Characters: Unohana, Rangiku
Summary: She saw the memories cascading around her, like water off of stone.
Pairings: GinRan
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Deicide arc
Timeline: post-Deicide arc
Author's Note: Unohana probably fulfills this sort of role to everyone.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
"Thank you for agreeing to speak with me, Unohana-taicho," Rangiku murmured, and Unohana nodded gently, gazing upon the lieutenant's form intensely and thinking privately that she would have called Rangiku in herself soon enough.
Unohana had closed and locked her office door that afternoon, with orders to the rest of the division that she was not to be disturbed—all questions and requests were to be directed to Isane, who had her captain's assurance that she would support (at least publicly) any action she took.
Tea brewed on the tiny stove in her office soon was ready. "Do you want any, Matsumoto-san?"
Rangiku raised a hand and shook her head, eyes still fixed firmly on her lap. "No, thank you."
Deft hands balanced a white porcelain, blue-embossed tea cup as Unohana retreated to her desk and returned to her scrutiny of the woman sitting in the arm chair before of her.
In the watery banana yellow light that melted along the walls and furnishings of Unohana's comfortable office, Rangiku seemed more than a little washed out. Bright gold hair was brought to dull tarnish, fair skin made waxen and wan. Her eyes seemed colorless, like glass instead of blue ice, with the eyelids drooping like loose window shutters. Even her shihakusho seemed dull, the deep rich black bleaching to gray.
And Rangiku had been in more than appearance becoming…washed out lately, Unohana couldn't help but notice. Her laughter and smiles were becoming rare things about the length of Seireitei, extinguished, perhaps dying out. She spoke less and drank more, though her control while drinking never wavered—Rangiku had long since worked out a system to avoid becoming so drunk as to be rendered incapable of walking home. She was simply withdrawn.
Unohana had watched her progress—or, more accurately, descent—with the same concern and gnawing worry digging into the pit of her stomach that she had felt many times in centuries long past. She had watched this sort of decline before.
"What was it you wished to speak to me of?" The tea cup hit the desk with a soft clink, and hands folded in black linen drapery, as Unohana strove to make her tone as delicately kind as possible.
Rangiku hesitated and Unohana's suspicions were confirmed. "The only witness will be the walls, unless you wish it otherwise." She was a doctor, Rangiku her patient, and there would be no breach of confidentiality, not today.
The lieutenant of the Tenth Division—this was what she was trying to project her to be, not breakable, vulnerable, human Rangiku, and failing miserably—closed her eyes and took in a deep breath perhaps to give her courage. Then, she nodded, storing up her resolve and knowing (Unohana could always tell now, after so many centuries of observation) that if she didn't speak now, she never would.
"It's about Gin."
Now it was Unohana's turn to close her eyes for a very long time.
What a wasp's nest.
She supposed Rangiku could be excused for feeling isolated and uncomfortable speaking of her feelings to anyone. Even speaking of a traitor in the Gotei Thirteen was a taboo so deeply ingrained that it was instinctual among the Shinigami. There were very few whom Rangiku could go to and expect to find an understanding shoulder to cry on.
Rangiku had taken responsibility of Kira. Helped him, but in the end couldn't help her out.
The captain of the Fourth Division—and this was Unohana's mask, but it was more finely crafted and stronger; what she knew she needed to make Rangiku feel secure, that the one she spoke to had authority and respect—lifted her eyes on Rangiku, and smiled sadly.
She was so young. Everyone apart from Yamamoto seemed young to her eyes, even Shunsui and Juushiro, who had entered the Academy in the early days of her captaincy. Unohana supposed she could tell Rangiku that, in fifty years, or maybe a hundred, that she would perhaps be capable of thinking of her late lover with detachment, even antipathy.
Or that perhaps, she still wouldn't.
Things like love and time and family, Unohana supposed, only meant anything to anyone at all because life would eventually end and these things were passing and transitory. What existed for only the shortest of times only had value because it was so short.
Unohana had watched centuries pass by like sand through an hourglass. She had witnessed the collapse of the Roman Empire, waded through destruction in the wake of the Black Death. So many whom she had known in her youth were gone—Kotetsu Isane was in fact the reincarnation, several times removed of Unohana's first lieutenant, something the captain knew but Isane herself did not.
The sadness that came after the loss of someone loved only came at all because there had been so much joy, so much happiness found. And there was only happiness because love was so short. Mortality, a scourge humanity feared and always sought to reverse, was in fact the greatest blessing mankind had ever received. Unohana could tell anyone curious that to live forever was not something anyone truly wanted.
"When he first left," Unohana broached the subject delicately, "you seemed to come to be at peace with Ichimaru-san's departure."
A golden eyebrow rose. "That fooled you?" Rangiku's face colored at the choice of words and she fell silent for a moment before going on, words just as tactless without really meaning to. "Nanao always saw straight through me."
"Ise-san is more often in your company, Matsumoto-san."
Rangiku's eyes fell to the window, very wide and blank but at the same time serious and grim and sad. "I had sort of gotten used to the idea," she half-whispered. "I had…at least thought that there would be a chance I'd be able to see him again, even if it was only ever as an enemy." She ran a hand through her hair and let out a mockery of a laugh that hit the air almost like the bark of a dog. "God, I didn't know whether I was gonna kick him or kiss him the next time I saw him."
Unohana recognized the sentiment and, secretly, she understood. Once in love, falling out was nearly impossible.
"But then…" Rangiku began to falter, and crack. Face contorted. Dull eyes grew very bright. "…then… He just…died.
"What makes it the worst was the way he acted that day. That…" she looked down "…I think… he still loved me, too."
Unohana said nothing.
"I watched him die, you know. I watched… the life just fade away. Like dye bleeding out of a yukata."
Rangiku again fell silent, and Unohana stayed her tongue for a minute more.
She saw the memories cascading around her, like water off of stone. Those memories still sang in Rangiku's ears, still teased her senses, made her fingers tingle, her lips quiver. A waterfall of remembrance, black sludge that was somehow simultaneously silver water, and she stood in the center of it.
Unohana still told herself not to turn her away. The healer inside of her, that face that wasn't really a face but was her, all of her, would not turn away one in need and pain.
Her smile was kind, and gentle and sad, the smile Unohana had perfected in the course of over seventeen hundred years that flowed like water under a bridge.
"Matsumoto-san, I have had little experience with the pain you suffer from." True, Unohana had had lovers in the past, but they had died peacefully, and they had never become traitors to Soul Society. She had only ever had experience with this particular anguish from her observations of others. "I will not say that this will pass. Truthfully, I do not know if it will pass. But if you ever need me, here I will be. There is no reason to ever worry within these walls."