Rangiku stared in horror at what had become of her old street. Her old home and many others had been destroyed. She walked slowly through the wreckage, her eyes moving from one familiar face to another. She felt a small amount of relief with each friend she found unharmed, but there was a knot in her chest that was growing tighter and tighter with each step. Neither Toshiro nor Gin were ever hard to locate, even in a crowd.
She was having a hard time making sense of what had happened. She saw emergency workers around Kaien, and heard the famous orange-haired Ryoka making some sort of apology to Miyako about not getting there soon enough, but Captain Ukitake was there so she didn't feel like she needed to go and give any sort of moral support. Then she passed by Renji, who was sitting on the ground with his head in his hands; Kira was standing beside him, looking as worried and awkward as ever, but no Gin and no Shiro-chan.
In the center of the chaos she saw General Yamamoto leaning on his staff and conversing with a strange woman, who seemed oddly comfortable talking to the old man. At any other time Rangiku might have wondered at that, at who the woman was and how she had come to be friends with the General, but at this moment Rangiku cared about exactly one thing: where her family was and what had happened to them.
She turned and looked back over the chaos, but she could not make sense of anything that was happening.
"Please come with me, Rangiku-san," Nemu said, taking hold of her arm.
"What are you talking about? Do you know where Gin is, Nemu-chan?" she demanded, looking around once more. Almost every captain was here, but where was her husband? It had looked horribly likely he was working with Aizen, but nobody seemed to have seen him, and Toshiro- "Where's my son?"
She grabbed ahold of the Twelfth Division lieutenant. "Nemu!" she shouted. "Where is my son?"
"Please, Rangiku-san," Nemu said, looking uncertain. "I need to take you back to Lieutenant Ise's home. Shiro-chan says it will be best if wait there."
Rangiku let go abruptly and took a step back. Her skin had gone completely gray and her expression was of someone who had realized they'd taken a fatal blow. She shook her head slowly, and her mouth moved but no words escaped.
Captain Kyoraku caught hold of her as she stumbled backwards. "Careful now, Rangiku-chan!" Then he saw her expression and turned to Nemu. "What happened?"
"I think she's worried about her family," Nemu said. "But I have nothing to say to reassure her. I do not know what has happened to Captain Ichimaru Gin, and I have no confidence as to Captain Ichimaru Toshiro's current condition."
Kyoraku frowned for a moment before he answered. "Toshiro's going to be just fine. He'd be here himself if he didn't have such poor heat tolerance. They're making him stay in bed till he's back down to his normal temperature, but nothing at all to worry about."
Tears started pouring from Rangiku's eyes. "You're sure? He's fine?"
Kyoraku smiled broadly. "I promise. He's an impressive young man, Rangiku-chan. There's not many of us could have come out of that as well as he did."
"Oh," Rangiku smiled back, and for a moment she started to relax. Then she seemed to realize he had been trying to distract her. "You didn't-Captain, please, if you-please, just tell me! Is Gin dead?"
"Gin's still alive," Kyoraku said, his expression going deadly serious. "Aizen left him and Lieutenant Hinamori in extremely critical condition, but Captain Unohana believes she reached them both in time. They have been transported to the Fourth, and Captain Unohana is overseeing their treatment herself. There is every reason to be hopeful for their eventual recovery."
Rangiku nodded slowly. "Thank-thank you, sir," she said. Then she added, "Do you think-do you think I could go see him now, sir?"
"I think it would be best if you let Nemu take you back to Nanao-chan's. You've got two little ones waiting for you, and we'll send Toshiro to you just as soon as he's able, alright?"
Rangiku nodded.
Rangiku spent the afternoon drinking tea and staring out the window at the beautiful buildings of the Eighth Division. Sake would have been better but Nanao claimed she was out. She let Nanao deal with Kinta and Yukiko. She did nurse the baby when Nanao shoved the crying infant into her arms, but she couldn't really focus on what was going on around her. She was too busy trying to make sense of a puzzle she didn't seem to have all the pieces to.
Shuhei staggered in at dinner time looking like he had been hit by a ton of bricks, and when Nanao demanded to know where he'd been he just shook his head and slumped, absolutely exhausted, onto the couch.
"That's not an answer," Nanao snapped, but she had to deal with the children's dinner and ran off to the kitchen without demanding a better one.
Rangiku looked her friend over slowly. There was no sign of injury she could see, no blood on his shihakusho or anything like that, but he still looked like he must have been in an awful fight. "What happened to you?" she asked finally.
"Ayasegawa Yumichika has no business calling himself a fifth seat," Shuhei answered without opening his eyes.
"Why would you have fought Ayasegawa?" Nanao demanded, as she returned to the room.
"Ichigo beat Zaraki so they all turned traitor," Shuhei answered, forcing himself to sit up. "I was following orders, Nanao."
"But you knew the captain had helped Rukia; you knew the orders had to be wrong," Nanao told him.
"Or your captain would do anything for Ukitake and Ukitake'd do anything for his people-I couldn't just go along with that. I have my own-had my own-captain-damn, my head hurts!" He leaned forward, pressing his eyes against his palms. "Someday I'm going to pay that goddamn pretty boy back."
"It's your own fault! You shouldn't have been fighting him in the first place. You should have trusted us," Nanao told him.
"Trusted what?" he demanded, looking up suddenly. "Neither of you trusted me enough to tell me what was going on."
"That's not true," Nanao answered, managing to look impressively indignant despite the fact that it really did appear to be the case. "We were protecting you, because we couldn't know for sure. We didn't tell Rangiku anything either, but she trusted us."
"What didn't you tell me?" Rangiku demanded, realizing for the first time that Nanao might know more about the Aizen situation than she did.
Nanao ignored Rangiku and pushed her glasses back carefully. "The point is," she said, clearing her throat. "That Rangiku helped, knowing that she was disobeying orders but trusting that it was the right thing to do-but you-you did not trust me-your wife! Or Captain Kyoraku-your adopted father! It's a good thing Ayasegawa is so strong! You could have killed him! Do you realize you could have killed your own friend because of Aizen's false orders?"
"Yes, Nanao, I am very very aware of that fact." Shuhei got up abruptly and crossed the room to pull a bottle of sake out of a corner cabinet. "I'm going upstairs," he said dully and vanished out the door.
Rangiku wanted to protest the fact that apparently sake did still exist in this house, but the look on Nanao's face stopped her. The woman was staring after her husband in total shock, like she couldn't believe he'd simply walked out in the middle of her telling him off. It was almost humorous. Rangiku couldn't begin to count the number of times Gin had decided he'd had enough and left before she was done talking.
"He's upset, isn't he?" Nanao said, finally.
"Who wouldn't be?" Rangiku asked.
"Maybe I should-"
There was a crash from the kitchen that sounded like at least half a dozen dishes had abruptly met the floor.
"I'll deal with it," Rangiku said, moving Yuki to her shoulder and getting to her feet. "Kin-chan probably decided he'd help with the dishes again."
Nanao looked uncertain, torn between dealing with the children and Shuhei.
"Go on," Rangiku said, waving her on. "Take care of your man. It's not like it's the first dishwashing disaster I've ever dealt with."
Toshiro stared at his father laying far too still in the hospital bed. From this distance he couldn't even tell for sure if he was breathing, but he couldn't get any closer. Ichimaru Gin was contained within a near-unbreakable barrier. No one could get in, in case Aizen had left some unknown ally in Seireitei who might want to finish Gin off, and he could not get out, although given the extent of his injuries it was going to be quite some time before he was capable of doing much of anything on his own, much less escaping.
The broken collarbone and shoulder blade and ten splintered ribs along with all the muscle and ligament damage was nothing to the two punctured lungs and a completely severed spinal column. It didn't really matter that his right shoulder was so badly damaged he couldn't lift his zanpakuto when he could not currently even feel his legs. It was somehow a frightening thought for Toshiro, realizing that for the time being, his father was completely helpless.
Various captains had looked in on Gin over the last day and a half, and more than one of the had told Toshiro he should go home. They shook their heads when he refused, but they didn't argue. They knew as well as he did why he was there. He was standing guard.
His father was like this because of him. He didn't understand what Aizen had been doing or how his father had been involved. No one seemed to know for sure. He knew Gin could still be everything he had suspected him of. He could be a liar and a traitor and a murderer, but the fact that he had saved Toshiro meant that Toshiro was going to have to stand by him and face whatever was coming with him. It was what a son should do.
It was late on the day after Aizen had gone that the general himself finally came to Gin's room. He arrived with Unohana and Kyoraku in tow. He paused when he saw Toshiro sitting on the near side of the barrier.
"I was told you had recovered," he said gruffly.
"Yes, sir, I'm fine," Toshiro answered. It was hard not to be hostile to the man, even knowing the threats he had heard Yamamoto speak, against himself and his siblings, had been one of Aizen's illusions. The pain of the burns and the damage to Hyorinmaru were a lot more real than any assurances anyone could give that the whole thing had been a trap created by AIzen for them both.
"Shouldn't you be home with your mother?"
Toshiro raised an eyebrow. "I'm sure my mother would agree that this is where I need to be right now."
"We can't put it off any longer, Toshiro. We're going to have to wake him up so we can talk to him. We can't get anything out of Tosen, and we need to know if there's any chance Rukia-chan could still be alive," Kyoraku explained.
Toshiro looked over at Unohana. "You said he needs to stay in a healing coma for a couple more days."
She nodded gently, looking back at him with obvious pity. "I will only wake him for a few minutes so the general can ask his questions. Then I will send him back to sleep."
"But you said the coma was the only way to deal with the pain."
"Your father is a captain of the Gotei 13. Pain alone cannot stop him from doing his duty," Yamamoto said firmly. "Kuchiki Rukia's life may well depend on information he alone can give us. Do you really believe he would choose to sleep rather than to help her?"
Toshiro looked back at his father, so still and peaceful. It wasn't right. Peaceful was not a look that suited Ichimaru Gin. Would he want to help Rukia? Toshiro doubted it, but he was willing to admit that he didn't know his father as well as he had thought he did. The father he thought he knew would never have faced any pain for anyone, but he had, so maybe, it was possible, maybe, he might care if Rukia lived or died.
"You'd have to ask him," Toshiro said finally. He didn't know, but he hoped, he really hoped, for the first time in a long time, that his father would do the right thing.
"It will take me just a few moments to wake him up," Unohana said.
She stepped forward and raised her hand to the barrier, waiting for it to dissipate at her command before she stepped forward, next to her patient's bed.
Toshiro stepped forward to watch her. The warm golden glow of healing kido spread from her outstretched hands to engulf his father and slowly he could see signs that Gin was waking up.
Tension appeared in his once slack features as his brows furrowed and his jaw tightened. His hands no longer lay limp at his sides but dug into the mattress beneath him. And his breathing, which had been so slow and deep as to be almost invisible before began to speed up.
"Captain, it is time to wake up," Unohana said gently.
Then she looked back and she motioned to Toshiro. "Come, take his hand," she instructed him.
Toshiro almost told her she was out of her mind. He hadn't held his father's hand since he'd been so little he wasn't allowed to cross the street on his own, and he didn't intend to start doing so now, but he did as he was told, and it was frightening how weak the hand that gripped his was.
"Toshiro is here," Unohana said gently.
Gin's breathing was growing even more shallow, drawn in hissing breaths between clenched teeth. "Can't breathe," he bit out.
"Your lungs are badly damaged, but I promise you can breathe," Unohana told him. "You need to calm down and try to breathe normally. If you panic you will pass out, and I will have to revive you again."
For a second Gin seemed to consider that. Then he drew a very slow purposeful breath.
"That's better, isn't it?"
Gin opened his eyes just enough to glare at her. Then his gaze dropped to Toshiro. His hand tightened on the boy's. "You're not hurt?" He asked in little more than a whisper.
Toshiro forced a smile. "Thanks to you," he answered.
Immediately, Gin looked away, but his hand still held onto Toshiro.
"Captain Ichimaru," Yamamoto said loudly.
Gin's eyes widened, but he did not turn his head in to direction on the general's voice. He stared, instead, at the ceiling.
"Aizen Sosuke has abandoned Soul Society and fled to Hueco Mundo. He has taken Kuchiki Rukia with him. Can you tell us why?" Yamamoto demanded.
For a moment Gin was silent. He closed his eyes and released Toshiro's hand before he answered. "That wasn't the plan."
"What was the plan?"
"To separate Rukia's soul from the Hogyoku. With the Sokyoku or a ritual we found in the library at Central 46. She would not be needed afterwards."
"Then he intends to kill her?" Kyoraku demanded.
Gin was silent for a moment. "Maybe, but he might keep her around to play with-or for bait."
Toshiro flinched at the phrase 'to play with'. He did not even want to imagine what Aizen might think to do with Rukia.
"Do you know where he would keep her if she is still alive?"
"Las Noches; he's the big bad there these days. He could keep her anywhere-but she could already be dead. He'll let you know one way or the other pretty soon."
"What do you mean?" Kyoraku asked, sounding just as worried as Toshiro felt.
"He'll probably send her big brother the body if he kills her-might send it to Abarai instead, though, depends on his mood. If she's alive he'll let her contact someone, probably Ichigo."
"Why would Aizen be interested in Kurosaki Ichigo?" Yamamoto asked.
"No idea, just one of his obsessions," Gin answered. He drew in a deep breath. "Please, would you tell me, is Ran-is Rangiku safe?"
Toshiro took hold of Gin's hand again as he answered. "Mom's fine; Kin-chan and Yuki too. Everyone's fine, and they're gonna stay that way too, ok? Don't worry. I'll keep them safe."
Gin did not look at him again, but he did tighten his hand around Toshiro's. "Good. That's good."