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Gin dies in the arms of his most cherished and it's—it's an alright way to go. If Ran-chan's face was the last one he saw, he was so much better than Aizen's. She's cursing him to the end of this earth, but he deserves that and her voice is nice to hear.
But souls aren’t born remembering. That is Law, perhaps.
Well, it’s funny that anyone believes Gin doesn’t view laws and regulations as little more than obstacles (a pity). So when he wakes up (in a baby incubator, born preterm) it was less of a surprise and more of an amusement park ride he didn’t sign up for.
Because of course , it has to be him and never someone deserving of it.
This is still Japan, somewhere in the human world, in a hospital with staff muttering words his undeveloped ears can’t hear. Gin sleeps.
September is the gate in which summer gales fall into bitter silver winters, an equinox as celebrated as it was reviled.
-
Life goes on.
The first month is a blur of bad dreams and a trip through overloaded sensory data, punctuated by strangers with smiles too wide holding his delicate body mid-air. He doesn't remember much of this time. Sleeping comes as easy as breathing, at least then, he could still see Ran-chan and Izuru and even the starving old man in the Rukongai with a kind smile.
-
Having parents is Different. It’s the kind of Different that shouldn’t technically matter when you’re nearing your third century of existence but it’s there . When the woman, his mother he thinks, holds him, all gentle hands and a warm, sharp smile, leaving his back open doesn’t feel like the metaphorical nails against a chalkboard. She’s grim and horrible and mutters vicious reassurances and Gin could never imagine another mother again.
He thinks the man was his father but he isn’t quite sure. He's dealt with worse.
(The man looks at the woman, all flames and no control and voice vindictive, " Your son."
She snarls, holding her son tight.)
-
Eventually, it was always inevitable he learned what kind of world this isn't. It wasn't the one where a Kurosaki family existed, for one, or a Karakura either. Then, there are people with blue skin or slitted eyes, men of flames for beards, and women circled in frost like a Hyakkimaru in constant use.
They're quirks, the man who isn't his father repeats that too many times. About powers and quirks and the woman prays, begs that he won't turn out like the others. Gin wasn't like them to begin with.
(The woman looks different now, not in the way time ages humans, but another woman altogether. She’s pregnant. His mother was never as soft as this woman, hands aren't as cold.
Rei, that’s her name, mutters to him when there’s no one in sight. “She’d always bitten off more than she could chew.”)
Being able to read, comprehend Japanese is a curse and a blessing on its own. He is a soul who should not remember in a world that feels drained of reishi. Gin understands better than to let on, the best lies are the ones the fooled construct themselves. He's simply aiding that.
(His name is Gin, not Ichimaru Gin, but still always Gin. With silver hair and cyan eyes that'll never leave.)
The development of a child was never his high point, not back when he was Ichimaru, so when children walk or begin forming words is beyond him. He was cannon fodder, then a military leader coated in steel, he doesn't quite remember ever holding a child, to begin with. By his first year as a miserable toddler, there's another kid next to him with two-colored hair and heterochromia. It's not a coincidence that one of these sides mirror Gin's (the woman) almost down to the exact shade.
The kid is fragile in the way Gin, with his small hands and weak bones could snap like stalks of straws. This was his brother now, he supposes, Ran-chan leaned more on the orange side but this would do.
He uses the boy as a benchmark instead, so whenever the kid decides to do something, he'll do the same a week later. The man wrapped in flames only visits two-colored hair now, with eyes that see right pass anything but a mirror. Gin doesn't make a habit of opening his eyes beyond the required sliver to see, they must think he's sleeping.
-
"Ran-chan," was the first thing Gin decided to say, two weeks after two-colored hair said his first word. His voice is strange, still undeniably his but just pitched like a kid's. It's natural, probably.
Two-colored hair looks at him with a fascination in his eyes and repeats, "Ran-chan."
No, no one but him calls Ran-chan like that, no one's allowed even if the kid couldn’t pronounce the n’s properly. He’ll let this slide once .
Then the kid stands up with much effort, wobbling over next to Gin before landing with a tumble, that should teach him not to say Ran-chan again. But because Gin knows better than to let the kid start the waterworks due to a fall, so on fours, he goes over to two-colored hair with all the might tiny toddler legs allowed. The woman already has so much to deal with anyhow.
He takes the kid’s chubby little fingers, unmarred from starvation or steel, and points to himself while slowly enunciating (because toddler vocal cords ain’t shit), “Gin.”
Once more, two-colored hair lights up like the days where the woman does not look behind her back for every move. Bright and very desperately contemplating with furrowing eyebrows.
“Gi-in! Gin!” the kid bouncing with the excitement of words and Gin has never seen anything in this lifetime and last so cute (aside from Ran-chan of course). “Gin!”
Shouto, that was two-colored hair’s name, wasn’t it?
-
Todoroki Gin, but that’s not quite right.
-
It was around his third year as a baby when Gin got his hands on the internet. It was one of the caretaker’s phone, with a password even a child could get past. It wasn’t unlike the technology he had known back before, the kids from Karakura used something similar, but that was expected knowing it’s been about three or so centuries since he’s last been alive.
(There were lots different.)
For one, there’s no more need for keyboards. It’s almost insulting that the kid has a better affinity with this piece of glass and metal, but it’s two-colored hair so Gin shrugs.
(No one should’ve let an Ichimaru Gin of any kind get his hands on the Internet, like Twitter is still up and running which should’ve been the first flag. It just so happens that the caretaker could find her phone until a week later when the thing was in parts by the washing machines.
Knowing how to get rid of the evidence is crucial . Shouto smiles at the caretaker in that disarming kind of way.)
Huh, the accounts on that blue bird app already hate him.
-
Two-colored hair drags him into a room away from nonchalant caretakers with anxious glee all over the kid’s face and strength no four-year-old should have, “Gin, look, look!”
From Shouto’s hands are the slightest sparks and a layer of frost reminiscent of the woman, powers like kido that don't exist here. It’s not magic, this Quirk thing, no spiritual fluctuations, or otherwise. It’s physical, perhaps something Quincy? Well, Gin’s too young for that conversation by Seireitei.
Quirks would bring Kurotsuchi into ecstasy, now that he thinks about it.
“Your Quirk manifested,” he doesn’t attempt to hide the fascination building in his voice.
(Because in this world, Shouto is a boy with a sort of magical brother who has a pretty sword and stares unflinchingly at a man in flames who calls himself a father.)
“You know what’s cooler ?” Shouto closes his eyes and furrows his eyebrows in concentration before the layer of frost grows spikes from it like stalactites that accumulate until it grows almost as tall as they are.
It’s magnificent in the way that the Hitsugaya kid would never hope to accomplish, ice as clear as the morning sun, even if Gin finds it a bit harder to breathe.
They get rid of the evidence together, small hands, and tumbling flames.
-
The Kurosaki kid had collected people he called his, like the Kuchiki girl or Byakuya or the ex-captain of the Twelfth, not to mention that group of ryouka. They were his so he protected them in exchange, he was theirs and theirs to protect.
Ran-chan was his then. Perhaps even Izuru.
(By dying, betrayal , he loses them and gods, how desperately he wants them back.)
They could never be replaced, not in a millennium or any eternity. One of these days, though, sneaking around in between the man’s compound and caretakers and a silent woman with frost on her fingertips with a tiny boy whose his people now.
A brother.
(No matter what the man says.)
“I’ll protect Gin from fire-man!” Shouto promises in that toddler’s voice because in this world he is a weak child with no signs of budding powers. It’s funny how that works when there’s the humming of his zanpaktou ready to be called upon.
-
He could end this right here and send Shinsou down the man in flame’s throat. Honestly, he doesn’t think anyone in this damned house would mind. They’ll play the grieving game, sure, but no one who knew this man personally would miss him , per se.
There exists a century worth of kido that would kill the man in heartbeats, leave the mangled corpse untraceable back to a withdrawn five-year-old.
Gin is not his son, nor is he the woman’s, but instead a ward. Some kind of distant relative he supposes, considering their coloring. No one talks about—not that they can in the first place—the bad blood goes both ways.
Fuyumi stares in horror, her arms clutching Shouto like a lifeline when the man stares down at Gin in furious red. Burly, rough hands hoist a small body up into the air.
Fire does not scare him. This man's fire even more so for an existence less than a human with the sword of Yamamoto Genryusai a second away from his neck, the heat of a thousand suns is nothing against the embers of one flame.
Singed fabric smells like wastelands, every weakness in this man’s form is obvious from here, a somewhat strangled airway or no.
“What did you say to me, kid ?” the man bellows, popping veins adding a comical factor that Gin can’t stifle a giggle for. He’s a professional liar once, it shouldn’t be that hard.
“I said ,” the boy wheezes out, a grin tugging at his lips, “that you should sign up for anger management classes.”
The man really should, it’s not good for his public image if he continues like this. The populace’s opinions are already turning nowadays against a man who resembles more of a bruised tomato than a human. Ah, didn’t Unohana say something about how middle-aged humans thread a line with their anger and blood pressure once?
It doesn’t matter. He has always hated it when Ran-chan cried, this is no different with Shouto now. His siblings are his , and if he couldn’t be there for Ran-chan, then he’ll—
Okay, that’s too much emotions for the day, especially when there’s a man bathed in flames millimeters from choking his tiny five-year-old body. Shouto looks as if the only thing stopping him from running confronting the man who masquerades himself as a father any second now.
All the snarling and scowling, though, is more that of an animal than man (a Poke-whatever his previous Sixteenth Seat had been so fond of), “You are just a leech that woman took pity on!”
The man, the second most extolled hero of this era in Japan, grits his teeth as if the decision not to crush a scrawny, powerless kid’s (as if) windpipe had been all that of a hard one. Must’ve taken a lot out of that muscle-filled brain to make any decision. Gin is dropped onto the hardwood floor of the training room, between ancient scorch marks, unceremoniously as the man makes his way for the door, footsteps heavy.
Before the man could disappear behind burnt mahogany walls, Gin calls out, still gasping for air “Been an honor not to share your blood.”
Ah, the dead can’t seek death though.
The temperature rises.
‘Hero’ is an empty title in this world, as empty as Shinigami had been back when he was Ichimaru. That blue bird app can say whatever it wants to.
Fuyumi is wary, she could be frozen if not for a steady drawing breath as if it were a prayer. Two-colored hair breaks from her hold easily, watery eyes making his way to Gin. It’s worth it to face the man in flames with a smile when that meant his brother could escape another day.
He brings his left hand to rest on Shouto’s red-white hair, “I’m alright, kiddo.”
“H-hey, you’re a kid too,” holding back a sob, the younger boy buries himself into Gin’s singed shirt. “Gin-nii.”
-
They’re fine at the end of the day, curled up next to each other in a room largely cut off from the main house. Yes, Gin will give this boy all he had failed to give Ran-chan.
The adults in their lives aren’t shit anyhow. The woman with frost is only momentarily affectionate when she feels the man has long disappeared, the caretakers only heed the man’s words, and the man? Gin has seen such trash before, within the seediest pits of Las Noches and all the way to Central.
The man in flames wants weapons though, child-sized swords forged from his blood to fight for (his ego) the greater good. Sometimes, he wonders how the woman could even look at her children anymore, much less Gin.
It’s his duty now, then, to teach the kid of humanity’s failures and successes.
-
Studying takes to him like a fish in water—growing up as a Rukongai brat meant food and survival, the Academy was to churn out cannon fodder for those who didn’t put in twice the effort. At this age, Soul Society children are one foot out of the cradle.
This place, Mafumafu, Japan, a nice big house with tutors who don’t question why children have bruises the size of a grown man’s fist, naturally doesn’t investigate into a Gin with a high school diploma and working on his Bachelor’s. It’s none of their business, first of all, not the woman who wasn’t his mother or the man in flames who looks at Todoroki Gin and sees, at best, a parasite and at worse, a profitable tool.
Even then, the latter would be preferable, over Shouto being the center of that man’s attention. They fail to keep the kid’s quirk a secret, a slip on Gin’s part. A training accident where an Endeavor who lost his prey decided that no children of his were to be so weak—the author paraphrased that because Gin doesn’t really care to listen when bullshit is spewing from someone’s mouth.
He knows five languages, one dead that he writes into the walls of the man’s room at night after peeling back the ostentatious wallpaper. It drives the man nuts, of course, casual paranoia and ghost stories do build up.
It helps to know the profession the man occupies himself with. Gin is dead anyhow, knowing how to leave a body is simple arithmetic. No one notices, of course, this isn’t Karakura town. Drawing Shinsou is easier there too—despite the fact that Gin really shouldn’t have been able to draw his zanpaktou at all whilst in a living body.
“Gin-nii,” two-colored hair looks at the wooden ceiling of their room, “I’m gonna be a hero.”
“Yea?”
The book on obscure 19th century happenings was promptly ignored with a flip of a blanket.
“I’ll be better than the man.”
Really, who was Gin to refuse that face?
(Fighting was in his blood, fighting and lying and bloodstained hands were what it meant to be a brat from the Outer Rukongai. To be a Shinigami too now that Gin thinks about it. This whole ‘saving people’ thing was one he never quite got the hang of.)
-
Complacency is a disease . As rotten and damning as the Hougyouku’s promise.
On a Tuesday night when the man in flames was Endeavor, far and away, Gin fiddled with his new toy while two-colored hair got their snacks. It was easy, it was a typical night. They stay out of the adults who couldn’t care less and maintain the false peace.
He should’ve seen this miles away, it was obvious the woman with frost was cracking by bit as the days went by, ever since the man laid his eyes on Shouto’s flames.
On a Tuesday night when even the crickets were quiet, she shattered, and with her was a boy at the center of this web.
Natsuo’s fuming, Fuyumi with the emergency services, and Gin, who’s doing a poor job telling himself pulling a knife is not the best course of action. There’s the sweet, very dead Touya too, the amalgamation of what Shouto (all of them) could become.
Ran-chan was always the one suited for these kinds of situations, never him, so whatever omnipotent being out there who made this decision should really sleep with one eye open. So he stands there, hands twitching and cyan eyes boring straight through the woman’s skull. She’s curled up on herself on wet kitchen tiles, the temperature rapidly decreasing.
Yet Gin couldn’t bring himself to loathe her.
-
Sometimes, he forgets that this body of his is not an adult spirit with a sea’s worth of power down his veins. Swings are too short, and there are no good substitutes for reishi as he feels the urge to build up empty reservoirs. He meets the man’s face just in time when a kick lands too easily.
It’s a good thing Shouto is still away.
(Two-color hair’s still in that hospital bed, even after Endeavor makes the woman disappear with righteous, vindictive rage. Not that Gin’s ever seen much difference between those two.
They say they could recover his eye, even if a blotchy scar remained. It won’t be at its fullest, but that’s better than a blindside.)
With his sprained arm and a patchwork of bruises and burns, Gin drags himself to his room without a scene. The caretakers know better than to look, Natsuo doesn’t ever leave his room, Fuyumi is off to gods know where again, although they wouldn’t dare interfere.
(Fuck, he’ll have to beg a new wooden sword off of the man.)
This body’s barely related to them anyhow, a fourth cousin, thrice removed on their mother’s side. It was only the lure of a potentially potent quirk which never manifested, that Gin wasn’t shoved into the foster system at birth. The man in flames does take his chances, ah, just look at the children, won’t you?
That night, from an anonymous source at the hospital, the news that Endeavor’s son was in critical condition in the hospital due splashed boiling water where scores of old bruises were found trailing the boy’s pale body. Steadily, tales unfolded themselves after one another, old photographs unearthed from the bowels of the internet, a Touya, a Rei, a Fuyumi, and a Natsuo.
Gin can hear the man in flame’s voice from the other side of the “house” on the phone with some poor PR agent. If the smuck knows what’s best for them and their eardrums, that phone is best in a sound-controlled room, away from the better part of society.
Hm, he’s even seen speculation of the legitimacy of the Todoroki kids’ academic records. Embers of a rumor.
(Those are his baby pictures alright.)
(The caretakers giggle.)
Embers that die out the next day, squashed by a power too high for Gin’s toddler hands to reach. And that incident is never brought up again, outside of the smallest corners of the internet.
(The Hero Agency has been quiet lately, though their media team’s been on overtime since the beginning of this period.)
He frowns.
-
“Shouto.”
“Yeah, Gin-nii?”
“I had a sister long ago.”
“Before you were Gin-nii?”
“Hm,” he nods. “You know Ran-chan, though I was always Gin.”
“You talk about her a lot.”
“When you see her, Shouto, tell her I’m sorry.”
“Tell her yourself. You’re the older one here.”
“B-but aren’t ya my lovely younger brother?”
An eye roll, “By four months.”
“Huh, I swore it was longer.”
(By a few hundred years—minuscule differences.)
“Shut up.”
“Oh? Have you finished your Trigonometry work, wittle Shouto-chan?”
How nice of his brother to ice his drink.
“Happy Birthday, Gin-nii.”
-
Middle school was three years of trauma Gin wasn’t willing to repeat. Yeah, sure, he’s technically several dozen times older than the lot of them but Shouto isn’t . That, and the wiles of puberty.
Two-colored hair plops down next to him, fresh out of the counselor’s office, “Has Endeavor given you a recommendation too?”
“Our dear provider has only you in mind, unfortunately,” Gin grins, “though that ain’t stopping me.”
And that’s how Gin ends up staring at giant robots he’ll have to fight. Gods, these things are even dumber than the most brainless Hollows. There’s not even a bit of programming dedicated to any ‘tactics’ up there—poker with a computer algorithm was far more interesting.
Shinsou fits into his hands, a familiar deared confidant, deadlier than the most venomous cobras. Even in his sealed state, Gin’s Zanpaktou was the epitome of grace in his power, something the man in flames could never hope for in that miserable life.
There’s a particularly sparkly kid in his group, screaming bloody murder and taking all the prey. Yeah, that’s almost as many decibels as the man in flames. The same man who gave Gin a month of silence since the moment he made his intentions known.
A quirkless boy has no business in the Hero Industry after all, even if he did serve as a good punching bag.
How he envies, Shouto’s probably having a swell time at home, not being in the middle of all This .
-
In a monitor room in the depths of UA, Aizawa Shouta feels the oncoming migraine miles away as some kid he didn’t bother to read the name of slices a robot apart with a tiny old-fashioned blade. It's a good blade, he'll admit that much, seven if he has no idea how the kid got that thing in.
( 'Support Item' .)
(He’s not getting paid enough for this shit.)
“Hey, isn’t that Endeavor’s kid or something?” someone with a deftly annoying voice says.
“Todoroki Gin?” said a woman this time, “I’m pretty sure that’s his illegitimate child.”
“...is he even using his quirk?”
A long moment of silence as a shiny pen rolls across an even shinier floor. "He's quirkless."
Now, where the fuck is his ibuprofen again. Maybe if Hiazshi stopped crashing his apartment every week, he’ll know where his shit is.
Then the screen switches to some screaming blond kid with explosions from his hands and right there , that’s another migraine. How he longed for the day he retires with thirty cats. All Might pats him sympathetically. Midnight cracks her whip.
-
“A-1?”
“A-1.”
The click of a pen.
"Gin-nii, if your costume is that Death Eater outfit I swear on the man's chairs that—"
"You were much cuter as a kid."
-
USJ goes straight to hell.
The kid knows better than to do anything stupid first of all, and a hundred of these underlings are worth a single man in flames. Assuming he got stuck with someone competent, it shouldn't be a problem.
For himself, well, whatever the sad excuse of a Garganta personification is, it's centuries too soon for it to catch him. So like the good hero-in-training he is, Gin plops himself in between a teacher who's way out of his specialty and mindless goons.
Urgh, they give villains a bad name. Aizen in all his megalomaniacal egotism would cringe to be categorized anywhere near them.
Also, while it's fun and Everything that All-Might punches hard, the Nomu thing ain't shit compared to his sweet Shinsou.
-
Zanpaktou Shinsou is clearly the best Shinsou in Gin's barely opened eyes.
-
The Sports Festival finished without much fanfare, and, “Shouto, you’re wonderful and all, but I think you’re spending too much time with that man.”
Sweet brother, please rethink your internship.
“He's effective, and you're under an art student ,” the boy responds, as flat as always.
“Oh, you say that like it's a bad thing, besides, Uryuu-kun's an old friend!"
(—whose first reaction to Gin's presence was trying to shove a reishi arrow into his gut. That was just a minor bump in their loving relationship, however.)
A raised eyebrow. "Whatever you say, Gin-nii."
It's wonderful. The expressions on two-colored hair read something vaguely of, ' I'm going to catch you doing something stupidly illegal and you're going to get away with it because you're the one who does the taxes around here' . There's also a part about Gin being the most amazingly talented brother but that's paraphrasing.
While this look is never wrong , per se, it's almost creepy how fast the kid catches on whenever Gin begins to plot. A problem for Shouto, though, the art student who's the part-time underground hero is also running a vigilante operation.
Yeah, Gin should've seen that coming ever since the Ryouka Invasion.
(That's something he likes in a man.)
“Don’t worry, I’ll invite him to dinner some time later.”