Ouroborous

Word Count: >24K Relevant tags: explicit sexual content (part V only), canon divergence (part VII only), depression, suicidal ideation, unhealthy relationships, infidelity, canon-typical violence, graphic description of gore and injury

Loneliness Defined (Sachiko POV)

“Please take care of me.”

Sachiko bowed until her forehead touched the floor, deeper than she had ever bowed in her life. She had never had a reason to, having met no being, cause, nor organization worth this level of prostration. It hurt to be down on the ground, but she pushed through it. The man before her had saved her in ways impossible to quantify or repay, had shown her a way of the world worth hurting for. Temporary physical pain was a small price to pay to show him the respect he deserved.

“There is no need to bow so deeply, Kobayashi," Captain Ukitake said. He sounded genuinely distressed to see her on the ground. "You will be a treasured member of this Division from this day forward, and I don't wish to see you in pain.”

She sat up on her knees, but kept her gaze lowered. She didn’t have the strength to meet her new Captain’s gaze, just as she hadn’t had the strength to meet her former Captain’s gaze when she had given him her resignation. “Thank you, Captain Ukitake,” she said, “for this opportunity to find my place in your honorable Division.”

“There is also no need to be so formal." He spoke with an energetic fervor she hadn't expected of him. He had always seemed weak of spirit, mild of voice in a way she associated with the soon-to-be-dead. In her former Division, he would be the butt of many jokes and mocking asides, but now she couldn’t see in him anything other than strength and grace. “You can relax.”

She peeked up at him through her lashes, unable still to meet his eyes but wanting to look into his face. She had been told that he had come from his sickbed today to welcome her personally to the Division. It warmed her heart, and eased some of the sting of how she'd come to be here. Logically, it was because she was a seated officer and he felt she was entitled to a show of respect, but she couldn’t help taking it personally.

When she was a little girl, Sachiko had been a firm believer in good and evil, in angels and demons, in scheming kings and dashing princes. She knew better now, but if you had told a ten-year-old Sachiko that Jushiro Ukitake was the prince from a fairytale, she would have believed you without hesitation. His white hair was pulled away from his handsome face, though a few pale wisps had escaped and framed his soft expression. His brown eyes when he looked at her were gentle and kind, without a trace of the pity that had been thrown her way over the past month. His easy-going smile wasn’t what she was used to seeing from a Captain, and almost seemed out of place in this harsh world. But she knew there was strength in him, and honor and goodness. And, most touching of all, kindness.

She was a little too old to be starstruck, and yet that was the only word she could think of when she looked at him.

“While I appreciate the sentiment, Captain Ukitake,” she said, “the pain is my penance. I will not allow my past failures to be repeated, and I will not bring shame to this Division as I did to my former.”

“Alright, cut the self-sacrificing crap," Lieutenant Shiba said, stepping forward. The hard look on his face was more familiar, the kind of look she had seen on every face from the moment she'd died. It was equally comforting: he was a man who took his duties seriously and expected the same of those beneath him.

While both Sachiko and Captain Ukitake were kneeling, one in front of and one behind the Captain’s desk, Lieutenant Shiba was standing, arms crossed as he watched the scene with an unamused expression. He had been the one to formally extend the offer to join the Thirteenth Division, and the one to direct her to the Captain's office after she had been medically released.

“I’ll not hear anything more about penance, or sacrifice, or redemption, got it? You’re gonna need to regain your strength before you can do anything like that, and also we don’t want it. Understand?” he continued.

She bowed her head in deference. Regardless of if the latter statement was true or not, she knew the truth of the former. The Fourth Division wasn’t even happy that she was up and walking right now. The nurses had wanted her to remain in her bed for another week or two, but Sachiko was too restless to remain still a moment more. No matter her wishes, however, she wouldn’t be hunting for a while yet.

“The Lieutenant is right,” Captain Ukitake said. “You should get some rest. You have a strong and good heart, Kobayashi, and I know you will be right at home here.”

Sachiko’s throat became tight and her head began to swim. She blinked rapidly before either man noticed the tears in her eye. She knew what he said was false, but she couldn’t bring herself to contradict him. “Thank you for your patience, Captain Ukitake, Lieutenant Shiba. I can never repay this debt,” she said, bowing deeply again. Her wounds pulled from the position, but she held it as long as she could.

"Stop thanking us," Lieutenant Shiba said again. He was smiling when she straightened back up, though, and when he waved his hand to dismiss her, it wasn’t the curt, uncaring gesture she was used to from nobility. "Just go get some rest. If you need anything, just holler for me."

She knew he meant it. She also knew she would never "holler" for him, no matter the circumstances.

Getting to her feet was a struggle, one she hid as well as she could, though she was pretty sure Captain Ukitake of all people saw all the signs of pain in her body. She stood to her full height and was immediately uncomfortable. She was used to towering over others but it felt wrong to stand so tall over the man to whom she owed her life.

“I will take my leave,” she announced, and had to stop herself from thanking them both again. Instead, she gave a short bow and left them with that curt farewell.

She stopped once she rounded the corner, fighting an uncharacteristic wave of tears. She felt like she was spinning, about to float away on the breeze. She leaned heavily against the nearest wall, squeezing her eye shut. The fingers of her good hand tangled into the fabric of her pants, needing the familiar and predictable sensation to ground her mind. Nothing felt real, tangible, or permanent. She expected at any moment for the day to dissolve like threads of spun sugar in water, leaving her back in pain and darkness.

It didn't.

She counted the beats of her heart as she felt them in her fingertips, willing her world to shrink down for a moment to just that steady bump-bump. Slowly, the disorientation passed as her overwhelming thoughts became more familiar and manageable.

When she’d calmed and banished the treacherous tears, Sachiko pulled herself up and began to walk again. She wasn’t sure where her destination was, letting her legs take her where they willed. She didn't want to go to her quarters. The thought of being alone scared her.

The warmth of Ukitake and Shiba's presence faded away as she put more distance between them. The glow of her gratitude and wonder faded as well, leaving behind the chill of solitude that settled on her like a tailored coat. The barracks were relatively empty and quiet at this time of day. She actually found that she didn't mind the solitude. It gave her time to wallow.

It had been a month and a half since… She didn’t even know how to define it in her mind. It had been a month and a half Since. It felt like it was only yesterday that she’d opened her eyes to a world changed. But the mission had been a month and a half ago. She’d spent a month unconscious, too badly wounded to even open her eyes. After she’d regained consciousness, she’d spent another two weeks in too much pain to stand. The Fourth Division nurses had tried to insist on her remaining another two weeks, but she was eager to escape that place. The scents and colors and pitying faces only reminded her of the pain that she wanted to escape. Five days ago, she’d given notice to Captain Zaraki that she was resigning from her position as the Eleventh Division Sixth Seat. Only two days ago, she had received the request from Lieutenant Shiba to change that request for resignation to a request for transfer. And now she was here, out of that hospital and out of that haunted Division.

But physically leaving the Relief Station wasn’t enough to escape the pain in her body, just as leaving her old Division wasn’t enough to escape the wounds to her soul. In more ways than one, she knew she would never escape.

Just as bad as the perpetual agony and newfound weakness of her body was the metaphorical gaping hole in her chest (the literal hole had been patched up already.) She swore she could feel it if she placed a hand over her heart, a lack of warmth and strength where there had once been abundance. It was familiar, sickeningly so. When she was still a child, newly dead and wandering, was the last time she'd felt this empty. This time, though, her pain was due to her survival, not her death.

The Hollow’s claws had torn a path down her body from her collarbone to just above her right knee, shredding flesh and bone and spirit in one swing. Half of her face was still bandaged, and the damaged right eye had been so corroded by poison that the Fourth Division had cut it out while she slept. She was walking with a heavy limp due to a right leg that couldn’t bend without agony, and her arm had only recently come out of its cast and sling. She was healing, but would never fully heal. She would never regain her full mobility and the lingering acid on the Hollow’s claws might never go away, leaving a perpetual itch and burn beneath her skin. And yet, she was alive, against all odds and against her will.

She didn’t know how long she’d laid in the dirt, waiting to die. Her uninjured eye had remained open the entire time, her vision hazy with pain and blocked by her own flowing blood. But that hadn’t been enough to blind her fully. She’d stared into the faces of her dead comrades, those who hadn’t been ravaged beyond recognition by the Hollow. It had tried to eat Juri alive, tearing her arms from her body and ripping into her stomach with its countless teeth. Her face had been barely intact as Sachiko stared at her, features twisted forever in her final pained screams. Chouta had been lucky: he’d died with its claws in his heart, though his body fared no better than anyone else’s. The force with which the Hollow had thrown his corpse at Sachiko, trying to fend off her final blow, had ripped his body nearly in half. The others Sachiko knew less intimately, but their deaths weighed just as heavily on her heart, and their names and faces were branded forever in her mind. By some grim twist of fate, or perhaps by twisted design of the Hollow, all twelve of them had fallen in one small area, where she could see nearly all of them as she’d waited for her own death. It was hard to tell where their blood began and hers ended, where the flayed bits of her flesh became theirs. Had part of her gone with them? Was the hole in her chest where parts of her heart had perished along with her comrades?

She didn’t remember the Fourth Division arriving and bringing her back to the Seireitei. She didn’t remember them stitching the shattered bits of her face and arm back together until she vaguely resembled a person again. She didn’t even remember the exact words that had been used when telling her the extent of her injuries. They must have been gentle, but all she remembered was a pain as heavy as if she were taking another blow from the Hollow’s claws.

Though she’d survived the attack, it still felt like the end. She’d been prepared to return to the Rukongai to starve, or else find a quick death at the end of her own blade. What other choice did she have? How could she sleep in the barracks next to the empty cots of those who had been slaughtered due to her failure? How could she walk the halls they'd walked together for decades, once full of laughter and now deathly quiet? Her failure was branded across her heart as deeply as it was on her body. She'd been spared death, but it didn't feel real…or deserved.

The weather didn’t have the decency to match her darkening mood. The sun was shining brightly even as it sunk lower in the sky, and it provided a pleasant, comfortable warmth. It was perfect spring weather, not cold enough to shiver nor hot enough to sweat. The wind carried the scent of budding flowers and the sweet smell of someone cooking a snack. Fluffy white clouds moved slowly across the blue-and-orange sky, a picturesque sunset fit for the end of a romantic novel. She didn't appreciate it. For the first time in a long time, Sachiko wished for the cold.

“Good morning.”

Sachiko stopped. A chill ran up her spine.

Always be careful what you wish for, her mother had always told her.

The smile she turned to face now was nothing like the kind smile of her new Captain.

“Good morning,” she returned the greeting slowly. “Lieutenant Ichimaru.”

His smile widened, and she saw a flash of teeth pure white like a Hollow’s static grin.

Fifth's Division's Lieutenant Gin Ichimaru was an infamous man, for his manner if not for his deeds. He was a child prodigy, powerful and intelligent enough to earn a Lieutenant spot despite his young age. But it was his manner he was best known for, not his actions. Most of the Shinigami outside of his own Division were afraid of him, or at least off-put by him. Having only met him in passing once or twice, Sachiko usually counted herself among that number. He controlled his expression in a way that baffled her, wearing a perpetual smirk that forced his small eyes to appear closed. He had the kind of skin-and-bones physique that looked more at home in the Rukongai than the Seireitei, and combined with his pale skin and hair, he looked a bit like a skeleton or a Hollow wearing a human suit.

Right now, though, Sachiko didn’t have the energy to be scared or off-put by him. Her morose mood didn’t allow for anxiety or frustration.

“How can I help you?” she asked, when he remained silent after her greeting.

"Oh, I was just in the area,” he said, waving a hand. “It’s nice to see ya up and walking.” His head tilted to the side, reminding her of an animal or a child examining something interesting. “We thought for sure you were a goner."

Sachiko was confused by his words of concern. The two of them had never spoken to each other before now. She’d had no visitors in the Relief Station with the sole exception of Lieutenant Shiba when he came to offer her a position in the Thirteenth. The squad she'd led to their deaths had been entirely Eleventh Division, so why would someone from the Fifth Division be concerned for her?

“I am recovering,” she said hesitantly. Then, to be polite, “Thank you for your concern.”

His strange grin widened and curled at the ends, a disconcerting expression to see on a human face. “Quite a vicious attack you survived, wasn’t it?,” he said in the same conversational tone. “A dozen Shinigami slaughtered, and yet here you are, alive and well. Pretty lucky, huh?"

Anger rose up in her breast, though she kept it from her face. What a callous and casual way to discuss the event that had just taken so many lives, and had almost taken hers as well. She couldn’t even think of a way to respond to that with anything other than a “Fuck you." She knew she would have to try, though. That wasn't appropriate.

“It was not luck,” she said truthfully. “I had a duty, and I performed it.”

Not well enough, the ghosts of her squadmates taunted her, their bloody frozen faces flashing before her when she blinked. When she opened her eye again, she only saw Lieutenant Ichimaru, smiling placidly at her. She could barely see a hint of his eyes behind his wide smile. They were pale, probably blue or grey. Like her own lost eye. For some reason, the thought made her want to laugh. Just a little bit.

“How lucky we are to have someone like you on our side, Kobayashi-san,” he said. “I’m sure Captain Ukitake is thrilled to have gotten ya in his Division. Must've been quite a hot commodity after leavin' the Eleventh.” He straightened his head up. "Zaraki Squad not up to your standards?"

"Fuck you," Sachiko wanted to say, and this time she couldn't come up with anything more appropriate, so she said nothing.

The wind picked up, bringing with it the light tinkle of the bells hung up around the Thirteenth Division barracks and the heavy scent of pollen. The former made her heart ache, and the latter tickled her nose and made her eyes water.

Sachiko sneezed delicately into her sleeve.

Lieutenant Ichimaru’s nose wrinkled. “What an adorable sneeze for such a big scary woman!” he said, with the same tone as if he were commenting on the weather.

Sachiko scrambled for something to even somewhat match his energy and settled on, “What a creepy expression for such a short, cute man.”

His grin widened until she saw his teeth flashing from behind his thin lips. “What flattery, and to a superior officer! Careful ya don’t get yourself in trouble with that tongue, Sachiko-chan.”

She frowned, and then winced when it pulled the wounds on her face. She didn't appreciate the honorific. “I’ll keep that in mind, Lieutenant Ichimaru,” she said and asked, desperate for this to end, "Is there a reason you wanted to talk to me, sir?"

"A reason?" His face shifted to a completely different--but equally stiff--expression: brows furrowed, mouth set in a wide frown, head tilted off to one side. "Do I need a reason?"

Her brow furrowed, and she winced from pain. Then the wince hurt too. She just couldn’t win today.

"I suppose not," she said.

"I have business with your Captain," he said, “but once I saw you were out and about, I just had to come and check on you.”

Once again, she could not imagine why he would even care. "Have we met before?" she asked hesitantly. She was sure she would remember if they'd ever exchanged anything beyond shallow greetings in passing.

His grin grew. "No, we haven't."

She was now thoroughly confused. She had no idea what he wanted her to say or do, and all she wanted to do was leave this conversation and lay down.

Luckily, for no reason that she could determine, he seemed to decide the conversation was over.

"It was a pleasure catching up with you," he said. He took a step back and stepped around her, lifting one hand in a lazy wave. “See ya around, Sachiko-chan!” he called over his shoulder. “Stay safe!” His unhurried steps took him in the opposite direction she was going, towards the office of her Captain.

She watched him go, feeling a bit disoriented from the weird exchange. What an extraordinary conversation, and not in the good way.

See me around? Probably not.

More likely, she and Lieutenant Ichimaru would never have more than passing words. In a few days time, he wouldn’t even remember her name.

She resumed her walk back to her new quarters, going back over the conversation in her mind. Her steps were a little lighter, if only because she was too busy being confused and aggravated to feel too lonely.

I’m Not Obsessed, Far Worse (Gin POV)

Reiatsu surged throughout the training area. Even from this distance, Gin felt it buffeting at him, a brief untamed flood before it was curbed. He leaned on the thin railing, the picture of a bored spectator. In the arena below, the two opponents circled each other. A team of Fourth Division nurses were on standby, just in case the training got a little too rowdy. Given that one of the trainees was ex-Eleventh Division, that was a distinct possibility.

Sachiko Kobayashi was one of the fighters down below, facing off against…someone. He hadn’t really paid attention to who her opponent was. They were smaller than her, weaker than her, and had less training than her, just an unseated Shinigami eager to test their mettle against one of the Thirteenth's newest officers. They were unimportant. He was only here to watch her anyway.

The two circled each other for quite a while, to his surprise. Given the Eleventh's reputation, he'd expected Sachiko to throw herself at her opponent with reckless abandon. Perhaps her wounds were holding her back. Or perhaps she was smarter than one would at first assume.

Gin was curious as to how she’d survived the attack. The squad dispatched had been under the impression that they were fighting a midlevel Hollow with some acidic powers that had been evading attempts at extermination. When they’d arrived, however, their opponent had been nearly Menos-level in terms of raw power, and had an intellect far greater than one might expect from its young age and origin. It had been able to partially cloak its reiatsu and its "mild acid" had proven capable of melting zanpakutōs. The reports had speculated that it was almost as if the Hollow had been artificially empowered.

That was all speculation, of course. Nothing could be proven.

Whatever the case, Sachiko alone had survived against it, and more than that had killed it, and that was worth attention.

As the fight began in earnest, he began to get an idea. Her sword fighting skills were nothing to scoff at, at the very least. Her size lent itself well to the two-handed nodachi she wielded, which was almost equivalent to a regular blade in her hands. Her long limbs were just as deadly a weapon as her blade, and she used them just as effectively. She threw swings, slammed her body into her opponent, and kicked as often as she could. She wasn’t swinging wildly, though. He could see the calculation behind her every attack. She lost ground at first, but then fought it back at a steady pace, blocking slashes and feinting towards weak spots that revealed themselves over the course of the duel. She moved with a dancer's grace, but the sheer mass of her body made each hit count.

As a former Eleventh Division member, he expected her to focus exclusively on offense. The length of her blade enabled her to defend herself, and he was surprised to see she took advantage of this fairly often. Despite being blind or near-blind on one side, she seemed to be able to track her opponent and block most of their hits. What hits she couldn't block, she rolled her body into to minimize damage. He was impressed. She was easily holding her own against an opponent far faster and more agile than she was. It had been nearly a year since the attack, and while she would never attain her former strength, she had regained enough to be a formidable opponent even in sparring.

What he was primarily interested in, he knew he probably wasn’t going to see. She wouldn’t release Shikai in this low-stakes duel. Her zanpakutō definitely had some kind of gimmick. She seemed to focus on hitting her opponent as often as possible with her sword, but the strength of the hit didn’t seem to matter. That kind of style was obviously playing around some type of effect. He was very curious to know what it did. According to the report of the mission, it was the primary reason she’d beaten the Hollow.

After blocking one hard hit, she landed in the dirt on one knee, obviously knocked off balance and only staying upright by putting most of her weight on her sword. Out of respect or maybe because they were tired themselves, her opponent gave her space, taking a moment to circle the battlefield.

Sachiko lifted her head up and, despite the great distance between them, her head was turned as if she was looking directly at him. Gin cracked one eye open and felt a shiver run down his spine. Could she see him? Surely not. She remained where she was, looking in his direction for a long moment, however, and for an instant her reiatsu flared as if in response to his presence. Then, the moment passed. She turned away, raised her sword, and threw herself back into battle.

He could lie to himself and say that it was that moment that piqued his interest, but truthfully he had been watching her for quite a while, whenever he got the chance to do so. They’d had a few more conversations in passing, each longer than the last, each one obviously throwing her off.

Did he have a reason for being so interested in her? Not particularly. If he wanted to, he might say it was for the sake of his captain. Anyone who had survived that Hollow was worth watching. He’d heard that her transferring to Thirteenth Division had been a compromise to avoid losing a valuable seated officer: she had originally planned on leaving the Seireitei completely. He’d asked around about her, and incidentally had discovered that she did seem the kind of person who might be aligned with Aizen’s goals, if nudged in the right direction: not deeply loyal to the Shinigami if her plans to leave were any indication, possessing the kind of personality that lent itself to fervent loyalty once earned, and the right kind of emotional baggage that could make her easy to manipulate given time and effort.

Even to himself, though, that was a poor excuse. Aizen hadn’t tasked him with recruiting anyone, and he wasn’t exactly interested in doing extracurricular work. He was forced to admit to himself that she was just interesting, and fun to watch.

And she was fun to watch. She put on a good show. There was a dramatic flourish to her movements in the training field that suggested she was aware she was being watched, a practiced choreography like this was a familiar dance. The fight itself was second nature to her, and she was adding extra flair, and clearly having fun.

Despite being severely out of practice, she emerged victorious. Blood painted the sand, courtesy of a well-placed slash that had the Fourth Division members on the sidelines scrambling. Most of them went to her opponent, but two of them headed straight to her. She allowed them to paw at her for a few minutes, then waved them off. She helped her opponent to her feet and the two shared a few words before she clapped them on the shoulder and retreated.

Gin remained where he was. It took only a few minutes for the arena to clear out and the next pair of Shinigami to emerge for their duel. Their duel was less exhilarating, probably because he had no interest in either of them. Still he watched, having nothing better to do.

“Lieutenant Ichimaru. Good afternoon.”

His grin widened slightly. Just the person he was hoping for. He looked at Sachiko over his shoulder, not putting in the effort of standing or turning.

She had shed her kosode and was wearing a sleeveless white top, baring her muscular shoulders and arms. She was still breathing hard from the strain of the fight…no, that wasn’t it. He noted the slightly stiff way she held her right leg, and the way her right arm hung somewhat limply at her side. Her gaze was dark and her thick lips were tightened in a barely hidden grimace. She wasn't out of breath. She was in pain.

“Ah, Sachiko-chan! What a pleasant surprise.” He waved lazily to the fight down below. “Come to join me?”

As it had before, her face twitched at the intimate honorific. She considered her choices for a moment and then joined him at the rail, taking the extra steps to keep him on her good side. She was trying very hard to hide her pain, and to anyone less perceptive, she might have gotten away with it. She was putting all her weight on her left leg, which had the amusing effect of making it look like she was posing for him. He let his eyes linger for a moment on the wide hip she thrust his way, not one to pass up a show when it was offered.

Standing side-by-side, the differences between them were stark. Gin was a tall man, but Sachiko was taller still, and had far more mass. She didn’t quite tower over him, but she easily dwarfed him in all other respects. Her hair, densely curly and nearly-black, was wrapped untidily into a high ponytail that still came to the middle of her back. She was no longer wearing bandages on the right side of her face, but she had manipulated her hair to partially hide the scars. From where he stood, though, all he could see was the (mostly) unscarred side. She had been, by any measure, a beautiful woman. High, full cheeks, a thick mouth that struggled not to smile, almond-shaped eyes of a staringly pale brown, and a figure that others would kill for. She was also quite a bit older than him: her exact age was a mystery to him, but based on looks alone, she had at least a century on him. Her age and scars did nothing to detract from the poise with which she held herself, which seemed more like a predator lying in wait than a noblewoman with manners. It was a bit exhilarating to be in the intensity of her gaze, wondering whether she was going to respond to his teasing or bite at him.

He’d be pleased with either.

For now, however, she was not looking at him. Her attention was on the fight below, and he didn’t try very hard to pretend that his was as well. If she noticed his staring, however, she did not bring it up.He considered needling her a bit. Wasn’t that why he’d come, after all? As it turned out, though, she was the one who broke the silence.

"Are you enjoying the show, Lieutenant Ichimaru?" she asked after only a few moments.

"Of course! People watching is my hobby, ya know,” he said. He leaned his chin down on his hand and watched her from beneath his eyelashes, intrigued. “And what about you?”

“It’s a boring fight,” she said bluntly. “I don’t really like watching fights anyway. Not when it’s strangers.”

“Oh? Why not? It’s very entertaining, and you can learn a lot.”

“That’s true, but spars are so boring. Nothing’s on the line, so no one fights as hard as they can.” She briefly tried to mirror his pose, then returned to her original stiff position. “That was one nice thing about the Eleventh. The fights were fun.”

He hummed. “That doesn’t seem very in line with your Captain’s whole ‘fights for life and honor’ spiel, you know,” he pointed out.

She blinked and her shoulders raised a fraction. “To be fair, I still don’t know what that means,” she admitted. “And besides, there are plenty of other fights. I just had a fight that wasn’t for honor. It was just a friendly spar.”

Oh, she was a pragmatic. How adorable.

“You’ll have to tell me about your Shikai sometime,” he said bluntly. “I can tell it must be something good, judging by the way you fight.” He bared his teeth at her, half hoping she’d bare hers back.

Her brow furrowed, and she turned her full attention to him. “I would kill you if we fought,” she said bluntly.

“Oh? What arrogance.” He didn’t let it show, but she had his full attention. “That’s not a good look on a lady, you know.”

“It's not arrogance,” she corrected him, though her tone wasn’t offended. Something about her tone made him think she wasn’t boasting either. “That’s just the way it works. Either my opponent is weaker than me and I defeat them without Shikai, or they are stronger than me and I defeat them with Shikai.”

He could point out that her assumption that she would win the fight regardless was arrogance, but to her credit, she had survived just about the worst she could expect to face.

“I hear you’re due to head out to hunt some Hollows soon.” He’d heard no such thing, but it was a logical conclusion. He knew her Captain was easing her back into a full workload, and it stood to reason that would include some trips into the world of the living. From what he’d heard, she’d been an elite Hollow hunter before the attack, and the Thirteenth would be eager to take advantage of that. “Make sure you use that Shikai out there if things get dicey. I would hate to lose my favorite conversation partner.”

She took a moment to respond, which he was beginning to think was just the way she was. “I would not dishonor Captain Ukitake in such a manner,” she declared.

It was amusing how awkwardly she sidestepped his implication that they were anything more than passing acquaintances. He could tell it made her uncomfortable, but she chose to simply ignore it rather than refute it.

“And of course, you would miss our conversation,” he said, not giving her the satisfaction.

She gave him another owlish look, then her face relaxed into something that was almost a smile. “Of course, Lieutenant Ichimaru,” she agreed.

“Please,” he admonished her. “If we're meeting for business, feel free to call me Lieutenant Ichimaru. Otherwise, Gin will do just fine.” His grin widened as her discomfort with that notion reflected very clearly in her face for a brief moment.

She blinked it away. “I…yes, Lieutenant Ichimaru.” At his sour expression, her entire face twisted, and she corrected herself, “Gin.” She said his name very carefully, like she was waiting for him to take it back. When he did not, she tilted her head to the side. “I don’t expect we will meet for pleasure very often, but I will keep that in mind.”

"We'll just have to see,” he purred.

He took his leave a few moments later, leaving her there to watch the battles below in thoughtful silence.

Pain is Unavoidable (Sachiko POV)

Sachiko hated the winter. She hated the fog and frost, she hated the grey skies, she hated the snow. She hated everything about it. With the cold came memories, and with memories came a darkness in her heart that she couldn't banish. Now that she had permanent scars that ached and itched in the cold, she hated it even more.

This winter was unusually harsh for the Seireitei. Usually, the weather in this area of the Soul Society was a milder variant of whatever was happening in the world of the living, and she shuddered to think what the humans were experiencing if the Shinigami were experiencing this bone-deep chill. Snow had been falling for nearly a day straight, heavy and wet and clumping. Even with her multiple heavy layers, Sachiko was cold.

The silver lining of winter was that solitude was in no short supply. Most people made excuses to be inside, so she got to entertain her morose thoughts in peace.

Despite having very few combat missions these days, her strength and knowledge had grown enough that she had risen to Fifth Seat in what she still considered her "new" Division. Usually she was working on much more pressing matters than delivering paperwork, but today was different.

Today was the Anniversary. In the past, she had been able to take the day off, but her promotion came with a heavier administrative workload in addition to the occasional difficult combat mission. So rather than spending the day in her room weeping and wallowing like she wanted to, she was delivering a transfer request by hand. Apparently the student’s family was nobility, so it was to be handled as quickly as possible. She’d volunteered to make the walk to the Third Division mostly so she had an excuse to be alone with her thoughts, as dark and depressing as they were.

She was glad to be in the Thirteenth. Captain Ukitake’s sense of honor and duty trickled down to his troops, and it was a welcome change to the more volatile and competitive nature of the Eleventh. Not that she had anything against the Eleventh, but now that she was gone, she knew it hadn’t been right for her. Despite her size and the nature of her zanpakutō, she didn’t relish combat, and the constant parties, brawls, and shouting matches had often left her aggravated and upset. The Thirteenth was a better fit for her: quiet and organized and headed by a man concerned with ideals and structure.

All that said, Sachiko was lonely. Whether it was due to her size, her past, or her scars, her Division cohorts tended to avoid her, and her attempts at reaching out were often met with cool indifference. Over a decade had passed since her transfer, and she still had no one she could really call a friend. Captain Ukitake held her confidence and her loyalty, but he was too high above her for her to feel comfortable being close to him. Part of the reason she had volunteered to go to Captain Ichimaru was because he was one of the few people who went out of his way to speak to her, even though their conversations were often short and inconsequential. He liked to “mess with her,” in his own words, but his jokes never seemed mean-spirited or mocking. His promotion was still relatively recent news as well, and she’d have to get used to seeing him outside of Captain Aizen’s shadow. She wondered if he would act any different now. Did she act any different after her promotion?

She’d never actually been to the Third Division barracks before. The way was lined with juvenile persimmon trees, which she'd been told was something new that Captain Ichimaru had done himself. In a few years, they would bear fruit and bring a spot of color to the otherwise drab white-and-black of the world. When that time came, winter would be pleasing in the Third Division. For now, however, they were just as cold and lifeless as everything else.

Captain Ichimaru’s office was dark and silent from the outside. She knocked to announce her presence, but even after waiting a moment, she heard no answer. A bit disappointing, but not unexpected. She’d known there was a decent chance he wasn’t even here. He liked to walk around, and very rarely could he actually be found where he was supposed to be. She could leave the request on his desk and come back for it later. She slid the door open and stepped inside, also hoping to take a bit of refuge inside the warmer building.

“Just bargin’ in, Sachiko-chan? How rude.”

Or maybe he was here.

“My apologies, Captain Ichimaru,” she said. She took a step back and made a show of kicking the snow off her shoes before she stepped back into his office. "I did knock," she pointed out.

"Knock louder next time." Gin Ichimaru smiled at her from behind his desk, the expression letting her know that he didn't mean his words in a harsh way. He was more slumped over it than sitting behind it. Rather than kneeling in the proper and formal pose of a Captain receiving a guest, he was lounging on the side of his legs, looking at her from behind his arms folded in front of his head. The pose was reminiscent of a snake wrapped up in its own coils, grinning at the foolish prey that had wandered into its dark den. It was made slightly less intimidating by the grit in the corners of his eyes, which made it look like he had been napping.

“I’m just here to deliver the transfer request you're expecting from Captain Ukitake,” she announced. “Everything has been taken care of, and it only requires your signature now.”

His false smile widened, and he invited her in with a crooked finger. When she closed the door behind her, she cast them in almost total darkness, strengthening her suspicion that she had just interrupted his sleep. She almost felt bad. His manner made it hard to be angry at him, and it also made it hard to imagine that he was ever angry at her.

The few steps between the door and the desk felt like an eternity when she was fixed in his unwavering stare. She found it easier to hold his gaze than others, perhaps because he hid his eyes. Once they'd spoken more than a few times, his expressions ceased to throw her off as much. If she really concentrated, she could even find minute details in his face that, if she were any good at that kind of thing, could give hints to his true thoughts.

“Are ya just going to stand there?” he asked after a minute.

“My apologies.” She knelt down and handed him the papers. As their fingers touched, a chill ran down her arm. He was so cold. For a moment, she had the urge to reach out and hold his hands and rub warmth into him like she used to do for her friends. Instead, her hand shot back to her lap. His smile twitched. “Once you’re done, the transfer will be finalized,” she said, hoping to distract him. “I can take the request back to Captain Ukitake, or you can keep it for yourself. He says he doesn’t mind either way.”

He pushed himself up with a heavy sigh, pulling the papers closer. After a few moments he produced a pen from his sleeve and began to lazily scrawl his signature where it was required.

“What an obedient little dog you are,” he commented, his tone almost distracted. “Running around making pointless deliveries like this. Hardly fitting for a fifth seat, wouldn’t you agree?”

Sachiko’s eye narrowed slightly. It was far from the first time she’d been called a dog or something similar. Her loyalty to her Captain, her speed in accomplishing her tasks, and apparently even the way she stood and sat reminded people of a loyal canine. She'd been called a dog, a puppy, a bitch, and every variation thereof, even before she'd become a Shinigami. She got the impression she was supposed to be offended by it, but she liked dogs so it didn't feel like an insult.

“Yes,” she answered. “I do not mind. Whatever my Captain requires, I will do it.”

He hummed in response, then fell to silence.

She frowned. Something was off. It was hard to know for sure what it was, but there was something different that she couldn’t place.

“What is the matter, Captain Ichimaru?” she asked.

His pen slowed. His smile was different for a moment, and then it wasn’t.

“Why would anything be the matter?” he asked. He flipped a page over very loudly, and began to sign his name again.

“You seem upset.” She hoped she sounded more sure than she felt. The benefits of a flat affect, she supposed, was that people rarely knew when she was floundering in conversation.

“Hm…and how would you know that? In fact, how would you know anything about me?” His pen paused. “You don’t know me at all, Sachiko-chan.”

A chill ran up her spine at his tone, suddenly just as flat and neutral as her own. She hadn’t realized how accustomed she had become to his slightly mocking tone until it was gone. Was he angry? She doubted herself for a moment, but she was sure something was different about him.

Was it the slope of his shoulders? The bags under his eyes that stood out so starkly on his pale cheeks? Was it the simple act of being here, in the dark of his office, sleeping with his head in his arms like a child trying to give himself a little bit of comfort? She couldn’t say it was any one of those things. Maybe it was the subdued ebb and flow of his spiritual pressure, usually more of a creeping feeling than this odd push-and-pull like the wind. Maybe she just wanted someone else to feel as miserable as she did right now.

“Aren’t you?” she asked.

“Maybe I’m upset that you interrupted my nap,” he suggested.

“It wouldn’t have been a very good nap,” she pointed out. “It’s so cold in here. And you don’t have anything soft to lay on.”

He hummed. “Beggars can’t be choosers, you know. And anyways, if anyone should be asking that question, it should be me. They say misery loves company,” he said, “and you look downright miserable.”

She blinked. She didn’t realize that her sorrow showed that clearly on her face. Or maybe he was teasing her? It was always hard to tell with him, harder than with most people. She looked into his face, hoping to get some kind of hint. There was nothing. Just that smile, those eyes, his long fingers folded underneath his chin.

“How do you know I’m upset?” she asked.

His eyes moved behind his lowered lids, and for a moment she saw a flash of blue as he looked up at her through his silver eyelashes. (They were blue, she'd found out, but not quite the same blue as the one she'd lost.) He finished signing the request and looked up at her, resting his chin on his palm. He flashed his teeth at her and parroted her words from earlier, “Aren’t you?”

Maybe he would share if she did.

“It is the tenth anniversary of…” she trailed off. To this day, she couldn’t say the words. There weren’t words for how heavy she ached, for how deep the wound was. No words felt right. Instead of trying to find them, she gestured up to the right side of her face, and just said, “This.” When he didn’t say anything, she said, “That is why I am…sad, today.”

“Oh, poor Sachiko-chan, are you feeling lonely?” He twirled his pen and grinned. He said it like it was a trivial thing, despite the fact that he had immediately cut right to the heart of her. “If you like, I can draft up another transfer request. I'd love a big scary dog of my own.”

She scoffed lightly. “No thank you,” she said, and was surprised that a part of her actually appreciated the offer. When he didn’t say anything else, she asked, “And you?”

“What about me?”

"Why are you upset?”

“I never said I was upset.”

She sighed. So much for reciprocity. “Of course, Captain Ichimaru.”

“So formal! We’re just chatting as friends, ya don’t have to use my title.”

She blinked. Was he being serious? For her own sanity, she decided to take what he said at face value. “Of course." It took her a moment, but she did manage to say it. "Gin.”

His name felt strange in her mouth. It was an odd name anyway, but it felt wrong to speak the name of her superior so intimately. She’d only ever called him by his first name once, back when he was a Lieutenant, and it had felt wrong then too.

He seemed to enjoy it, though, grin widening for a moment. “There ya go. Not so hard, was it?”

They fell into silence. Gin just looked at her, eyes narrow and smiling. She found it a bit easier to meet his gaze when she couldn’t see his eyes, but out of habit her own eyes roamed over his face.

It had only been ten years since they’d first met, but he looked so different from back then. At that time, his cheeks had been rounded and softer, and there had been a kind of restless energy like he was always holding back laughter. He looked older now, with a thinner face and a heaviness in the corner of his eyes that hadn’t been there before. She wondered if it was just the weight of the years, or if his somewhat new position as Captain was to blame. It had been less than a year since he’d been promoted.

“See something you like?” he asked after a while.

She blinked. Something she liked? “I was just looking at you,” she answered honestly. “I was thinking that you look tired.”

He hummed. “You’re not gonna drop this, are ya?”

She lowered her gaze. “I apologize for pressing,” she said. “You said I could call you by your name. Does that not mean we’re friends? If you’re my friend, I wouldn’t want to let you be miserable.”

He straightened up, smile faltering for a moment. “Friends, huh?” After a long stretch of silence he asked, “Tell me, Sachiko-chan: what makes you so doggedly loyal to him…your Captain?”

Sachiko’s brow furrowed as she pondered the question. She wondered if he was just trying to distract her from her line of questioning. Maybe he really didn't want to talk about it. Bowing to his wishes, she shifted her attention. She had to think for a long moment before she could answer the question, though Gin didn’t push her. Finally, she said, “He is an admirable man, honest and caring.” That was a shallow answer, though she meant it earnestly.

“What a boring answer!” Gin responded predictably, faking a yawn. “You could say that about any Shinigami walking by!”

“I couldn’t say that about you,” she pointed out.

“Suppose you couldn’t.” He pretended to give the statement some thought, then dismissed it with a shrug of one shoulder. “Anyway. Gimme a real answer.” Once again, his tone sounded serious. He was looking at her without moving now, smile frozen mirthlessly on his face.

She sighed, and shifted her weight back. Acquiescing once again, she gave it a moment of serious thought. Perhaps because of her already morose mood, it wasn’t hard to come up with another answer that felt perhaps more in line with what Gin wanted to hear. “He gave me something that I didn’t realize I needed desperately.”

“Oh? And what’s that?”

“A sense of purpose, I suppose.” Her gaze dropped down to Gin’s fingers, wrapped loosely around his pen, tapping it slowly against the paper. He was making a mess of the transfer request, a bunch of little dots and splotches beginning to obscure the text. “I didn’t become a Shinigami out of a sense of justice or duty. I am not very clever, or driven, or ambitious. I am simply strong. In my youth, I used my strength for destruction and survival. It didn’t feel…appropriate. Even in the Eleventh Division, beneath the Kenpachi, it still felt like I was simply fighting the world for the sake of it. Just struggling against the current.” At her own words, she winced, fingers closing into fists as ancient memories tried to resurface. “In the hands of someone like Captain Ukitake, however, perhaps my strength can be used for something that is meaningful. I would rather be the loyal dog of a good man than another mutt starving to death in the streets.”

Silence fell as she finished. Sachiko’s cheeks began to burn as the minutes marched on and Gin said nothing, and she began to wonder if that was a more intimate response than he had wanted. She did that sometimes, responding with emotional ernesty where people wanted casual shallowness. His face was, as always, impossible to read. He wasn’t smiling anymore, and she couldn’t even tell if he was still looking at her. He had stopped fidgeting with the pen, and stillness settled on them.

Gin broke the silence after a long while, pulling something out of his sleeve.

“Persimmon?” he offered.

Sachiko blinked at him, then down at the snack he offered. “Thank you.”

When she took it, she let the touch linger, hoping to give him some warmth. She was surprised that he let her, fingers hovering over her palm, gaze downturned at the space where their skin touched. As he watched her eat, she liked to think that Gin’s smile looked a little more natural.

“You know,” he said, pulling another dried persimmon out of his sleeve for himself. “I’m not a fan of winter. Too gloomy, don’t you think?”

She blinked. “I agree completely.” She wrinkled her nose. “But I don’t like spring either. I sneeze too much.”

“There is no pleasing you, Sachiko-chan!” He sighed dramatically. “I suppose summer is too hot, and autumn is too colorful!”

“Autumn is nice!” she argued. “I like to watch the birds.”

He let her stay after that, offering her another dried persimmon when she finished the first, and beginning to eat himself. They sat in a silence that felt more comfortable until long after the sun went down.

“Gin?” she asked after a while.

“Hmm?” He wasn’t looking at her, his attention having been taken by the moon’s shadow sliding across the wall.

“Why did you become a Shinigami?” she asked.

For a long moment, he didn’t answer, body and face still as a statue, and she worried she had overstepped again. Then, he answered, and his playful tone didn’t seem genuine anymore.

“Oh, you and I are nothing alike, Sachiko-chan. I joined for a very good reason.” He turned to look at her for the first time in a while, one eye cracked open so she knew he was really looking. “I’m chasing someone, you see.”

“Chasing someone…” She ruminated on that for a moment. He’d been right when he’d said earlier that she didn’t know much about him, so she couldn’t even begin to guess who that someone could be, or what he planned to do when he caught them. His tone was so serious, however, that she didn’t think it would be as simple as catching up on lost time when the destined meeting came.

She realized that she wanted to comfort him, the same way he had just comforted her. She had no idea how, was the only problem. She had no food to give him, no words of wisdom. She only had…

“Well. Let me know if you need any help finding them,” she said. “Or if you need someone beaten up. I’m good at that.”

He actually looked startled by her words, blinking once before regaining his composure.

Time passed easier after that. They snacked mostly in silence, though every now and then Gin asked her a question about her youth, and even offered her a tidbit or two of his own past. He had many less stories to tell than she, or was less willing to share.

She didn’t realize that hours were passing until he teasingly asked if she was planning on spending the night.

“How scandalous, Sachiko-chan! Sneaking into the young captain’s office and staying late into the night! Think of your reputation!”

“I have no reputation!” she argued, and then realizing the implications of her response, added, “I will take my leave now, Captain Ichimaru. Thank you for…for keeping me company.”

He raised a hand in farewell. “Don’t make a habit of it, now. I’m a busy man now, you know!”

Busy enough to take a nap, she didn’t say. Instead, she gave him a respectful bow, restoring the proper formality between them, and took her leave. When she returned to her own quarters that night, she did not weep or wallow as she’d planned. She wrapped herself up in blankets to fight off the chill in her body, but found that for the first time in a very long time, the chill in her heart had been banished.

I Will Eat You Up Alive (Sachiko POV)

Captain Ichimaru had no business in the heart of the Thirteenth, and yet here he was. He was sitting on the roof, elbow propped on his knee and chin propped on his hand. He reminded her of a stray cat lounging at the gates of a palace it believed it owned. Sachiko knew he was watching her. The new graduates had been in the courtyard for almost an hour before she had arrived, and yet he had only shown up two minutes after she had. She suspected he had been following her all morning, but she hadn't been paying attention until the past hour or so, when she caught a flash of white behind her.

She was determined not to be distracted by his presence. She had a duty to fulfill. Her Captain was feeling unwell today, leaving the co-thirds to take over his reports. That left the Lieutenant duties they usually handled vacant, meaning Sachiko was the one who was greeting and orienting the batch of new Shinigami who had just come into the Thirteenth Division.

As usual, they had a promising group. She’d read the reports on every one of them, and had faith they would all be excellent additions to the Division.

All that said, she didn’t want to do this. She was bad at deciphering people’s faces, but there was one expression she had seen enough to recognize: fear. It had taken a while for her fellow seated officers to stop looking at her like she was going to rip their head off if they said the wrong word, but all the unseated soldiers and, without fail, every new face in the Division always looked at her the same way. She was used to it, but she didn’t like it.

As she stepped into the courtyard, every face that looked at her had that familiar expression. She ignored the looks, as she always did, and introduced herself.

“Welcome to the Thirteenth Division,” she said. “I am the Fourth Seat, Sachiko Kobayashi, and I'm here to welcome you." She launched into her practiced speech, running through a list of general rules and expectations, both literal and social.

She tried her best, but she couldn’t ignore him. Captain Ichimaru did and said nothing while she went through her speech and answered questions, but he was right in her field of view giving her that familiar vacant smile. She swore she saw a flash of his teeth when she spoke of Captain Ukitake’s kindness and honor and stated truthfully that she was always glad to see more new faces in their Division. He was keeping his reiatsu curbed so no one would notice he was there unless they looked up. With her standing in front of them, no one was likely to look his way even accidentally.

When she showed them around the barracks, he actually slid down and joined them. She faltered in her script when she realized he was walking behind her, but tried to press on. He was acting like he was one of the graduates, keeping his gaze on her and reacting with faux shock and awe whenever she shared a new fact.

After a few minutes of his game, Sachiko relaxed. She had no idea what he was doing, but he seemed to be having fun. She let him keep at it, so long as he wasn’t causing trouble. He would reveal his intentions eventually--or not.

“Down that way is the Ugendō Quarters, where our Captain rests when he feels unwell.” She gestured with one hand, and a few of the recruits’ eyes lit up at the prospect of meeting their new Captain. “He is currently not well enough for visitors," she had to dash their hopes, "but I’m sure that as soon as he feels strong enough, he will greet each and every one of you personally. Further up ahead are the officer’s quarters, where you can always seek out the co-third seats, or myself, if you have any issues or questions.”

No one ever sought her out. She had long ago stopped taking it personally, able now to see it in purely practical terms. She didn’t have the charisma of their co-thirds, though she had just as much experience, and she certainly didn’t have the charisma of their Captain. It only made sense that people would prefer to go to someone that wasn’t frightening in appearance or blunt in demeanor.

She had planned on escorting them directly into the barracks, but with Captain Ichimaru among their number, she stopped just outside the building, not wanting to let him in. That was a step too far.

“Here is where I’ll leave you. These will be your quarters,” she said. “You should have each already received a room assignment?” At their nods, she dismissed them: “Go on, then, and get settled in. Your first assignments will be posted first thing tomorrow morning. You can check with either the co-thirds or myself for them.”

The recruits all filed away until it was just her and Captain Ichimaru. He slunk closer to her, flashing his teeth.

“What a professional performance,” he complimented her, though it didn’t sound like a compliment. “I should snag you for my Division.”

Sachiko had decided that his constantly bringing up her transferring to his Division was an “in-joke” between the two of them as friends, as it had never been backed up by anything substantial.

“Is there something I can assist you with, Captain Ichimaru?” she asked. “Captain Ukitake is feeling unwell today, but Third Seats Kotsubaki and Kotetsu are available if you have any important business to discuss.”

“Can’t I visit a friend?” he asked, his face a mask of innocence and--no, wait, she knew him better than that. That was mischief, not innocence. “Join me, won’t ya?”

“Are you just walking?” she asked. Is this business, or pleasure? was the question she was really asking him. The past few decades of their friendship had followed the same simple rules of separating business and intimacy, and she always made sure she knew exactly where they stood in conversation. He still sometimes tried to blur the lines, but she was pretty sure he only did it to try and get a rise out of her. He always settled for one or the other in the end, for which she was grateful.

His grin widened. “Just stretching my legs, if you would care to join me?” he asked again. Pleasure, he answered in their silent language. They rarely met for business anymore.

She let some of the professional tension out of her shoulders. She didn’t have anything else to do, so she nodded. “I would love to, Gin.”

He immediately turned and set off in a seemingly random direction. She caught up with him and kept pace, shortening her stride to match his. She stayed a step behind him, letting him choose their path. They meandered out of the Thirteenth barracks and into the heart of the Seireitei, and then off through some slower traffic corridors.

Gin didn’t speak, and Sachiko didn’t mind the silence. She'd joined him on his walks many times before. Most of the time she just tagged along silently like she was now, watching as he performed his tricks and played his verbal games with other Shinigami. Sometimes he just passed out dried persimmons, or tried to convince her to play a prank on a high-ranking officer. She still didn't really understand why he did it, but he was having fun so she didn't need to.

This time, he didn’t seem to have anything to say to her or to anyone else. They walked in silence for a long time. Gin seemed content to just watch those around them. A few times he would nudge Sachiko with his elbow and nod in someone’s direction, reminding her with just a grin of previous mischief he’d played on them in the past.

Everyone moved out of their way as they approached, not daring to look either of them in the eye. Despite leaving the Eleventh Division decades ago, Sachiko still had that kind of reputation, and she had a feeling she would never really shake it. And Gin was, of course, Captain Ichimaru. Only those in his own Division were truly comfortable in his presence. She got the impression that he had very few friends, and even if he did, just being his friend didn’t grant a reprieve from his personality.

They turned down an empty hall, and Gin stopped suddenly. Sachiko, not getting the message, was a few steps ahead of him before she realized he wasn't with her. She turned and found him looking directly at her with that signature smile, though there was a curl to the end of his mouth that suggested active mischief was afoot and their sudden isolation was not an accident. She couldn't sense anyone else near them, and hadn't for a while, and realized only just now that he must have been intentionally steering them to a corner of the Seireitei where no one else lurked.

“Sachiko-chan.” There was a playful lilt to his voice as he said her name.

“Yes, Gin.”

“I have a surprise for you,” he said. His hands were tucked deep into his sleeves, and she thought she saw them twitching as if he were rooting around for something. “Close your eyes. And bend down a little, I can’t reach ya all the way up there.”

Surprises were not always a pleasant thing from Gin. He especially loved surprising Sachiko, having said a few times that she was a “good sport.” Being a good sport usually ended with her looking like a fool, but Sachiko didn’t have pride or a reputation for him to injure with his pranks. She always tried to play along when she was his chosen victim, and only on a handful of occasions had she ever gotten truly upset with his antics. Most of the time, she enjoyed being part of something fun. So this time, like all the times before, she decided to trust him.

She was truthfully not that much taller than him, but she obligingly bent down just enough that he could reach her face without stretching, closed her eye, and waited.

She wasn’t surprised when his reiatsu vanished again, nor when she ceased to hear his footsteps and the rustle of his robes. Gin thrived on the shock on the face of his victims, on keeping them in suspense until the very last moment and beyond. It was the moment when their eyes went wide and their heart skipped a beat where he derived the most pleasure and glee. To that end he liked to hide his presence, or at the very least his intentions. She kept her eyes closed, and didn't try to sense him. She didn’t want to spoil his fun by trying to find him out.

When long, cold fingers lightly gripped her jaw, Sachiko thought she knew what to expect. Gin had given her sour things before disguised as sweets, and spicy things also disguised as sweets. With her eyes closed, she could expect something like that, or maybe worse. She pursed her lips, preparing for something foul. Maybe it would just be a dried persimmon, though she didn’t imagine he would make her close her eyes for that.

Instead of foul-tasting food, something cold touched her lips, something soft and grinning. When nothing sour or spicy bit her tongue, she relaxed ever so slightly, and when she did, Gin kissed her deeper.

Sachiko’s heart and mind immediately set off racing. Was this a prank? He wasn't normally this physical with his mischief. She knew he liked to play with emotions, to stir people up and leave them dazed, but this was--

Gin pulled away, just barely. "Relax," he murmured against her lips. His other hand slid around the back of her neck and he tangled his fingers into her hair, holding her gently in place. “You trust me, don’t ya?”

His fingers tightened on her chin, but he wasn’t really holding her. If she wanted to, she could escape his grip. She was bigger than him, physically stronger than him. If he was trying to trap her, he could use his reiatsu, or his authority. He was using neither, only his hand resting gently on the back of her neck.

She decided to trust him.

He let out a satisfied huff and pulled her down. The previously loose hold he had on her tightened, long fingers on one hand gripping her jaw and the other fisted tightly into the curls on the back of her head.

She wasn't surprised that Gin kissed with his tongue. He ran it over her bottom lip until she opened her mouth for him, and he snaked inside. He kissed like he was trying to taste what she had for lunch, running his tongue over hers with enthusiasm. He nibbled at her bottom lip and even the tip of her tongue, grinning all the while. It was kinda gross, but it was mostly endearing.

When it got more gross than endearing, she took over. She pulled away, and almost laughed at the indignant furrow of his brow. Before he could get too upset, she cupped his face and leaned back down to kiss him again.

She kissed him softer, slower. He responded in kind, allowing her to hold him as tight as he held her. She was careful when she held him, not wanting to grip him too tight. Her one hand remained on his cheek, and the other gripped his arm, a non-kiss sensation to keep herself grounded. His hand slid down her jaw and snaked around her waist, holding her with a surprising amount of strength. Her heart fluttered and then calmed, soothed by the sensation of being held so tightly.

He pressed into her, pushing her against the wall. She took the opportunity to slide down into a sitting position rather than bending over to kiss him. He wasted no time in crawling into her lap, grinning against her mouth when she immediately wrapped her arms around his waist. Back and forth they went, taking control from one another and kissing until they were breathless. Every time one of them pulled away, for air or for a break from the sensation, the other dove back in. Her mouth strayed to his jaw and throat, and he pressed quick pecks to her nose and cheek.

"How eager, Sahciko-chan," he laughed when he finally pulled away. He tugged her bottom lip between his teeth, biting hard enough that she briefly, illogically, wondered if he actually intended to eat her. "I never knew you were so naughty.”

"You started it," she pointed out, but couldn't deny her own eagerness.

His grin widened. "A woman after my own heart," he purred, and leaned up to kiss her again.

She hadn't really thought about kissing Gin before, but now that he had initiated, suddenly she really wanted to. Now that she was kissing him, she never wanted to stop. The way he was wrapping himself around her, limbs like snakes seeking warmth in her robes, he didn’t seem like he was going to stop any time soon.

This time, she didn’t even have to think about it. She closed her eyes and trusted him.

All Your Tenderness (Gin POV)

The night was cold, but not dark. The snow had stopped falling hours ago, and the night was lit up by the waxing moon shining down on the white landscape. The sky above glittered with stars and the world below glittered with frost.

Here, however, neither the cold nor the light entered. Heavy curtains covered all the windows and walls, keeping it warm and dark inside. A little stove in one corner cradled a slumbering ember. There was nothing lying around, all books and teacups and trinkets in their proper place. A line of hand drums rested against one wall. Green tiles hung from the ceiling in clusters, as if a mosaic had been taken apart and hung up as a makeshift wind chime.

Gin moved carefully to avoid bumping against the hanging tiles and causing a racket. He was sure they sounded lovely, but it was too late at night for all that noise. He was keeping his reiatsu low. He didn't need any nosy officers wondering what he was doing in another Division's barracks.

His destination was the bed in the back right corner of the room. It wasn’t the usual futon on the floor, or even one of the elevated cots like they had in the Fourth Division. It looked more like a cabinet that had been converted into a sleeping space, a large sheltered nook protected by thick curtains. He pulled them back and leaned inside. Curled up on top of the pile of thick blankets was his prize: Sachiko Kobayashi, dressed in only a loose shirt and shorts. She’d taken her hair down for bed, thick curls spread out over the silk pillow she was half-curled around. Her bangs and hands covered the right side of her face. Even while she slept she unconsciously shielded the world from her scars.

He had planned to just slide into bed beside her immediately, but a curious whim stopped him. He had never liked how she hid herself but he knew better than to push. But here she was in a position where she couldn't fight his curiosity. He very carefully slipped his fingers under the curls covering her right eye. Her dark skin was warm to the touch, and compared to the chill of the night it felt like she was burning his fingertips. He exposed her face slowly, gently, doing his best not to wake her.

The left side of her face was familiar to him. He knew her thick mouth, her strong jaw, her round cheek. He knew the shade of brown behind her eyelid, bright and warm and always glad to see him. Her thick brow, usually furrowed in an unconscious scowl, was relaxed as she slept. Her stern countenance was a mask of peace tonight.

It was the other side of her face that he looked at now, the side that even decades later she hid from everyone. She'd allowed him to see it only in glimpses before, always letting her hair cover it or turning her face away so he didn't see.

The scar was just as bad as everyone whispered. Thick twisted tissue crossed her face in a unique pattern, two lines from the top and one from the bottom as if a large three-fingered hand had grasped her face and squeezed until her skull split open. The Hollow’s claws had completely gouged out her eye, and a chunk was missing from her nose and her jaw. The Fourth Division had done their best reconnecting the split parts of her skull, cheek, and jaw, but their best wasn’t enough to even partially hide the evidence of what had been done to her. She would always bear these deep gouges, a testament to her survival against a horrific enemy.

Guilt and anger wriggled in his chest, familiar and hot. His thumb gently caressed her scarred cheek. She'd told him once that her scars hurt, burning with the Hollow’s acid that would linger in her body forever. Nothing had been done that eased the agony, and she was the kind who accepted her fate with grace rather than seethe about it. As angry as he was about what had happened, she was resigned to it.

Sachiko was a light sleeper, and he only got a second or two before her face twitched and her breath lightened. Her face turned, her good eye opened slowly, and she met Gin’s gaze. If she was surprised to see his eyes fully open and watching her, she didn’t show it. If the serious expression on his face bothered her, she didn’t show that either. Not a hint of suspicion or fear was on her face, despite him hovering over her in the dark of her room after she had gone to sleep alone. Her eye reflected only that bright warmth, glad to see him. She didn't even seem to care that her scars were bared, too concerned with his presence.

"Gin…?” Her voice was quiet, raspy, weak with sleep. “Aren’t you cold?”

His chest squeezed. He had snuck into her room in the dead of night after being gone for days and her first thought was that he was cold? Rather than answer, he bent down and kissed her. Her eye was wide when he pulled away, and she gasped softly.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re beautiful, Sachiko-chan?” he asked so she wouldn't ask him again. He could resist her once, but with that open, trusting look on her face, he knew he couldn’t do it twice. If he let her ask another question, he would answer honestly.

She didn’t answer, eye sliding half-closed at his touch. One hand cupped her unscathed cheek and the other held her bangs away from her face. He ran his thumb over the twisted flesh again, touching the most vulnerable and delicate part of her while she had a chance to stop him.

She didn't stop him. Her brows came together and her hand twitched towards her face, but she tangled her fingers into the hem of her shirt rather than push him away. She wanted to cover her face, but she was choosing not to. She changed the subject rather than answer his question, and pulled away from his touch after a moment. "Why are you here?” She moved away from him, just enough to sit up on her elbows. “It’s the middle of the night and you just had a mission. Don’t you need to debrief, or rest?”

"Can't I come show you I missed you?" he said, unable to resist telling her at least part of the truth. He leaned further down, chasing her lips again. He was almost straddling her now, her head caged by his arms. "I've barely seen you in months, you’re neglectin’ me."

It wasn’t fair to say that, which was why he said it. But shifting the blame would pull her closer and make her long for him, to make up for the perceived failing on her part. At least, that was the idea. When she narrowed her eye at him, he got the distinct impression that his manipulation wasn't working. Whether it worked or not, though, he was willing to bet she was going to reach for him anyway.

"You're lucky I missed you too," she said before reaching for him and pulling him down for another kiss.

He knew she meant it, too. Sachiko wasn't the kind of woman to kiss simply because they had kissed before. She only kissed him when she really wanted to. She was almost as purposeful as he was. Almost.

He had missed her, and not just her body (though as he got to press into her curves, he wasn't above admitting he missed that too.) He had come to appreciate the intelligent simplicity of Sachiko’s world. She was not stupid by any stretch, but she chose to live her life in a straightforward honest manner that, given her circumstances, was admirable. She was a bit like Tosen in that regard, but without the annoying self-righteousness his fellow Captain possessed. Even Gin, who was by his very nature duplicitous, found comfort in playing by her rules. In her eyes there were no expectations for him to be anything other than what he was. She didn't get angry at him when he lied, or left, because that was simply the way he was, and she liked him like that. She willingly gave him the space to be selfish, to be cruel, to devour.

Gin grinned against her lips, and it was a true smile. He intended to devour her, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Her hands slipped under his robes, and he took the hint. He undid the ties and folds of his captain's haori without pulling away from her, and he was quick to throw the rest of his uniform away with it. If the insulated warmth of the room didn’t protect him from the frost, the heat of Sachiko’s body as he pressed into her surely would. Her blood ran warm and this was far from the first time he'd sought warmth with her.

He crawled on top of her and pushed her down. She didn’t fight him, tilting her head back to allow him access to the soft column of her throat. He couldn't hide the eagerness with which he peeled away her clothes, promising with a sly grin that she didn’t have to miss him anymore.

When she tried to turn her face away as she always did, hiding her scars against the pillow, he stopped her with a strong grip on her chin. He was under no illusion as to which of them was physically stronger. If she wanted to rip herself from his tight hold, she easily could. But when he turned her face to him, she let him. When he opened his eyes and made it clear that he was looking at her, she looked back. He looked at the whole of her and she looked back.

His heart squeezed.

There was a sharpness in her gaze, like she knew the truth of why he was really here. Did she know? Did she know the depth of his depravity and longing, the unfair ways in which he was using and twisting her for his own pleasure? Did she know how long he had closed his eyes and pretended that she was who he wanted, who he needed, until the pretending came true? When she looked into his eyes, he felt as though she was looking directly into the greedy, cavernous maw of his heart. Did she see? Did she see his teeth, his venom, his hunger? If she saw, why did she choose to let him bite down anyway? Or was she blissfully unaware of it all, letting him feast without once wondering who he really was?

She began to squirm under his intense scrutiny, and he gave her a break, leaning down to kiss her again.

"Beautiful," he announced against her lips, and kissed her again before she could refute.

At his insistence, Sachiko laid her head back and spread her legs. With a crook of his fingers and a flick of his tongue, he let her enjoy being devoured as much as he enjoyed devouring. The taste of her filled his mouth and soaked his tongue, nearly as addictive as her breathless sigh of his name. Her hand on his head was an anchor he welcomed, not pushing him down, but refusing to let him pull away. How easily her fingers slid through his hair, scratching at his scalp and into his mind.

Sachiko was a quiet woman even at the height of pleasure. That only made it so much more satisfying to watch her careful composure shatter under his attention. That desperate furrow of her brow and soft moaning sighs from her open mouth were just as strong a declaration of passion as if she writhed and wailed. The past few years of practice had made him a master of her pleasure, knowing just where to flatten his tongue and crook his fingers.

All of this with a goal, of course. He was a selfish man, after all. They both wanted the same thing, but they would be denied until she asked. He knew she guarded herself carefully, but he knew that if he kept at it, her walls would crumble for him. And they did, just when he knew they would. He was giving her a rare reprieve from an intense orgasm, tongue and fingers moving in slow gentle motions. She was desperate for him, the time apart and the intensity of his return only compounding her want, and in her desperation she finally revealed the longing she kept hidden. Gin had only wanted her to ask, but instead Sachiko begged.

“Gin, please…” It was almost a whisper. “Please, I need more of you, please…”

"Oh, Sachiko…” He pulled his fingers from her, making a show of licking them clean before crawling up her body to press his forehead against hers. “I’ll give ya what ya need, don’t worry…” He said it almost tenderly as he draped himself over her.

She didn’t rise to his teasing, and that was when he realized that she really had missed him. She met his gaze as long as she could, eye unfocused and wet with tears, either from overstimulation or emotion. She had begged for him so sweetly, as she never had before, and he couldn’t deny her. She was so high strung and desperate that he could fuck her without mercy until she shattered and she would thank him for it. Once, he might have. Not tonight, though. Tonight, he would take his time, give her just enough to keep the edge off but not nearly enough to satisfy her craving.

When they were finally joined, it felt like losing control. The entirety of her swallowed him, the expanse of her open arms and legs pulling him in, sheltering him from the winter, holding onto him tighter than she ever had before. He kissed at her open mouth, accepted a whispered ‘thank you’ against his cheek. Once she was convinced he wasn’t going to slip away, he did. Just enough to sit up on his knees, but it was also just enough to shock her out of her stupor, to keep her from getting too comfortable.

Her head fell back, but he kept his chin down, staring at her as if trying to memorize her features.

(He didn’t need to.)

(He knew her by heart already.)

This was not the same as their usual trysts. This was almost making love. One of his hands held her hip in place, while the other was tangled with hers. Her legs around his waist were shaking, but they hadn’t been going long enough for her to be overexerted. She was overwhelmed, desperate, longing for him written across the planes of her body. He thrust into her slowly, forcefully, reminding her what she could have, but withholding it.

Or so he told himself. How delightfully in character that would be, if this gentle motion was purely to wrap her tighter around his little finger. In truth, the slow careful strokes were less to tease her and more because he dreaded the end of it. He needed this, wanted this, and he knew his time here was finite. To run towards that climax would mean it was time to leave her and slither away back into the cold of the world outside.

“I wonder...?” he asked, pretending to tease while he was buried deep inside her. He stopped moving and she whined, gripping his arms almost possessively. "Tell me, Sachiko-chan, whose dog you are." His playful tone hid the demand hidden in the words, the need for her to give him the answer he wanted.

"I'm no one's," she gasped, sounding almost confused by the question.

He grinned, pleased by her answer. She was fully herself even in the throes of pleasure. Even as she gasped and sighed and rolled her hips beneath him in search of more, she held strong against his questions. She was his stubborn thing, not letting the truth past her teeth until she knew he really wanted it.

And, oh, he did want. He leaned down and kissed her, sucked her tongue into his mouth and bit down hard. He swallowed her whines and her blood, and tucking them deep in his belly. She had been giving in to him little by little over the years, not knowing (or did she know?) that he was not a man of half measures. If she was under the impression that she could offer him what he wanted at no risk to herself, she was sorely mistaken. He would take her and never give her back, rip her to pieces and devour her so the warm pieces of her heart would be with him forever. He was a selfish man, a possessive man, and had no intentions of pretending otherwise.

His grip on her tightened, fingers digging into her hip and into the back of her hand. For all his scheming, he was still a man. As much as he would love to toy with her forever, his own body yearned for hers, and being together after so long apart was a bliss he couldn’t fight. Far sooner than he wanted, he felt the end coming for him. It crawled its way down his spine, and when the dam burst, the throaty sigh he released was too honest to be purposeful. She responded with a breathy exhale of his name, as if his pleasure somehow increased her own.

He had planned to pull out and away as soon as he was spent, to pull back on his robes and disappear into the blizzard. But as he caught his breath from his orgasm, the fire in him burned hotter rather than dying down. Sachiko was none the wiser, catching her breath along with him, eyes closed as she basked in the brief moment they had together.

Perhaps not so brief. On a whim, Gin flipped them over, sprawling out beneath her in the absurdly soft blankets. She went over gracefully, hands coming to rest on either side of his head. She completely consumed him, a dark curtain hiding him from the cold of the night. Her eye when she looked at him was wide, her brow furrowed and her mouth pulled into an uncertain frown. Her gaze asked a hesitant question, one he wasn’t sure how to answer.

He had never stayed before.

For a few moments, they were still, caught in her uncertainty. Then, he laid one hand on her hip, the other reaching up to wrap gently around her throat. He didn't squeeze or pull. This wasn't a threat. It was a collar, a claim.

"Show me whose dog you are," he asked again.

She hesitated still, the last of her heart's barrier still holding out. To break that last bit of resistance, he raised his hand from her throat, to her cheek, cupping the scarred flesh and stroking it with his thumb.

"Be good for me now, Sachiko-chan." Dirty words, spoken in an almost gentle tone. They had the desired effect as he watched a shiver run over her whole body. Her eye slid half-closed and she leaned into his palm as if she were the one coming in from the cold.

“What do you want?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse, though not from sleep any longer.

He grinned. “More,” he demanded.

Slowly, as if expecting him to disappear, she lowered herself down. He wasn’t able to penetrate her again just yet, but she dragged herself across his softening flesh, coaxing yet more out of both of them. This time, Gin did let his head fall back, eyes closed, his world shrunk down to where their bodies met.

When he was able to meet her weight with an eager thrust, she let down the last of her walls and gave herself fully. She didn’t stop when the first wave hit her, held up only by his hand on her chest. She whispered his name fervently, desperately, like it was a prayer. Trusting that he would pick up the pieces (would he? even he wasn't sure), she tore herself apart for him, with him, using him. Her hips moved in desperate circles, guided by his hand on her hip and fingers between her legs, touching her with masterful intent. When she began to shake and whine, starting to come apart, he spurred her on, not allowing her to slow or stop. With his words now as well as his body, he urged her to keep going. His own need had grown far past what could be physically sated. He needed her to fuck him until their skin split open and their bodies melted together. He needed to devour her until he was bursting.

She had nowhere to hide in this position, allowing him full view of the tender, purposeful way she looked at him while they fucked. Her face was open, showing clearly what she had never said, what he had never wanted her to say. He didn’t bring it up, didn't tease or mock. For once, he gave her what she gave him. When she fell down, physically exhausted, he rose up to meet her, pressing his forehead against hers.

“That’s it…” he murmured, almost tender. He wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her closer. He couldn’t pull out of her in this position, leaving them no other option but to grind into each other as hard as they could.

When she reached out blindly for support, he tangled his fingers with hers. She held him like he was her anchor to the world, the pain only bringing him higher. When overwhelmed tears streamed down her face, he kissed them away, tongue snaking out to taste the salt of her. Little by little, he took the torn scraps of her and swallowed them down.

"Yours," she finally whispered, half sobbing. Her face was inches from his, her eye unfocused, cheek pressed against his palm. "Yours, I'm yours…"

With her permission finally given, he laid his claim on her, any way he could. He bit down on her neck until he tasted blood as he came inside of her for the second time. This time, he dragged her over the precipice with him, her fourth of the night. It was too much for her, he could see. The last of her strength left her, though she had just enough wit left to collapse just to the left, not quite crushing him. Pleased, he opened wide and took the last of her in his jaws, forever doomed to lie in the heart of him. He pressed his grinning mouth to her skin. She would be stained by him, twisted by him for the rest of her life, even if it took all his power to do it.

The realization came to him that no one would know what he had done to her, and with it came the urge to carve his name in her flesh with his nails. He managed to resist, just barely.

“One more time,” he whispered. She whimpered, shaking her head. “Just one more, Sachiko-chan.” He kissed her again.

She obeyed, legs shaking as she began to grind against him again. This time, he took the reins back again, rolling her onto her side and sliding in with his face pressed to her back. He couldn’t stand it if he saw her face again. If he looked into her face again, he would lose his nerve. He kept one hand between her legs, not letting her escape by simply being a willing hole.

The final time was almost anticlimactic. She came first, the only sign being the tremble in her limbs, but she brought him down just after, and he sighed as finally the pit in his stomach felt full.

When they finally came down, she still hesitated to roll away from him. Though, that may have been less devotion and more exhaustion. When he pulled away, she whined, and her hand moved as if she were going to reach for him. She didn’t. He was worn out as well, barely possessing the strength to sit up. He got up for just a moment to fetch a towel to wet. He wiped the cum off of her thighs and hips, and tossed the blanket they'd fucked on to a corner of the room to be dealt with later. He slid back onto the bed and she immediately rolled over onto her stomach, draping an arm over his waist.

He turned his head and their eyes met. She looked sleepy and satisfied, and something in him felt…different. She whispered his name and it didn't sound like his anymore. Something about the way it filled her mouth felt different, like she had pulled it out of her stomach and laid it at his feet. How long had she had it? When had he given it to her? He wondered how much of himself he had given to her without noticing.

Oblivious to his thoughts, just glad to be in his presence, she hummed happily and shifted closer to him. He pressed a kiss to her forehead and she relaxed as if he had banished all the misery and tension from her.

“I did miss you,” he murmured into her bare shoulder, almost hoping she didn’t hear.

“I know,” she replied gently, moving closer and wrapping herself around him. The chill that had begun to creep in fled.

Did she know? All his life was sprinting towards a nebulous goal that would damn him and drag him away from her, and not once had he ever turned back, not really. And yet when he tried to run away from her, she pulled him back.

No, that wasn’t right, nor was it fair to her. It wasn't on purpose. Sachiko always let him go, never holding him tight or using the ties that bound them to drag him back. But in her absence he missed her claws dug deep in his flesh and her teeth resting on his throat. He missed the warmth of her, innocent and oblivious to the coldness that was in his blood. He found himself twisting words, playing tricks, and sneaking in the middle of the night into a room that wasn't his in order to witness the moment where her heart outran her brain and she smiled at him as if the moon was hung just to light his face. Every time he came back, she opened herself to him. And like the predator he was, he crawled inside without hesitation.

She sighed one final time, eye sliding closed as she gave in to sleep. “I missed you too,” she said softly, and he knew what it was she meant to say.

Didn't Mean to Burden You with Love (Sachiko POV)

She expected the interrogation. Very few people had openly trusted Gin Ichimaru, and fewer still counted him among their friends…or whatever it was she and Gin had been. To her knowledge, there were four people in all the Seireitei known to willingly associate with him. One had defected with him. One had been manipulated, and was known to be innocent. One had assisted in trying to stop him, and was known to be innocent. One waited patiently for her turn.

Two days after Captain Aizen, Captain Tosen, and Captain Ichimaru’s defection, Sachiko was interrogated by two members of the Onmitsukidō. After finishing up her paperwork for the day, she looked up and they were suddenly in front of her. Given that they did not immediately spirit her away to some dark room suggested that her innocence was assumed.

“Sachiko Kobayashi, Thirteenth Division Fourth Seat,” the taller person on the left addressed her. Her voice was deep and without emotion, and with most of her face hidden, Sachiko couldn’t know anything about her.

That was a familiar experience at this point, and she tried not to let it bother her. She laid her pen and papers down and dutifully prepared to answer their every question honestly. She had no reason to lie.

"How long have you known Gin Ichimaru?" was the first question, asked the moment she gave them her full attention.

"Fifty-seven years and ten months," she answered. They didn’t ask, so she didn't tell them that she hadn't considered him a friend until thirty-one years and three months ago, or that he had kissed her three years and one month ago, or that they had first had sex two years and seven months ago.

“How did you meet?”

“He approached me immediately after my transfer to the Thirteenth Division, to inquire about my health.”

They asked her more questions about the beginning of the relationship, and she answered. No, he hadn’t tried to get her to transfer to his Division, which was Captain Aizen’s Fifth Division at that time. Yes, he had seemed to seek her out intentionally.

“Did he ever ask you to run odd errands, tasks, or take over duties for him with no explanation?” the shorter person asked, speaking for the first time. Their voice was soft and quiet like wind on a cool night.

"Yes."

She sometimes was an accomplice to his pranks, holding onto people's missing items or acting as a backup for his white lies such as the time and place of an important meeting he'd invented. The one time they’d been on a mission together, he’d tasked her with defeating the Hollow herself, but he’d told her that it was just an excuse for him to see her Shikai and she had no reason not to believe him. And, of course, she’d helped him with his paperwork when she happened to catch him napping and knew he was on a deadline.

"Do these favors include when he was Aizen's Lieutenant?" was the follow up.

"Yes."

She was asked to give details on these events, though the details weren’t interesting. Gin had learned very early that, so long as he asked politely, Sachiko had no problem doing favors for him. She’d lost count of how many little things she’d done for him over nearly sixty years.

“Did he ever take advantage of the access you have been given to the Daireishokairō?”

Sachiko had been granted access to the Central 46’s great archive only once, with great stipulations and restrictions to what she could access. A string of strangely powerful Hollows had inspired a panic among the Shinigami, and a task force had been assembled to look into it. She had been appointed by her Captain to join them, an honor that to this day inspired pride.

“I’m not sure how to answer that,” Sachiko said honestly. “He never asked me to look anything up for him, but he asked me about what I learned when I went in there.” She shrugged one shoulder. “He didn’t ask me about anything that was restricted,” she recalled.

“Did he ever ask you about Hollows, or Hueco Mundo?”

She blinked. “Yes, of course. That's what I was looking up in there: reports from the archives on old missions involving unusual Hollows, and comparing them to what we were seeing at the time.” She trailed off. Those were fond memories, though she wasn't going to tell them that. She and Gin had gone over most of the reports together. “Throughout the whole project, he sat with me while I worked. He didn’t understand everything, so I would explain things to him like Hollow power levels, the upper limits of their abilities, and some of the unique properties of their bodies. He liked to ask me questions.” Compelled to defend him, she added, "His Division was involved in the project as well. He and I were on the final assault team together."

“Did he not have others in his own department who could answer him?”

“I don’t know. I assume he did.” He’d never told her why he'd chosen to spend that time with her. She didn’t tell them, but she'd always hoped it was on purpose. She liked to read reports about powerful Hollows, and had Ever Since. Gin knew her interest was one of the ways she tried to cope with What Had Happened, because she’d told him, and he was one of the few people who would listen to her talk about it with no judgment. He actually seemed to enjoy their conversations, too, actively participating and asking questions where others let her just ramble.

Her interrogators didn't care about that, though. Instead, they asked for any specific details she might’ve given him about particular Hollows.

"Only the ones in the reports. He never asked for anything extra."

Then, they asked if he'd ever talked of treason, of being displeased with the Soul Society. Did he encourage her to see the Seireitei as corrupt, or wrong, or unworthy of her time? Did he speak ill of the Central 46’s decisions or decrees? This answer was the first one she almost hesitated to give.

“No,” she said. They didn’t ask, so she didn’t say that she had, on a few drunken nights, and he had always listened with the same face, intense and dark.

He’d been born in the Soul Society, but Sachiko had come here the tragic way, a child of only twelve years old. Even after joining, she’d never had a high opinion of the Seireitei as an organization. Shinigami had a great responsibility, and many of them didn’t treat it with the gravity it deserved. How many other children had suffered as she had, lost and afraid, until it was almost too late? She’d only ever spoken aloud those frustrations to Gin, and he’d only ever listened.

“Had he ever spoken to you about Sōsuke Aizen, or arranged a meeting between the two of you?” the taller person asked next, almost immediately after she had finished speaking.

“No,” she answered.

She’d only met Captain Aizen in person once, and Gin hadn’t been there. Back when she was still recovering physically, delivering paperwork was one of her main duties. She’d met Aizen then. At that time Gin was his Lieutenant, but she’d met Sōsuke Aizen alone in his office. He'd seemed just as polite and good-natured as she'd heard he was. He’d asked how her day was going, and whether she was in any pain. When she admitted that she was, he allowed her to rest in his office and made small talk, asking her how she liked her new Division and whether she was enjoying the warmer spring that had come that year. As far as she knew, Gin had no idea she'd ever spoken to his Captain.

“Did Ichimaru ever mention these names to you: Kisuke Urahara, Rukia Kuchiki, Izuru Kira, or Rangiku Matsumoto?”

“We never spoke of Kisuke Urahara, or Rukia Kuchiki, but I know who they are,” she said. Urahara was a former Captain, but he had vanished decades before she’d even been admitted to the Academy. Kuchiki, of course, was a well-known name in the whole Soul Society, and Rukia was one of the most popular members of Sachiko’s own Division, so she knew who the woman was. Gin had never mentioned either of them, though. And as for the other two… “I know that he was fond of his Lieutenant. He spoke highly of Kira-san, both when he was in the Third and Fifth Division. I remember he seemed very happy when Kira became his Lieutenant. We drank on the day he was promoted.” Too much, honestly. It was the only time Sachiko had ever seen Gin too drunk to function.

“And Lieutenant Matsumoto?”

Sachiko frowned, searching her memory. “He didn’t talk about her very much,” she admitted, “I could count on two hands how many times. I know that they grew up together.” She had always assumed that Gin was very fond of Lieutenant Matsumoto, just based on the way that he had spoken of her. “He mentioned spending time with her sometimes, and sometimes told me about things that happened when they were kids.”

“He never mentioned you to anyone else,” the shorter person told her. “No one in his Division recognized your name when we asked, and neither Lieutenants Kira nor Matsumoto knew who you were.”

Sachiko blinked, confused. She knew that was supposed to make her feel something, but she didn't know what.

"Does this surprise you?" they asked.

"Yes," she admitted. "I assumed he would have mentioned me at least in passing." They’d been lovers almost three years, and no one knew? Granted, she'd never said anything about it either, but she didn't have anyone to tell.

"He did not. We found a single note in his bedroom mentioning the first name Sachiko. After investigation, we discovered a drawing in your personal quarters that linked the two of you."

Sachiko's cheeks burned. Her sketches? She'd only drawn him on paper that would never be seen by another person, too embarrassed by her lack of skill and the somewhat childish nature of the habit. To know that two people of such a serious disposition--and maybe more--had seen them was mortifying.

“Do you have any idea why he might have kept your connection a secret?” the taller asked, unaware or uncaring of her embarrassment.

“...no, I don’t,” she said honestly. Then, as soon as she said it, something occurred to her. “Maybe he didn’t want anyone to know he was having sex with a high-ranking officer in another Division?” That was her best guess. Fraternization wasn’t forbidden, but having relationships across Divisions was generally considered a bad idea.

“The two of you were sexually intimate?” the taller asked, while the shorter made a weird noise in their throat.

“For the past two years and seven months,” she confirmed.

The two exchanged a look. Sachiko wasn't sure how, since their faces were completely covered, but some information seemed to pass silently between them.

“Did the favors for him begin before or after this…intimate relationship began?” the taller asked, while the shorter rubbed at their mask with the back of their hand.

“Long before,” she answered.

Her answers finally seemed to satisfy them. They asked her only a few more after that, requesting a few more details about previous questions. Then she blinked and they were gone. She sat there for a few minutes. Nothing happened.

She was waiting for something to happen, externally or internally. She wasn't scared, she wasn't hurt, she wasn't even surprised. She was just confused.

Gin's defection didn't surprise her as much as she might have expected. He liked to leave, and this seemed almost the logical conclusion. The sight of his retreating back was as familiar as his smiling face. Every time he came to her for sex or conversation, she had a feeling she was enjoying him on borrowed time, like he had ditched something more important to spend time with her but still had every intention of going back to it. He had always held his cards close to his chest, and she had let him. That she had been one of his secrets, however, was the most confusing and upsetting of all the week's revelations.

If she had ever asked him about his day, he would tell her about Lieutenants Kira or Matsumoto if he’d seen them. When he went for his "people watching" walks, he told her about every single person he encountered. But what about the reverse? When he spent his nights in her bed, and someone asked where he’d been, what did he say? If someone asked about his day on the days she helped him play his pranks, what did he say?

Perhaps by design, all the questions they'd asked made Sachiko wonder if she had somehow been an unwitting accomplice to his crimes. By relieving some of the weight of his duties without question or suspicion, had she given him the freedom to take part in conspiracy?

For the first time in almost sixty years of knowing Gin Ichimaru, Sachiko doubted. He had always seemed easy to understand at his core, even if his moment-to-moment thoughts often escaped her. She'd liked him the way he was, frequent absences and all. She didn’t ask questions or try to make him stay with her longer than he wanted to. She wasn't going to wave her hands and pretend he wasn't the kind of man who would murder and betray for his own reasons, but she still felt hurt and she didn't know why. Was it the magnitude of his crimes? Was it the way he had used those closest to him as tools in the end, leaving her in blissful unawareness?

She was content with all the misfortune of her life being one unhappy accident after another, a legacy of bad luck she was willing to bear for the contented peace of the present. The rage that had grown inside her in her youth had calmed in her adulthood once it became clear there was no point to it. But now her heart was restless and confused. All of her hard earned peace was thrown off by yet another revelation.

Had That been Aizen's doing? Had Gin known? Was that what she was to him? An experiment? An anomaly? A failure for having survived? Was she meat fit only for him to devour, to defile, to throw away at his amusement? He held her at a distance, sometimes toying with her by bringing her in close before leaving again. She had let him. She had been so happy to let him do as he pleased if it meant he was standing beside her for just a moment.

Sachiko hated uncertainty, and she just wanted to sit down and study until the truth came out. But Gin was gone, and she couldn't interrogate him. With nothing else to do, she put all the thoughts and feelings away, and got back to work. Instead of tears, a familiar void grew inside her throat, the almost forgotten and painfully familiar feeling of being alone. She let it grow until it filled her up, pushing away hurt and confusion and leaving no room for tears.

Sachiko didn’t cry for Gin that night, or the night after. She returned to her duties with no further scrutiny. No one had really known she had been involved with him and she had no real friends aside from him, so no one asked how she was doing, or how she felt, or if she missed him.

If they had asked, she would have answered: fine, horrible, and of course she did.

In autumn, everything began to fall into place. Sachiko wasn’t directly involved, but she read reports about the Visoreds and the Arrancar making their mysterious moves in the world of the living. A multi-Division team was dispatched into the world of the living to investigate. Aizen's goals became known and the Soul Society prepared for war. Gin's name was nowhere to be found in any of the publically released reports, but that wasn't a comfort.

The day her heart finally broke began without incident. Sachiko had finished her daily work early and was taking them for approval shortly before nightfall. No one spoke to her as she walked the halls towards her Captain's office. People moved out of her way and avoided her gaze without acknowledging her presence.

Captain Ukitake didn’t seem surprised to see her when she entered his office. He set aside his work and invited her in with an outstretched hand.

“Ah, Kobayashi-san. Is there something I can assist you with this evening?” He looked tired, but there was a determined clench to his jaw and brow. “Ah, thank you.” He took the reports from her with a smile. “Punctual, as always. Your diligence is appreciated.”

“Of course, Captain.” She bowed deeply, as she always did when speaking to him. He had stopped asking her to sit up straight when they talked. She didn’t look him in the eyes, but she saw the gentle smile on his face. This time it didn't calm her as much as it usually did.

She let him read her work silently, accepting his few comments with a nod. Finally, he set them aside, but did not dismiss her.

“Say, Kobayashi-san," he began slowly, "do you remember those old projects from a few years ago? From that winter with all the strange Hollows?”

“Of course." It had been more than a few years ago by now, but as old as Captain Ukitake was, she knew not to correct him. Time stretched differently for those who had so much of it.

“I will be frank with you," he began solemnly. "We have reason now to believe those incidents might be related to some of Aizen’s experiments. If you would be able to re-compile all of that information and compare it to the data we’re getting on the Arrancar, I am certain that we will be able to find something useful.” He coughed, a polite dry cough to imply he was aware this was a delicate subject. "We also have reason to believe that the...incident preceding your transfer all those years ago may have been Aizen’s doing as well."

“I see." The information was purely that, at the moment. She had no feelings one way or the other, for now. She had never needed anyone to blame for What Had Happened, and recent events hadn't changed that. As always, however, she jumped at the chance to be useful to her Captain. "I will begin to recompile my notes right away.”

“Right away? Nonsense.” He leaned forward, resting his chin on his folded hands and holding his gaze steady. “It is the end of the day, Kobayashi-san, and I know you’ve been working hard. It is just a hunch of mine, nothing official, so you can begin tomorrow morning.”

Once upon a time, she would have insisted. She used to believe that her Captain underestimated her or was overcompensating for the fatigue he knew her injuries still caused her. She knew better now. Captain Ukitake wanted her at her best, and he knew that rest was not the antithesis of productivity. He seemed to know before Sachiko did when she was overworking herself, and usually suggested she take a break before she even knew she was exhausted.

“Thank you, Captain.” After a moment of thought, she smiled to let him know she genuinely appreciated the gesture. He brightened up at the sight, returning it with a smile of his own. “I will report to you when I have results.”

"As I said, there is no rush. It will be winter before we must truly be ready." He waved a hand, a move that would have looked haughty on any other man. "Go, get some rest."

She bowed and took her leave.

The sun was barely setting. The wind blew through the open corridors of the barracks, ringing the chimes at the door behind her. Pollen was still heavy in the air, and she had to muffle her constant sneezes in her sleeve. It was a relief when she arrived at her quarters, where thick curtains and mild incense kept the vegetation outside from assaulting her nose and eyes. It was a relief to close the door behind her and shut out the pollen, the sound, and the light.

Captain Ukitake was right. She was exhausted.

No doubt because her Captain had brought it up, she found herself thinking back all those decades ago. Were the feelings she’d had then similar to what she felt now? She felt…lost, and cold. It didn’t feel like anyone’s fault, but she was alone again.

She’d left the Eleventh because it felt like a ghost town, as if every corner was haunted, or cursed. Transferring hadn’t made the feeling go away, but Gin had. She had no room in her heart for ghosts with him inside of her chest, a snake burrowing for warmth inside the cavern of her ribs. But now…now she felt exactly the same as she had, but she had no Eleventh Division to blame.

Maybe it wasn’t the Division that was haunted. Maybe it was her.

In the past, with other people, she'd always had something to cling to, trinkets and gifts to remind her of the happier times.

She could count on one hand, using one finger, how many tangible gifts he'd ever given her. It had only been a few weeks ago, on the morning that she'd woken up to find Gin uncharacteristically still in her bed, she'd been unable to take her eyes off of him. He’d been gone for a long time, and to have him again felt right, as if a missing part of her had come back. She’d missed him, so much, and now that he was back she wanted to memorize him for the next time. While watching him get dressed, she'd commented that she wouldn't miss him so much if he left something to remember him by. She'd meant it as a joke, similar to the teasing he often threw her way, but he hadn't laughed or even smiled. He'd just hummed and produced from his sleeve a hair pin decorated with pretty little light blue flowers. He hadn't handed it to her, and instead had set it down on her small vanity.

"I was savin' it for your birthday," he'd said without looking at her, "but it looks like I won't be around then, so I'll give it ya now." His tone was strange, soft and gentle.

And then he'd left. Again.

At the time, she'd thought he was referring to an upcoming mission he'd be on. Now, in hindsight, the fact that that had been the day Rukia Kuchiki had been arrested no longer seemed a coincidence. Had it been his attempt at a secretive farewell? Was it just a way to placate her, to stop her from looking too closely at his life? Was it meant to torment her, to give her a painful reminder of what they'd had, what she'd allowed?

She hadn't had a chance to wear it, but it had been proudly displayed on her vanity since that day, the one piece of nonfunctional jewelry she owned. Every time she caught a glimpse of it, her heart skipped a beat and she felt the nearly uncontrollable urge to smile as wide as she could.

She picked it up now and twirled it slowly between her fingers. Her stomach flipped. She'd accepted it as a gift, a real gift to convey affection, but now she didn’t know what it was. Embarrassingly, the same feelings still rose up in her as she watched it. Holding it made her remember how it felt to hold Gin to her chest, to feel his lips against her.

In a fit of juvenile aggravation, she wrapped it in a plain shirt and stuck it under her wood stove. It wouldn't burn there, but she would never have to look at it again.

Satisfied that that emotion had been resolved, she began to prepare for bed.

As she took off her uniform and let her hair down, she noticed that her hands were shaking. She couldn't find any reason for them to do so, so she ignored it even when the trembling spread to her entire body. She’d planned on reading or writing before bed but now that she was here, she was too tired. As soon as she was undressed, she crawled into bed, pulled the curtains closed, and wrapped her blankets around herself. Her bed was a curated place of comfort, darkness, and warmth: almost a dozen pillows and six blankets as soft and fluffy as she could afford. The weight and heat was a comforting constant in a world of dizzying unknowns. She burrowed deep into the blankets, seeking that moment when the warmth sapped her of all her tension away and allowed her to truly relax.

Without any warning, her body went cold. Her heart began to pound so hard she felt it in her throat. The shaking came back and her head began to spin and she felt sick to her stomach. Her body was frozen, unable to move as sobs wracked her body. She wanted to curl up tight, to fold herself again and again until she could fit in her own ribcage and then claw her way out.

Her skin hurt, her throat hurt. Her chest hurt. She dug her nails into her sides, trying to ground herself but only adding to the overstimulation. She thought of Gin in her bed, digging his nails into her skin with that distant grin, pulling her close and kissing her deeply. She thought of The Hollow, grinning that frozen grin as it ripped her to pieces. She thought of struggling against a hopelessly strong current, clawing and praying for a savior that wasn't coming.

Grief mixed with anger and confusion inside of her. She found herself going over every memory, looking for some clue to what had been wrong. He had been so interested in her Shikai, in her scars, in her life, always pushing her to bare herself to his fangs. She'd thought it was just the way he was, the way he treated those close to him. She'd been willing to pay that price, once her distrust had faded to begrudging tolerance. That tolerance had turned to amused enjoyment had turned to warm affection had turned to…to…

She couldn't even think it, not even in her mind where no one could hear. That word had weight to it, had promises inside of it that she knew he wouldn’t keep.

Had he known all this time?

Sachiko had allowed Gin into her world, into her body, into her heart and soul. She had made the choice, once, twice, a hundred times, to trust him, thinking that she knew him to an extent. Thinking that he had allowed her to know him, that her trust was reciprocated with respect or affection.

It was a lie. She had never known him.

Sachiko buried her face in the pillow and wailed.

Ending 1: You and I Are Blood and Wine (Sachiko POV)

They won. Aizen's plot was foiled, and his throne in Hueco Mundo unseated. The world was saved, thanks to someone else somewhere else. Sachiko had no part in it, nor had she wanted one. The days others spent fighting, she spent filing reports and delivering paperwork as always.

Sachiko knew she should have felt some sense of relief or victory. Even though she hadn't been directly involved in the whole thing, she was one of the many many people who lived in the world, and should have been relieved that Aizen's plans to upend everything had been stopped. To her shame, however, her only thought when the victors returned home was: Where is Gin? She'd heard he’d come home in Lieutenant Matsumoto's arms and on the verge of death. His unconscious body had been taken to the Fourth Division for healing, and he’d been moved to a prison cell as soon as he was out of danger of dying.

She'd hoped that the months since he’d left, few though they'd been, would have been enough to ease the ache for him. She'd hoped that she might be able to acknowledge his return with a degree of realistic detachment. After all, she had fully expected him to die, and she had thought she'd made her peace with that. She'd hoped that the sting of betrayal would overpower her first instinct, which was to go to him.

She was wrong.

She overheard the news of his stabilization as a group of Shinigami passed by her open office, discussing the news of the day in excited tones.

He's okay, she thought. What a relief.

She didn't even make it through the day. The sun was still peeking above the horizon when she put aside her work and headed straight for the prison cells.

She didn’t encounter anyone until she was in the hall on the way to his cell. Another figure was in the hall, walking slowly in her direction with their head down. As they came close and raised their head, she blinked in vague recognition.

"Kobayashi-san."

It took her a moment to find her voice. "Lieutenant Matsumoto," she greeted.

"You here for him too?" Lieutenant Matsumoto asked. She looked… Well, Sachiko didn't know her well enough to know what she usually looked like, but from an objective perspective, she looked bad. Her skin was pale and there were dark bags under her eyes, which were red as if she'd been crying. Her hair was untidy, and the front was lifted like she'd been running her fingers through her bangs. That was beside her extensive injuries, which were still bandaged. She looked as harrowed as Sachiko felt, and she had a much more valid reason for being so.

"Yes." Sachiko felt uncomfortable admitting it, realizing now how ridiculous it was to be here. This woman had known Gin longer than her, and was closer to him than her, and had actually participated in the battle and had carried him home while Sachiko had just sat in her office and--

"He's still unconscious," Lieutenant Matsumoto said, interrupting her spiraling thoughts. "But he'll survive.” Sachiko got the impression that the look she was giving her meant something, if only she could read it. "I read your interview," she said gently. “Seems like you and I were rivals and didn’t even know it. I didn’t peg him as the unfaithful type, to be honest. Didn't think he'd put in the effort.”

It took a moment for the meaning of the other woman’s words to sink in, but as soon as they did, Sachiko went hot with shame. Her heart dropped and she wanted to run away. "I'm sorry," she said.

Suddenly Gin keeping her a secret made a little more sense, and hurt a little more.

Lieutenant Matsumoto's face softened and she looked down at Sachiko's hands, which were tangled around each other so tightly her fingertips were pale and tingling. Self conscious, she slipped them into her sleeves.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. "I didn't know." There was so much she didn't know.

"There's no need to apologize," Lieutenant Matsumoto said gently. “Gin and I grew up together, but…it feels like he’s been gone for a long time.” Their eyes met, and Sachiko realized that the other woman was on the verge of tears as well. “You know what that’s like, don’t you?”

Sachiko lowered her eyes and nodded slowly, even though doing so felt like betraying him somehow. Her first instinct was to defend him, but Lieutenant Matsumoto knew him better. What could Sachiko say?

“It’s better that way,” Lieutenant Matsumoto continued. “It hurts now, but we’ll survive.” She turned to look at the door from which she’d just come. “They…they already severed his Saketsu and his Hakusui, so he’s more or less harmless now," she said. “No matter what happens, he won’t be a danger to anyone anymore.”

For some reason, hearing that nearly made Sachiko burst into tears. Inside her sleeves, her fingers gripped her forearms tight enough to leave marks.

"What will happen to him?" she asked. Matsumoto was a Lieutenant, she had to know more than Sachiko did. “Is he going to… Are they going to...” She couldn’t say it.

"As soon as he is well enough, he will go on trial," Lieutenant Matsumoto said. "I expect he'll be imprisoned. They didn't execute Aizen, so they probably won't execute him." She gave Sachiko another soft look. "They wouldn't have gone through all the trouble of severing him if they planned on killing him."

Sachiko nodded slowly. The thought that he would live was a comfort, but the thought of him being out of her reach, locked away forever was both familiar and too painful to bear.

“I should go,” Lieutenant Matsumoto said, saving Sachiko the struggle of exiting the conversation herself. She smiled at Sachiko, and it looked more sad than happy. “Good luck.”

“I apologize for taking your time.” Sachiko bowed again. “Thank you for your words.”

She stepped aside to let Lieutenant Matsumoto pass and then gave in to the urge to just go to him. She walked quickly, almost running, not caring if she looked foolish.

The holding room was divided into a cell half and a visiting half, the two separated by bars that had to be made of more than just the thick metal she could see. There were three guards standing in front of the cell, and one Fourth Division nurse passed out by the door. The guards said nothing as she approached the bars of the cell, but she could tell they were watching her closely.

Gin was, as Lieutenant Matsumoto had said, still asleep. A sheet covered him from the waist down, exposing the tightly wrapped stump of his right arm and the extensive stitching and bandaging holding his torso together. The cell was completely empty except for the bed he was lying in and a stool beside him. The bed was tucked against the wall, leaving most of the massive cell completely empty.

"May I go in?" she asked. She was amazed at how steady her voice sounded. She felt like she was about to burst into tears or start screaming, but she sounded as casual as if she were asking about the weather.

The nearest guard looked at her for only a moment. "Yes. Hands where I can see them."

She slid her hands out of her sleeves and the guard opened the cell for her. He turned to watch her as she stepped inside, while the other two kept their gaze on the door.

It was only a few short steps to bridge the distance between them. She lowered herself awkwardly down on the stool by his side. It was designed, as most things were, for someone shorter than her, and she felt a bit like an adult sitting on child’s furniture. If he were awake, Gin probably would’ve laughed at the sight.

The thought, along with his proximity, reminded her that he was back, and with that reminder came the flood of emotions.

She was angry, hurt, and bitter, but she was also just glad that he was alive. Part of her wished he was awake so she could slap him. Another part of her wished he was awake so she could embrace him. A third part of her was relieved he was asleep so she didn't have to decide which she would do.

Since she didn’t have to decide, she just looked at him. She wasn’t sure if he was just sleeping, or if he was in that deep, nearly comatose state that souls entered while they recovered from terrible wounds. When she’d lost her eye, she’d slept for almost a month. Unsure, she kept as quiet and still as she could, not wanting to risk waking him.

In slumber, his trademark grin was gone. Even the furrow of his brow, always present if his smile wasn’t, was completely smooth. In this relaxed state, he looked almost like a different person. The more superficial wounds from the battle had been healed, leaving only the massive slash across his torso. She knew that, even in sleep, it must be hurting him. She remembered all those years ago being in a similar position, and even while she'd dreamt, she'd felt the agony of her wounds. The smell of the medicines that Fourth Division had given him were familiar, and the scars on her face and torso began to prickle with old memories.

The anger and uncertainty she'd been feeling faded as she sat beside him, partially because it felt a bit stupid to have such strong feelings towards someone who was asleep. She couldn't deny that it was also partially because she was relieved that he was alive, and that the Central 46 didn't seem to be planning on killing him. Selfishly, she was glad that she still had him, even if it was only in the small and superficial way of being alive at the same time.

The blanket under his arm was wrinkled. Sachiko tried to ignore it, but as time went on, she couldn’t put it out of her mind. It must have been uncomfortable, and it made her own arm itch. She very carefully lifted his arm, and smoothed out the sheet. As she gently laid his elbow back down on the bed, his face twitched and his breathing changed.

Sachiko froze.

Go back to sleep, she begged him silently, not daring to move or even breathe. Go back to sleep!

His eyes opened.

Her hand, which had been still wrapped loosely around his wrist, shot back to her lap. Foolishly, the thought came to her mind that if she stayed very still, he wouldn’t look at her.

He blinked a few times at the ceiling, then turned his head to look at her. When their eyes met, her breath stopped. She hadn’t been expecting to see the clear blue of his irises. They were cloudy and a bit unfocused, taking a moment to settle on her face. His mouth pulled down in a slight frown.

“So the one who came…was you?” His voice was so quiet and rough, as if he hadn’t spoken in weeks.

That familiar shame came back. She wasn’t supposed to be here.

"Lieutenant Matsumoto was just here," she said, voice cracking. "She was here with you before me."

In more ways than one.

"Surprised ya bothered with me, Sachiko-chan." His eyes narrowed until they’d nearly closed, though his frown remained. "After everything, you still came back…"

Like a loyal dog, her mind supplied the rest of the sentence he didn't finish. Isn't that what she'd promised him?

Her breath started to come rapidly and tears blurred her vision. Guilt and confusion began to cloud her mind. She didn't know what to say. She didn’t even know if he wanted to see her. Without any input from her overwhelmed mind and heart, her body took over, and she did something she hadn't done in years.

Sachiko fled. She was nearly sprinting as she let her feet take her back to the Thirteenth Division barracks. As soon as she was in the safety of her own room, she fell into bed and cried until she felt empty.

This time, the pain didn’t ease, not even when she’d cried until she couldn’t cry anymore. Her throat was raw, her eyes were burning, and her stomach hurt from crying, but the hole in her chest only grew deeper and colder.

She returned to work the next morning, and the morning after that, with her eyes downcast.

Two days later, Gin was declared fit to stand trial. It was pure coincidence that Sachiko happened to be reporting to Captain Ukitake when the news of his sentence came. As soon as the butterfly fluttered through the window, she knew what it must be carrying. Almost all other loose ends in this war had been tied up.

Captain Ukitake listened to it for a long moment, face grim. Finally, he nodded and dismissed it with a gentle wave of his hand. He said nothing, eyes staring off into the distance.

"...Captain?" Sachiko hoped she didn’t sound too eager or desperate for news.

The older man fixed her in his gaze, which had always seen right through her. “Gin Ichimaru has been sentenced,” he said simply.

Sachiko tried to keep her face clear, but her hands tightened on the papers in her hands until she feared they might rip.

"What is his sentence?" she asked, though part of her didn't want to know.

“One thousand years in Kokujō, the second level of the Underground Prison,” he said. “A much lighter sentence than what Aizen received. They evidently decided his crimes were not as severe…or perhaps they gave him credit for attempting to betray Aizen at the end.”

She swallowed. She waited for the news to sink in, but it was taking its time. “I see,” she said, and even to herself her voice sounded small. "That is fortunate."

Captain Ukitake’s face grew softer still. “I do not know the details, but it is evident to me that the two of you were close. He will be moved in the morning, if you wish to say any final goodbyes before then,” he told her gently, though she hadn’t asked.

She bowed her head, hoping to hide the grateful tears that sprang to her eyes. “Thank you, Captain,” she said, to stop herself from letting them fall. She kept her head bowed until she was sure she could keep herself together. To stare into that bright smile might tip her over the edge. “We were close," she confirmed. "Or at least, I hope we were." She could no longer pretend to guess what was in Gin's heart.

"I see. While I may not necessarily approve of that, I understand you cannot control the heart." He waved for her to straighten up. "Go to him, if it will ease your suffering."

"Thank you for your consideration, Captain.” She paused, and then added, "Not just for now, but for as long as you have been my Captain. You have given me more grace and kindness than I deserve."

He smiled. He had stopped trying to convince her she was worthy of his kindness years ago, but she suspected he still didn't believe her. “I will see you in the morning, Kobayashi,” he said, dismissing her without saying it explicitly.

“Good evening, Captain.”

She bowed and took her leave. She returned to her office, but she didn’t pick up her work. In fact, for about two hours all she did was stare at the paper in front of her, eyes unfocused. Her mind was going around in slow circles, unanswered questions floating around.

The foremost question was, of course, what she was going to do. The easiest and best path forward was to simply live on. She could put Gin Ichimaru out of her mind, mourn him in her quiet way, and dedicate herself to living her lonely life with purpose and clarity. If she was still alive in a thousand years, she could deal with his release with the benefit of age and wisdom and a lot of time to plan.

She didn't want to do that. She didn't want to be alone again, not for another night let alone a thousand years.

No, that wasn't entirely it. She didn't just want to not be alone. She didn't just want company. She wanted him.

When the sun slid below the horizon, signaling the end of her day, Sachiko did not go to her quarters. Her path was clear as she made her way to the Central 46 compound. She was surprised that her access to the archives hadn’t been revoked now that Aizen was defeated. Part of her even wanted for a short end to her plans for the evening, for the decision to be made for her. Instead, the doors slid open for her and she descended into darkness without any interference.

For a moment, she just stood inside the doors and enjoyed a moment of perfect peace. She had always liked the archives, and wished her job allowed her to enter more often. The darkness was comforting, and the perfect hexagonal shape of its walls and shelves pleased her greatly. Following the sharp lines of its architecture brought her racing thoughts to a halt. If she could, she would spend hours here, not even needing to access any information to feel happy.

She did have something to do, however. The questions she had weren't going to be answered by her Captain, by her own mind, or by Gin. She would have to take matters into her own hands.

The archives’ systems were labyrinthine, using an organization method that had sent her reeling the first time she’d had to use it. It was designed to be difficult to navigate, to stop anyone from learning how to abuse the repository of knowledge within. Sachiko was by no means an expert at navigating it, but it took only a little bit of poking around to find what she was looking for: a transcript of Gin Ichimaru’s trial. Though it had only happened this morning, it had already been entered into the archive.

The trials of the Central 46 were, in her opinion, little more than a show put on to placate the accused, who more often than not had had their fates sealed long before they stood in front of their judges. This time seemed no different. The questions the Central 46 asked Gin before passing judgment seemed less intended to confirm his guilt and more to satisfy their own curiosity. Still, Sachiko read each and every one of them until it was burned into her brain just what kind of man Gin Ichimaru was.

Gin had been Aizen’s accomplice for over a century at this point, almost from the moment he’d graduated the Academy. She wasn’t surprised to read that he was unflinching and unashamed in his responses to the accusations. Being captured hadn’t changed Gin’s personality or his way of speaking. Did he come out and say, “Here is a list of my crimes?” Not at all. But, in his roundabout way, Gin confessed to everything he'd done. And in the middle of it all was the confirmation of what she didn't want to know.

He knew. He confirmed a list of Hollows that Aizen had experimented on and released. Some of them had ambushed a group of students and resulted in many deaths. One had slaughtered eleven Shinigami and left the sole survivor disabled for the rest of her life.

"Sachiko-chan's a strong one," he'd said. "After getting to know her a bit, it wasn't a surprise she survived."

That was the only time he mentioned her. The other two were brought up time and time again, but her name was spoken aloud only once.

Gin didn’t give very many details about anything, for the most part only confirming or denying which of Aizen's more heinous crimes he was personally involved in. She could count one hand how many he denied.

“Why did you betray Aizen?” was asked by the thirty-fourth wise man at the end of the trial.

According to the transcript, this was the moment that Gin’s smile had dropped from his face. "I always planned to kill that man, since the moment I saw him,” he’d said. “He took something from someone dear to me, and I just couldn’t forgive that.”

Sachiko read the trial transcript four times. On her fifth attempt, the tears in her eyes became too thick to see through. There was no chair to collapse into, so Sachiko just shifted her weight to her heels and stared vacantly down at the ground. No matter how many tears fell, more and more were waiting behind.

She reflected on Gin’s words. After so many years, she believed she was somewhat good at deciphering the meaning behind his indirect words, at connecting the dots between his seemingly unconnected anecdotes. She knew he had grown up in the Rukongai, like her. He had become a Shinigami, like her. He was off-putting and people avoided him, like her. And the similarities ended there.

He was not like her. He was cold, driven, ambitious. He worked tirelessly at one lofty goal, not caring who or what stood in his way. The difference between her and him was that he had someone he loved enough to dedicate himself to, someone he would change the world for. Someone who wasn’t her.

After everything she’d learned in the past few months, Sachiko wasn’t sure which of the three of them she hated most. She hated Rangiku Matsumoto for having everything Sachiko didn’t know she wanted until she realized she had never had it. She hated herself for being so foolishly blindly dedicated towards a man everyone but her knew wasn’t to be trusted. She hated Gin Ichimaru for being the kind of man who let her dedicate herself to him when he had no intentions of reciprocating her devotion.

“What are you going to do about it?” she asked herself out loud. Her own voice sounded broken and unsure, swallowed up by the darkness and dust of the archives.

She had no answer. For the moment, all she did was cry. By the time the tears stopped, however, she had made a decision.

She returned to her room, and she took off her uniform, changing into her sleep clothes: a large “novelty tee shirt” that she'd gotten herself as a birthday gift, loose green pants that gave her enough room to perform a high kick (a must on all her clothes, even loungewear), and a long robe to keep the whole thing from being too indecent to walk around in. She tied her hair back, baring her face. As an afterthought, she tied her zanpakutō to her back as well. It looked a bit silly to be wearing a sword with her pajamas, but ideally she wouldn’t be out for very long so not many people would see. She reached underneath her stove and pulled out a rolled up shirt she never wore. She dusted the dirt off of it and tucked it under her arm.

She stood there for a moment, having shed her responsibility, her identity, all her ties to this place. She was just herself for the moment, just lonely Sachiko Kobayashi, adrift and confused.

Maybe she was right. Maybe she was cursed. Maybe she was haunted. Maybe all Gin had ever been was a distraction from the hole inside of her, but had never been the one meant to fill it.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Once she was ready, she went back to the prison cells. There was no one in the hall this time to talk to. There was only one guard posted in front of his cell. She greeted Sachiko with a nod.

The stool had been removed from the cell. The slight change made the room look much larger. The man within it looked like he was part of the decor. Pale clothes, pale hair, pale skin all blended into the stark white walls. Gin was sitting on the bed, one knee pulled to his chest. She hadn’t seen him without a Captain’s haori in years, and it looked wrong to see him in just a plain yukata. His face was turned away from her, looking up towards the single window in his cell. With the artificial lights turned off for the night, the only light in the room was the single shaft of moonlight the window allowed in.

“Nice of you to come back, Sachiko-chan.” His voice was the cool, teasing tone she was used to. There was something about it, though, that gave the impression that his heart wasn’t in it. It was flat, unenergetic. Hardly surprising, given the circumstances.

"You always said I was like a loyal dog," she said, which might have been a joke if her tone weren't so serious. "Didn't you, Gin?"

"Here for pleasure, then?" He was still not looking at her, but his chin dropped to his chest, indicating he was giving her his attention.

She shrugged. “You have no title,” she said plainly. “I can call you by your last name, if you are unsure if this is business or pleasure.”

His grin widened and grew thinner, the way it did when he was feeling uncomfortable. “How cruel! Is our last goodbye going to be so cold, Sachiko-chan?”

“Are you in a position to be picky?” she asked. “Has anyone else come to wish you off?”

He didn’t answer, which she interpreted as its own answer. If anyone else had come, he would gloat about it.

“I didn't come to say goodbye. I came to ask you something,” she said. "Three questions, no more or less."

"I’ve answered a lot of questions the past few days,” he said, and faked a yawn. “Not sure I’ve got many more answers in me.”

“You will answer me," she declared. She couldn't force him, but maybe if she said it confidently enough, he would go along with it. That didn't usually work with Gin, but maybe this time he would play along.

He finally looked at her. No, that wasn’t right. He turned his face towards her, but she knew he wasn’t looking her in the eyes. “You might not like the answers," he said, in a chastising tone like she was a child.

If he was trying to aggravate her, it was definitely working. She had to take a few calming breaths to avoid snapping. “That is irrelevant.” She frowned, and her next words were cruel, despite her early assurance that cruelty wasn’t her goal. “My opinion of the truth has never mattered before."

His smile flickered for a moment, then froze in place as a grotesque grimace. "Go on, then."

She gathered her courage. She had three questions, each more distressing than the one before. She hoped she was as prepared for his answers as she felt. "I want to know why you became…intimate with me. Friends, lovers, whatever we were…why did you pursue me?"

He chuckled, but there was no mirth in it. It was just a rush of air, a mockery of the sound she adored. "I've told ya before, Sachiko-chan, you're a good sport, and fun to play with," he said. "Do ya really think I would need another reason?"

She considered that answer. He had said all of those things about her in the past, often in response to similar questions. The conversation had always ended there, because she knew that she was a good sport for him, and that had always seemed as good a reason as any to seek out her presence. This time, though, she thought about it. She looked at him, that stiff smile, his eyes closed tightly, his hand on his knee curled into a fist. "I don't believe you," she finally decided. "If that were true, why make all this effort? Please stop playing with me. I came here to know the truth."

"Oh? You want the truth? Don't say I didn't warn you.” He rested his chin on his hand, the perfect picture of a casually lounging predator. His grin widened and his teeth flashed at her. She remembered, illogically, that many animals bared teeth as a sign of danger. “The truth is, Sachiko-chan, that I used you. I wanted something from someone else, and I wasn’t going to get it so I found someone who would give it to me.” His expression twisted, almost mocking in its arrangement. “I told ya before, you're a dog. A few kind words and a pat on the head, and you were eating out of the palm of my hand.”

His words hurt just as much as she knew he wanted them to. This time, anger flared up inside her as well, indignation and confusion in addition to the pain. But she pushed it all aside and stayed her course. That wasn't an unexpected answer. Gin was a man whose pasttime was torment and torture, though typically of a harmless variety. She'd known who he was when she began to spend time with him. It was probably even true, what he'd said.

She took a deep breath. Against her will, it shook audibly on the exhale. When she felt like she could speak steadily, she asked, "Is that the whole truth?"

He was quiet, face turning back towards the window. Another attempt to aggravate her, and it worked as all the others did. This time, she did snap.

"Look at me," she demanded. And when all he did was turn his face, she demanded again, "Look at me, Gin." She knew she was only a step above begging, but she didn't care.

She was surprised that he obeyed. She almost faltered then, gave up on everything she’d planned. Looking into his face, into his eyes, after so long without him, made her want to cave and just do whatever he asked without question.

He still didn’t say anything, leaving her to probe him again.

"Is that the whole truth?" she asked again, quieter this time. He was hurting her, and she knew it was on purpose, but that didn't matter as much as his reason for doing so. No matter what he told her now, she would accept it. It was far too late to get angry, at him or at herself, for what they had both allowed to happen.

"No." He stood up and crossed the cell until he was standing right in front of her.

Being so close to him, her heart squeezed. Despite everything, she wanted to reach out to him and soothe the cross expression off of his face. She didn't. She kept her arms crossed low on her stomach and stayed the course.

"I was using you, eating my fill and pretending you were someone else. But…" He trailed off and didn't pick the sentence back up again.

"But?" She hoped she didn't sound as desperate as she felt. She knew that she did.

He tilted his head to the side. "I don’t know if anyone has ever told you, Sachiko-chan, but you are beautiful."

She tried to suppress the shiver that ran down her spine. No one but him had ever told her that, even before her accident. She'd been married before--a fact he knew--and even her husband from all those decades ago had never called her beautiful. She was dangerous, strong, frightening, sometimes cute if she had the right expression on her face. But never beautiful. It was on purpose, she knew, to repeat verbatim what he'd said that night. The last night they'd spent together, before his defection. Before he'd left her, the final time.

“No one,” she said softly. “No one but you.”

He hummed. He knew this already, of course. “Always thought that was a shame. You should know it.” He tilted his head to the side. "Was that all you wanted to know?" he asked. "You here just to please your own ego?"

She almost gave up on her plan right then. Her next question was the one that could break her, and he had already hurt her so badly.

Why did you leave? Why didn't you take me with you? part of her wanted to ask, but she already knew that answer. Nothing he could ever say would make the truth hurt less.

"Who am I to you?" she asked, amazed that her conviction held out.

He stepped closer, so close that if there weren’t bars between them, they’d be touching. He wrapped his long fingers around the bars.

"Pardon?"

"Who...what am I to you?" she repeated, voice stronger this time. She wanted to explain herself, to tell him what he was to her, what she would do for him, what she wanted from him, what she needed from him, to beg him to give her the same in return. She held her tongue, having to physically bite it to stop herself from saying any more. She didn’t need any more reasons for him to call her a dog.

His smile widened. "Why, Sachiko-chan…you're strong, you're beautiful." His fingers reached through the bars and he cradled her chin. "Given the choice, you're someone I'd never want out of my grasp again."

"Given the choice," she repeated. She lowered her gaze, lingering on the skin peeking out of the top of his loose yukata. She could see the angry outline of his wound. It must be hurting him. She raised her hand slowly, laying her palm over his. He was so cold. Her thumb moved over the back of his hand slowly, trying to rub some warmth into his skin.

She took a deep breath, and made her decision. She raised her gaze to meet his. "If you had the choice…” She swallowed. “I would give you that. Would you take it? If I offered it to you, would you take it?"

"A cruel thing to ask a man about to spend a thousand years in a cage," he pointed out. "Do you intend to wait for me, Sachiko-chan?"

"That would be cruel," she said. "And I am not very good at waiting."

“Was that question three?” he asked, holding her gaze.

“No.” She closed her eye, took one more very deep breath. If he had answered either of the two questions differently, she might not even have gotten to the third question. “You were sentenced to a thousand years…do you accept that judgment?”

When she looked at him again, he looked genuinely started. Whatever he had expected her to say, it wasn’t that.

“Do I…accept it?”

She nodded, not trusting herself to say any more. She gently moved his heart down, moving his palm from her cheek down to her chest, over where her heart was fiercely hammering.

“That is my third question,” she confirmed.

Finally, he seemed to understand why she was here. She wasn't very good at saying things without saying them, but he seemed to understand. His eyes went wide, and for the first time since they had met, Gin Ichimaru was speechless. His grin slipped from his face, replaced with an open mouthed frown. His hand slid out of her grasp, retreating back into his cell. For a very long time, he was quiet. Then, softly, "You would do that."

"I would," she said, hoping they were talking about the same thing. "If you mean everything you've said, and if you let me choose, if you would make the same choice...I would. In a heartbeat."

He looked at her for a moment. Slowly, he morphed into that man she knew: those cold lips in a wide smirk, blue eyes hidden behind pale eyelashes, hands folded into white sleeves. That mask that had always confounded her, in this moment only bringing her comfort and relief. He appeared so closed off, but for the first time, Sachiko felt like she had some form of understanding.

"Be my guest," he said at last.

Sachiko relaxed. For the first time in her life, she had no doubts. Was this what she had always wanted? She had been content to devote herself, to be used, and that’s what she’d had all these years. With Captain Zaraki, with Captain Ukitake, and with Gin. But this was more. Her devotion had always been a given, something to be taken for granted. But heknew. He knew that she was devoting herself to him on purpose. He knew this was not her nature. It was her choice now, willfully, knowing all that she knew. And he welcomed it.

She took a step back from the bars, and took a steadying breath. She placed her hand on her sword.

“Stand back, Gin,” she said softly. “This will only take a moment.”

Gin grinned, that wide toothy grin she loved, and Sachiko knew she had chosen correctly.