at the time. At the end of it, however, he had a clean canvas of a personality, the kind of canvas that took upon itself elements of the people close to him.

He had realised that, since then, he had become a thief.

If you took Rangiku Matsumoto, and all the things that made her who she was; if you took Izuru Kira, and all the things that made him who he was, and you added the two together, then you got most of what Gin Ichimaru was.

He had stolen them.

When he stared into the mirror, he could see them looking back at him, with their beautiful, broken sorrow.

There was her playfulness in his eyes, there was Izuru's determination in his bared teeth, sharp and strong. He could feel them inside of him, his little lieutenant's ruthlessness in the tightening in his chest and the wiles of his childhood friend in the clenching of his fists. He could sense them as he moved, his stride echoing her grace, and his tapered fingers tracing the delicacy of Izuru's touch. He took strength from both of them too, hid it inside of himself, and these things just scratched the surface.

There were a thousand more that he had taken, stripping them down to the bare, white bone.

He hoarded them, he collected them, and every little part of them was every little part of him, too, and that was why this- this whole, painful situation- had to be the way it was. Each and every part of them were butterflies for him to catch, to pin and preserve in the cool, clean linen of his own corruption. He locked away their brightness and kept it for himself to use, for himself to look at. They used to dance on the wind, and he remembered their beauty there, but now they fluttered only under his cold, pressing touch. Silver pins held them down, trapping them with him.

He had taken the joy from her smile almost as soon as he had met her, and had used it to convince others of his normality. He had taken the naivety from Izuru's eyes, and used it as a banner for his own innocence. Of course, not everyone was convinced, but enough were so that he was not particularly suspect; he just gave some people the creeps, that was all.

But they were so much more to him than tools to shape and mould himself. They were a part of him, a real, living, immovable, irrevocable part. Without his little lieutenant he was desperately unhappy, the kind of unhappiness he only felt when he was without his oldest friend.

He soon realised that he could not live without Rangiku.

And then, at that exact moment, he realised that he could not live without Izuru, either.

He had plucked them out of the air with his long, cold hands and had pinched their wings together, so they could not fly away from him. His beautiful little butterflies, and he could not choose between them. In fact, more than anything else, he did not want to choose.

And that was why it was such a messy, painful state of affairs.

Without Izuru, he was incomplete, and without Rangiku, he was incomplete, and if he only had one of them, then he knew he still would be incomplete, and that just was not enough.

So, in the nature of greed, he took both of them.

They struggled- oh, how they struggled. Their pearlescent wings pulled against the pins that held them down, but all they did, when they pulled themselves away, was to tear themselves further, to rip their pretty little wings apart.

And Gin, with the eyes of a seasoned collector, watched them doing it.

He watched the tears spring up at the corners of her eyes, quickly blinked back in a show of defiance. He pulled her to him, and he made sure that she was safe and warm against him, safe and warm and as happy as she could be. He pushed her down onto her bed and made her whisper his name, hoarse and guttural, over and over again, until it echoed around his mind, her calling for him: a voice he could not escape.

He watched his down-turned mouth, squared to give an image of strength that he knew he could break in a moment. He took Izuru's hand and he lead him through the trials of life, and made sure that he stayed dry as bone through all the storms that raged on overhead. He pressed Izuru up against his desk and made him pant on top of the paperwork until those small sounds of pleasure were in his dreams, a background tempo to his subconscious.

He kissed them both better, and then he broke down them again.

He realised, though, it was never enough.

He consumed them, but he made them so sad whilst he destroyed them, even though they loved him as much as he did them. Whilst having them both made him feel complete, he knew that as long as it was this way, they could never be as happy as he truly felt he was.

When he pulled Izuru to him in an embrace, he could always feel the lieutenant's flinch, when he could smell her on the fabric of his clothes.

He could always hear Rangiku soft, near-silent tears at night when he got up to leave her bed- always her bed, or his bed; never their bed.

He would pause and think, and then decide, and twist the knife a little deeper. It had not bothered him at all, at first, but after a while, when his feelings for them both began to grow, and change him, he had felt just a little guilty, just a little cruel. Soon after that, though, he came to believe that their dependency on him, and what he did to them, was the most beautiful thing that he could ever dream of, and whist he still always felt those flinches, still always heard those sobs, still always saw those eyes, accusing and terrified and unaccountably heartbreaking, part of him started to get used to it.

Part of him even started to like it.

And then it was three weeks before he was due to leave, to follow the orders that had commanded him for as long as he cared to remember, and he was sitting at his desk in the office that he would soon leave and never see again, and he still had not made a choice. There were several options, he knew- he could simply not go, but that was impossible.

Or, he could take them. He could always have them by his side.

He could destroy them a little further.

He would have everything.

Or else...

When he did disappear, neither of them had been expecting it. When he vanished from their view, taking with him their lifeline to lives half-lived, he cut all of the ties that existed between him and them. He left them in the cold, because he knew that if he had Izuru, he would long for Rangiku, and when he had Rangiku, he needed Izuru, and he could not win. The in-between was only a little better, because having them both made them as painfully miserable as having neither made him, and he had fallen in love with that joyful smile, those innocent eyes, and when he was there, now, that smile was tired, and those eyes were disenchanted.

He had ruined them, he could see that.

He had pinned them down for too long.

Their wings had ripped too far.

So, in an action as close to selflessness as he knew that he would ever get, he did not take either one of them with him, to this new order and far off land, because whilst he knew that both would, in a moment, he knew that it was better for them this way.

A fresh start.

Part of him hoped that they would move on quickly, that he would find some pretty little thing to keep him happy and loved, and she would find a beautiful creature to give her the stability that he could not, all before Aizen's world came to pass and they would be destroyed in the flames of the new. Maybe, if he let them go, they could learn to fly once more, before the air burned up with ash and heat and death.

It could be a chance for them both to heal, to find someone that did not take what they were but let them be their own person. Someone who did not collect them for their own vile ends.

They would have a new beginning, but a bigger part of him hoped that they would stay lonely, forever missing him, him in their thoughts just as they would be in his.

A break, a clean cut that might still heal over, leaving little more than a scar.

They still might forget.

Izuru, and Rangiku.

His delicate, wonderful, unforgettable butterflies, with scars ruining their once beautiful wings.

He knew he would remember them.