Love is a Many-Splendored Thing
Warning: Lemon and a bit OCC at times so if you don't like it just do not read folks or keep reading and then say you did not read. This is a first for me so be nice and good things like that!?
Setting: One year after the winter world ends so its a bit A.U from the main time line that is happening in the Manga/Anime.
Also thanks goes to Jiece Reno for being a good beta reader and working on me with things.

So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal

One day Before the 29th of September: Prolog

She missed him; it was that simple to see in her eyes that normally shown a bright blue full of a sharp wit and wicked gleam of a edged humor or amusement in her daily life as being the Lieutenant of the Tenth division of the thirteen divisions known only as the Gotei 13. She missed those moments for some time, her friend and former lover that chose to leave the ranks and travel, wandering. Never coming back to her side like he always had so many times before as children, and even not so many days ago. His name still lingered on his lips as his dying kiss that never leaves and echoed deep within the wound of her heart.

Gin Ichimaru.

A year had gone by, her life going by so slowly. Time used to mean nothing in their long lives, and yet now every day seemed only to creep by. And every day she missed him and yearned for her name to be said by his voice, as she lay in his bed as the twilight broke away. She missed how his long fingers would play with her honey colored locks and how he would give a soft smile he kept only for her on those mornings of just them and the world meant nothing. She missed the sound of his heart beat filling her ears after a night of love and passion, and song of his breath filling the room so long after a sea of touches and fire raging in their skins.

Matsumoto Rangiku missed him and silently wept for him every night after that final sight of him dying in her arms. Night after night he came, covered in the blood of the war, and even after deemed a traitor he gave his life so she could live on. He would trace her full lips with those finger tips and whisper her name once more with the song of his breath one last time before fading into the next life to wander where she could not follow him this time, and he not return.

She was often a woman thought to have a light flirt and a strong heart to match a feminine like smile. She was a hell cat in the battle field that rose through the ranks and carried her with an influence many longed to bath in and be part of. She was friend to any seeking one and was trusted with the darkness of hidden things. She was Matsumoto Rangiku in all definitions of her name and filled that name as if it was something derived. Yet she now felt that none these things right, that if anything she was a woman of broken shell and shattered smile if you could creep behind the mask she wore in her every day life. Few could do that now, and they had died to protect her, to the last blade drawn in the battle of the Winter War.

One person could tell the different in the bright smile that shone in all ranges of who she was, as he was her captain and friend; Hitusyaga Toshiro.

The young captain of the tenth had picked up the lost of the bright Venus known as Matsumoto of the ranked division; he had woken to her holding his hand softly in his own of as if she might break the pale skin that fortnight after the war. They had claimed victory, but there were many a lost in their ranks, those who fought for the white fortress and the souls of the living and dead. Honey colored hair fell softly around the angelic face that seemed out of place in their war torn world now, her breath butterfly light on his skin when she breathed and the room smelled of roses after of a spring rain, a scent of Matsumoto Rangiku he had missed all the more these past days in the war. She was clean and pure despite the gore of the world and his center of peace in those moments they could breathe in the company of the other.

She had been with him this whole time while he slept in the rooms of the forth. Never once leaving his side for anyone or thing even when ordered by the commander-general himself; Shigekuni Yamamoto-Genryusai. She had stood her ground in the power of the old man and roared like the hell cat she was in caged flesh. "He is my captain and friend, and no one, not even you, can make me leave him old man," he was told. She was a stubborn woman and held her ground to anyone on pure nerves, she was just Matsumoto through and through to the end of all things.

In those weeks after the war, when their world was rebuilding itself like it always did after such things happened, he came to realize one day that the paper work was done.
She never got the paper work done on time.

He wondered if it was to gain something of him in turn, yet she never talked about it and headed out for a drink with her friends like always.

Then he took note of another odd thing as the weeks turned into a month of spring. He did not find her sleeping on his couch in his office as she had been doing from their first meeting as Captain and Lieutenant. Hitusyaga had just stood in the doorway, looking around for her form. Where was she?

He had gone seeking his Lieutenant out of worry that she might be sick and he found her in her room, working on the paper work as her duties dictated she should do. The conversations had seemed to shallow for his tasting of their normal banter or the energy she seemed also full of to get him to relax a bit in his work or duties as a Captain.

"Matsumoto, are you all right?" His silver brows had knotted and the normal scowl was softened in depth.

She had only ghostly smiled at him, and he had seen clearly that it never reached her eyes. "Of course captain, just doing my work as I should be doing."

Hitusyaga felt something more was wrong, the smile was hollow as where those normally bright eyes. "Are you sure? If you need to talk…"

"Captain, I am fine. Don't worry so much or you'll get wrinkles!" She had only smiled at the light joke while cutting him off from saying any more. "Everything is fine Captain." She had left it at that.

Those days following their talk were just light and simple, the understanding of a Captain in how his Lieutenant should act in the Ranks of the 13. She did her work on time and stopped drinking for the most part save in her own rooms and away from any bonds she had formed or friends. She stopped giving her captain those hugs he yelled at her about, and gone were her childish antics. Matsumoto often seemed to be smiling to those looking on the Venus and thought she was alright and had grown up from the Winter War. Yet inside her soul withered like a flower with out the light, the light of the man she had lost and the burn of having to carry on alone with out him. He saw this, her captain, and missed the joyful woman that lit up his days with that smile she gave to him with a light tease or the touch of her skin for those few moments she captured him in the sea of roses of her scent.

Soon even those light talks become only a few words to each other, simple in their point and lacking the vigor of her tease to him in any form. Many began to worry for her as the weeks flowed into months with a few short blinks of time's eyes that seemed oh so long to her.
Nanao Ise found herself trying to get the once bright flower out for a shopping trip, but Matsumoto refused, saying she had paper work to do. It was a shock on the proper woman's face in hearing those words from her friend and it hurt all the more as the door slowly closed to cut Nanao off from helping her.

Both Ikkaku and Ayasegawa would stop by in the evenings to her room to get her out for a friendly drink with them as would have been the normal for the three on such pliant spring nights. Yet she only gave them that doll-like smile she used now and said her work had to come first and the training of the new members. The fighters of the Eleventh were left speechless to hear such words from the full lips of the usually enthusiastic drinker.

She missed him; her light of the world seemed nothing with out the man her heart had bleed for and sought to take in for all those long years of waiting for his return to her side. The Venus fell into the darkness of her own solitude and pain, and left the world alone to move on without her if she could leave it at that. Maybe it was for the best of all things, she seemed to think. Just to fulfill the duties required of her and then return, alone, to the coldness of the bottle and an empty bed. Yet now, looking outside her window, it hurt the more to see the leaves change into the colors she once loved to walk in with his arm around her waist, a hidden smile of crimson kisses, her name whispered by his lips they pressed to her skin in heated rooms of dark. And the day they first met in which he gave her a birthday, a day all her own...Gin...

Yet one young male knew the real cause of this break down of his friend and Lieutenant; Hitusyaga Toushiro. He was no fool in this matter, nor was he ignorant of the bond the pair had shared in their younger days, till Gin had become the Lieutenant of Aizen later in his path. Yet it seemed to the boy's understanding that they had remained close even in those days till Gin became a taicho of the third and Matsumoto the Lieutenant of the tenth, before he had come into the ranks as the fourth seat back then. He had seen more then once her back as it slipped away at the break of dawn from the thirds house, but soon he saw this also start to wane till he no longer spotted her female form slipping from the shadows to her personal rooms.

Something had happened to cause the pair to spill as he became the new captain of the tenth. He knew not what it might have been or the reasons for their bond to just break in such a fashion after being together as long as they had. Somehow it made him look back on his own bound with Momo, and how close that was to breaking, his friendship with the former fifth Lieutenant, Momo Hinamori. She was still trapped in the illusion that Aizen had been a man of honor, and had had his reasons for nearly killing off the shinigami and those on earth for his sick views on his place in heaven. It had broken his spirit to see her like this... Hitusyaga could only spend so much time with the girl who now lived in the care of the forth night and day to keep her from killing herself as she nearly had a few months ago. How cruel could fate be to his childhood friend anymore then it had...or to the other woman who now seemed lost...he wanted to help them both but one seemed to need it more than the other...which one??