AN: this is a separate work from The Striking Snake. You can assume it takes place in the canon universe.

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Bleach

Jealousy

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She hated him.

It didn't show; you'd never know it from her words or actions. Soifon was harsh and cold to most, if not all, of her associates - be they peers or subordinates. Her hate may have been unusual, but she didn't treat him differently.

And even if it had been obvious, why should it be noteworthy?

Lots of people disliked Ichimaru Gin. In fact, apart from Lieutenant Matsumoto and Captain Aizen, he had essentially no friends. He was creepy, eccentric, elusive, and generally an all-round pain in the ass. He was easy to hate.

Soifon didn't hate him for that, though. As a captain herself, she knew quite well that almost no-one reached such titanic levels of spiritual fortitude without developing a fair few eccentricities. She could forgive Kyōraku his drink, Zaraki his blood lust, even Kurotsuchi his psychopathy; compared to the worst excesses of some captains, Ichimaru could be downright agreeable.

But still she hated him. she hated him even more than she hated her former mentor, Yoruichi.

And, partly, for the same reason.

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Perhaps it was his smile.

So amiable. So plastic. So obviously false, especially matched with his slitted eyes. It was the smile of a man that hid behind a false face. People saw it, and assumed he was hiding something.

Soifon knew better. Years of operating as a stealth agent had given her a certain insight into people's ways of expressing themselves.

Yes, Ichimaru's smile was fake.

But there was nothing hiding behind it. He affected it because it amused him, no more.

His fake smile hid only the fact that it was not fake at all.

He smiled all the time because, on the inside, he really was laughing at everyone's expense.

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Perhaps it was his mannerisms.

So elusive and creepy, like he viewed other humans as toys to be played with. So ambiguous, erratic, random; like a bored kitten. So carefully bordering on evil. He acted like a larger-than-life fictional villain.

And once again, Soifon was the only person who saw the truth of it - the real man, hidden in the blink of an eye and the twitch of a brow and the curl of a lip.

His malicious lightheartedness was itself no act. He did what he liked. But his erratic behavior was not erratic at all. It had purpose; a purpose that Soifon, as one who had a use for unpredictability, knew well.

The purpose of his strange behavior was to give him the appearance of having no purpose.

Only Soifon seemed to realize that it took a great deal of effort and dedication to act as randomly as Ichimaru did.

And she hated that she was the only one.

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Perhaps it was his zanpakutō.

Shinsō. So tiny. So innocuous. Hardly even a weapon; certainly not suited to the battlefield. Impractical in any pitched fight, and yet so terrifyingly lethal in its own way. By the time you saw it coming, it would be too late.

Soifon's Suzumebachi could kill anything in two hits, but Shinsō put it to shame. Shinsō was made to strike from the shadow; to kill in an instant and vanish in the next. If Suzumebachi was a hornet, Shinsō was truly a snake.

Where other shinigami carried weapons of war, Ichimaru's zanpakutō was a naked killer, an assassin's dagger made to slay with efficiency and nothing else.

She hated his zanpakutō. She hated her own, because it was not his.

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Soifon was the renowned ninja captain, famous and respected. Ichimaru was a gutter kid who got lucky, a nobody, someone you didn't look at twice.

Soifon was fast as an arrow and could hide in any shadow. Ichimaru never needed to move fast, and didn't hide at all.

Soifon could evade attention in any number of different ways. Ichimaru actively attracted attention; he reveled in the rumors and whispers, each one so far from the truth it was laughable.

Soifon could stab a man to death in two strikes. Ichimaru could stab a man to death and murder his widow and and orphaned children before the man's corpse had hit the ground.

Soifon was the professional assassin and spy of the two; she was the head of the stealth corps, but she knew she didn't deserve the title.

Ichimaru was the one who swam like a shark in a school of fish.

Soifon hated Ichimaru Gin. She hated him because they were both assassins, lethal stealth operatives whose trades were misdirection and deceit -

And, at the heart of it, she hated him because he was better at it than she was.