Characters: Rangiku, Isshin
Summary: The mourning's not all there since there isn't even any proof of death.
Pairings: vaguely alluded to GinRan
Warnings/Spoilers: Contains speculation
Timeline: Pre-manga
Author's Note: Just to warn you, this contains a huge amount of speculation, not least of which that Isshin was the previous Tenth division captain and Rangiku was his lieutenant.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
She's more numb than anything else. No grief, no tears, just blank-eyed, hollow-stepping numbness. She's caught in a state of numb disconnection, like everything's one big out-of-body experience. There's nothing that seems very real anymore.
Rangiku can remember, remember everything; sake's done a number on her liver but it leaves her mind unclouded. When she first came to the Tenth Division, Kurosaki Isshin was Tachibana-taicho's third seat. Since the lieutenant was ill and likely to go on indefinite medical leave soon, Isshin was being primed to take his place; if he thought this to be at all morbid, he didn't let on.
He had a booming laugh and an undeniable love of life—Still has, Rangiku tells herself. Somewhat prone to avoiding paperwork (he outgrows it eventually but never relishes the interminable task), he didn't seem to have much potential as an administrator—he didn't have any potential as an administrator, in fact—, but in Isshin's case, he wasn't being considered for captaincy because of his administrative skill—or lack of. With Isshin, it was a matter of his brute strength, of his having achieved bankai and his general skill with a zanpakuto. He and Rangiku became friends immediately upon meeting.
The day Isshin becomes captain of the Tenth Division is the day Rangiku, who by this time has become his third seat, beats him in a drinking contest—they by now have figured out that, between them, they can drink literally all of Seireitei, including Kyouraku Shunsui, under the table.
The bar table is littered with empty glasses; the light coming from the narrow window drips over them, like honey. Isshin, amazed with the younger woman, gapes at her, but is soon accosted by the perfectly irate lieutenant of the Fifth Division; Gin is furious with Isshin for getting Rangiku so drunk that she can barely stand. Isshin remembers little of their encounter and Gin has hated him ever since.
Gin isn't the only one Isshin rubs the wrong way as time moves on. Isshin was—Is, Rangiku intones over and again, unwilling to apply the past tense to her captain—a non-conformist; Seireitei isn't fond of vocal non-conformists, and Isshin qualifies as both. That's how he ends up on long-term assignment in Karakura Town—a low-ranking Shinigami may be sent on long-term assignment in the Human World as a training exercise, but if it's a higher-ranking officer or a captain, it means that the officer in question is in some sort of disgrace and is one step away from being what amounts to being fired in Seireitei. Isshin grumbles, of course—Isshin always grumbles about something—but he accepts it, and leaves, albeit reluctantly.
Five years pass. Isshin returns to Soul Society for a few hours once every three months to report back—they visit, they talk, mostly of the Tenth Division and if things have been going smoothly since the last check-up. Rangiku drinks but Isshin never does—doesn't want to head back to Earth drunk, she supposes.
And now, he's gone.
He's missed two checkpoints. One could be explained away, but two can not.
Rangiku, as standing captain of the division sends men and sometimes searches herself but can't find a single trace of him. She knows Isshin has associates among the living—he has to be staying with someone in order to be able to get something to eat—but though he's talked about them before he's never given names or addresses, so she has nowhere to look.
The only thing that can be assumed is that he's dead, but there's not even a body—not that there would be, if Isshin met his death by Hollow.
No body, no trace of violence, nothing, no proof that he's dead.
The captain of the Tenth Division has simply dropped off the face of the map.
Rangiku doesn't mourn—doesn't really know how to mourn, in such a situation. She thinks about organizing a wake a few times but stops herself, telling herself that if Isshin's alive he'd probably think it was pretty funny that someone was holding a wake over him, but Rangiku wouldn't find it so amusing. Besides, in order to have a wake there must first be a body.
The river flows on, of course. Seireitei acts as though Kurosaki Isshin-taicho never existed—it's not hard, and plenty of the higher-ups are quite willing to forget the man who gave them so many migraines. His memory is never mentioned aloud, though Rangiku knows that more than just her remember; his name is never mentioned again.
The afterlife moves on. Seireitei's mantra is arbitrary but correct, in a terrible sort of way. Things must keep moving if the machinery can continue to work properly. The afterlife moves on, no matter what happens.
It must move on.
Yeah… In the interim between Kurosaki-taicho and the next captain, Rangiku sits at a desk that seems too big for her. The desk she shouldn't be sitting in. The desk she shouldn't have to be sitting in. The afterlife moves on.
And all the while, the thought crossing through her mind, one more current in the great river, remains the same, constant, unchanging.
His body was never found.