Author's Note: Hi! I wrote a fanfiction! Please enjoy it. Just one thing: while I was writing this, I forgot that Gin's arm was ripped off by Aizen when they fought, and, well, it's already a bit of an AU, so I now declare that all ripped-off arms are officially reattached within the bounds of this story. Hey, it would only be fair.

Also, on a shipping note: Yeah, there probably won't be very much blatantly in here, and if we do actually see anyone getting it on in here, it'll most likely be Gin and Rangiku, because right now it just makes the most sense in the context of the story- though I'm not making nay promises either way.

Disclaimer: Bleach is not mine. Also, Confucius is not me.

Warnings: None really for this chapter I don't think. Definitely some later, though. Probably some language later, also some violence, maybe some sex.

CHAPTER I

"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." ~ Confucius

"You know they're going to execute you anyway. In fact, if you had been found by anyone other than Rangiku Matsumoto, well…"

"Why are you even here?"

"The guards let me in." A pause. "I promised not to spit."

"Right, right, and so the magnificent Byakuya Kuchiki stops in for a visit."

Gin cracked his eyes open and caught a hazy image of the sixth-squad captain in all his monochromatic glory.

"They've locked Aizen away."

"That's all?"

"All I'm here to tell you? Or all they went ahead and did?"

A slow, shaky laugh escaped Gin's throat.

"I would have thought they'd have killed him."

"I hear you tried."

"Did you now?" Another laugh. "Who told you that?"

Byakuya didn't reply to this. Instead, he simply stared at the captive from his place by the door. Across the room, Gin lay on ledge of the same cold, reiatsu-blocking stone that made up the vast interior of the Senzaikyu prison. He tucked his arms behind his head and slowly began to walk his toes up the wall in front of him. From the doorway, he could hear Byakuya sigh.

"They couldn't kill him, you know."

For the first time in weeks, Gin's smile was almost genuine. Almost.

"So, it wasn't your fault that he didn't die." Byakuya continued, taking a few steps towards the prisoner. Gin let his foot drop back onto the ledge and for a moment, they stared at each other in silence. After a while, it occurred to Gin to say something—anything—to break the quiet, but before he could, his stomach let out a strangled, hollow growl.

"They haven't been feeding you, then?"

Gin rolled his eyes and placed a long, pale hand on his middle.

"They've tried all sorts of clever methods to kill my reiatsu dead."

"You do look thinner…"

"I'm starving."

"…but it might just be that awful robe…"

"You know what I could go for? Some persimmons. Dried persimmons."

"… That robe doesn't do a thing for your appearance, washes you out like nothing…"

"And a little cup of sake. You know, I haven't had a drink in years. I was too afraid of spilling some secrets to somebody…"

"…but I guess that's what you get…"

"But I guess that's what I get."

Silence resumed, and Gin turned away from the captain to look back out the window, this one overlooking the massive shining labyrinth that was Seireitei. The sun was ready to set and the clouds reflected a bright orange glow.

"I do have something else to tell you."

"And what would that be?" Gin spoke into the window. He could see Byakuya's reflection advancing. The place that he stopped, Gin estimated, was a line etched into the ground about ten feet from the window ledge. Earlier in the day, a guard had secured a chain about ten feet in length around the criminal's ankle, something Gin only barely registered as he drifted in and out of dreamless sleep.

"Tomorrow."

"They're killing me, I figured."

"You figured wrong. The Central Forty-Six have declined thus far to set a date for your execution."

"Ahh, bummer." Gin whispered dryly, though his heartbeat had already sped up in anticipation. In the reflection, he could see Byakuya's features harden. "Alright, I give up. What's happening tomorrow?"

"I don't think you are taking your situation as seriously as you should."

"I'm taking it plenty seriously." Gin said lazily and without an ounce of defense, though his heart still pounded visibly in his chest. Byakuya sighed.

"Tomorrow," he repeated finally, "We are sending someone in here. You'll talk to them, they'll take down your story."

At this, Gin snapped upright, though a wave of dizziness and nausea rolled over him at the sudden change of position. "No."

"Yes." Byakuya was almost smirking at the sight of Gin struggling to keep his head up.

"I won't say anything."

"I'm afraid you'll have to."

"Or what?" Painfully, Gin raised his eyes and brushed away strands of his silvery hair. Byakuya was definitely smirking now. "What I'd like to do to you…"

"I'm also afraid that your private desires are of no bearing right now."

"You asshole." Gin said darkly, the smile all but melting from his visage. With great effort, the prisoner began to push himself to his feet. Byakuya stood his ground.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Ichimaru. You don't look well."

"Go screw yourself." In a second, Gin was up on his wobbly, bare feet. What he would have liked to say was a little longer, a little more thought out, a little more analytical of Byakuya's behavior, but in another second, Gin found himself tasting the stone floor.

"I warned you."

Gin twisted from his position on the ground. He had fallen right at Byakuya's feet and found himself staring at his pristine white socks and the hem of his hakama. For just a moment, Gin fought the urge to bite him.

"Anyway," Byakuya stepped back from the line, closing Gin's window of opportunity. "Tomorrow, early, but not too early, we're sending someone down here, and you will talk."

"Screw you."

The monochromatic captain was almost to the door when he turned back and called into the vast room "I'll see if the guards will take that chain off of you… and clean yourself up, will you? It's embarrassing. "

Gin hissed at him as a bright beam of light expanded and contracted with the opening and closing of the door. For ten minutes, he lay alone on the ground, too weak to even pull himself back to the ledge. It briefly crossed his mind that if he kept in that spot, he would miss the sunset, but he shrugged that thought away. He would be there for the sunset the next day, and the next, and a number of days stretching out into infinity, and perhaps even longer. If they were not going to make short work of him, as Byakuya suggested, who was to say that they wouldn't drag this out forever? Perhaps that was the punishment for not giving the interview that someone in some high place clearly desired—instead of killing him, they would trap him in the massive tower indefinitely, immobilized by his deteriorating body as his mind slowly dripped away.

Gin was just about to close his eyes to sleep when he heard the sound of the door creaking open again, followed by the heavy footsteps of four men. He had been through this before: two to hold him at the shoulders, one to stand and watch, and one to do what they actually came in to do. As the burlier pair lifted him into a workable position, Gin noticed that the 'doing stuff' guard held not the key to the chain around his ankle but a basket containing objects that Gin could not quite make out from the awkward pose at which he was being held. He could feel the smile creeping across his face once again.

"What's in the basket?" his voice sounded dry and cracked, without any of the humor he could usually work up.

"Shut up." said the armed guard whose face Gin did not recognize, but the guard with the basket—a stocky, fresh-faced young man whose name was probably Kuro, though Gin never really bothered to remember—stepped in.

"Clean clothes and a damp cloth to clean your face with."

Gin smirked and repositioned as much as possible to face the armed man.

"See? No need to be rude here…"

Kuro moved in to undo the tie at Gin's waist.

"We were instructed to pretty you up for your visitor today."

Gin twisted again as he felt the robe open up in the front, leaving him partially exposed.

"What do you mean today?" Gin finally asked. "I thought Kuchiki said tomorrow."

"It is tomorrow." Kuro explained, motioning for the guard on the right to loosen his grip on Gin's arm so that he could continue to remove the robe. "Captain Kuchiki spoke to you yesterday."

Suddenly aware of the fresh morning light streaming in through the windows, Gin sighed. The slight pains in his neck and lower back telling him now that he actually had fallen asleep where he landed on the floor during his—frankly, pathetic—altercation with the Captain. Wonderful.

It wasn't until Kuro got the robe off of him and Gin found himself standing uncomfortably naked in the cool air of the Senzaikyu that he remembered the question he had neglected to ask the previous evening.

"Say, who's coming for me, anyhow?"

"He can't tell you that, asshole." The guard holding his left shoulder breathed into his ear, breath hot and pungent on Gin's face. He felt his throat contract like he was about to be sick and he snapped his mouth shut. Kuro pulled the new robe from the basket, but suddenly stopped short.

"If you're going to vomit, do it before I put the new clothes on you."

Gin shook his head, though he kept his mouth closed. The idea of being naked any longer in this company was even more unpleasant than the guard's breath. The weeks of captivity had stripped away what little excess flesh he had, and being there, unclothed, in the cold, reduced to nothing but bones and physical weakness—it gave him an uncanny sense of vulnerability that he deliberately had not felt since childhood.

"Right." Kuro finally said as he went to work wrapping the new robe, identical to the last except in terms of cleanliness, around Gin's emaciated body and wiping down his face and neck with the damp cloth from the basket, paying special attention to the area around the thick red collar secured tightly around the neck of the prisoner.

When all of this was done, the two shoulder guards walked Gin back to the ledge by the window and sat him at its edge. Gin, like a child, jingled the chain that had spent the night around his ankle.

"Are you going to take this off? It's getting pretty itchy, and Kuchiki said…"

"That, I've actually been instructed to leave on." Kuro cut him off. "The visitor. You understand."

Gin slouched as the shoulder guards finally let go of him and hurried to the other side of the line. His stomach grumbled again, but the guards ignored the sound. Gin balled his fist and pressed it into his abdomen.

"You just sit tight. He'll be here in a few minutes."

By the time Gin looked up, the guards had already walked out, shutting the door behind them. Gin lay down on the ledge, turning away from the doorway but keeping his eyes fixed on its reflection in the window. Through the glass, he could feel the heat trying to break its way through from the outside. It would be a nice day in Seireitei, the sort of day that a year earlier, he would have spent eating sweets and wandering the labyrinth. Any hotter, he would be inside 'doing paperwork', any cooler… definitely laying invisible tripwires a few inches above the ground in the stalls of the Sixth Squad barrack's men's room and waiting outside to hear the girly screams of his victims. He shut his eyes all the way and curled closer into himself.

When he heard the door unlock and creak open not one minute later, Gin's entire body went rigid, his back straightening so quickly that he almost smacked his head into the wall. In the window reflection, he could barely make out the tall form of the man who entered through the high lighting on that side of the building.

"You know," Gin drawled as deliberately as possible. "I almost feel bad for you, having to spend such a nice day in here with slime like me."

"Springtime in the Soul Society…" came the deep, pleasant voice, "It's not as if days like this are few or far between. Anyway, today's a little heavy on the pollen for my taste, so I honestly can think of nothing better."

Gin rolled over with open eyes and stared Captain Jushiro Ukitake directly in the face. "It sounds like you're trying to be cute."

The left shoulder guard with the rancid breath crept in carrying a folding chair under his arm.

"No, no, I'm not. Are you? Thank you." Ukitake sat down in the chair as it was set up a few inches behind the line, placing the purple drawstring bag he had arrived with on the floor. For a moment, he paused, coughing quietly into his hand, before smiling gently and folding his hands in his lap.

"I wonder if Kuchiki told you that I wouldn't talk."

"He informed me of this moments after leaving this place yesterday. He said you were being very uncooperative."

Ukitake ran his fingers though his long, white hair, though never breaking eye contact with the criminal who lay stretched on the ledge ten feet in front of him.

"I understand why you would resist to opening up in such a fashion…"

"And why's that?"

Ukitake shrugged. "Your pride's been hurt, you're trying to hold on to what little you have left."

Gin rolled his eyes. The psychoanalysis reminded him of Aizen telling the older captain off as they floated up to the Gargantua, forever leaving the Soul Society as a home. Gin could barely remember what Aizen had said that day—all of the events had long since blurred together in his head, but there was no way it was flattering. Ukitake seemed perfectly nice now, though; away from Aizen's influence, even in the moments after, he was astounded as how clear his vision had become.

As nice as the Captain seemed now, though, he had to make his lack of interest in speaking to him almost palpable, or he was sure Ukitake would never go away.

"Unless I'm incorrect."

Ukitake's words caught Gin off guard, and for a moment, his smirk went slack. The Captain casually stretched out his arms in front of himself before crossing them across his chest, and staring up towards the endless vault of the tower, following the spiraling stone staircase into the ceiling some twenty stories up.

"And in that case, you can feel free to correct me." Ukitake looked back to the captive. "Of course, to do that, you will have to speak—and, of course, what you speak will have to be the truth."

Gin paused, chewing this comment over in his mind.

"And before you ask, I have no idea what's in this for you." Ukitake was rifling through the purple satchel now. Slowly, Gin tried to prop himself up against the wall.

"What, has Yamamoto finally realized how useless you've been and stripped you of your captaincy?"

"You know, Gin," Ukitake began, raising an eyebrow. "Comments about my illness have long ceased to bother me, and I highly doubt anything you say could get under my skin. I see exactly what you're trying to do."

"And what's that?"

"You're trying to drive me off. Never before have you been so easy to read."

Gin sneered at him, but Ukitake smiled pleasantly back.

"So, are you going to prove me wrong about your pride? Are you going to tell me that you won't speak because you're a big strong man who just happens to be caught in a jam, and you'd hate to accidently reveal the identity of the loyal followers you're got helping you to plan your escape? That's what it sounds like you're trying to tell me, and if that's the truth…"

"You're wrong, Ukitake." Gin hissed as frustration swelled in his chest. "It's different than that. It's not something you could imagine-"

The captive cut himself off. Ukitake stared on, tenderly.

"You're right again. I can't imagine what goes on in your head. See? I was trying to provoke you, now."

"You're not very good at it."

"That it may seem, but you've already opened your mouth." Ukitake paused, pulling a little electronic recorder out of his bag and leaning down to set it on the line at his feet. "And I happen to know that this is the only thing between you and your execution. The faster you talk, the faster we get it over with and kill you on that hill, but the longer you talk, the longer it'll take. Either way, you'll have something to do until the end—but we know you're going to talk, and we know you're going to talk today. Do you know how we know that?"

Gin was silent, an unnerving smile graced Ukitake's features instead of his own. The captain sat up in his seat and smoothed his long hair once again.

"I'll tell you. Rumors have been spreading throughout the Soul Society. You've become quite the curiosity."

"And why do I care?"

"Glad you asked. I mean, Lieutenant Matsumoto is pretty excellent at her job, but being psychic is not an aspect of it. How will she know what to believe once you're gone but the questions still persist?"

Slowly, sadly, Gin opened his eyes.

"You're not just doing this for her."

"Unfortunately, no, but I'm sure if anyone should know the whole truth-"

"There are some things you can never tell her."

"I will personally make sure she doesn't listen to anything you find inappropriate. In fact, if it has you that worried, it is to my understanding that the tapes will be sealed to the general public. Not only will she not hear those things, but no one will be able to tell her, because no one else will know."

Gin nodded and shut his eyes again.

"That's good, that's good."

For a moment, a tiny voice—his own—shouted from the depths of memory, 'You idiot! Do you know what you're about to do?', but Gin pushed it aside. He was going soft. The mere mention of Rangiku Matsumoto, whom he hadn't seen since the closing chapters of the Winter War, fighting her way through the half-truths and flat lies that swirled around her was almost too much for him to bear—but he kept his cool. If he would stalk and kill a man for her, couldn't he also give an explanation?

But… logically, he knew what Ukitake was asking for was more than 'an explanation'—it was a memoir, a retrospective, a look back on everything he had been twisted to do, everything he had twisted himself to do, everything he had been born for and everything he had nearly died for. The things that fell heavily on his chest, even though he could hardly identify them intellectually, the things that lightened his step that he had had to keep a secret for more than a hundred years. For all this, his body ached, his mind fizzled. For all this, one woman? The love of one wonderful woman that he knew he could now never have? He'd wasted his potential, squandered his inheritance. If he's let it go. If he'd only let it go.

Gin held his breath. Perhaps it was time after all.

Exhaling shakily, but trying to keep his voice casual, Gin finally whispered: "Sure, then. Whatever."