I am honestly nervous about trying to post this story. It's two-thirds done, but I have so many projects underway right now that I'm afraid I might get slowed down on posting near the end—but I will finish it. I hate not getting to read the endings of stories so I will end it somehow.

But I really want to share this because fix-its for my very favorite couple almost don't exist and that makes me sad. I'm sure someone else out there feels the same ️

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Consciousness returned slowly to ex-captain Ichimaru Gin. Pain was the first thing he was aware of, pain too all-encompassing for thought, that sent him tumbling back into the darkness many times before the existence of pain finally brought with it the realization of life. Only the living felt pain. The pain meant he was alive.

That knowledge brought with it terror, terror that fought against the murkiness of his mind and the weight of his broken body. It demanded fight or flight. He had failed; Aizen had won. The world, all worlds, would be destroyed and remade.

Though terror screamed through him, demanding action, his body gave no sign that the message was reaching it. He lay still, the only response his body gave to his demands of movement was an ever increasing awareness of pain, pain to breath, pain even for his heart to beat. And fighting against the pain was like trying to move encased in lead, impossible. Exhaustion began to overwhelm him, pulling him back into the darkness.

Rangiku! The thought of her was enough to push back the darkness for another moment. The image of her tear-stained face appeared before him. She had been with him. She had held him even as Aizen rebuilt himself into a greater and more powerful form. She had--

"Rangiku!" he tried to shout out her name, though no sound escaped his dry, cracked lips, but his eyes snapped open, desperation to see her stronger than the pain and exhaustion that held him prisoner.

The sight that greeted his eyes was nothing that he could ever have guessed. Against the background of a simple Japanese room, a red-headed boy in the clothing of the living world stared down at him, with a look of mingled contempt and disgust and shouted, "Hey, Ururu, Fox-face is awake!"

Then he grinned, and it was a grin Gin himself would have been proud to have worn. "Can we give him to the shinigami now?"

Gin's eyes widened. The shinigami? There were still shinigami? Aizen's conquest had somehow failed. How? And who were these people? And where was Rangiku? What had happened to Rangiku?

A black haired girl with enormous, sad eyes cut across his vision. "Don't worry," she said, in a tone meant to comfort, though her expression was so pitiful it contradicted her. "The boss says we aren't supposed to tell the shinigami you're here."

The girl's cool hand stroked across his forehead. "Your fever is down. That's good. I think you'll be ok--"

"Except your arm!" The boy shouted out from behind her. "You've only got one hand, Fox-face. Even the freeloader could beat you now!"

"Jinta!" Ururu scolded. "Don't tease the patient!"

"I could probably take 'im!" Jinta declared, pushing Ururu out of the way, and shoving his face close to Gin's, glaring his best and most intimidating glare. "Not much of a captain now, are you, traitor Fox-face!"

A smile curved up the corners of Gin's lips. He had feared eternal torture at Aizen's hands and had found himself the mockery of children. It really was funny. If he'd had the energy he might have laughed.

Jinta jumped back like he'd been struck and his eyes were wide and fearful. "You better not try anything, Fox-face!" he shouted, trying to sound braver than he currently looked. "It's my job to protect Ururu so you'd better watch out! And the boss could be back any minute, too! Any minute! And he took out your boss!"

Gin's eyes widened once more. Someone had taken out Aizen? How was that even possible? The illusions he created were perfect. Gin had risked everything and spent years finding a way to take advantage of the one tiny weakness to Aizen's bankai--and it hadn't been enough, not nearly enough.

"Yeah, you'd better be scared, Fox-face!" Jinta continued, gaining courage when the smile faded from Gin's lips. There was something massively creepy about that smile. "Urahara Kisuke is stronger than Aizen! So there!"

"Ichigo-san helped," Ururu's gentle voice added.

Jinta rolled his eyes. "Anyway you guys lost, and if the super-sexy shinigami hadn't begged us to save you, you'd just be blood and guts all over the street 'cause that's what your boss did to you. That's right, Fox-face, do you remember that? Your Aizen chopped you to bits. Do you remember? Do you?"

But Gin's eyes had closed. There was no more reason to fight against the darkness. The boy had told him all he ever wanted to know. Aizen had been defeated and Rangiku, Rangiku was alive. Whatever awaited him, neither pain nor darkness, life nor death, held any more terror for him.

As soon as he stopped fighting, he lost consciousness once more.

Ururu sighed. She had wanted to apologize to her patient. She wasn't as good at healing as the Fourth Division or Orihime. She couldn't do anything about his arm, and she was worried he would always have trouble breathing. The lung Aizen had sliced through wasn't really going to be much use anymore. She'd done the best she could. Putting a person's heart and lung back together while at the same time trying to keep them from bleeding out or dying of shock was not something she'd ever done before. She'd dealt with slashes and stab wounds, but Gin had literally been sliced apart. One slash had taken off his arm and another had split his chest in two. Ururu was almost embarrassed at how poorly she'd done putting him back together. She'd even allowed bacteria into the wounds and had been fighting for days just to keep his fever down.

He would live, now that the infection was clearing. She hoped that would be good enough, and she was pretty sure her boss could make him a new arm that would be almost as good as the original. That would make him happy, wouldn't it?

"You shouldn't work so hard, Ururu," Jinta said, frowning as Ururu wiped the sweat from the fox-faced ex-captain's forehead. "He isn't worth it."

"Matsumoto-san loves him," Ururu answered, sitting back and staring at her patient. She studied the pale face, all sharp angles. Even in sleep it seemed to her that there was something cruel about the shape of his lips and the set of his jaw. Jinta was right; he did have a fox face. He looked like he might strike out at any moment with a vicious snap of his teeth, just like a real fox. But he was loved, truly loved, and to Ururu that meant that whether she could see it or not, there must be something about him, some wonderful something that had earned him that love. "That makes him worth it."