Don't own Bleach.
I got the idea of/wrote this from Landing in London by 3 Doors Down, and I suggest listening to it as you read.
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Gritty dirt mixed with sticky, dry sweat grated against sensitive skin, waking the worn desolate from a fitful slumber. Bone-weary feet bore the former spiritual-army elite, then villain for a masterminded strategist, now yet again the child wandering barren lands of Soul Society with false peace and raging hunger. The long white coat, status of side, mark of loyalty to a dead man, had been lost, was lying on the ground singed and black with blood. This left only his shihakushou braced at the waist with a white obi, now red, where his silent zanpaktou clung.
Ichimaru Gin had survived.
Ichimaru Gin had gotten away, leaving the raging battle for a fake town, the bite of winter, and the boiling blood, behind.
Through the districts the traitor escaped, casting a woefully hideous shadow from which people shied as he passed, not caring for the expressions upon the faces of those he had no business knowing. The pit of his stomach was aflame, burning like hellish bile: intense, insistent, and real. Real like the strands of strawberry blond clutched in his long, red-dried fingers. Never did he not touch the fiery hair to his lips, imagining the scent, the woman.
When he didn't sleep, he ran further away, hastening towards an unfathomable goal. When often he slept, he slept like the lifeless whose grave was disturbed. His dreams were visions of what had been. Gin would overlook the battlements, thrashing, bleeding, dying; all for the enjoyment of Aizen Sousuke. From the man's formerly unsoiled sword, the killing of his subordinate, his loyal young boy, vice captain, cohort, would strike less painfully than Gin's witnessing a slash and caressing the heat of the cero that consumed everything else but the lone strands of her hair: the only thing he could grasp. The howl from his memories, inhuman, pure in anguish, tore his mind and soul apart.
But the pressure as a hounded fox through grassy fields urged Gin onward through his old forest of dessert.
Gin rose on to carry the weight of an empty world passing minute as day, and day as forlorn year, until his dreams and realities could not separate. The glint of a slender hand would catch the corner of his heavy eye, but vanish in stale air when he turned. The apparition, at first, was only a presence, a ghost among ghosts, and a vice he quickly could do away with. But another day dimmed into months of night, and he faintly saw her coaxing. He dutifully followed when it suited his weighty body.
Staring up at the stars, head leaning against the sturdiness of a stone, a face, pale and transparent, appeared before him. Gin outstretched his hand, trembling with effort, and so surely touched her face, touched the soft hair beside her ear, that he nearly wept after a blink and she was gone.
Snow hugged his shoulders, dusted his bangs when the chill roused him, and he saw the bleeding injuries. Slowly, his hand laid upon his stomach, came away deep red like cherries, and Gin shivered once more. His confusion now briefly fed, he realized that he'd left a trail for the hounds to follow. For the flurries of the Tenth Captain to reach him, he had fallen half-step by half-step behind his own pace, drained any desire to trudge faster in the swirl of snow blackening the world beyond his cold feet. He would die here, then.
Hands lifted him gently, held his back, and helped him forward. Only a little further, she whispered into his narrowing ear. Just a little further.
When the support left, Gin collapsed, gasping. In the frozen sky, he pictured her hand brushing his bangs. Back arched in convulsion, the shell of his outer spirit quickly began to fail. But he still saw her face. Beyond the darkness surrounding his mortal vision, she became clearer, tangent, touchable. Rangiku's scent, the faint but powerful smell of lavender, overcame the stench of his own blood, and when he finally could raise a hand, skin met skin.
Hitsugaya Toushiro met only the chilling corpse of the man he'd doggedly chased halfway across Soul Society. The young captain, hair clumped red, in an unseen show of respect, bent and closed those eyes. Silently he debated anger and sorrow for the loss of his vice captain, the spur of Gin's would have been commendation of Aizen's end. If that would have been enough to pass Ichimaru from execution, they would never know.
Hitsugaya glanced up when the elements fell under natural control and spied a small, run-down shack that had been invisible in his storm. Past the half-destroyed door, Toushiro sucked in a breath, shocked at the lived-in look that vanished when he blinked. Lavender, familiar enough, a rustic fragrance, and smoke caused the young captain to pause momentarily in the thick atmosphere, bow his head shortly, and leave quickly to order his men transporting the unwitting hero back for burial.
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Ben was chiming three in the morning, an ungodly time to wake from any dream, when he started, slowly rising to his elbow. And what a dream it was, he thought, scratching the back of his head absently.
The woman next to him stirred, and his new wife blinked up at him, her skin beautifully pale in the soft light of the old time-teller outside their hotel window. "Everything alright?"
He brushed long fingers over her cheek with a wiry smirk, and kissed her forehead before wrapping his arms about her waist, snuggling into her thick, lavender-scented hair. "Yeah."
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They have so many sad endings out there that I had to end on a good note. And to somehow tie the whole London bit in there too. Does Big Ben sound the hourly time like that? Well, I'm not from there, and I don't rightfully know…so if it's wrong then oh well. My bad. XD Otherwise, thanks for reading!