Pull Down the World
Chapter 4 - Into the Wilderness
"I am alone."
The words stung, but she forced herself to say them. "I am alone." For perhaps the thousandth time, and yet the bitter pain of loss never seemed to fade. Gin had disappeared, without a word, without a trace.
He had come back from the town panting and exhausted, half-mad and ranting about someone, about murder and death. Rangiku hadn't understood a word of it. And then Gin had collapsed. Rangiku remembered dragging him into the shack they shared, laying him on the floor. He had been so hot; it burned to touch his skin. Rangiku remembered crying, remembered tears streaming from her eyes as she stared down at Gin, sure he was going to die. Stupid Gin. Never thinking about himself. Never thinking about what she would do without him. Stupid, stupid Gin.
Rangiku had done everything she could think of. She had wetted towels to cool him off. She had fanned him, trying to take the heat away. She had cried. For long hours, she had cried, and he never twitched a muscle, until finally it was so dark that Rangiku couldn't see what she was doing. She was too exhausted to do more for him, so she made him a bed and rolled him on it. Then Rangiku had put herself to sleep, still crying, praying that when she woke he would still be with her.
And then she woke, and he was not. But not in the way she had feared. Gin wasn't dead. He was gone, with no sign of him to be found anywhere. Rangiku didn't understand.
She never understood Gin anyway, not really. But he had always been there for her. Always, since the day they met, since he offered her rice crackers under the desert sun. Always. And then, that morning, he wasn't.
She had known something was wrong. She had known it wasn't one of Gin's occasional disappearances. Not after the way he had come home, not after the fever she thought would kill him. But she tried to tell herself otherwise. Rangiku tried to pretend it was the same as any of his other trips. She waited a week. The last of the food ran out. She waited another week, hunting for scraps to keep her alive. And still, Gin didn't return.
Finally, Rangiku steeled herself to go into the town. To look for Gin. To look for food. Gin had said there was no food, but how could that be? An entire town with no food? It made no sense.
And yet he was right. Rangiku found nothing. No sign of Gin, no scrap of food. It was like a different world. Gin had always been with her before, in the town. Gin had always led the way for her. Without Gin, every one, every thing seemed... hostile. It was not the life she wanted.
So Rangiku had left. Her purpose had been so clear at first. To find Gin. She didn't know how, but she knew she had to. Rangiku couldn't endure solitude, couldn't endure a world centered on herself. She had never been alone before. There was the time before she met Gin, but... Rangiku had not understood what alone meant until she met Gin. Now she did. And so she had set out. To find Gin, and lose herself.
Or perhaps, part of her whispered, to lose Gin and find herself.
But Ichimaru Gin was like a jagged arrowhead piercing her heart. The pain of having him there was more than she could bear. The pain of trying to rip him out would surely kill her.
And yet...
"I am alone."
But she had nowhere to look. Gin had been gone for weeks. He could be anywhere. And he had seemed so frightened the last time he returned from the town, Rangiku could hardly imagine him returning there. Rangiku had no idea where he might be. And with no idea, no hope.
He must have fled from the shack. Rangiku knew that much. So she returned to the shack, the little shelter they had both called home for almost eight years. She searched, then. For any sign of Gin, for any hint of where he might have fled. But after weeks without looking, what traces could possibly remain? The hopelessness, the helplessness, blossomed inside her.
And then, unaccountably, she found something. A trail, leading through the scrub brush, away from the shack. It was faded, but still easy enough to spot. Someone had crashed through here, breaking branches of the pinion bushes. Gin? Rangiku couldn't be sure, but she did not know who else could have been here.
She followed the trail, climbing the hills east of the shack. She walked for more than an hour, watching for the traces of broken twigs, picking her way carefully between the bushes. Finally, the path opened onto a clearing, and a grisly sight that made Rangiku's stomach lurch.
The remains of a campfire sat in the center of the clearing, with two bodies lying beside it. Dead - there could be no question of that - with most of their flesh already eaten by vultures and jackals. What the scavengers couldn't get was being devoured by insects, even now.
Rangiku's heart froze as she took in the scene. "Gin?" The name was no more than a whisper.
Fighting her squeamishness, she walked toward one of the bodies, lying face-down near the firepit. The corpse was missing its arms. From bones lying nearby, Rangiku assumed they had been torn away while jackals fought over the body. She kicked it over, uncovering writhing patches of maggoty flesh. Rangiku put a hand to her mouth, struggling against the nausea that filled her. The face was inhuman, too rotted to be recognizable. But the form was too large, she realized. This was a grown man, far taller than Gin.
She stepped over the man's corpse gingerly, staring at the other body. It was in worse shape. The carrion-eaters had been even more thorough here. The head was ruined, crushed in by some overeager scavenger. The body looked like it had been dragged back and forth. scraping thin trails through the dry dirt of the campsite. It was splayed, though wholly unrecognizable. But the size... A sob caught in Rangiku's throat. The size was right. The height. It was Gin.
Rangiku fell to her knees. Horror filled her, but none of the squeamishness she had felt before. She wrapped her arms around the body and held it up, held it to her chest. Gin's body. Gin, who would never come back for her again. Gin, who would never again smile for her, who would never again tease her, who would never again open those brilliant red eyes.
Gin, who would never know that she loved him.
The thought brought a shiver, a cold that infused her bones. The thought was new to her, but she knew it to be true. Gin. She loved Gin. And she would never have a chance to tell him.
Broken sobs shook through Rangiku. Tears washed down her cheeks and fell, glittering, onto the body in her arms. She sat, cradling Gin's dessicated form, long into the night, until exhaustion overcame her and Rangiku fell to the ground, unconscious, a third body to join the two already there.
She woke to the sun beating down on her. She woke to pain. In her chest, where her heart should be. Gin was gone, and inside her where once she'd kept his memory, now there was nothing. She was empty. Hollow.
Something called to her. Not a voice, not anything she could put into words. There was simply a longing, a longing she had not felt since meeting Gin. It pulled at her, like a leash, like the strings on a puppet directing her every move.
It pulled her west.
She went, unresisting. Food was gone from her mind. Even the hunger seemed a faint thing, now. Day and night blurred together. She would walk until she collapsed, her limbs refusing to move. Sleep would claim her, for minutes or for hours. And when she woke, the longing would be waiting for her, stronger than ever before.
And through all that time, she had only one thought to keep her company.
"I am alone."
There was no one to hear her now, not here. No soul would wander this far from Rukongai, past the 80th district, past the outermost borders of Soul Society. Here the land turned sere and wild. Not even animals ventured this far. No creature would willingly abandon the security offered by Soul Society. No creature but Rangiku. The wilderness outside Rukongai was the place of Hollows.
She had crossed the border two days ago. She had known, somehow, the moment she left Rukongai. She had felt a pressure lifting, unbinding, a pressure that was as much a part her as her own skin. Rangiku had never known the pressure existed until it was gone. A part of her was free now, unlocked. Exposed. And now the longing came stronger than ever before.
The air was different here: raw, untamed. Wind whipped around her, tangling her hair and staining her clothing with dust. It whined in her ears and stung her nose with a bitter charcoal scent. The ground was rocky, stained in yellow and gray. Stone mesas rose around her, with twisted juniper bushes clinging to life in the shadows of their cliffs. But no other creatures, no sound but the howl of the wind. Still, she walked onward.
West.
As the red disk of the sun burned on the horizon, shivering the air into ripples with it's brutal heat, Rangiku came to a stop. South of her, a towering cliff curved inward. Rusty red granite arched overhead, eroded by millenia of wind into an inconceivable bridge, linking protrusions of the mesa above. Rangiku's legs gave out, dropping her roughly onto the desert floor. There was no energy left in her, no power to go on. She crumpled into a heap, panting for breath.
And noticed, gradually, that the longing was gone. She had arrived. Somewhere.
Gathering her strength, Rangiku crawled toward the recess in the cliff. It would provide some protection from the sun. Rangiku's skin was blistery red, burnt from days of exposure. The rocky sand cut into her forearms as she pulled herself forward, and she had to clench her teeth to keep from screaming. A part of her knew that she needed refuge, even the small refuge afforded by the cliff walls.
Past the arch the ground was cool, protected from the sun's scorching heat. The dark, scraggly green of juniper bushes hugged the base of the cliffs and stabbed into the bowl at the bottom. Rangiku pulled herself past the first ranks of bushes, blocking her view of the desert beyond the archway. She fell onto her back, and sharp rocks stabbed through the thin fabric of her clothes. She knew she would have bruises or worse, but she couldn't find the energy to care. The biting scent of the juniper bushes came to her nose, clouding her head as she stared upward. Cliff walls, of the same reddish stone as the arch, formed a giant circle overhead, framing the cloudless sky. Rangiku watched, gasping, as the sky faded to black, draining color from the cliffs.
A star peeked out, twinkling white, and then another. Another, and another. The sky resolved into a sparkling field of light, writ large across the sky, across the circle of Rangiku's vision. Her breathing calmed as she watched, entranced. The stars had been clear, beautiful in Rukongai, but not like this. Never like this. The night sky was so bright, alive with fire overhead. A wide band of white, the thickest concentration of stars, stretched across the sky like a river. It turned, so slowly she could barely notice. It spun around her head. She watched, too tired to do anything else.
The stars were so pretty. So white. They reminded her of Gin, somehow...
A snapping twig brought her awake with a gasp. Rangiku was still on her back, facing the stars overhead. The river of light had turned farther. She felt disoriented, lost. Pain flooded through her head, scouring away thoughts as they formed. Where was she? Her body felt like lead. And the Hunger... A tear rolled down her cheek, and she didn't understand why.
Another snapping twig, and she forced herself to roll over. Something told her this was wrong. There should be no sound. Sound was dangerous. She peered through the thin cover of a juniper, holding her breath. Her body ached, but the reason for the pain was lost to her.
And then, stepping out of the darkness, she saw a little white fox. It strolled between the bushes, coming straight toward her. The fox stared into Rangiku's eyes, freezing her to the spot. It had deep, crimson eyes. Something seemed important about that. A memory tugged at Rangiku, a name, but the pain in her head washed it away.
The fox trotted up on silent paws and stared at her for a few moments. Then, it whined softly and began to lick her face. A man's voice, dry and cracked with age, echoed from the darkness. "Oboyi, what did you find there?"
Rangiku looked up as the man stepped into view. She could not see him clearly by starlight, but he seemed small, almost fragile. Rangiku thought he couldn't be much bigger than she herself. But the man carried a sack, almost as large as he was, slung over one shoulder. He turned now, depositing the sack on the ground with a thump, and walked closer.
Rangiku scrabbled backward and tried to stand, but her muscles were too sore. She lurched upward, but her legs gave out and she fell back to sit on the ground.
The man was right in front of Rangiku now, and he bent closer to examine her. "A girl, Oboyi? And so young. Why, I don't think we've had a girl out here in, oh...three hund... Oh, but never mind that! What am I thinking?" He reached forward, offering Rangiku his hand, and she could just see a smile creasing his face in the faint light.
She took the hand, and the old man helped her up with surprising strength. He wrapped her arm around his shoulders in the same motion, letting Rangiku rest her weight on him. Rangiku was glad of the help, but surprised that the aged man could give it. She was young still, and small, but her legs were too weak to support more than the barest fraction of her weight. Up close now, the man looked even more ancient than he had at a distance. Rangiku could make out lines creasing every inch of his face. A man this old should be crumbling to dust, not helping a young girl like herself to stand.
The man walked Rangiku into a clearing among the juniper bushes, a rough circle of stony dirt four meters in diameter. He sat her on a large rock near the center of the space, easing her down slowly.
The white fox trotted at his heels. It was joined, a moment later, by another small white fox, nearly identical to the first. The man turned to the foxes, ignoring Rangiku. "Omohi, can you find us a few juniper branches for a fire? Oboyi, would you get my bag for me? Thank you." The two foxes whirled, darting away into the underbrush.
Turning his attention back to Rangiku, the man moved his head up and down, studying her. Rangiku shivered under the man's gaze. His eyes turned her stomach to ice, for some reason. Thoughts still shattered as they were forming for her, but Rangiku was aware of power, unlike anything she had ever felt before, radiating from the old man like heat.
The man folded his legs, sitting on the ground and propping his hand on his knee. At length, he spoke to her.
"You're young."
The words took a moment to register, and when they did Rangiku could only blink. She struggled against the pain in her head, finally forming a word. "Yes?" Her hand shot to her temple as the pain redoubled, and she tried desperately to massage it away.
"Ah. My apologies. I forget myself." The old man laughed good naturedly, and all at once the pain was gone. "I simply meant, you're young to be out so far in the wilderness. Souls come here to die. Old souls. It's been a very long time since I've seen someone as young as you."
Without the pain, Rangiku found that she could think again. But with thought came memory, The memory of Gin. A tear ran down her cheek. The old man watched her silently, and his eyes seemed to squeeze her, forcing out the tears like water rung from a damp cloth. He expected her to respond, but the memories were too fresh. Rangiku couldn't bring herself to talk about them.
She tried to resist the tears, ashamed, but they refused to stop. A sob rose from her chest and she fought it back down, but another followed, and another, and Rangiku couldn't stop them all. The pressure was palpable now, squeezing her chest like a vice. Her head thrummed, and she collapsed off the rock, huddling in the dirt as sobs racked her body. The images came back to her. Gin, collapsing in the shack. Gin, with his burning fever. And Gin's mutilated body, unrecognizable even as she cradled it in her arms. Then older memories, memories of how happy she had been with Gin, memories that made his loss hurt so much more.
After what seemed like hours, she felt a hand brushing the tears away from her cheeks, smoothing her hair. The touch reminded her of Gin, of the way he would laugh when she was upset, smile and smooth back her hair. The touch always calmed her, as its memory did now. Tears swam in her eyes, but she could feel them fading, and after a few seconds the watery veil shrouding the world vanished. A last, dry sob, shook her body.
The old man was sitting on the ground just where she remembered, but for the first time she could see him clearly. A fire was burning off to her left, in the center of the clearing, and the glow of its flames danced across his face. A thin scrabble of white hair covered the old man's scalp. His face was like wrinkled parchment and sunbeaten so long it looked as hard as leather. One of his eyes was a striking, brilliant gold. The other was milky white.
"I don't think I've ever seen someone cry so long, child, or so hard. But then again you're young. You don't know what the world is like yet. Everything is still new and raw for you, isn't it?"
Rangiku opened her mouth to argue, but all that came out was a hoarse croak.
The man laughed, a smile creasing his lips, and oddly Rangiku found his good humor reassuring rather than insulting. "Don't trouble yourself, child. Oboyi has already told me all about your boy friend. He says you've been running the last two weeks, or near enough. And running long before that as well, long before you ever met this..." The man looked down, and Rangiku noticed the two white foxes playing at his feet. "Long before you ever met this Gin," he finished.
Rangiku forgot her raw throat for a moment. "How do you know his..." she began, but her cracked voice dissolved into a fit of coughing.
"How do I know his name, child? I don't. Oboyi does. And Oboyi knows it because you know it."
Thought seemed to shatter again. Rangiku massaged her throat. She tried to form another question, but words failed her. The fox knew? And it knew because she knew? What was the old man talking about?
The old man read the confusion on Rangiku's face. "There are things in this world, child, that you will never understand. Best to just accept them for what they are. Now tell me, why are you running?"
"I thought you said you knew!" Rangiku protested heatedly. The words still had a hoarse sound, but oddly her voice seemed to be recovering already.
"No, child, I do not know. Oboyi does, but this time I have chosen to ask you rather than him. Now, why?" The old man spoke with a coolly insistent tone.
Rangiku rubbed a hand through her hair, frowning at the ground. She paused, thinking. Parts of her memory seemed black and empty, like holes in her life, and she found herself trying to look inside them for the answers. Some of those holes were from times long ago. Others were recent. Very recent. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't remember what those holes contained. Finally, she shook her head with a sigh. "I don't know. I can't seem to remember why I was running."
The old man glanced at the foxes again. They ceased playing, and one of them walked to Rangiku. It curled up beside her feet. "Try again, child," the old man ordered.
"But I just..."
"Humor me."
Rangiku closed her eyes and concentrated, focusing her mind on those empty places. But this time, memory flooded back. Memory of the longing that brought her into the wilds beyond Rukongai. Memory of the times before Gin, of the same longing. She had been moving toward the wilds then, too. Until he found her. Until he stopped her. But why had she been running then? What had caused the longing the first time? Rangiku pushed her mind back farther, probing for the true reason.
A black wall slammed down around her memories, closing them off. Rangiku's eyes shot open, and she found the little white fox staring up at her. Oboyi?
"You found your answer, child. That is enough. Now tell me."
I didn't find the answer, she wanted to protest. I was right there. I was so close, but you stopped me. Somehow she knew it was true. But he had said she found the answer too. The answer...
"Longing," she said. "There was a feeling, a longing, sort of like an emptiness inside me. It took me after Gin died. It called me out here. It took me before, too, though I don't remember the reason. But that longing, that's the reason I was running."
The old man gave her a smile, and Rangiku felt warmth spreading through her, contentment. "Good, child. Good." And then his voice softened, as if he was talking with himself. "But why in one so young?" He looked to the fox at his feet, and the fox stared back at him. The pair of them sat for minutes, silently. Something rubbed against Rangiku's leg and she looked down to see the other fox curling up beside her. She reached down and scratched behind its ears, and the fox gave her a grateful smile.
"Something has a powerful desire for you, child." The old man was staring at her again, his expression now unreadable. "Omohi thinks it's a Hollow, one of the strong ones. He says the holes in your memory are proof enough; something is commanding you. I'm not so sure. You've been out here for two days already, and not a single Hollow has come within sight of you. Something wants you here, badly enough to have called you twice, but whatever it is... Well, no matter. I found you first."
The words washed over Rangiku like water. Nothing could want her. It made no sense. But then again, she had felt the longing. "What do you...?"
"Shh, child. The time for questions is over. Now is the time for listening." There was an intensity in the man's voice now, a fire that made his ancient body suddenly seem much younger. "You must leave. You must go back to Rukongai and never come here again. Something is hunting for you. Find out what, and why."
"I was trying, but you stopped me. Stopped my memories," she protested. "I was about to find out why!"
"No child, you were not. No part of you yet knows why you are being hunted. Find a place where you can seek out the answers."
"But where do I go? What do I do?" Melancholy slipped over Rangiku as she thought of returning to Rukongai. "I don't have anyone left."
"Memories can lie, child. They can play tricks on the mind. Not all is as you believe it to be. In the morning, I will send Oboyi to take you back to Rukongai. He likes your company. Now, before you sleep I will leave you with two pieces of advice. Watch for the one who laughs. He will lead you well. Watch for the one who sings. He would do you harm."
"Wait. What do you mean? Before I sleep? I'm not even tir..." A yawn split Rangiku's jaw, and a familiar pressure settled over her, weighing down her eyelids. She tried her hardest to fight it off.
The old man smiled gently. "I'm sorry, child, but I have more business to be about before the night is through, I have enjoyed meeting you, though." Rangiku's eyes slid shut, and exhaustion overcame her will to stay awake. The old man's final words seemed to come from a great distance. "Remember what I have said. We will not meet again in this world."
Sleep took her, and with sleep came dreams. Scattered, incoherent dreams at first, and then dreams of the past, of her life with Gin. And other dreams, older dreams, images she did not understand.
A voice came to her in dreams, whispered in the darkness. It was a woman's voice, familiar and yet not. She could find no memory of its owner. It whispered just out of hearing as the dreams faded one into another. Rangiku tried to listen, tried to discern the words the voice spoke, but as she listened, the words seemed to blend together into a meaningless rumble of sound.
She woke to the midmorning sun beating down on her already-sunburnt face, and the coarse, sandpapery feel of a tongue lapping at her hand. Rangiku blinked, lost for a moment between waking and sleeping. She raised her head to look toward her hand, and saw a small white fox. Memory stirred, and Rangiku sat up with a start. Something swung forward with her, making a soft jingling noise, and for the first time Rangiku noticed a weight around her neck.
She raised her hand, prompting a soft whine from the fox. She could feel a chain at her neck, almost like a collar. A heavy ring in the front held it closed, and another length of chain dangled from that.Her hand trailed down, raising the chain to where she could see it. Again, a quiet jingling sound.
At the end of the chain was an open ball of carved jade, all of once piece and white as snow. It showed two foxes suspended in a playful fight. Through the gaps in the carving, Rangiku saw that a silver bell rested inside, too large to be removed without breaking the carving. She looked at it wonderingly, and glanced down at the fox beside her. The white fox, so similar to those in the carving, stared back with its startling crimson eyes.
Rangiku rose to her feet, dusting herself off. There was no sign of the old man anymore, not even a residue of the last night's fire. But the longing that had gripped her, the longing she now remembered so clearly, was gone as well. Pain remained, the pain of loss, the pain of Gin's death, but absent the helplessness she had felt before.
A solitary tear rolled down Rangiku's cheek, and she brushed it away. No more tears, she promised herself. No more tears for Gin. I loved him, but he's gone and I'm still here. He had something important to tell me. Now, he never will. It's my turn to find out for myself. It's my turn to live for myself.
Rangiku turned to the fox, curled lazily near her feet. "All right. Oboyi? Show me where we're going."