The last of the golden ginkgo leaves were falling as Lieutenant Ise marched up the path to the home of the captain of the Third Division. The captain was on the porch with the two boys. The toddler was bundled up in several layers of kimonos and wore a ridiculous-looking stocking cap from the world of the living that was decorated with pink snowflakes and pompoms. He was also giggling and throwing the blocks Gin was calmly counting as he stacked. Toshiro, dressed like it was mid-summer, in a blue and green jinbei and bare feet, looked unamused.

Gin raised his head, immediately sensing the lieutenant, and smiled hugely. Then he turned toward the closed paper doors and shouted, "Ran, one of your friends."

"One! Two! Ten!" Kinta announced just as loudly, and smiling just as enormously.

"Told you he couldn't learn to count," Toshiro muttered.

"Good morning, Captain, Toshiro-kun," Nanao said awkwardly.

"Morning, Nanana!" Kinta announced loudly.

Toshiro rolled his eyes. He wasn't impressed by baby-talk. Of course, Nanao was, and she came up to the tiny boy and started talking to him in baby-talk too, which Toshiro found even more annoying. He was certain, despite what his parents claimed, that he had never been that nauseating.

"You know he learned to talk even faster than you did," Gin told Toshiro. "You'd better watch out. We may have two baby geniuses in the family."

"He's not a genius," Toshiro said. "He's just loud, like Mom."

The door behind him slid open, and Rangiku looked down at her son. "Is that so?" she asked.

Toshiro looked away. "What's so great about talking a lot?" he muttered.

Rangiku chose to ignore him. "Hello, Nanao-chan. What brings you all the way out to the Third? It's our day off so it had better not be business."

"Only part of it's business," Nanao answered, straightening and pushing her glasses back. "The Captain has volunteered the Eighth to decorate for New Year's, and he is insisting that we do something special. He suggested I see if Toshiro-kun would be interested in helping."

Toshiro raised his head. "Help decorating?" he said in surprise.

"You used to make beautiful giant snowflakes when you were little," Rangiku said. "Don't you think you could do some wonderful ice sculptures now?"

Toshiro frowned slightly. He did not remember making snowflakes. He remembered trying other things, like seeing how far he could make a frost spread, when he had trained with Aizen. Captain Aizen had found his ice creating abilities fascinating, and they had spent a lot of time learning his abilities and limitations. He hadn't realized his affinity for ice was common knowledge throughout the Gotei, however, and wasn't sure what to make of Nanao's request.

He glanced at his father, but Gin was simply smiling at him, unreadable as ever.

"I guess I could," he said, finally. "Unless it gets too warm."

"I'm sure you can convince the weather to cooperate if you try," Gin said.

Toshiro glanced back at his father, ready to demand to know what he meant by that, but Rangiku interrupted. "Oh, you should freeze the lake. Then we could have ice skating! I've always wanted to try ice skating! They have the cutest western clothes for it with little fur hats and fur trimmed coats-oh, wouldn't you boys look adorable in those little western coats? Gi, you have to get-"

"I'm not wearing a coat!" Toshiro protested. "I won't freeze the lake if you're going to make me wear a coat. You have to promise, no winter clothes."

Rangiku sighed. "Fine. At least Kin-chan will wear a pretty little coat with fur trim, won't you, darling?"

Kinta looked up at her and grinned. "Yes!" he declared happily.

Rangiku picked him up and hugged him. "You're such a good boy!"

Toshiro just rolled his eyes.

"Then it's settled?" Nanao said a little uncertainly. "You'll help with New Year's?"

Toshiro nodded. "Yeah, I guess so."

"Good. Thank you. I'm sure my captain will be very glad to hear it," Nanao told him. Then she looked up at his mother, still snuggling Kinta. "Rangiku, there is one other thing I would like to talk to you about. It's not work related. I promise."

"Come on in then," Rangiku suggested. "I'll make some tea."

Tea had been made and served and the two lieutenants were relaxing all warm and snugly, half buried under the blanket of that most wonderful of inventions, the kotatsu. Rangiku thought she could probably forgive Captain Kurotsuchi for all his various crimes just for bringing the heated table to Soul Society.

Nanao wasn't quite so generous, but she did enjoy sitting under the kotatsu with a nice cup of tea. She glanced toward the outside doors, no longer hearing voices or seeing shadowy figures moving around on the porch. "Where have the boys gone?"

"Gin was going to take them to go play out in the garden somewhere. Shiro-chan has a secret base," Rangiku said, smiling. He really was still so cute.

"Toshiro does?" Nanao said in surprise. He didn't seem like the type to play make-believe with a little homemade fort. He seemed more down to earth than that.

"Yep," Rangiku declared. "He goes all the time-when he isn't off to the Fifth to see Hinamori Momo-she's the new Fifth Seat there. Have you met her? Shiro-chan has a crush on her. His first crush! It's so cute!"

Nanao blinked. She had not met the Fifth Seat, but imagining Toshiro crushing on some young shinigami was even harder than imagining him playing in a secret base. He was just such a serious child. But Rangiku probably knew better than she did. Somehow, impossibly, Rangiku seemed to see these things.

"You seem to have been right about Nemu and Captain Ukitake," Nanao said, looking down into her tea cup and swishing around the tea leaves in the dregs of the tea. Figuring out who was meant for whom seemed about as simple as reading the future in those tea leaves-in other words impossible-but somehow Rangiku had pulled it off.

"Really? It was Miyako who thought of it, not me, but, really? What have you heard? No one's told me anything. Are they together, together?" Rangiku demanded, enthusiastically.

"My captain was sulking this morning because Captain Ukitake cancelled their annual trip to the mountain hot springs to enjoy the fall color, and in my captain's case to drink so much he's sick for a week. But they're not going this year because Captain Ukitake is taking Nemu instead, on her very first vacation."

Rangiku's eyes widened. "They're going on a vacation together! That's serious!"

Nanao's eyes narrowed. "Separate rooms, and I am sure Captain Ukitake will be a perfect gentleman," she said, coolly. "But yes, it does seem serious. How did you know?"

"How did I know what?" Rangiku demanded.

"How did you know they would work? They have nothing in common," Nanao said. "She's a scientist. She's interested in facts and numbers and experimental data. It's only in the last decade or so that she's realized she's lacking in people skills and that that is a problem. She barely even noticed that people existed as more than experimental subjects before then, but people is all Captain Ukitake is interested in. He takes the grand ideas of the Gotei and looks at how they will affect individuals. He cares even less than my captain about any great and noble callings; he wants only to take care of the people Involved. He's Nemu's opposite, and yet, somehow, they fit.

"I was taking turns with Miyako keeping the captain company in Division Four while he was recovering, and I saw them together more than once. Nemu kept coming and trying to apologize, and he kept telling her she had nothing to apologize for. They never said much; it was always very simple, polite conversation, but I always felt like I was intruding. I felt like they were sharing more than the words they spoke." Nanao looked frustrated as she tried to explain. "Why do they fit? What is it that makes one person right for another, and how is it that you see it while I am completely blind?"

A smile spread slowly over Rangiku's face. "Do you want me to help you find someone for you, Nanao-chan?"

"Absolutely not!" Nanao exclaimed. "If I was interested in romance I am sure I could find a man myself. I am puzzled, that's all. I don't understand how such very different people can be happy together. For that matter, you and Captain Ichimaru are also very different, and yet you seem to be perfectly happy even after over half a century together. I always thought that a good couple should have many interests in common. Miyako and Kaien-san are a perfect example of that, but Nemu and Captain Ukitake and you and Captain Ichimaru seem to argue the opposite. If common interests aren't required then what is it that makes a good couple?"

Rangiku grinned. "Maybe it's all just physical," she laughed.

Nanao blushed. "Don't be ridiculous," she said quickly. "You had plenty of young men to choose from, and Captain Ichimaru was hardly the best-looking. If all that mattered was physical appearance-"

"Maybe I didn't mean appearance," Rangiku interrupted.

Nanao's blush darkened, but her eyes narrowed. "A physical relationship does not make a couple. No matter how satisfying it might be a physical relationship is just that, physical. A real couple seems to me to connect on a very different level, and without that connection a couple is nothing more than two people passing some time together, regardless of what they are doing."

"Is that from personal experience?" Rangiku asked, more than a little amused by the direction of the conversation.

"It's what I have seen," Nanao answered stiffly. "I only wondered if you could tell me what it is that causes such a connection to form. If you don't know then I won't waste any more of your time."

Nanao started to get up, but Rangiku stopped her. "Nobody knows," Rangiku said. "Not really. We just fall in love with who we fall in love with. I've loved Gin since the moment I met him. I could give you all sorts of reasons, but the truth is I just do. I guess it's probably that way with everyone. It's not something you decide. It just happens."

"Then how did you know-"

"We didn't," Rangiku interrupted. "Miyako and I, we just thought Captain Ukitake and Nemu both seemed like the sort of people who were meant to love someone just the way they needed to be loved, so we gave them the chance to see if they thought so too. I hope it does work out. But you never can know, not from the outside."

"Can you from the inside?" Nanao asked.

Rangiku's smile faded slightly. "I hope so," she answered.

Nanao's sharp eyes narrowed on Rangiku's face. "Rangiku?" she said softly. There had been something in the way Rangiku had spoken, a lack of the happy confidence Rangiku always had when she spoke about relationships, that suddenly worried Nanao. "Is something wrong?"

Rangiku shook her head and laughed lightly. "Of course not!" she said. "I just meant no one knows everything. Love is something you have to take on faith. You can know how you feel, but you just have to trust the person you love to love you back. I think that scares some people-I bet it would scare you, wouldn't it? Risking your heart when you can never really know what they feel."

Nanao did not miss how Rangiku had turned the focus back on her, avoiding sharing what she, herself, felt. "I suppose I would," Nanao said stiffly and honestly. "I'm not like you, Rangiku. I don't wear my feelings on my sleeve. All of my feelings are private, and I do not trust them to just anyone. I suppose that love, being the most deeply valuable and intense emotion one can experience, I would find it difficult to share, until I felt quite confident that I could trust the person for whom I felt it. Is it easy for you, Rangiku, to trust Captain Ichimaru?"

After such an honest answer Rangiku could hardly shrug the question off like she usually did, when people, baffled by her relationship to Gin, questioned her. Their questions were always some sort of joking variant on "how can you trust that lying, two-faced bastard?" She always laughed and said she always had and it seemed to have worked out just fine so far. But he did lie to her, constantly, and he did all sorts of things she didn't know about, and he and Shiro-chan had been up to something for years-she wasn't stupid. She knew that Gin was probably the least trustworthy person she'd ever met, but still, "He loves me," she said, smiling gently. "I can always feel it, surrounding me, shielding me all the time from anything that could possibly hurt me. I may not have the most honest husband, but I can always trust him."

Nanao shook her head. "Then it is a good thing I have no interest in falling in love. I could not sustain such an obvious contradiction of heart and mind."

Rangiku laughed, all her deeper worries banished instantly. "It's not a contradiction, Nanao. It's just that nothing else matters. He might do anything to the world or anyone in it, and I really wouldn't be surprised. I have no idea what he wants and sometimes that does worry me, but I never stop trusting him because I know that, no matter what, he will always love and protect me."

"Why?" Nanao asked, completely mystified by Rangiku's attitude.

Rangiku shrugged. "I guess that that's the connection you were asking about. We're tied together so nothing can pull us apart."

Nanao sighed. "And Miyako said you would be able to explain better than her. I really can't imagine that she would do worse. Love is, according to you, some sort of magical feeling that comes from nowhere and somehow convinces you to ignore your better sense and trust people regardless of whether they deserve it. Love, at best sounds unwise, and at worst, sounds completely foolish. I am quite glad to have no part of it."

With that Nanao departed, and Rangiku, watching her go, felt very sorry for her friend and worried that she must be very lonely.