A/N: This chapter has been slightly edited. I have gone through and fixed some grammatical errors or any sentences that I found to be a bit awkward. If you find anything else that could use some reconsideration, please let me know. Enjoy the chapter.

The Hour of Insight

However long and dark the night may be,
your forehead still will bear your name.

-Betti Alver, Stellar Hour

When Gin awoke, he was thankful to find Sakura suspiciously absent. The pink-haired medic was no different from any other woman he'd ever met. Pushy, demanding, easily enraged. Although, he mused, there were some notable exceptions to the stereotype, they were, in essence, mostly just some hyped up or varied form of the afore mentioned list. Rangiku, for example, was more of the 'scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' kind of pushy. Give her persimmons and booze, and she was more than companionable.

He was thinking of her again. Perhaps it was the physical pain that pushed him to remember—the mere proof of his body's injuries. Maybe it was the fact that he was alive, in some form or another. But he had died for her. Everything he had done in his life, since the day they met, had been for her.

Gin wasn't foolish enough to lie to himself. He didn't like many people; he simply didn't care about them. But she had been different. Pushy. Yes. Demanding. Always. But the way she looked at him when he followed Aizen to Hueco Mundo spoke of something deeper. Even after he had supposedly betrayed her, she had clearly held onto some notion of hope—some faint belief that perhaps he was really the Gin she believed him to be.

And, in some comforting way, at least before he died, he had been able to prove her right.

Ya have other things to be worryin' about, he reminded himself, shoving Rangiku from his mind or, at the very least, to a darker corner of it.

He didn't know how long he had slept—the sun was at an angle that suggested it would set relatively soon—but at least he was thinking clearer now.

Which was, he decided, not as welcome as he originally imagined.

Earlier that day he had noticed that the world felt different. But now he understood why. This world was different. This was nothing like the human world he once protected in Soul Society. All beings, including humans, should have reiryoku, or spiritual power, but he couldn't sense a thing here. Not even his own.

Usually there were spirit particles in the environment as well, especially this close to nature, but as he scanned his surroundings, he could find nothing that resembled the familiar feeling of reishi.

He frowned, perplexed by this discovery. Mostly because it didn't make any sense. This place was walking with life, but he couldn't feel it. He felt suddenly deafened, shut out of a world that he'd never really realized he was a part of until he was standing on the outside and looking in. There were noises in every direction, filling the forest with sound, but without the touch of spirit particles, it seemed as if he was only receiving a part of the song.

Humans led fleeting lives; they didn't live long enough to learn to hear and see the things beyond the tangible. They were blind, in a sense, to the things that really made life live.

But he couldn't see it anymore either.

What if he had lost his Shinigami abilities after his death?

But if he had then that meant that…

Shinsou! Gin glanced around for his zanpakutou, startling himself when he felt a twinge of worry. It wasn't like him to stress over situations, even negative ones. But this was different. This wasn't a matter of life or death. This was a matter of existence—of his existence.

The wakizashi was lying next to Sakura's medical bag just out of reach. He half dragged himself towards it, stretching his sinewy arm to grab the hilt.

This ain't good. His face held none of its snake-like attributes; he was all seriousness now. He opened his eyes so that the blue of the irises was visible, observing the sharpness of the blade, the perfection of the handle. But the zanpakutou itself felt empty, soulless.

Gin pulled himself into a sitting position, crossing his legs, and placed Shinsou horizontally across his lap. This was the normal way for communication with a zanpakutou—a road to truly seeing the heart of one's soul. Closing his eyes, he forced his mind to lapse into silence; given his situation, it proved no easy task, but with some work, he managed to find something resembling meditation.

He waited, silently calling the name of his zanpakutou. But there was no answer, no life. Shinsou was an entity that represented the very nature of himself; it was a part of him. When he had died, so did it. But though Gin had been revived, the zanpakutou was unable to follow him here, he realized; his Shinigami soul did not return. Whatever changes had occurred, whoever he was now, it was not the same as the Gin of Soul Society or Hueco Mundo.

But if he was alive and not a Shinigami, Hollow, or any other spiritual being, what was he?

The realization was almost too much. Even for him.

Human.

Humans, with the exception of Kurosaki Ichigo, did not have the ability to wield zanpakutou. There were humans, like Ichigo's friends, who had higher levels of spiritual power than average, but even they were limited. They could not obtain Shinigami powers.

Gin had never really found them to be impressive foes, though they tried often enough to intervene, to grow stronger, and to prove their worth. Until his death, he had only regarded Ichigo with disappointment. The kid had promise—he seemed to be ever full of surprises—but he was too emotional, wavering between all of his faulty human insecurities, and too attached to loyalties and friends.

Loyalty, as Gin had found—however twisted his had been—only got you killed.

You've gotta be kiddin' me. Outta all the things…

Human!

What the hell was he going to do? Wave around a dead sword? Shinsou, ya useless bastard, he grumbled mentally. Leavin' me like this.

Gin looked up at the sound of crunching leaves to see Sakura emerge from the shadows of the trees. Almost instinctively, his face took up its usual sardonic grin, leaving little trace of his thoughts from the past few minutes.

"I caught some fish," Sakura said pleasantly, hoping for a better start to their conversation this time. She was trying very hard to look past the mere mockery of his gaze and that ever-present smile. "I figured we could ta—"

She raised a brow as he lifted his wakizashi, pointing the blade at her. Because of his injuries, she felt no fear of harm, nor did she get the impression that he intended to do anything of the sort, but the gesture wasn't entirely welcome. "What are you—?"

Much to her dismay, she didn't manage to get that sentence out either.

"I was right," Gin said, his smile spreading; the slits of his eyes followed suit. "I did die."

Not this again. Sakura let out a mental groan. She had hoped that they could move past the insanity. Because it seemed pointless to yet again point out the obvious—that he clearly had not died—Sakura chose the next best thing. Silence.

Gin didn't seem to care. He continued regardless, his words easy-going and observational, "Ya see this," he waved the wakizashi for emphasis, "ain't answerin' me. It's like no one's home." He had the grace to ignore the slight twitch of her brow and the growing impatience on her features. "What I'm tryin' to tell you is…" The edges of his grin faded into something remotely neutral; if Sakura knew him better, she might have called it sorrow. "He's dead."

"Dead…" Sakura repeated, more for her sake than for his. She couldn't tell for sure, as he wasn't the easiest person to read, but Gin was—insomuch as he could be—being serious. This just kept getting better and better. "You're saying that it was alive?"

"As alive as I was." He shrugged, lowering the wakizashi.

Are. As alive as you are. Sakura knew it'd be pointless to correct him, but she couldn't stop herself from doing it anyway. At least in her mind. Couldn't he give her a little more credit?

She pondered his words for a moment, looking past all of the improbabilities, and opening her thoughts to the possibility. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen her fair share of strange and implausible occurrences in the past several years of being a kunoichi. In fact, when looking back, Gin was relatively normal compared to some things she had witnessed. Well, maybe normal was a bit of an understatement. But in reality, he could very well have a conceivable explanation for it all.

Open your mind a little, she scolded herself yet again. Just because she found him weird, and a bit disgruntling, didn't mean he was lying. Who really had the time to make up crap like that these days? Besides, the late Hoshigaki Kisame had carried the sword Samehada, which literally had a life of its own. No one had tried denying its sentience. Granted its capacity to think and understand was limited, but it had an appetite for chakra—it liked to eat it. The sword even liked the person it was with so long as the person fed it. All of that was personifying the sword, but really, there wasn't any other way to describe it.

Sakura sighed, breathing deeply to calm her nerves; she didn't doubt that she was going to need them all before the end of the night. "All right," she began, steeling herself for the next part, the fish now forgotten, "could you please explain as much as you can?"

Gin grinned and she cringed. "Seems like you're th' only one gettin' to ask questions here."

Oh, she was indeed going to need her nerves for this. And then some. "What do you want to know then?"

Resting his uninjured elbow on his left knee, Gin assumed an entirely placid expression, "Dunno. Prob'ly the same thing as you." He thought about it for a moment, "How'd ya heal me if you didn't revive me?"

As that seemed to be a rather important question, Sakura decided it was well worth giving her best answer.

"Well, it wasn't easy," she admitted. "You were in critical condition when I found you. There was, of course, the large gash across your torso; I deduced it was a sword wound, though it's possibly the worst I've seen, and I managed to heal most of your organs with chakra. At first I only did what was necessary to prevent death, in order to conserve my chakra stores, but I've been rehabilitating it a bit more each time I replace the bandages."

Gin wasn't smiling anymore, and Sakura realized that he was actually listening, hanging on to each word as he tried to piece something together in his mind. When she mentioned chakra, evident curiosity swept into a frown of concentration.

He doesn't know what chakra is? That was puzzling.

But he didn't ask and so she continued, slowing to watch him closer, "Your arm was trickiest. The surgery itself took hours. I don't know, even now, how well it will work when it's healed fully, but if anything, you should have some use of it."

She could have given him all the technical terms, the step-by-step process, but Sakura knew he wouldn't care. From the looks of things, she had answered his question. Or created new questions. She got the impression that there would be quite a bit of that before they reached a logical conclusion—or any conclusion at all. It depended entirely on his cooperation and she wasn't going to hold her breath for it.

"Chakra's an energy which can be utilized outside th' body?" Gin caught on quickly. He hadn't graduated in one year from the Shinigami Academy on talent alone. He considered the idea. Since when had humans ever had this kind of power? She acted as if it was second nature, a normal occurrence.

Sakura cleared her throat; she had always been good at instructing others in the textbook part of ninja training. She was top of the class, next to Sasuke, when it came to understanding the principles behind jutsu. "There are different kinds of chakra, but in essence, every living thing creates it and needs it to live. The basic form is the physical energy in the body, found in all the cells, but there is also a spiritual energy that comes from outside the tangible being. The spiritual energy increases with hard work and training." She stopped long enough to check that he was following her thus far. When he didn't intervene, she hurried on. "When a person mixes the physical and spiritual chakras, he or she can mold it with the chakra circulatory system, which flows throughout the body, and control it to attack, to defend, or, in my case, to heal."

Clearly, it was more complicated than that. Gin knew that much without her having to inform him. But it was enough, at that point, to sate his interest. He could draw his own conclusions from there. This chakra, as she called it, was like reiryoku in that it sustained life; it could even plausibly be the same thing, but he sensed the differences.

Even if he didn't have Shinigami powers, he could tell that the two energies did not exist on the same principles. Spirit power had always manifested strongly in beings of a celestial and otherworldly nature, but chakra seemed entirely human, having its basis in the physicality of the earth and the essence of humanity itself—emotions, thoughts, desires. While spirit power had remained largely intangible, occasionally becoming something physical through the wielder's will, chakra, though unseen to the naked eye, was grounded in tangible things; it had roots in the living.

Yes, on the surface, Gin mused, both energies were entirely similar, but the subtle difference placed them in different planes. If both worlds were to collide, they would be incompatible.

But, Gin hadn't been meant for this world; he had been among spiritual beings—beings made from spirit particles—and bathed in a life that was living, but never truly alive. At least in the human sense of the word alive. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to compare life and death between the truly alive and the semi-alive, he reasoned, now that he was thinking about it. He had died in his world, but it hadn't been death in the sense of the body. Death as a Shinigami or a Hollow meant an absence of existence, an absence of a soul. It meant forfeiting one's entirety of being.

At least that was the general consensus. His current predicament didn't quite match up with that ideal, but he was willing to believe that he might be an extenuating circumstance.

Sakura got the eerie feeling that he understood something of what she had said in an entirely different manner. In a way that possibly exceeded the best explanation that she could have given. This was both unnerving and impressive, and she was half-tempted to ask what he made of it all.

"Do all humans use this… chakra?" Gin asked, finally, wondering to what extent they utilized this energy and in what ways.

"No," the medic-nin shook her head, choosing to overlook his loose interpretation of the word 'humans', "those trained to mold it are called shinobi—or ninja. We are the military force of our country and each country has a hidden village where we are trained." Then she added as an afterthought, "There are normal everyday citizens living there as well, of course."

Ninja? If Gin wasn't well versed in schooling his expressions, or at least in keeping it consistent, he might have shown some surprise at this revelation. In just what age had he landed himself?

It was just getting worse and worse, he mused.

However, Gin decided it might be haphazard to voice his opinion on this matter and for once he held his tongue. He decided to figure out his location in this new world instead, "What country's this?"

"The Land of Fire," Sakura said proudly. Home was home, after all. "And the Hidden Village is Konoha."

Humans had a weird thing about names. They weren't terribly creative and they didn't always make a whole lot of sense. The Land of Fire was almost as bad as Karakura Town. But then again, he was from a place called Soul Society, so he wasn't sure he was entirely justified in his thinking. Maybe names in general were just one of those necessary evils.

But regardless of names, location, or even the time-period, Gin realized he wasn't going to get any more answers until he saw everything firsthand. This, he decided, was one of those things that he was going to have to judge for himself.

Rangiku, he thought with something that drifted uncannily close to dismay, I think I'm in hell after all.

Wrapping her mind around Ichimaru Gin, Sakura decided, was about as difficult as reattaching his severed arm. Once it was her turn, the questioning, as she had predicted, was going in about every direction but forward. Even after utilizing all of her ninja training, she still couldn't get a straight answer out of the guy. "So you're trying to tell me that you come from a…land…called Soul Society?"

Gin was clearly bored with the conversation. After making him repeat it three different times, the medic-nin was now taking the liberty of repeating it for him. "Sorta."

"Sort of!" Sakura clenched her fists. "That isn't what you said last time!"

He didn't look the least bit remorseful, "Well, I dunno if land is th' right word for it."

She bit her lip to avoid the rather impudent remark that was on the verge of escaping, and with a bit of work, she managed to sound semi-pleasant. But the sarcasm was inevitable. "Then, please, do enlighten me."

"B'lieve me," Gin leaned back lazily and looked towards the sky, now dotted with stars," I've been tryin', but it just ain't possible. I can't explain it to ya any better than this."

"What? It's just floating in the clouds?"

"Kinda."

"Like a heaven."

"Humans've been known to call it that."

"So you're not human?"

"I wasn't." He had answered that question already too, but it hadn't seemed to register. "But I might be now."

"You lived in this Soul Society for over a century?"

"That's what I told ya, wasn't it?"

Sakura chose to ignore the rude commentary. Pick your battles, she reminded herself. "And when you…died?"

The ever-present smirk on Gin's face widened into a fanged grin. Just watching Sakura struggle to make some sense to his story made for a thoroughly enjoyable spectacle. And at the very least, it eased the pain of constant repetition.

"I ended up here."

"And your sword was a part of you? A part of your soul? With a name, a personality, and an appearance? And it died too. Except it wasn't revived."

"Sounds 'bout right."

Sakura let out a huff, defeated. "I give up."

She didn't even have the energy to expend on anger or irritation. What she had hoped would be a plausible story ended up nothing more than a fairy tale. It was as if he plucked it right out of a screenplay and was using it to toy with her. Was this someone's cruel joke? The world's way of telling her that she should have stayed in Konoha?

It just didn't sound believable. The fact that Madara had managed to transcend the element of time hadn't made sense. Nor had the way that Orochimaru used his jutsu to switch bodies. There were members of Akatsuki who had forged a bridge that arched over the normalcy of humanity and devoured on the monstrosity and darkness of human nature. But they had all sacrificed something. In the end, total immortality was beyond the reach of humankind.

However, Gin wasn't one of these people. He wasn't evil. At least not in her sense of the word. She didn't like him and she suspected he probably hadn't been well-liked elsewhere, but he wasn't what she would deem to be a 'monster'. His claims suggested immortality. But then again, she was assuming immortality through mortal understanding of such a concept. She was assuming that he was immortal to begin with, which didn't make sense given that he made such a scene about dying. In reality, then, what he was claiming had more to do with the soul. Aging had nothing to do with it. For all she knew, a soul could age. The human souls were supposed to be immortal, right? Living on in some form of another?

Was that what he was getting at? Was he some sort of spirit then?

Her mouth fell open for likely the twentieth time that day and she almost had to shut it with her hands. Something clicked, all at once, like the closing of a gate.

"You—" Sakura could hardly find the words to begin. "You never told me what exactly you did in this Soul Society. I'm a kunoichi—a human ninja fighting human battles—but what…what were you?"

She asked him all the questions she thought were relevant to getting answers. Why he was here, how he came to arrive; she had even asked if he was human. But in all the explanations, when he deigned to give them in more than one or two words, he had never stated just what he was doing in Soul Society.

Gin sat up straighter, observing her with a bit less boredom. So the wheels were finally turning in her brain? She was asking him directly. What had he been? Well, that was a rather open-ended question. He had been many things. A friend, a traitor, a sidekick, a killer, a leader. But in essence? He knew the answer she wanted.

"I was a Shinigami," he told her calmly, without overusing his informal speech. "A spirit of death. I was the Captain of my division and I had three duties. To protect Soul Society. To maintain th' balance between the living and th' dead—th' good souls and th' bad souls. And to—"

It was his turn to stop short. And to kill Aizen.

"The problem's this," he reverted to his normal intonation. "You're seein' it all wrong. Lookin' at it like a human. Humans only understand what they see. But I'm tellin' you, I ain't a human. 'Least I wasn't. Shinigami are somethin' different—not alive in your range of comprehension, but not dead either. When we die, well, let's jus' say, for posterity's sake, that there's nothin' left of us. We disappear."

"And yet you're here."

"Yep," Gin agreed, "and yet I'm here."

He didn't bother to explain the concept of souls. That was an entirely different subject.

Sakura was silent for a measurable length of time, thinking it over, turning it around in her mind. "What were you protecting Soul Society from?"

But, alas, it didn't seem like he was going to get to avoid the explanations. "Jus' as you've got bad people, we've got bad souls."

He hadn't been much of a good soul himself.

"Then, hypothetically, if what you're saying is true," Sakura began, tucking a stray strand of pink hair behind her ears in thought, "if one of the bad shinobi I killed became a soul, it would go to some other world—for bad souls?"

Gin nearly grimaced; her attempted explanation was elementary; it was entirely too simple. But, he decided it would have to do. "Somethin' like that."

The bad soul would just be devoid of everything, hungering for nothing but other souls to ease the pain of its own torment, a true monster in body and mind. Always searching for power, for control. For a greater existence.

But he chose to leave that part out.

Sakura didn't know what more to say. No amount of ninja experience could have prepared her for this loophole. Or for Ichimaru Gin. He remained a large mystery. But it was clear, and she could no longer deny this, that he was something more than human. Something beyond the ninja world completely.

The Fire Daimyo was going to hang her.

How was she to take him back? His mocking politeness would only enrage the Daimyo, and then what? Execution? Exile? What was Gin really going to do in a land of warring ninja? A human world of shinobi of which he had no concept? He didn't even know how to mold chakra. How would he defend himself? She figured that the death of the wakizashi he carried had meant something beyond the death of his soul—of himself. He had said himself, more of less, that he thought he was human now. It was probably safe to assume that he no longer had his original abilities, whatever they happened to be.

It's a dream, she decided. I'll wake up after having fallen asleep on the forest floor, and this will all be one of those strange nightmares.

"So how long do I gotta stay like this?" Gin asked, shattering her hopes. Really, how often did one hope for nightmares?

"Until I say so," Sakura snapped, falling back into her mood. She was tired and hungry, and knew she wouldn't be able to handle him for another minute without pummeling him. She stood, suddenly angry. Angry that she had fallen into a badly written horror story. War was horror. But this? This made the war seem like the fairy tale. At least war made sense. It was brutal and bloody, but it was real.

He was claiming to be a former spirit. What the hell was she to make of that?

"I'm going to bed." She needed to be alone and sort her thoughts. She gave him one last look, feeling guilty for her anger. He was still injured after all, and surely this was just as hard for him—even if he didn't show it. "You should be able to move around tomorrow."

Gin watched Sakura go, his face impassive. When all traces of her disappeared, he reclined, tucking his one good arm behind his head, and gazed up at the moon through the branches. It reminded him of the moon in Hueco Mundo—always watching, always looming. He shut his eyes to block the sight of it; he wanted no reminders. Not tonight.

Rangiku, it ain't a question anymore. He imagined her standing there, listening. Perhaps even pitying him. I'm definitely in hell.