Seven Days After Aizen's escape:

Gin smiled proudly as he paced back and forth across the room. "See?" he declared. "Good as new."

It felt so good to move freely. His movement had come back slowly over the day before, but the pain had kept him from trying much more than wiggling his toes. This morning he'd awoken free from pain, and he'd immediately hopped out of bed, or that had been the plan. An ecstatic bound had turned into a graceless tumble. He couldn't remember the last time he'd heard Shiro laugh like that. He eventually made it back to his feet, and now, after an hour of loosening up all those unused muscles, he was able to move normally.

"Your reiatsu's still a little low," Toshiro answered.

"That's only because they've got Shinso locked up somewhere. I haven't been able to reach it all week."

"You've been trying to talk to Shinso?" Toshiro said, looking surprised.

"How long can you go without talking to your zanpakuto?" Gin asked. It really would be nice to feel the blade in his hand again. He felt, if not completely helpless, at least vulnerable without it. He was no kido master. He'd put nearly all his strength and focus into Shinso, and nearly all of that had gone into developing the best possible attack. His only real defense was to run away. He had been speaking from personal experience when he'd told Toshiro that the problem with someone hellbent on revenge was they were killer on the attack but completely fell apart on the defense. Without Shinso, he probably couldn't defend himself any better than a third seat. At least he'd made sure Toshiro did not make the same mistake.

"I'll see if I can get it for you," Toshiro said. "I think General Yamamoto's been keeping it locked up. A captain's zanpakuto can be dangerous."

"Especially if you don't happen to trust the captain it belongs to," Gin said, pleasantly. "Do you think I could go see Ran now? You said something about a captain's meeting after lunch, but that's still an hour-"

"Captain Unohana wants to look you over to makes sure everything's healed alright, and after the meeting you get to tell Kurotsuchi and his staff everything you know about the Arrancar. You'll be lucky if you get to go home before Kinta's bedtime."

Gin turned away. He gave skipping a bit of a try, but there really wasn't enough space, so he hopped on the balls of his feet a few times, but it really wasn't the same. He couldn't wait to get out of this place. He'd have to see if he could still shunpo to the East Gate and back in under five minutes. He really didn't like cramped spaces like this, lots of barriers and no windows, always felt like a trap.

He turned back to Shiro, smiling. "So how angry is your mother? I left her a baby with a dirty diaper angry or she missed a once in a lifetime chance to go to the Shiba family hot springs with all her best friends and no any annoying Shibas, and instead spent the weekend being thrown up on after Kin-chan caught a stomach bug, and all because I didn't bother to come home for a couple days angry?"

Toshiro just glared back at him.

"Right," Gin said. "I'm a terrible husband. I knew that." He looked around the room quickly. "What do you think they've done with my clothes?"

"Burned them?" Toshiro suggested. "They were slashed to bits and soaked in blood. I don't think anybody's even going to complain when you put in for a replacement."

"Well, that would be a nice change. Last time I lost one of my socks I got a three page letter about personal responsibility, scarcity of resources, and an in-depth analysis of waste in the food and stationary supply departments and how those funds could be better spent on extra socks and underwear for the Gotei."

Toshiro smiled faintly. "They told me the waste was in construction, although that was a tough argument to make when the Eleventh had just torn half their division apart again."

"Maybe the waste is in having an Eleventh at all," Gin suggested. "Maybe we could all have enough socks if we got rid of Kenpachi."

"How are you planning to do that?"

"There's the problem-all my best plans end up having some sort of problem like that. Never can get them to work properly. It really is too bad."

Toshiro shook his head. "It wasn't so much a plan as a random thought. Is that what all your plans are? Because if it is, it's a miracle you managed to last as long as you did with Aizen. I would have thought it would take a lot of careful planning not to end up skewered."

"I don't know. I think over planning just gets you in a mess when things go wrong. It wasn't very hard to remember, 'become Aizen's favorite little sidekick; learn everything; kill him', but again with the problem of one very big, very nasty person having to be dealt with before it's mission accomplished. It's a definite failing."

"You must have had some idea of what you were going to do," Toshiro answered.

"Wait till he was thoroughly distracted and stab him in the back was my favorite. Seemed more likely I was going to have wait till he stabbed me with Kyoka Suigetsu and hit him back. Kind of why I kept putting it off," Gin said, checking various drawers in the bedside cabinet. "Oh, look, you did bring me clothes! That was very nice of you."

"Wait a minute," Toshiro said. "You were going to wait for him to hit you to hit him back? What sort of plan is that? That sounds like a good way to end up dead!"

"Ah, well, long as I got to take him with me," Gin shrugged. He seemed more interested in the new shihakusho he was laying out on the bed. "A new haori! Getting these replaced is worse than socks! I was sure they'd try to repair the old one. Look how nice and white it is!"

Gin smiled down at Toshiro's stunned expression. He wasn't particularly surprised that Toshiro was shocked by his plan. It really wasn't his sort of thing, sacrificing himself for others-or maybe it was; he had stepped between Toshiro and AIzen's blade. But, usually, he was pretty focused on self-preservation. He'd certainly never been impressed by stories where the hero died to save everyone else; it always seemed like the hero should have thought things out a little better, or if the situation was impossible to salvage then the author should have. But in real life you didn't have the options of a fictional hero, and your strength didn't grow just because you needed it to. Your strength had limits, and his was always going to be less than Aizen's. He had been doing the best he could with what he had.

"Weren't you going to go find Shinso for me?" he asked when it became obvious Toshiro wasn't going to say anything.

"You should've asked for help!" Toshiro said angrily and stormed out of the room.

Gin sighed. He wondered if that counted as the father-son bonding Rangiku was always going on about. Toshiro had seemed more frustrated than truly angry when he'd stormed out, so that was progress, right?