A/N: Hi there! Two updates in one week! Welcome to what happens when my stuff doesn't work. I spend hours writing! This is a little more Gin-Toshiro feels, for those of you who requested it.
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Thanks to everyone who has followed, favorited, and reviewed!
Love, Ari
Brushing a hand across his forehead, Toshiro Hitsugaya looked around. His division was fighting a bunch of Hollows and were badly outnumbered, but he knew they'd been trained well. At least, he hoped so.
He ducked a blow from a Hollow and drew Hyorinmaru. A few more Hollows began to converge upon him but that didn't matter very much. He and Hyorinmaru could defeat them easily, there wasn't a reason to do bankai.
Of course, what probably would have helped would have been if there were some shingami backing him. One captain against twenty Hollows? Piece of cake, as Karin would say. But there were five Menos in the mix now. That...that would be a touch more complicated.
Toshiro dodged a few ceros, ducked a couple of blows, and easily dispatched the fifteen Hollows. But while he was finishing up with the final Hollow a Menos crept up behind him. Luckily he was able to avoid getting his head taken off but now the other Menos had taken notice of him.
"Shiro!" Gin jumped into the fray, Shinso unsheathed in his hand. He maneuvered until he was back to back with his son.
Father and son fought until all the Menos' were defeated. As soon as the last one was gone, Gin turned around and began to pat Toshiro down. "Stop that!"
"I'm just making sure you're okay. You could have been hurt." Gin sat back on his heels. "Are you sure nothing is bothering you?"
"I'm perfectly fine. There is no reason for you to concern yourself." Turning away, Toshiro sheathed Hyorinmaru and began to walk away.
"You're coming back with me, Toshiro."
"No I am not."
Gin sighed. "Yes, you are. I've already checked with Ran-chan. She said that you have nothing pressing to take care of. You're going to stay with me for the afternoon so that I can make sure that you're as okay as you say you are."
"Fine, if it will make you stop driving me crazy about it from now on." Toshiro followed the taller captain back to third, a scowl on his face. "What am I supposed to do here? You can't stick me in a corner with a toy."
Gin stifled a laugh, brushing his hand through his son's hair. "I have a bit of paperwork to do but as soon as I'm finished we can go for dinner. Sounds good?"
"No."
"Toshiro..."
"I don't want to sit in your office like a child. I'm a captain."
"I can see that." Straddling a chair, Gin met his son's eyes. "What do you want to do then? You're still staying here. I want to keep an eye on you."
"Why? I've fought before and you've never cared."
"Why do you think I didn't care?"
"What?"
"Why do you think I didn't care? Rangiku kept an eye on you even though she didn't know you were her son because you're a child." He took a deep breath. "I watched you while you were in the academy and afterwards. Whenever you wound up in fourth I came to check on you. I was there when you killed your first Hollow, Toshiro. So don't say that I never cared."
"Oh." Toshiro fell silent and sat down on the chair beside Gin.
Gin looked down at him and then began to do paperwork. After a few minutes he felt his son lean over to take a clean sheet of paper and a pen. He turned his head to find the child sketching. Hiding a grin, he went back to his paperwork to finish up.
U_U
Toshiro felt himself being shaken awake and rubbed his eyes. Judging by the fact that Hyorinmaru hadn't warned him and he hadn't reacted to the touch, he had to assume that it was Gin. He stretched, feeling his muscles pop.
"You are entirely too young for that. Come on. Is there anything you want to eat?" Gin took the young captain's hand and helped him up. "Is anything bothering you? You did get hit pretty hard."
"I'm fine. I'll have bruises tomorrow but nothing I haven't had before." Catching sight of the paper he'd been drawing on, he grabbed it and made to crumple it, but Gin plucked it out of his grasp. "Hey!"
"You have real talent. Why would you throw this away?" The tall man held the paper out of reach and looked at it. "Where is this?"
Toshiro shrugged and sat back down on the chair, his arms crossed. "Can we either leave or can I return to my division?"
"We'll leave now. I have an apartment in the world of the living-"
"You what?!"
Gin winced. "While I was with Aizen I made arrangements in case I had to run. I assumed he wouldn't look for me in the world of the living. Now it's a good place to go to think."
"Fine. Let's get this over with."
"If that's the way you want to look at it..."
U_U
"Twenty minutes? Good. Thank you." Gin hung up the phone and looked over at Toshiro, who was curled up on the couch. "Food will be here in twenty minutes."
"I heard."
"Shiro?" Sitting down beside his son, Gin wrapped an arm around him. "What is it?"
"Nothing."
"It can't be nothing. You fell asleep earlier and you don't seem like yourself."
Toshiro looked up. "I told you I'm fine. You have to stop worrying about me."
"And like I told you, you are my son and I will always worry about you." Gin stuck his fingers beneath his son's chin and tilted his head up. "Did you hurt your head?"
"No."
"Arms?"
"No."
"Legs?"
"No."
Gin sighed. "Do I have to go through every part of your body to get an answer?"
"Yes?"
"Shiro..."
"Stop calling me that already!" Toshiro exploded. Gin felt a wave of relief at hearing his crabby son being himself again. "I am not an infant and you cannot call me that!"
"Ran and I called you that when you were born. It was our pet name for you."
Toshiro fell silent. "I'm sorry," he said quietly a few minutes later.
"You didn't know. And I know that this bothers you a lot, for some reason." Gin sat down on the couch beside Toshiro and rubbed his shoulder. "Will you tell me what's bothering you?"
"I told you before, I'm fine."
"I know you did. But you're in pain." He gently poked his son's ribs, eliciting a gasp. "Toshiro..."
"It's nothing." But the pained look on Toshiro's face said otherwise. "One of the Menos hit me harder than the other ones. It's only bruised."
Gin pulled up the t-shirt he'd insisted Toshiro wear and sucked in a sharp breath. A bruise twice the size of his hand spread across the child's ribs, a livid purple blotch. "This isn't nothing. This needs ice. And I'd be surprised if you don't have a broken rib or two."
"This isn't the worst I've had. It doesn't hurt so much." Toshiro pulled his shirt back down and leaned against the arm of the couch. "I'll be fine."
"I know you will. That doesn't stop me from trying to take care of you." The doorbell rang and Gin stood up. "That should be the food. You stay there."
He came back a couple of minutes later with two steaming bowls of ramen and a platter of onigiri. "Half of these are umeboshi, the rest are mixed. Here's your regular ramen."
"Thank you."
U_U
Gin gently pressed the ice pack to Toshiro's side, ignoring his hiss of pain. "I know, it hurts worse than before. It will help with the pain in the long run."
"You aren't Unohana-taicho."
"I'm not an imbecile either. Where do you think you get your brains from?" Pointing the remote at the television, Gin switched it on and began to flip through the channels. "Most captains know basic emergency medical care. I would assume that you know that, too."
Toshiro shrugged and turned away. He silently picked at the last onigiri on his plate, not eating any of it. Finally, he asked, "How old was I when you send me to Momo and Granny?"
"Six months old." Gin looked at his son, surprised by the question. "That was when you started to show signs of superior intelligence."
"What do you mean?"
"You started asking for Rangiku. As far as I knew infants should not be talking." He leaned back, still facing Toshiro. "It was a week after Rangiku had lost her memories. Nanao found her, afterwards, and that was when the two of them became close friends. After a week I realized that I couldn't take care of an infant while being a spy, especially if you were that smart. I decided to bring you to my mother, who was already taking care of a young girl at the time. I never thought that you would have to go to the academy at such a young age, nor that Ran would be the one to bring you there."
"You left me with my grandmother?" Toshiro's eyes were wide, and Gin was confused by the question.
"Yes, why?"
"I..." He took a deep breath and continued. " I always thought you just left me. I didn't realize..."
"You didn't realize that I left you with family," Gin finished. "I would never have left you with a stranger. What kind of heartless bastard do you think I am?"
"You always appeared to be the bad guy, to everyone. Why would I think otherwise?"
Gin thought about it and then ran his fingers through Toshiro's hair. "I don't blame you. I suppose, in a way, I understand. That was the image I cultivated. The only people who ever saw through that, especially once Rangiku lost her memories and I gave you up, was Rangiku herself, Kyoraku, and Juushiro. You hated Aizen for some reason and by extension, myself."
"I suppose." Toshiro let out a quiet breath, leaning his head against Gin's arm. At Gin's sharp intake of breath, he looked up. "Is there a problem?"
"No. Not at all." Resting his hand against his son's head, he pulled him against his side. He looked out the window, surprised to see how dark it had become while they'd been eating and talking. "Are you - "
Looking down, Gin felt a rusty smile spread across his face. Toshiro had his head resting against his arm, his hand holding Gin's. Gin carefully picked him up and brought him to the sparse bedroom. Putting him down, he whispered quietly, "Sleep well, Shiro-chan."
Toshiro sighed contently and rolled over.
U_U
Rangiku rested her chin on Gin's shoulder and watched her sleeping son. "See? You aren't a horrible parent. You two went a whole day without killing each other," she whispered softly.
"It was a close thing." The pair went into the living room and sat down together. "I think I set him straight on some facts."
"Such as?"
"He was under the impression that I didn't care about him in the least." Gin leaned over, pulling a couple of beers from the mini-fridge beside the couch. "If possible, I want him to go to fourth tomorrow: I didn't realize until we were eating that he was hit by a Menos. He has a large bruise on his side."
"It isn't the first time and it won't be the last. He'll be okay." Taking a swig of the cold beer, Rangiku lay against Gin's arm. "We're not the world's worst parents, are we?"
Gin shook his head. "We can't be worse than your former taicho, and the Kurosaki children don't seem to be too damaged. Emphasis on the word 'too'. At times Ichigo Kurosaki worries me."
Laughing, Rangiku punched his shoulder. "Toshiro is nothing like any of those three. I don't think we could've done a bad job with him even if we had raised him. He's naturally a good kid."
"He is."
They drank together in silence for a few minutes until Rangiku broke it. "Do you ever wish we had raised him?"
"If the world wouldn't have been the way it was, with Aizen and the Gotei 13. But it wasn't like that. You had lost your memories, Aizen was on top of me, and Toshiro...Toshiro was too smart. He already recognized that you were gone. I couldn't keep him, not if he would have been in danger." Gin took a drink, his gaze somewhere in the distance. "At times...at times I wish we would never have been in Seireitei."
"I've felt the same." Leaning against Gin's shoulder, Rangiku continued, "We would have had a normal life. Toshiro would have been a normal child. Still brilliant, but at least he would have had his parents."
"No one would have tried to kill him or us. It would have been peaceful."
Rangiku laughed. "Not Toshiro's speed at all."
"Not really." Gin let out a quiet sigh. "I suppose this was better for him."
"But he would have had a normal childhood. Grow up, make mistakes, have feelings..." Rangiku set her beer down on the low table before them. "Date Karin, have Ichigo go all berserk older brother on him..."
"I don't think he really misses that aspect of normal life."
They sat in silence until Gin heard a sound from the bedroom. "Not nightmares. Not again."
"No, it isn't a nightmare. He's just moving around. He does that a lot." Rangiku stood up and quietly crept into the bedroom, Gin close behind her. "See? He's talking in his sleep. It's normal."
"I don't know how normal it is. Sleeptalking?" Gin brushed through the sleeping child's hair. "He's a little old for that."
"He's been through a lot. Let him have some weird habits."
"I suppose."
U_U
Toshiro poked his head out of the room, disoriented. He'd woken up confused, not knowing where he was, until he remembered what had happened the day...night before.
He padded into the living room, rubbing his eyes. To his surprise, he found his parents asleep on the couch, Rangiku curled into Gin's arms.
:You should not be so surprised. They were both worried about you.: Hyorinmaru said.
:I know that. I suppose I've made my peace with them.:
He turned around and went back to the room, leaving his parents behind.
