Characters: Kira, Rangiku, Gin
Summary: Kira and Rangiku, comparing notes.
Pairings: GinRan, onesided KiraRan
Warnings/Spoilers: Soul Society arc
Timeline: Post Soul Society arc.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
With Hitsugaya-taicho still in the hospital, the office is isolated and unlikely to be disturbed. The deep red shadows of bloody twilight casts a pall over Rangiku's face, and Kira shivers to notice it.
"He played us both for fools, didn't he?" Rangiku's voice is flat and dull, though that might just be the sake playing with her vocal cords, merciless and stiff. It shocks Kira to learn that she's not always a happy drunk, but he supposes he shouldn't be so taken aback.
Kira's pale, milky blue eyes stare deep into the sake cup nursed in his thin, long-fingered hands, and the word fool runs through his mind like a tidal wave of ill thought. Fool fool… you're such a fool… you were, are and remain the greatest fool of all… He deliberately dumps the contents of his sake glass out the window so he can't see his true reflection in its depths. The reality of him as a fool is something he can admit to himself but doesn't like to see.
"Yes," Kira whispers, voice quavering—just the sake, he keeps telling himself, just like the sake is making Rangiku flat and toneless, "he did."
The image that assaults him now is one Kira knows Rangiku will not be able to discern in his eyes—because he knows that it is not the image she sees in her own mind.
There were always, have always been barriers. The one that separates Kira from Rangiku, Kira from Gin, Gin from everyone else. They're so one-sided, that while Kira was always on the outside looking in, either one of them could swoop in on him. Gin had a habit of doing that to everyone.
There's always been a wall there. Gin and Rangiku, talking, conversing, laughing, arguing, Rangiku whispering conspiratorially, and Kira, just one step behind. A barrier that Kira can not penetrate, can not hope to break through, and doesn't even try to shatter. Some things are better left unbroken.
Like her smile. People think it to be his captain's smile that makes Kira go a little weak, but really, it's hers.
And it's her smile that is absent now.
Gin, who has slipped away like a thief in the night, stole it when he left. He took Kira's last vestige of joy, too.
They are fools.
They never knew the man could do this.
And all they know now is that they never knew Gin at all.