A/N: Just something I wrote, cuz I was kindda sad and needed to let it out in one form or the other.

Prayer

The sun was blazing bright, hot, white with fire above the ground, singing the upper layer of Earth and turning it into a cracked, dusty crust. The air seemed to be moving – it was trying to wriggle away from the heat, to dance its way out of the charring rays, but all this effort appeared to lead nowhere. There was no escaping the divine light.

There was no escaping God.

Somewhere deep, deep inside his blank, aching mind, beneath the numbness that had tightened its hold around every last inch of his body, he knew without a doubt that it was going to be over soon. That the physical pain – both his and not – would end, and with it, something much, much worse, would instantly commence.

Something irreversible. Something unthinkable.

He had been watching Toushiro's blood steadily drip for two days now, and it seemed to be finally slowing down, leaving only a gaping, throbbing wound, red and sore, staring back at Gin from across the few meters of barren, yellow ground that separated them. Everything about that horribly weeping gash – from the jagged, shredded edges, to the pulsing vermillion core between them - felt brutally familiar by now. Sickeningly so. It had been reopened by a diligent black-eyed priest every morning at dawn and every evening at sunset, without fail, without mercy, the old, sacrificial dagger boring deeply into the flesh through the soft chanting of the executor, while, unable to look away, Gin held onto the victim's gaze and ground his teeth at the thought that he should be the one in his place. He should've been the bearer of this crazed crucifixion. Not him.

Not him.

Never him.

Because, damn it all, this was never supposed to happen. It was never supposed to go like this, Gin had never meant to drag them both down, ever. Even if they were eventually found out, he was the one who should've taken all the blame. Not the kid.

Not someone who had barely started comprehending what life was all about.

Gin wanted to look away, he wanted to badly. But over the past two days, he had realized he just couldn't bring himself to, knowing as he did that he had caused it all, that he had been the reason for this to happen, the bad choice which had landed Toushiro - the only thing Gin absolutely couldn't bear to lose – in the clutches of a bunch of ruthless fanatics. And this was the result. The outcome and the future which Gin was still refusing to accept. What did he even have left to do?!

Live for?

Hope for?

Without a single little cut on him, without a single serious injury to physically impair him, he was slowly, gradually, perishing in the abyss of his own despair. Time was working against him more than it had ever done before, the truth and severity of the situation drilling their way to every last denying part of his brain, wiping out any thoughts of salvation, shutting his body down little by little. And he hated how quickly, how beastly and blatantly he could spot the changes, the wooing traces of death's fingertips all over Toushiro's frame. The days he had spent tied up to the pillar, with his hands pulled high up above his head and his toes straining to support his weight, had rapidly eaten away at the little bit of body mass Toushiro had used to possess. He was nothing but a mere shadow of himself now, limp, boneless, limbless, painfully alive. He was white and red, pale skin against drying, crimson blood, and he had no words left in his mouth to speak with, no willpower to raise his head and crack his sore, swollen eyes in order to steal one final glimpse at the person who had used to hold him every minute, every chance he got.

That was what hurt Gin the most. At the end of the day, they had given each of them a different punishment. They had taken away Toushiro's love, hurt him, left him to die.

Because Toushiro was going to die.

And Gin was going to have to watch - and then live with it until he no longer could.

They had put them outside of the city, so that nobody could look, nobody could pity them or try to bring them water. They wanted Toushiro to suffer as much as possible – he was only a cheaply sold blacksmith's apprentice, after all, nothing more, nothing even remotely more important, and his screams and tears, his naïve love or admiration, those never counted for anything but a ground for disdain. He was an animal as far as they were concerned – sacrificial lamb, meant to absolve Gin from his demons, from his lusts, from his perverse cravings – and they were going to use his frail fifteen-year-old body for as long and for as much edification as his crumbling being allowed them to. They were. They had said it themselves. At the end of the day, it was all those thousands of years, piles of gold, dozens of titles that truly separated Gin from the person he cared for the most. Law had erected a sky-high fort between them, one not even the intensity of their emotions could dream of pulling down, and it was bound there for centuries ahead. Even more than that, what they had done was a sin in the eyes of God, a form of unforgivable disobedience.

They needed to purge their souls from the devil, with anguish and hardship, and contrition.

Gin couldn't give a fuck about it. But that didn't make things any easier.

"Do you think-" Toushiro's voice, friable, thin and crumbling snapped Gin out of his daze, making him look up in surprise. The boy across from him hadn't moved – the distance separating the pillars to which they were tied up was small enough to allow them to talk, but it was still too far, it was still too much. He guessed that was the point, though, wasn't it? Severing the little that still connected them, ridiculing the last remnants of affection they dared to feel for each other; this was why they had hung them here.

That, and out of fear that they were losing their power over the people. That their endless, soulless preaches just might not be enough to hold the city together under their foot anymore. Unless they acted instantly. Unless they uprooted all buds of evil while the seeds were still merely sprouting in the fruitless, barren soils of blind faith.

Unless… Unless…

For a while there was nothing but the sound of hot wind gushing over the deserted horizon and wiping around the culprits' bare, burned soles. After several minutes Gin started to wonder if he'd heard right at all, or if he had, in his desperate need to assure himself that his lover was still conscious, made up for himself the pleasant illusion of hearing him speak. After all, he had given up talking to the boy a long time ago, out of fear he would be the reason of his earlier demise, the snake to suck away the last traces of energy that still coiled in that beautiful, young body Gin had marveled at during so many endless, bittersweet nights. Or would a quicker death be a form of mercy? A gesture of selfless, absolute love?

Gin wished he didn't have to ask himself those questions every single torturous second. He wished also that he could go back, all the way back to the very start when he had so deliberately chosen to corrupt them both and lead them into sin. He wished he had never said a thing, never reached out for what wasn't his to yearn, never touched the flesh he so desired, never coaxed the shy, trembling lips that had resisted him for so long, to open themselves up, just so he could steal their first – and ultimately last – kiss for himself.

He wished so many things.

And at the same time didn't.

"-You think-…There might be-" Toushiro's breathing was a grotesque disaster, every inhalation a torment, every exhalation – an obstacle. Then he leaned his sweat drenched temple into the curve of his arm and managed to open his blackening eyes just enough to look at Gin, to seek out his lover's gaze through the quivering delirium of the pain. Blue and crimson streaks were still glaring from their corners all over his face and body, some of them deceitfully faded under the layer of fine ashes covering his skin, some of it visibly marring the once flawless flesh in all those nooks and places someone else's relentless hands had brought their justice for what Gin had done. "There might be- Something? For us?"

"Something?" Gin repeated, very softly, as though convinced by some ludicrous thought that if he spoke up any louder, any firmer, he might somehow hurt Toushiro more than he was already hurting. He watched the boy's chest heave, drawing the hot desert in, releasing unspoken moans of pain into the ugly, depraved world outside.

"Something-" Toushiro's cracked, dust-covered lips tugged at the corners into a difficult smile and Gin saw him struggle to swallow, to maintain some form of normalcy even in his miserable current state. "Like heaven."

Gin's stomach flipped, then twisted into a ball. He tended to purposefully disregard the fact that Toushiro was religious – it was the one thing that had always stood in their way, and the one thing that was going to kill Toushiro now, for being different, for stepping out of the dividing line he had been shoved behind all his life. But Gin didn't have the heart to object again, he didn't have the strength – or the right – to accuse Toushiro's God for leaving them like this, to rot, to burn, for the sole reason of doing the exact thing this same deity had turned into a cult: love each other and the world.

"You're not going to die, Toushiro," Gin whispered, but he knew it was hopeless and untrue even as he strained to pour as much conviction and weight into his statement as possible. For a long minute their gazes remained locked – one a fading jade, the other an exhausted, dismal blue – and then something inside Toushiro broke and his lips twisted into a vulnerable, uneven line, giving up the softest of sobs.

"Please," the boy choked as a lone, hot tear slowly rolled down his cheek and dripped from the end of his chin, drawing its own wet groove through the blood and grime on his fifteen-year-old, graying face. "Don't lie to me. Not you. Not you."

"I'm not- I wouldn't," I wouldn't lie if I had a choice.

Toushiro's body shook ever so slightly, drowning in its inner and outer agony, absolutely, entirely, irrevocably.

There was nothing Gin could do to stop it. And that was his punishment. His curse.

Having no power to so much as hold his lover at that minute.

"I can't do this without you," the boy managed in a low, pleading voice. If he hadn't been so hurt, there might've been a notch of hysteria where the words were coming from, but as it was, there was only illogical and hopeless fear of being abandoned. Only that. And unconditional, condemned love. "I can't, Gin. Please. Please, just don't leave me."

"Kitten-" but the rest of it never came. He felt his throat clog with the realization that nothing he felt he needed to say was ever going to be enough, ever going to be the truth or consolation Toushiro so needed. So instead, through all the pain, through all the guilt he had never wanted to admit, he just said – a single, honest, disastrous: "I'm so sorry." And for the first time ever asked himself if he was. He listened to Toushiro cry quietly in the sleeve of his shabby shirt for a while longer, draining himself dry of any last drops of energy he might've preserved. And he kept repeating it in his head, repeating it, repeating it, like it might make some kind of a difference, summon some sort of clandestine powers to their rescue. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. God, I am so sorry.

And then… And then…

Please. Just spare him.

Just give him back everything I took from him.

He never asked for this. He never wanted it. I'm so. Sorry.

For being this selfish.

For hurting him so much.

At the end, when there was nothing left but the crushing, toxic weight of the heat, and the solitude they were bound to share, the younger male calmed down enough to seek out Gin's eyes again.

"I'm not," he said, though his voice was cracking and throbbing with his own guilt, his own shame. "I can't be sorry. I still-" his bruised fingers curled around the rope that held his wrists together and he let a very last, dying tear drip onto the sand in his feet. "I still love you."

Gin felt as if a hand had just ripped through his chest and taken his heart out. Closing his eyes for a minute, he held his breath and allowed his body to fill up with the full understanding of what he had done.

He had taken Toushiro's innocence. Toushiro's body.

Toushiro's life.

And now he had taken Toushiro's faith, too.

For the very first time in his life, Gin Ichimaru wished he had never been born. He wished he could just die instead.

For the very first time in his life, Gin Ichimaru lifted his gaze towards the heavens, and prayed.

A/N: Would appreciate a review.