I own nothing.
"So there's a shadow on the sun; is that what you're trying to tell me?" Rangiku's eyes are laughing and her voice shows signs of wanting to as well. Her hair smells of summer and her smile is playing with the suggestion of incredulous mirth.
"Well…" Gin deliberately lets his tongue linger long on the syllable; with a deft hand he catches a strand of gold hair being worried at by a languid breeze "…either that or your mother stole some sunlight for your hair when you were born."
She laughs, and the sound is like the beginning and ending of whole worlds.
Gin has never liked to dream and this, this is what he terms a dream perhaps more pleasant than he deserves. That he can dream at all astounds him; he took Hueco Mundo to be the sort of place that devours dreams whole, but instead it lets him have his. How odd.
Gin has never liked delusions or illusions either, but for some reason these delusions are the only thing he clings to here. A glimpse of sunlight in a night-doused world.
This is how he remembers her: Rangiku is joking, Rangiku is laughing, and she isn't holding a blade to his throat or glaring at him from between a pillar of light. She is sober or perhaps just a little drunk, her smile starting to droop like an overripe rose. When she looks at him, there is that familiar gleam in her eyes, commingled recognition and welcome. Rangiku is as beautiful here as she ever is, gold hair spilling over her shoulders and pale blue eyes glistening in some ruddy lamplight.
This is reality as Gin knows it: He and Rangiku are separated by two worlds and things that can never be communicated. She doesn't know the whole story, Gin is a criminal and a fugitive from justice, and he can never go back.
Maybe that's why Gin lets himself dream. Maybe that's why he lets illusions creep over his flesh. This is the best it will ever be.
There's one thing: He can't hear her talk. Gin can see Rangiku's mouth forming words and he knows exactly what she's saying, but there is no sound. All is mute, and Gin can't even hear his own voice here, because… because…
Gin doesn't know why it's always okay that he can't hear himself speak. It just is.
And here is the only reality that matters: It just can't last, and it doesn't.
She's always gone long before he opens his eyes, and Gin knows it's just better that way. He doesn't need his delusions carrying over into the waking world.