Diospyros: The Drowning Ophelia, a bleach fanfic

[Beginning Author's Note:] Perhaps I am not looking correctly, but it seems that GinRan is lacking in fanfics involving them meeting as children on FF. There are some on A03, but for FF almost all the fanfics involving this couple is when Gin leaves to join Aizen to Hueco Mundo or on how this ship tragically ends with Gin's death, and the few ones on here that dealt with them meeting as children were usually drabbles. I was so frustrated a few weeks ago that I began spending 3 in a half weeks writing this out, because as the saying goes, write what you wanna read, amIright?. Some of the inspiration of this fanfic, specifically the first part of it, came from a fanbook I read where in the fanbook it was written that Gin found Rangiku sexually assaulted by men (Interestingly this fanbook came out 4 or 5 years before it was revealed that the hogyoku was used on Rangiku) and he thus killed them brutally and left them to be devoured by the crows. I always found it strange the lengths Gin went from Aizen just because Rangiku got some of her spirit or whatever taken away for the hogyoku, and also I remembered that when Gin found Rangiku unconscious part of her top was exposed, so this fanfic can be seen as expanding on the damage Aizen's three lackies did to Rangiku which would cause Gin to go through so much just to kill Aizen and get revenge. This fanfiction also deals with the sociopathic side of Gin that I always headcanon was a little bit in him but escalated after finding Rangiku and finding out about Aizen. I guess. I hope you guys enjoy this.

[Title:] Diospryos: The Drowning Ophelia. (Those who know what Diospryos and Rangiku's name can translate to as well as either of read Hamlet or have seen the Ophelia painting by John Everett Millais will get the meaning of this title.)

[Author:] Lumiere de Venise.

[Fandom:] Bleach

[Genre:] Horror and Hurt/Comfort (The horror is definitely the main genre in this; I was going to put angst as the second one, but the hurt and comfort moments between Gin and Ran, in my view, is why angst can't be exactly used.)

[Prompt:] Deals with themes of snakes, animals, poverty, the 3 different kinds of lust, bashing of Soul Society's hierarchy and structure, blood, gore, virginity, and trauma.

[Word Count:] 7,615 Words/14 Pages (Originally Arial Size 11 Font.)

[Rating:] M due to the beginning scene of rape and the following scenes involving gore and blood.

[Pairing:] GinxRan (GinxRangiku). Though in this fanfic, I believe it isn't shown romantically as much as it's shown in a platonic, comforting way since, you know, they just met lol.

[Summary:] The Rukongai is not a place for souls to rest—it is rather a place for souls to rot. That, Gin and Rangiku, malnourished orphans who pass by the beasts known as men daily, are both certain of. (GinRan as children/when they met. Pre-series. Dark. Eerie. Innocence is lost, Hogyoku and Aizen are to blame—oneshot. TBTP-arc briefly at the end.) As the story progresses, the depravity and hopelessness and detail in misery and problems that face many orphans and overall people in the poorer districts of the Rukongai escalates, just to warn anyone who is squeamish. Also, there is a lot of allegories and imagery in this fanfiction, specifically on Gin's peculiar demeanor and Rangiku's attack from the three men that worked under Aizen.

[Disclaimers:] I don't own Bleach, nor am I or will I ever profit from this work.

DIOSPYROS: THE DROWNING OPHELIA

By Lumiere de Venise

"I've decided. I'm going to become a Shinigami. Become a Shinigami and change things. So that they'll end…without Rangiku having to cry."—Gin Ichimaru.

THE GROUND IS A DAMNED SURFACE with chipped and jagged rocks that perch themselves upon it, along with trees so bare and malnourished that in them lie bark with partially decayed imprints that uncomfortably, yet easily, catch one's eye. Most of all the sky, while blue, has an ashen tint to it that depresses more than it can ever uplift—

Much like the way the Rukongai, a place said to be where "souls come to rest", is in actuality a place where souls come to dwindle and rot and trudge in rugged rags and stolen sandals alongside the dreary stench and sight of poverty.

These are the things that occur inside Rangiku's mind—perhaps in such an uncharacteristically verbose way due to the way her head was slammed harshly into the dirt by calloused, large arms—as she feels hasty hands pull down on the top of her yukata, forceful fingers lay themselves upon her small chest, and crescent-shaped nails drop malicious marks as the upper part of her legs are clutched at.

There are three black-haired men touchi—no, hurting her. The first is with shaggy black hair, and he has decided to prey upon the untarnished area that even as a child Rangiku knows is a special area not to be shown to the opposite sex lightly.

(However, Rangiku is also an orphan, and like all homeless females her age, she knows that many girls a couple of years and decades older than her have shown that area to the sleaziest of men in order to gain food or a run down building to temporarily call a "home".)

The second man has casual hair, and all ten of his digits are cupping at her breasts, pulling at her pink buds and leaving soft but still sour-feeling teeth indents. Rangiku spots the sight of blood starting to slowly drip from one of the bruises before she decides to look to her left and somehow daydream so she can briefly forget this tragedy is happening to her.

The last man is bald, and his extremities—which feel more like a dozen minus two spider legs injecting poison into her tresses—hook themselves harshly unto the curls of her short locks, and he whispers phrases like "Can't wait to fuck you" and "It's a shame we can't keep you" and other terrible things that makes Rangiku close her eyes shut, the least she can do since she was cursed with the ability to have amazing hearing.

Not even twenty seconds after she closes her eyes, she feels her right cheek get slapped and a hand go to widen her left eyelid. She looks up to see the grin of the man with casual hair.

"Keep dem' eyes open, sweetheart. We wanna' see all da' tears dat'll come out dem' blue eyes of ya's as we make ya' scream."

The shaggy-haired man grunts in approval of his comrade's warning, the causal-haired man lets go of Rangiku momentarily as he laughs, and the bald man begins to untangle the knot of his jet black pants.

Rangiku lets out a shaky breath, but does nothing to struggle, as the whole reason why her head was pummeled cruelly into the ground in the first place was because she kicked the casual-haired man in his stomach and tried to bite the hand of the man with shaggy hair.

"Hold her down more towards you," the man with shaggy hair says to the bald man, and after the bald man does exactly that, the shaggy-haired man lifts her legs up on his shoulders and pulls her underwear off and to the side, where it dangles at her left ankle.

The man with shaggy hair slowly travels two of his fingers downwards to...that area, and he halfway enters her with those fingers. Rangiku lets out a tiny hiss as the man with casual hair laughs at her misery once more and goes back to assaulting the upper part of her torso.

"I'm surprised you're a virgin," the shaggy haired man tells the blonde girl as he begins to unravel his pants, "you seemed to be the type of girl on the street that would sell her body for a good night sleep and a few pounds of bread and rice. It has been a long time since I've gotten to deflower a girl, so forgive me if I go too roughly."

The man with casual hair playfully nudges the shaggy haired man's shoulders. "Oh, don't give da' girl 'dat bull. Ya' know damn well ya' gonna be fuckin' her as hard and deep as possible."

"It's hotter when you're more formal about telling these types of girls what you're planning on doing to them," the bald male says as he gets out his member and wraps the ends of Rangiku's hair around the disgusting, pulsing and warming up thing.

(Rangiku wants to die.)

"Yea', yea', when I go take her by the backdoor, I'll just whisper to her all da' nasty thangs to get her real wet for us."

The man with the shaggy hair's shaft is right at her thigh, and then she feels his...thing at her entrance.

"Fine by me," the man about to take her virginity says as he positions his head—Rangiku briefly has a vision of herself wearing a white wedding dress that's leaking blood everywhere and she tries hard not to cry in front of her assaulters—in order for him to properly penetrate her, "just remember not to go too rough. We still are expected to have a fed Hogyoku when we come back."

Something in Rangiku's mind clicks for her to ask the man what he's talking about, but something in her head also clicks that there is something, something feeling like it's pressuring up and widening too much down below, so she instead puts it in her mind that she she should gaze downwards.

Except that she doesn't even do that, because she feels something harshly enter and her insides tearing and breaking and ripping apart and she's feels liquid that's not water come out and it hurts and it hurts and hurtshurtshurtshurtssss—

"G-G-GAAAAAAH!"

Her eyes bulge, like crystals that have been shattered, and she squirms as the bald man begins to stimulate himself with her hair faster, the casual-haired man laughs and begins to unbuckle his pants with one hand and harshly flick her left nipple with the other, and the shaggy-haired man moans.

"Even for a virgin, your tightness is unbelievable for someone on the streets. Perhaps instead of touching you, we should've just furthered the progress of the Hogykyu and then sold you as a virgin bride of the unwed young male of a noble family."

Without any warning, the man begins to thrust in and out of her without any mercy, and Rangiku can see blood begin to gush out of her. Rangiku screams so much that she almost sprains her vocal chords.

After a while, the man with the casual-hair, whose member has already leaked such foul-smelling sperm, puts his thing into her mouth, and it tastes so awful and the thing itself is so shoved down her throat that bile rises up, but Rangiku is—barely—able to swallow it down before it gets even close to her mouth.

'S...Stop….It hurts…'

It gets harder and harder to think clearly, and even when the man with the causal-hair removes his member, Rangiku's mouth still feels clogged and sore.

(The taste of the man's pre-ejaculation is one of the worst things she's ever had to consume, even far worse than the days where she's had to rely on stale, soggy and expired pieces of sushi at small stores she's managed to steal food from.)

Just as Rangiku tries to daydream again and think about anything other than what is happening to her at the moment, the man with shaggy hair stands up with Rangiku in hold, grabs both of her hands with his right hand, and he spreads her cheeks as the man with casual hair lets out a sound of joy and goes right behind her.

The man with bald hair takes a few steps backwards and begins to masturbate again, this time simply with just his hands, and the way his eyes bore into hers as he does it makes her change her gaze to the chest of the casual-haired man that hasn't made another movement inside her since he's gotten up.

"Ya' said it hurts, little gal'? Well, guess what? I don' got somethin' for ya' that's gonna' really hurt. Just wait a minute," the causal-haired man happily informs her as he gets a tight grip around her waist.

Rangiku turns around to be face to face with the drawl-having man, confused by his words for just a second, and the she remembers what he said earlier about 'taking her by the backdoor' and Rangiku snatches her hands out of the grip of the man who has deflowered her to push away the man about to cause her even more pain.

Before the tip of her fingers can even come in contact with the chest of the man behind her, it is then that she breaks.

Yes, it is at that point that black spots begin to cloud parts of her vision, that everything below the waist feels like it's about to fall to the bedraggled ground in bits and pieces of strained flesh, and when the next instants of breaths she takes in and out feels restrained, ruptured—ravished.

The casual-haired man's shaft, with the only sense of "lubrication" on it being leftover saliva from Rangiku's mouth, buries itself into her, and Rangiku's eyes roll all the way up as she screams in pure agony, her fingers gripping as gratingly as she can on the Hakama pants of the man violating her in the front.

The laughter of the man behind her starts to fade in its volume, and her senses numb down more and more, and then she doesn't feel or hear or see anything, something that decades later she is thankful for, because she'd rather be vacant of the events that unfolded as crimson traveled out of an area once barricaded and innocence was lost then have to of been conscious to the whole time she was depredated and preyed upon like a mere rabbit amongst the wolves.

ii.

The forests of the most destitute parts of the Rukongai are filled with so little edible leaves and trees that a majority of beasts that run wild in the thickets starve, for even the hungriest of snakes and the most rabid of bears do not wish to thrive on the malnourished and morbid meat that makes up the components of many unfortunate spirits that dwell in the double-digit districts of Soul Society, and the spirits that hunt these animals much do so with poorly made sticks and knives and at that go to bed famished, unlike the wellborns that flourish in the Court of the Pure Souls and bestow upon themselves fine brooches and bijouterie—

Much like the way Soul Society, a place said to be where "souls come for eternal paradise", is in actuality a place where resting is only for the souls that are fortunate enough to either land themselves in Seireitei or are born to any of the top twenty or so noble families, especially the top four noble houses, while the ones that lack such blessings must crawl their way out of the hell-hole that is the Rukongai and, just like crabs, have to fight off the attempt of others who try to claw at their legs to bring them back down to the epitome of famine and itinerant living.

Those are the things that occur inside Gin's mind—in a characteristically sadistic way because he is but a young snake, not yet ready to poison the minds of others but already with a venomous, negative like mindset—as he walks around in the middle of a forest, surrounded by sick trees and poisonous leaves and the sounds of half-stepped-on insects and slithering, slippery snakes that eye the child but do not bare their fangs or go to strike at him.

Gin waves one of his two slender hands to one snake that slithers pass his feet quickly to go hide in a bush, and he can almost swear that it looks back at him and nods its head in a term of positive acknowledgment, and he wonders if snakes when dipped with sauce have a taste as captivating and crunchy as the meat in kushiyaki or yakitori.

Perhaps he should find the answers for that, one day, if his luck with snakes doesn't run out.

Grrrr…

...

"Ah….My stomach's grumblin' 'gain…"

Gin is a hungry child—a very hungry child—and the district in which he was dwelling in is almost entirely vacant of food. So, as always, he goes to one of the many forests surrounding the Rukongai slums, his eyes slanted, his mouth quivering, and his thoughts on the hope of finding, if not a good source of meat or plants, a persimmon tree (or two) for him to snatch a couple of the orange fruits.

There are about a dozen orphan kids who, like Gin, have to eat as a necessity back at the district he is currently in, but they find his face to be too mischievous and akin to a fox, his skin too scaly and cold and akin to a snake, and his personality and tendencies to pop up out of nowhere to be too much like a predator ready to spew out toxin, so he must go into the woodlands alone, no blade to cut down the heads of carnivores creatures or have any co-op defense of another parentless child.

It does not bother him, to be without a group to call "friends", as he believes the inability to have two people to call "parents" is much worse, and long ago did the Rukongai rugrat realize that reptiles and arachnids seem to view him as a possible master rather than a defenseless dinner.

(Perhaps, one day, he will go live with them and start hunting humans as prey himself, or at the very least hide in trees to start scaring people enough for them to accidentally drop their coin-bags or semi-processed chicken and goat meat.)

"...If only 'dere was a cow or pig 'dat roam 'round da' forests 'ight now…"'

After he feels a rumbling from himself, the silver-haired boy rubs his empty stomach and hops over a large boulder that was in the middle of the pathway he was following, his impressive agility—which he credits to the amount of running he has done to avoid angry kiosk owners in nearby Rukongais after he swipes away bags of rice and meat from them—preventing him from scraping his feet or knee as he lands right in front of the gray stone.

Along the way, he sees a crow, and it cries thrice before it promptly takes off in the direction the pale juvenile was walking from; not even three seconds after, a sudden feeling of uneasiness occurs inside the boy's chest, and his legs shiver not due to any type of "coldness" but, instead, because it feels as if the more he's continuing to go in a straight direction, the more that whatever lies ahead will only be an unsettling event to wander upon.

Even he, a spirit who snakes infatuate themselves with and whom wolves and foxes flinch and cower themselves before, is still a mere child in the end, and bad luck is not something that a parentless, penniless, pointless little boy such as him could afford.

Moments of walking later, when the fox-faced youth ends up at the near edge of a cliff that's covered by large bushes right below the top of many leafed Cryptomeria japonicas, he first feels something, and then sees something.

When it comes to what he feels, it's a faint but noticeable reiatsu pressure a couple or so feet ahead and below, and something, something about it feels as if it's not only been immoderately absorbed but it also—and this is what gets him to feel a quavering sensation—feels toyed with, preyed upon, snuck upon…

So, when it comes to what he ends up seeing as he goes to investigate from far above, he is not surprised when he sees something—no, some girl—down below, unconscious. A beautiful blonde girl at that.

So beautiful, the girl is, despite the amount of bruises Gin notices on her face and red marks and scratches her chest and legs.

(He hopes that her left eye, which is covered by some of her bangs, is simply just being covered due to the way she's passed out, and not because it might've been taken out or marred with.)

Not wasting any time, Gin quickly makes his way down, and hides behind a tree—a persimmon one, go figure—somehow managing to hide his reiatsu pressure long enough to be undetected by the three black-haired men he sees walking away from the scene.

He notices that their faces are smug and that one of the men, who bears short, "causal" like hair, has a faint smell of blood coming from him, and Gin knows it's not the man's own, nor of an animal, despite the way the crimson stains resemble blood of a throat-slotted pig spewing unto a obsidian black kosode.

Due to how uncomfortable it is, Gin tries to pretend to ignore the stench from all three men that Gin has only inhaled when he's hiding near shanty brothels filled with scantily clad women that are so attenuated that their ribs poke out, as hard as it is to do.

(He does not, however, ignore the small, crystal-like object that one of the men, who bears shaggy hair, is holding, nor does he ignore the fact that the solely bald man of the tree adult spirits is fixing his large hakama pants as the three grownups walk away with disgusting smiles on their faces.)

When the men have walked out of sight and he can't detect them reiatsu pressure anymore, Gin decides to first climb on the tree that he was hiding behind and, after moments of trying to get a couple of persimmon fruits before a fast moving caterpillar could, throws himself towards the ground where he lands perfectly on his feet.

Gin was tempted to go eat at least one of the bearings of Diospyros, but he hesitated—the injured girl being attended to is the most important task he has right now.

Immediately going to the other child, the boy uses his tiny, skinny fingers separate a few parts of one of the fresh, cold fruits in his hands and holds one slice right below her knee, his closed eyes facing her and his mouth forming a smile as he waits for the sleeping—tarnished but still so pretty—beauty to wake up. He was able to detect a little bit of spiritual pressure left in her, so he was sure she would get a bit better for now via a couple of snacks.

Five minutes later, however, no response other than the faint sight of her breathing in and out is exhibited from the unconscious girl, Gin frowns, moved the piece of persimmon away from her, and wonders if he should carry her to the closest district, but when her right, bright blue eye slowly but surely begins to reveal itself, Gin's frown turns back into a smile.

"Ah...are ya' gettin' 'wake now?" he asks with his usual peppy albeit impish drawl, and as he notices her bruised mouth trying to make up a response, he hopes she's able to stay awake and doesn't end up succumbing to her injuries.

Her right eye—and her left eye which, from Gin's perspective, he can just barely see behind her bangs that it's in normal shape, thank goodness—is fully opened and gazing around Gin now. Gin decides at that moment to hold the autumn-season fruit back at her lips, this time a little bit closer to her mouth, and he says only one thing to the now awake girl.

"Eat."

iii.

As Rangiku wakes up from her temporary escape from the harsh reality she had just been forced to endure, the aching agony around the lower half of her body coming back into her senses, there are six things that the strawberry blonde notices—

1: There is a smell of something sweet and fresh that's invading her nose, so much so that if not for reason #2 and #5, she would've thought that she was saved and put in some candy or fruit shop of an old man.

2: She is still on the ground, but no longer does the ground seem bleak in color that much, and now she sees a few trees with detailed bark and healthy leaves to them.

3: Her whole body, especially her thighs and everything between it, feels like it's been stabbed at and ripped apart by a thousand knives, and she can feel a little bit of blood dripping down from the bite marks and clawed-indents on her chest, as well as from...down there.

4: On the bottom of her lips, she feels a fuzzy, jagged-shape strip of something resting on it. It's a slice of a fruit she can't recognize, she notes when she looks down.

5: The slice of fruit she can't recognize that's touching her lips is being held by a boy in a black yukata with a brown obi belt and chain like pattern on the left side standing above her, his eyelids shut and skin only a little bit less pale than snow. His hair is gray, something uncommon for souls their age.

6: The boy is talking to her.

"Da' fact 'dat ya' fainted from hunga' means...ya' hav' it too, 'ight?"

Rangiku's bewildered, and she raises up her eyebrows and quivers slightly with her half-battered lips as she repeats two of his last few words in a soft and strained and non-drawl voice, "You...too?"

"Yea', meh too," the boy responds, "meh too—Ichimaru Gin. Nice ta' meet ya'."

"Gin…"

"Yup!"

"That's such a….weird name…"

Gin chuckles. "Well, it fits ma' weird silva' hair, 'tho, don't ya' say so, Miss….?"

"Miss…?"

Gin cocks his head to the side.

"Ya' do rememba' ya' name, don't ya'? If nawt', I can make a name fer' ya'!" the silver-haired boy exclaims happily before he extends his smile and shows off his white pearls. He is weird. Very weird.

From the ashen akin to the oblique eyes to the foxy, cunning smile, there is nothing that best depicts the strange and almost like a cur than a simply mischievously boy that is Gin other than the word "weird".

It is because that weirdness omits so heavily, so proudly, so openly and yet so mysteriously from him that Rangiku immediately gives out a response, fearing that she'll be renamed "Kiiroko" or "Garuka".

"Rangiku...Matsumoto…"

"Aww, I didn't even get da' chance ta' tell ya' the name I 'as gonna' give ya'!"

Rangiku gives out a sound of uncertainty before she stammers out, "I somehow feel it...would be a...mean name, wouldn't it…?"

Gin frowns playfully, and then tells her in the most jaunty tone possible, "Noooo, I'd call ya' Hinami 'ause ya' hair 'minds me of sunflowas' and cuz' ya' so 'damn pretty and such, Ran! I was gonna' give ya' ma' surname, too…"

Rangiku feels her cheeks flush. "You don't...need to lie about the state I'm in…"

Gin giggles.

"Even 'ith all da' bruises, ya' still gawt a stunnin' aura 'bout ya', Ran'. I like folks like ya'!"

As Rangiku blushes even more, she also tries to get herself to sit upwards, but there's a sharp pain that travels from her hands to her elbows and then shoulders, and she finds herself with her whole back and limbs on the floor again before she can even blink.

Gin furrows his eyebrows.

"Ah….let meh' help ya' get ta' ya' feet…"

The boy's hands go near her to help her, and Rangiku knows this, but she still flinches, not only because it's the hand of a male but because his accent, the way he drawls out syllables and uses shorter versions of words, is too similar, far too similar, to the man who had soiled her from behind, had laughed at her as she screamed herself hoarse in pain, in misery, in pure torture—

He seems to notice too, as he takes a few steps backwards and tells her sheepishly, "Ah, I'm sorry, I don't kno' da' full details of what happen' ta' ya', but I guess ya' wouldn't want da' be touched 'ight now, ay, Rangiku?"

"S...Sorry. I…I would feel more comfortable doing it myself…"

"Understandable! I'll stand 'ight here till' ya' do."

Three minutes later, which they spend talking about how both of them can't remember their human lives in the living world before they somehow died and were brought to the Rukongai, Rangiku tries again to sit upwards, and though visually and vocally it's clear that she is still in deep pain, she manages to do it.

"Gin," Rangiku voices out quietly, "do you know what Rukongai District we're in?"

"Da' 62th District. 'Dis district mostly haz' forests and a desert like landscape."

"A desert landscape…?"

Rangiku looks to her left and right. A chill runs down her body.

While she had noticed the bleakness of the area she was in, she did not notice just how barren and dispossessed the region the whole area was.

The trees all had dust sticking unto their flaking bark, their shapes crooked and arched in all the wrong places, skeletons of birds and vermins peaking in the sunlight. At the roots of the trees lay rocks that Rangiku thinks she spots on them little droplets of dried brain matter of who knows what animal (or person) or creature.

The clouds above no longer look simply skinny and transparent but instead infirm, as if the dreary and attenuated composition of the settlement below it, like almost everything else it touches or is near (with the exception of Gin as he is a weird one), sucked out any sense of essence and character the white masses possessed.

This is nothing like District 70, as strapped and ailing as that district of hers could be.

District 62th is as if someone took all the humanity of it and wiped it clean, leaving only a place full of dry and coarse land, dehydrated and gaunt plants and trees, and animals and souls who have more similarities with skeletons and death than beings and life.

To think that she had roamed around this district in order to find an apple to snatch or at least one puddle of semi-clean water to drink up...

Speaking of water…

"Gin."

"Yes, Ran'?"

"Since this is like a desert, do you think there's...a cactus around?"

Gin responses by chortling. Rangiku responds by blushing.

"Y-You could've just said no…"

Gin just gives out a louder chuckle before he tells her, "All da' cactus 'round here are 'ither dead or just about!"

"I guess camels are out of the question too…?"

Gin laughs again, this time patting Rangiku on the head as he does so. "Ya' know, ya' are as pretty as ya' are a' silly, Ran'!"

"T...T-Thank you," Rangiku murmurs out as she stares down at her feet and fumbles tightly with the bottom of her yukata, her cheeks once again flushing bright red. She sees some splatter of blood residue on her palms from doing so, and quickly wipes her palms on the sides of her white garment.

Grrr...

Rangiku wraps her arms around her stomach, her whole face now as red as a tomato. Gin cocks his head and bends down in front of her, before he widens his smile and takes out more pieces of the fruit he had waved at her mouth.

"Don't get ya' cheeks flushin' so much, Ran'," he says as he places three slices of the food unto her left hand, "ain't nothin' wrong with feelin' like ya' gotta' eat!"

Rangiku chews and swallows the slices of fruit in seconds.

"Ya' know it's gettin' close ta' being da' afternoon, soon. Come on, get ya'self up and follow meh ta' my hometown, District 64'."

Pushing hard on the ground before her, Rangiku manages to stand all the way up and walk a few steps forwards. Gin is right next to her, walking slowly but surely.

"I didn't even...realize it was afternoon already."

Gin kicks away a rock that's in his path, and it lands an inch in front of the sandals of Rangiku. Rangiku kicks it back, and Gin kicks it back harder, and when Rangiku reels her right leg quite back to kick it even harder than Gin, she wobbles and winces—and then she gasps.

"What happened?" Gin asks, his smile quickly turning downwards and his walking ceasing. Rangiku looks down, bites her lips, and with tears about to prickle out of her eyes, attempts to respond.

"I'm….It's...er, I think I'm…I'm…"

"Rangiku. Are ya' feelin sick or somethin'?"

"N-No, it's just that I'm….er...bleeding…"

"Ya're bleedin'? Ya' need somethin' fer ya' feet or head?"

"No, I'm not bleeding around those areas," she responds as she closes her legs in embarrassment, "it's...u-um….I'm bleeding there…"

Gin cocks his head. "Ya' bleedin' ova' 'dere?"

"Between my...legs."

Gin faces down and makes a grunt.

When Rangiku looks back down at herself, she very much tries not to cry out as she sees the thin but long trails of blood that have erupted from her are already traveling past her knees.

"I….I….G-Gin, I…"

Rangiku can't find it in herself to finish her sentence. She shakes in fear, the inside of her chest feeling like it'll burst out in anxiety at any moment—Gin pats her on the back.

"I'll fix dat' issue up fer' ya', hold on…"

Bending down, Gin rips off a moderate size of his right sleeve. Much to the humiliation of Rangiku, he begins to use the ripped black garment to wipe off any blood that is dripping from her.

When he is done, he places the garment in his pocket and moves his head towards her, and when he reveals his beautiful pale blue eyes, it is then that Rangiku realizes that he had his eyes slanted and eyelids shut the whole time before now.

"Ya'...Ya' got violated by dem' wolves of da' Rukongai, didn't ya', Ran'?"

Rangiku tries to answer him, but it feels as if the hands of the men who assaulted her are still trailing around, still inching up her body, still violating her, ravishing into her like she was nothing more than a package of free meat to distribute and fondle with, and the memories of what had occurred to her before and during her state of incapacity is so much that Rangiku just looks to her left and tries not to let the tears from her eyes fall.

Gin gets up and hugs her, and it is then that those tears start to go downward.

"I'll make 'ure ya' don't eva' hav' a filthy man touch ya' again, alright, Ran? 'Dey won't, I swear," he says as he looks her straight in the eye, "I'll kill any man 'dat dares hurts ya' in dat' way again. I'll make as many locks 'round meh shed as possible to protect ya'."

"...Shed? You...want me to live with you? I'm allowed to? Wouldn't I just be a leech, though…?"

Gin frowned. "Nuh-uh, I would neva' see ya' as leech, Ran', 'specially a gal' as pretty as ya'! What'ya mean 'I'm allowed ta' anyways? Of course I'm takin' ya' with meh. I wouldn't be a gentleman if I left ya' to roam 'round dis' hellhole alone!"

Gin hugs Rangiku tighter, more affectionately, and his hands never go downwards or roam around in once sacred and unexposed places, and for that, Rangiku decides that maybe, just maybe, it is far better to be a bizzare soul among the animals who dare to bear the name as "adult male souls" than to be a juvenile that would grow up to be one of the 'wolves' that roam and hunt and rape in the slummiest parts of the most dangerous districts.

"Ah!"

Rangiku lets out a tiny, cat-like sequel as Gin effortlessly lifts her up on his back.

"Ya' sounded lik' a kitty-cat fer' a minute ova' 'dere, Rangiku."

The blonde blushes in response.

"I-I h-hope I'm not t-too heav—"

"Ay', Ran', ya' don't 'ave to worry 'bout walkin' any furtha'. I'll carry ya' all da' way back, I swear!"

Suddenly too tired to respond, Rangiku just nods her head and begins to listen to Gin tell her stories about persimmons and how he's an apparent snake whisperer.

.✦.

✦ † ✦

.✦.

"'Dis' is mah' shed!"

Rangiku hops off of Gin's back—he grabs at her arm and helps her upright when she almost flops to the floor head first—and has a downcast smile, not at the shed, but at what she had seen in Gin's district.

Orphans were everywhere, unlike Rangiku's district where there were only three kids besides her all surrounded by broke and old farmers that couldn't seem to make any crops on the dry and cracked dirt of District 70.

The orphans of District 64 were not as nice as the few kids from Rangiku's, as well. Their eyes did not hide their feelings of fear for Gin and sympathy for Ran, and when Gin would wave at some of them, the younger ones would run away and cower behind small sheds in fear, while the ones either the same age as Gin and Rangiku or older than them would scoff and sneer and point and protest Gin talking to them.

A group of older girls the same age as Gin and Ran had attempted to snatch Rangiku away from Gin, the teenagers under the impression that Gin must've threatened or coached her into going to District 64.

Needless to say, when Rangiku told the girls that Gin was her friend and that he was only helping her, the six outstretched hands, warm smiles, and eyes full of curiousness from the females turned into recoiled hands, wide sneers, and eyes full of contempt for the both of them.

Adults were barely better, openly talking negatively on Gin's hair and Rangiku's wounds, their mouths covered by their hands but their glares—something Rangiku noticed was a common factor for District 64 when it came to Gin and the company he keeps—fully exposed and like knives ready to cut and plunge and thrust.

Much, much different from the adults in District 70 who simply ignored everything around them, choosing to lament in paucity and woe (for Rangiku to think all these words, she is sure that she has a massive concussion at this point) with cheap liquor bottles as the elderly cry themselves to sleep on ripped blankets and broken shamisens that strings are never pulled at or touched.

District 70, Rangiku concluded, was the district where it is a state of individualism and solidarity and decades of silent generations in terms of suffering, while in District 64, everyone shared and empathized with each other's sorrows unless one was too quaint, for then those ones were pushed out of the circle of starving children and men and women, feared at and hated at, all at the same time.

Rangiku can not tell which is worse.

"Ya' seem ta' be in deep thought, Ran'. What's da' matter?"

Rangiku was thrown out of her thoughts by a happy Gin, who was fixing up the futon on his floor. It has taken all afternoon for the two of them to reach District 64.

She couldn't understand how even someone as weird as him wouldn't feel even just a little uncomfortable with how people in District 64 view him.

"...Why do you let them treat you like that?"

Gin raises his eyebrows up, giving out a hmm? sound from his mouth.

"The people of this district. They are so...cruel to you. Why do you let them badmouth you and point at you, Gin?"

"I tried ta' a long time ago, but dey neva' quitted doin' it, 'specially da' otha' kids, so I just let it be," the silver-haired boy responds as he shrugs and lies down.

"Huh. That must be...lonely though, right?"

Gin shakes his head. "Nawt' really, nawt' only daz' it help meh keep meh supplies in check and stuff but I've always had snakes and da' likes ta' keep meh company when da' otha' kids wouldn't. 'Sides…"

Gin's already wide smile manages to expand even more as he says gaily, "I gawt ya' now here fer' da' lonely times! Meh own ray of sunshine!"

Rangiku gives a small smile—her cheeks flushed and her hands fumbling with her yukata—at Gin's response. Gin laughs.

"See what I mean? Ya' are all da' company I'll eva' need, Ran'!"

Rangiku lays down on the bed. To lay herself down too close to Gin is too much for her right now, so she makes a small but noticeable distance between them.

Gin turns to her, his grin still wide and bright. Rangiku is jealous. She doesn't think she could even last five minutes if she was the sole black sheep of a whole district, nevermind the amount of months (or years) Gin has probably had to be.

"I wish I could be more like you," Rangiku tells the other orphan, "you're so brave and smart. I'm nothing but a pretty fac—mmph!"

Rangiku was bewildered at the sight of Gin glaring at her, his hands on her mouth and a scowl on his mouth.

"Don't eva' say dat again. Ya' are somethin', ya' got dat? If ya' ever get told ya're nothin' or a jackass tells ya' dat ya're nothin', tell meh so I can kill dat person, alright?"

Rangiku nods, for the sudden darkness in Gin's eyes has a different type of weirdness to them than the childish and free-spirited weirdness that usually omits from Gin, the murkiness Rangiku seeing now in Gin feeling akin to the peril one feels around a watching hen, a god guiding a maiden in distress—a kneeling knight ready to shed blood for his queen.

Gin smiles, and before he hides his eyes behind his pale eyelids again, Rangiku sees a little bit of the light in his eyes return, and Rangiku feels not like the prey of a snake but instead the precious serpent egg of one, a sensation like wintry scales going through her as Gin holds her hands.

He reveals his eyes once more, and the way they slant and almost glow in the dark and the way his pupils become like pinpoints terrifies her. She tries to shriek out, but as if she has no mouth despite her need to scream, only silence comes out.

"I mean it. I will let no one eva' hurt ya' or make ya' cry again, ya' hear me, Rangiku?"

"Yes...I do…"

Rangiku gives no response when Gin kisses her on the top of her forehead.

"Good. Well, good night!" he tells her, and he has his eyelids covering his eyes again and his smile is no longer like one of a reptile ready to strike and protect but instead a closed grin of someone who had a good day.

When Rangiku goes to slumber that night, nightmares are what awaits her—horrific imaginations of hands crawling, skin being torn, breast gripped, crimson dripping from rooted lacerations that expand throughout her whole body, trapping her between a sea of white lilies that have either lost their petals or have petals full of fresh blood.

She sees in her dream a snake—an elongated, speedy one, whose tongue flicked off specks of toxins that melt not only the hands and the flower and even the blood, but when the snake starts to have physical contact with Rangiku, even her skin succumbs to the strength of the poison that emits from its mouth, Rangiku's flesh turning red and then melted and then nothing.

She screams, but the snake's long tail covers her mouth, muffles it—and her face drips down, the starved meat of her cheeks turning into a puddle of peach and red and her eyes and ears mixing into the puddle of flesh-containing liquid.

Suddenly, she cannot see, she cannot hear. She can, however, feel as her body is positioned to the position of the woman in the painting of Ophelia—and she knows not of how she knows the name of the painting or why she is posed like that. There is a difference, however—

There bares no clothes on her, her hands that are up are skeletal, seeps of fleshy rind barely holding unto the bones, her mouth opened but with her whole teeth showing, an obsidian void in place of her eyes, her hair all fell off and swept away, and instead of being in a lake of water surrounded by lively plants and flowers, Rangiku lays in a sea of blood; the flowers that circle around her are all dead and with the smell of cruor.

When she wakes up the next day, she rushes out of the shed—Gin is nowhere around, she notices—and throws up, a little bit of blood pooled in with the remains of the persimmon she had risen as a snack.

There are crows who perk their feet upon the half-fallen lines of thread holding laundry at a house a few places to the left, and Rangiku throws up again when she sees the crows rush to peck and poke and consume the regurgitated fare. Men who stand across from Gin's (and Ran's) shed look down at the semi-exposed chest of Rangiku, licking their lips besides the messy look of Rangiku.

As Rangiku covers herself up, she sees children from a far away distance fighting over a wakizashi, one child having blood and a loose tooth hanging from their mouth, while two other children point at Rangiku and her vomit in pure abhorrence, and it is then that Rangiku once again remembers the awful truth in that the Rukongai only bestows the lust for bloodshed, the lust for copulation, and the lust for dinner—

An awful, awful truth that is set in her mind for many years to come when Gin returns that night with a plentiful of food and money in his hands, blood all over him but with no wounds in sight on his pale, pale skin, too wide smile and suddenly showing eyes full of darkness.

"Well, this is quite the scene I've walked unto."

Gin, whose hands are gripping unto the cut in half liver of a grown man, turns to the owner of the voice, still holding the dismembered body part. He takes two steps forward, making sure that his sandals don't have too much on their bottoms blood and intensities and peeled off skin that covers the ground.

"Ah, sorry, vice-captain, I made a 'hole mess 'round da' area, didn't I?" Gin says as he throws the liver at the decapitated head of a face. Gin's whole shihakusho is covered with so much blood and matter of disfigured organs and flesh, even with the outfit being fully black, the slops and stains and of claret ares excessively perceptible.

Gin licks up the crimson flow of liquid that was all over his mouth as he steps acrimoniously on a head full of red-stained, shaggy black hair, brain-matter oozing out of the head's grotesque and profound wounds.

Aizen looks almost shocked for just half of a second before he composes himself to his usual facade as the calm, almost "boring" lieutenant of the 5th Division.

"Oh my. What did Amano-san, Kawaguchi-san, and Uchiyama-san do?"

Gin keeps his long smile open and in a rare moment shows his bright blue slanted eyes as he responds in a bubbly tone, "'Dey were all don' weak and stuff! No place at all in our division. Like ya' said, vice-captain, dose' who are useless gotta' be slayed down 'fore 'dey ruin any plans!"

Three days prior, Gin had already killed the third seat of the 5th Division.

"Well, let's go back into the office now, Gin. We have a few things I'd like to discuss about the plan."

"Alright!" Gin tells Aizen happily as crows begin to come from above to swoop down and eat at the leftover flesh of the three dead men, the elder of the two males mentally noting that there would be a great possibility of the fox-faced boy one day having the audacity to try to turn and strike his short blade towards him, and that the children of the worst areas in the Rukongai may be bigger beasts and monstrosities that hide themselves in the shadows to strike and attack far more than the adults that shun and ignore them in the poverty-filled Rukongai.

This knowledge, however, would not be so foreign or unexpected to Gin and Ran. They are orphans who've crawled out of the Rukongai with their bare, chipped and cracked fingernails, blood of others all over them in order to do so, especially Gin.

The Rukongai is not a place for souls in need of paradise, after all—it is rather a place for souls to steal and rape and kill themselves and others either until death or if they're lucky enough to obtain spiritual pressure that could land them into the white-walled, ornamental-designed buildings and courts of the Gotei 13, the place filled with men and women and children who by just selling off their captain coats or fukutaichou badges can live off of properly cut food, master beds with silk drapes, and shoes and clothes made with true gold and diamonds for the rest of their lives.

Of this, Sosuke Aizen is certain of.

[FIN.]

[Ending AN:] I believe this might be one of, if not the best fanfiction I've written so far due to the amount of imagery and allegories I threw in. One of the things that captivates me most about GinRan is the themes of snakes and cats and reliance on each-other as well as Ran not understanding Gin all the time but still loving him. I tried to write how even when they first met (well also the fact that canon-wise in the flashback of how they met Ran literally calls something of Gin's weird lol) Rangiku felt waves of maliciousness and weirdness from Gin but, ultimately, could not help but do anything other than want to continue being around him. It terms of Gin, perhaps Gin always was a weird one but because of the Rangiku situation it went up 100. Writing this fanfic made me realize that Gin could count as a yandere, but maybe that's just my writing of him having me feel like he has a few yandere tendencies lol.

One thing I liked about this was my ending, where I had Aizen for a moment go "wtf is wrong with this lil' nigga?" before he composed himself. I think even someone as collected and one-step-ahead-of-ya as Aizen who himself was a sociopath starting from a kid would be a little unnerved and disturbed at the almost inhumane demeanor and mentality of Gin. I could've sworn he was a bit surprised for a bit when Gin killed the former third-seat during the TBTP-arc, but I could be wrong, but if I am not wrong, then that shows just how depraved Gin can be when it comes to killing. Another thing I liked was the nightmare sequence, as while we all know that Gin is associated with snakes and foxes, I always felt like Rangiku in a way could be seen as an Ophelia like character, drowning and troubled by the things of her past, and the fact that Ophelia's surrounded by flowers during her drowning and and Rangiku's name relates to flowers and can also mean confusion/instability helps, especially since some see Ophelia's pose as an almost erotic one and Ophelia was not right in the head when she died. Which goes well with this fanfiction and the overall theme of Gin accidentally causing Rangiku more pain the more things he tried to do to ensure that she would one day stop crying.

I hope it was obvious that the three guys who got killed at the end were the 3 guys Gin saw at the scene of where he found Rangiku btw.

One thing I think I messed up on though was Gin's drawl and accent. It's better than the drawl I wrote for him in my previous fanfictions involving Gin but I'm pretty sure there's a few lines where a word that should be given the accent sprinkles are instead of the standard form. Sorry in advance.

(Also, please do not think that the rape scene was meant to be erotic. I tried to write it with as much horror-themed details as possible so that it would come off as horrifying and to show the anguish that Rangiku would of felt. I hope it worked.)

As always, reviews would be nice, especially since I put a lot of effort into writing this, including delaying a homework assignment till the last minute. Until next time, readers. Ciao!