The sound of pots banging and dishes clanking brought Gin back to wakefulness some hours later. He blinked slowly at the sight before him. Rangiku was sitting beside him, her left breast completely bare as she raised the white-haired infant to her nipple.

Beyond her was that Unohana? He blinked again. It was indeed the Captain of Division Four sitting on the far side of Rangiku listening with a pleasant smile as Rangiku went through the events of the previous day.

"Good morning, Lieutenant Ichimaru," Unohana said, pleasantly.

Rangiku turned and smiled down at him. "Good morning, sleepyhead. You missed breakfast. Miyako-chan's already cleaning up."

"What?" he demanded, sitting abruptly.

Rangiku was right. Shiba's girlfriend was in their house, washing dishes. That was not something he'd ever expected to see. The girl only detested him more as time went on; what was she doing actually helping out?

Miyako looked over her shoulder at him. "Don't worry. Ran-chan insisted we save something for you." She pointed at a small tray with an entire breakfast spread, rice, miso soup, even fish-there was no way she'd found all that here. She'd actually brought them food.

"Oh, you are the sweetest little thing, aren't you? Coming here in the middle of a snowstorm just to take care of your friends. It is ever so kind of you. I can see why Shiba likes you."

Miyako glared back at Gin's smiling face. "I couldn't let Rangiku starve, now could I? With you in charge of her food she'd probably end up living on rice, and what is that stuff you keep bringing back from the world of the living? Bubble gum?"

"You don't eat bubble gum," Gin informed her as he sat before the delicious-looking meal. "You chew it until it starts to taste like rubber, and then you throw it out. Would you like some? I'm sure I've got a package somewhere around here. There was a funny mint flavored one that we didn't like-why humans make medicine flavored treats I don't know, but maybe you'd like it. You've always had strange taste."

"Just hurry up and eat. You've got to get to work," Miyako answered.

"Work? When I have a brand new baby and my lovely wife to take care of? How could I possibly go to work?"

"That's why I'm here. And don't try to give me any more excuses. There's a lieutenants meeting today, and I know you're expected to be there."

"My captain is a slave driver," Gin declared. "Captain Unohana, don't you think you could give me an excuse? If you told my captain that Ran-chan needed me here I'm sure he'd let me stay."

"There is no need, Lieutenant," Unohana answered calmly. "Rangiku and Toshiro are doing well and Seya-san is happy to stay here with them for the day."

Gin sighed.

At the end of the day Gin appeared in the doorway carrying a stacked bento box wrapped in a patterned red cloth in one hand and a large pack over one shoulder. Snow swirled around him as he stepped inside, and Miyako was immediately shouting at him to close the door.

He sighed. "Are you still here?"

"Of course I'm still here. Did you expect Rangiku to be up and about by the end of the day? Someone had to make dinner."

"Oh, but I brought dinner so off you go," he smiled broadly and gestured towards the door. "I can manage breakfast too so don't feel like there's any need for you to hurry over in the morning."

"Stop trying to get rid of my friend," Rangiku said, from where she lay on a futon beside the fire. "I told her you would bring dinner so she's just made us some soup to go with it. I'm not nearly as cold as I was, but something hot still sounds good."

"You're not cold?" Gin demanded. He was instantly beside her, his hands on her cheek and forehead. "You're not."

His eyes shifted to the very pale baby nestled beside her. He was making faces at the dancing flames only a few feet away. Gin reached out one hand slowly. His fingers touched the baby's skin, and he frowned.

There was no way the baby should be cold. Rangiku lay on her side, curled around him. Her body heat alone should have been enough to keep him warm, but the fire was so close it should have heated his skin. His skin was almost as cool as Gin's after his trip through the snow.

"What's wrong?" Rangiku demanded, her voice already panicked.

"Nothing," Gin answered quickly, then he added, "Just making sure he's real," with an embarrassed smile that calmed her fear.

Rangiku and Toshiro fell asleep soon after dinner, and Gin immediately carried his pack to the back room and started emptying its contents onto the low table. There were several small boxes marked Squad 12, Research & Development that Miyako was quite certain Gin should not have access to. Then he got out a small stack of books, and her eyes widened. Every book was also marked R&D, and had a Top Secret stamp across the cover.

"It's bad, isn't it?" she asked softly. "That Toshiro's so cold? Rangiku had him wrapped up earlier, but he started turning red; he felt right, but he looked overheated so I unwrapped him, and he immediately looked better. He needs to be cold."

Gin smiled at her. "What a vivid imagination you have. Does Shiba know about your flights of fancy?"

"I might not be a child genius," Miyako said, crossing the room to the table, where Gin was already flipping through books. "But I can see a problem when it's staring me in the face. Do you think this is what all the reiatsu exposure did?"

Gin didn't bother to look up. "Aren't you going home?" he asked.

Miyako looked down at the book he was flipping through. "Those are active seals. Even a captain needs special permission to access those."

"The head archivist of R&D is a close personal friend," he answered. "And likely his only one if anyone else ever finds out what he gets up to in his personal time. I just pointed that out and he let me borrow anything I wanted."

"So you blackmailed him. You are absolutely without any moral compunctions at all, aren't you?" Miyako said as she sat down. She pulled the book away from Gin and read over the page he had stopped on. It was on the seals used to block ninety percent of captains' and lieutenants' reiatsu while in the World of the Living. "What are you thinking?"

Gin turned and smiled at her. "Does that mean you are also without any compunctions?" he asked. "Because you are breaking the laws of Soul Society, too, now."

She looked down at the book in front of her. It was top secret for a reason. An enemy of Soul Society could use the knowledge in this book to change the seal or remove it of even create others to limit the power of the top shinigami in other places as well as the World of the Living. "Will it protect Toshiro?" she asked softly.

"That's the plan-now shoo. It's nothing personal, but I don't think we're really close enough to commit high crimes together."

"You know you can't manage a seal of this level on your own. I can help you. I'm better with kido than you are, and before you try to argue remember I was offered a position with the kido masters."

Gin's smile grew. "Why are women always so willing to risk their necks for babies?" he asked, sounding genuinely curious. "He isn't yours. How much could it possibly matter to you what happens to him?"

Miyako shook her head. "Why do you see the desire to protect an innocent as suspicious? Rangiku is a very dear friend to me. Toshiro is her son, and if something were to happen to him it would devastate her. Can you understand me wanting to protect my friend from that pain? Is that enough in my own self-interest for you to comprehend? Or do I need a better reason?"

"For Rangiku is always a good enough reason," he answered. "No one can know, not Rangiku, not Shiba, no one. Telling them puts them at risk and increases the chances of discovery. I don't care if you have to lie to their faces, even if they guess, you deny it. It's the only way to protect them, understand?"

Miyako nodded dumbly.

"And if you ever go to anyone to report what I'm going to do, know it will cost your life and the life of whoever you go to. I have more eyes in this city that you could ever guess, and I will be watching you. No pangs of conscience are going to put my son at risk."

Miyako's eyes narrowed. "You don't have to threaten me. I would never risk his safety. If I don't like what you're doing I'll stop you myself."

Gin grinned at that. "That does sound like fun, except that Rangiku'd kill me if I hurt you. I suppose I'm just going to have to hope you like my plan."

"What do you want to do?"

"I'm going to place a limiter on his reiatsu every time he passes through the front door."

"What? How will that help with how cold he is?"

"I'm sure Unohana noticed how cold he is. If she isn't concerned then it's unlikely to be a problem. In fact, it may be a useful distraction. People are unlikely to look for any other unusual traits when his unique relationship to cold is so obvious. It should satisfy their curiosity for a few years. If it's discovered, his reiatsu is more likely to be dangerous."

Miyako looked at Gin doubtfully. "He's strong, but I don't think he could accidentally hurt someone. Reiatsu has to be trained to be used as a weapon."

"What do I care about that?" Gin answered, shaking his head at her. "Toshiro's reiatsu is already high enough that if he was a child he would be immediately enrolled in the Academy, and unless he is unlike any other person ever, it will continue to grow. He is the Gotei's dream, a born shinigami. I'm not having a bunch of power-hungry captains watching Rangiku's baby, waiting like vultures circling, for the first possible moment to take him from Ran to train into whatever picture of shinigami perfection they've always dreamed of. He is going to be her child, not their weapon."

Miyako looked back at the newborn sleeping beside his mother. She had not thought about anything beyond his strange coldness, but she could see it, if she tried, enough reiatsu for a shinigami, not an officer, but an adult shinigami. And he would only grow stronger. Who would not be tempted to try to shape that power, to, like Gin said, create their own picture of shinigami perfection? And there would be so many ways to justify it. They could claim it was for his own safety and the safety of those around him. He couldn't be allowed to grow up like any other child, happy and carefree. He had to be trained.

She felt sick. He would not be Rangiku's baby to the Gotei. He would be a new and exciting opportunity. "You're right," she said. "They'll want him. They won't care that he's just a baby. Kurotsuchi will want to run tests, and even Isshin will want to see how much Toshiro can learn. It won't even occur to him that there are things a child shouldn't have to know. The only thing that ever stops any of them is if you're strong enough. They never think about age. Why don't they ever think about age?"

"They're idiots."

"So we're going to hide him from them, right in front of their noses? Do you really think it will work?"

"The limiter is designed not to be sensed, otherwise someone might notice captains literally can't access their true strength in the World of the Living, and we'd probably lose a few to one of our cleverer enemies. If we can set it properly no one will notice, and he will not seem much stronger than might be expected of our child. Hopefully he won't be too much of a temptation that way."

"But why the limiter? There are other simpler and legal seals that could protect him until he's old enough to become a shinigami," Miyako said.

"It has to be the limiter. He needs to be accustomed to his own reiatsu. Can you imagine if you had your entire reiatsu dropped on you suddenly when you went to the Academy? It would be completely overwhelming. He needs to have it under control by then."

"Then you're still going to train him?" Miyako said, a clear accusation in her tone.

"I'm not going to take him from Ran, and I'm not going to make him into a child soldier, but he is going to be as strong as I can make him. Strength is the only way a shinigami ever survives."

Miyako frowned. One of the many things that had always bothered her about Gin was his obsession with strength. He could be quite cruel to anyone he deemed weak, and he worked obsessively to increase his own strength and skill. Everyone wanted to get stronger, but not everyone blackmailed librarians to get books on forbidden techniques. "You are going to let him be a child," she said softly.

"A very happy child, I'm sure, if Ran has anything to say about it."

Rangiku's child, that's who they were protecting. Gin might be no better than any of the captains who might be tempted by Toshiro's power, but Rangiku deserved to be able to raise her own child. She shouldn't have to worry that they would take him from her to make into a child soldier.

"So how long do we have to work this out?" she asked.

"As long as you can keep Ran from taking him out to show off and keep anyone strong enough to really notice his reiatsu from visiting."

"Unohana's already seen him. She would never have missed it," Miyako pointed out.

"Unohana never shares her patients' secrets. It's a good rule to follow if you're going to treat every moron in Seireitei who tries to blow themselves up with forbidden kido."

"Is this knowledge from personal experience?" Miyako asked.

"I had to do something with my time before I started sleeping with Ran," Gin answered, smiling pleasantly. "There's only so much time you can spend plotting the murders of everyone you know before it starts getting repetitive. Forbidden kido are a great way to spice up a dull evening."

Miyako glared back at him. "You'll say absolutely anything, won't you?"

Gin frowned slightly, thinking over her question. "I think so," he said finally. "I haven't found anything I wouldn't say so far, but you never know."

"Just so we're clear, I really, really don't like you, and if it weren't for Rangiku, I'd never come within five miles of you."

"That would probably be the wiser choice. I'm afraid I am at least as dangerous as everyone suspects."

"Let's just get started on the limiter."