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A Shadow of What Was	By : katami Category: Bleach > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 49594 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Author's Notes: We have another Gin chapter! I was starting to miss the fox. This chapter mentions both child abuse and rape - you have been warned. Also, Aizen is a horrible rat bastard (but we already knew that).

Many thanks to all the people who have shown an interest in this story.

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He shouldn't have been up. He would be scolded when it was discovered. Oddly enough, for once Gin didn't care. Let the healers rebuke him and Aizen chastise him. He wasn't in the mood to lay in bed with his thoughts and his pain. He wanted to be up. He wanted to think and he wanted to see the sky.

The sky in Hueco Mundo wasn't like the sky in Soul Society or on Earth. There were no stars. He hadn't thought he would, but he found he missed them when he was stranded in Hueco Mundo. He had always liked the stars, found them soothing. They were one of the constants in his incessantly shifting life.

The old woman who had raised him had claimed he was a child of the stars with his silvery hair and pale skin. He sighed softly as her wrinkled and weathered face came to mind. He tried to place a name to the face, saddened that he couldn't. She had been the first to take him in, having found him after his true mother had dumped him in the Wastes. He had been a strange and sickly child - his reiatsu burning far too brightly for his tiny frame to handle. It was the reiatsu that had bleached his hair and had likely caused his mother to abandon him. It was rare, but some infants, usually those with large amounts of spirit energy, were born with their full power coursing through them. It burned out their tiny bodies, killing most in a few weeks. Some survived though. He had. Ukitake had. For most however, death was the only escape.

The old woman had found him and taken him in. She had raised him until one winter night she had fallen asleep and never woken up. Gin shivered, his body remembering that frigid bite of the cold from all those years ago. He remembered awakening and finding Shaya - that was her name! ...finding Shaya cold and stiff. He wrapped his arms around himself, he had been no stranger to death, even then. He and Shaya had always stumbled across some poor bastard on the cold mornings. He had just never thought Shaya to be one of the them. He remembered huddling next to her, no tears coming, but reluctant to leave her. She hadn't been his mother and she hadn't always been kind to him, but she had been the closest thing to a mother that he'd ever known.

He had huddled there for three days, only his desperate need for water prodding him to leave her. He tried to guess how old he might have been - no more than six, that was certain. It would be three winters before he caught his first glimpse of Aizen. The young member of the 12th had been helping to put out a fire in the 80th when Gin had first seen him. And a tiny part of him couldn't help but wonder if the other man hadn't played some part in the fire starting. Aizen had always had a rather casual view of the lower wards and considered their inhabitants little more than ready subjects for his research. It was one of the things that had lead to his transfer from the 12th to the 5th. Urahara had liked to play the fool, but there was a core of solid steel in him and he took a very different view of the Rukongai and its people.

He remembered huddling in the ruins of a burnt out building, covered in soot, waiting for the Shinigami to pass. Like most children he had been both scared and fascinated by them, but years in the lowest wards had taught him to hide from those bigger and stronger than himself. He had been good at hiding, but somehow Aizen had sensed him because he had paused and stared at his hiding place for a long minute. Gin had felt sure the older man would drag him out, but he hadn't, he had just snorted and moved on.

It had been another three years before he had seen Aizen again - he had been perhaps twelve. He had found Rangiku two summers before, a tiny, underfed girl with a smile that had shown like the sun. He had been captivated from the moment he'd seen her, lured by that beautiful smile and her soulful eyes. He had claimed her, taken her as his own and fought eight fights to keep her. He had gone with Aizen the first time for her.

Aizen had caught him trying to steal from a merchant, the first person to catch him in years. He had been as clever and nimble as a fox by then and an accomplished thief. Aizen had seen him though, had trapped him with a kidou spell. Gin still remembered standing there, locked to the ground, helpless and enraged by it. He had snapped and snarled at the older man until Aizen had hit him across the face and combined it with a kidou blast. Rangiku had come flying out then, a wild creature full of fury, clawing and screaming at Aizen to leave him alone. The Shinigami had tossed her aside with an easy and casual strength.

Gin could still hear the sickening crunch as her little body hit the side of a building, her head rebounding off it, smeared with blood. He had watched her slid to the ground, something inside him tearing loose as he screamed. He had shattered Aizen's spell and thrown himself at the older man. Aizen had knocked him down, letting him up only to knock him down again, over and over, until he was too weak and bruised to move.

Then the older man had made his offer.

Gin could go with him, give him what he wanted, and he would help Rangiku. Or Gin could refuse him, in which case he would turn Gin over to the merchant to be punish for his theft and leave Rangiku to bleed to death. The blow had broken something in her head and it had been bleeding into her brain.

He had gone.

He had followed Aizen into one of the twisted little alleyways and sunk to his knees like he had been ordered, hating himself but hating Aizen more. The few coins Aizen had tossed at him had kept him and Rangiku in water for days though. After that, the Shinigami had shown up periodically, sometimes offering treats and sometimes beating him and demanding his favors. He had never been able to detect any pattern to Aizen's actions and sometimes he didn't think Aizen himself knew what he would do until he saw him.

Gin frowned and hugged himself against the bitter taste of his own memories. He waved his hand, twisting a tiny bit of power with the gesture and opening a doorway between Hueco Mundo and Earth. It was a smaller portal than anything the Arrancar used and neater than even Aizen's. He stepped through into the world. He was in the park they had fought in not so long ago, confident that any trace of his gate would be chalked up to residual energy and ignored.

He stared up at the night sky and tried to find some solace in the stars. Tried to find that time when everything had made sense. Long ago he had believed in Aizen, trusted him and followed him, but everything seemed muddled now.

When he closed his eyes he could see Rangiku's face and Kira's soft voice haunted his dreams. They made him doubt. He could see their eyes in his dreams, sad and echoing the loneliness he sometimes saw in his own. He missed them. He missed Matsumoto's laughter and he missed Kira's quiet grace. Aizen's haughty perfection seemed pale and shallow when placed beside them.

Gin sighed, settling heavily on a swing, the pull of his wounds bringing a hiss to his lips, but the urge to rest was greater than the pain. He had left Rangiku twice for Aizen. Both times he had kept silent, protecting her from the other man. No matter how she had grown he couldn't quite exercise the image of her tiny body, broken and bleeding, from his mind. Looking up at the stars, he wasn't sure there would be enough left of Ichimaru Gin should he have to choose between her and Aizen again.

"Tell me what to do," he pleaded softly with the night, a lost child looking to find home.
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A Shadow of What Was