Characters: Rangiku, Gin.
Pairings: GinRan.
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Soul Society arc and Turn Back the Pendulum arc.
Timeline: Goes from pre-manga, to Turn Back the Pendulum arc, to Soul Society arc.
Author's Note: I always come back to this pairing in the end.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
There had been a chill in the air, of autumn coming on with a vengeance. Rangiku stared up at the sky, the pale, gray sky, as clouds began to threaten with a freezing rain.
She couldn't move anymore, the strength gone from her fluted bones. It had been weeks since she had eaten anything, and her skin clung to her skeleton as her hair would to her face if wet.
Rangiku was afraid she was going to die again, so soon after coming to that strange land. The causes were so different this time…
"Eat up."
"Why…am I here?" Rangiku brushed small, short strands of fair hair out of her eyes with one small, shaking hand. She was still weak with hunger, the darkness close around her pitifully thin frame.
The house was more of a shack than anything else; Rangiku was lying on a straw mat on an earthen floor. There was a small stove nearby, and she was staring up at a leaking thatched roof made of straw.
A strange smile greeted her question. The odd boy named Gin leaned over her with the basket he had been holding sitting on his lap. The smile seemed affixed to his small face, as his pale silver hair fell over his half-closed eyes; he had very dark eyelashes considering how light his hair was.
"I didn't think it would be alright to just let you die on my doorstep," Gin answered, taking another one of the strange fruit out of his wicker basket. Rangiku flinched when he picked up a small knife, but he was only peeling the skin off of the fruit, slowly and meticulously, so as to avoid slipping his hand over the knife and drawing blood.
Gin finished peeling the fruit, and held it out to her. "Come on," he tried to coax her, "you have to eat some more if you want to get your strength back." He put his hand behind Rangiku's back to help her sit up. "It was kind of hard to get you in here; considering how thin you are, you're about as heavy as a ton of bricks, you know that?"
Hesitantly, Rangiku took the proffered fruit. "What is it?"
"It's a persimmon."
"It's mushy!" Rangiku exclaimed. The fruit was leaking juice all over her hand.
"It has to get mushy for it to get sweet. I like them better dry, but most don't."
Rangiku shrugged. She didn't particularly like getting her hands sticky, so in future she decided if she were to eat persimmons, she'd eat them dry.
The sweet taste made her eyes burn, as the juices dribbled down over her chin—she was only eight and Rangiku hadn't quite mastered the art of eating neatly—and Rangiku wiped the mess away with the back of her hand. It felt so good to have food in her aching stomach again, after weeks of wild hunger and scrounging for food without success.
"Thank you," Rangiku murmured softly after she was done, wiping her slightly sticky hands on her dirt-ingrained skirt.
"My name's—"
"I…heard you. You said your name was Gin?"
"Yup. What's yours?"
"Matsumoto…Rangiku." Rangiku tipped her chin downwards and gazed shyly at the boy out of the corner of her eyes. "Why did you…"
Gin answered her question without ever hearing it in full; at the same time, the smile never fell from his face, as though he were wearing a kabuki mask with a smile painted on. "Like I said. I didn't think it would be right for you to be dying outside of my house."
.
There was someone crying. Gin was unconcerned with it—the gamut of human suffering no longer affected him—but Rangiku, being a curious girl, wanted to see what was up.
It had been just under four years since they had met. Autumn had come again, with tawny, scarlet leaves swirling into the streets of the sixty-fourth district. District sixty four of north Rukongai was not affluent, nor was it consistently poverty-stricken. It was instead a mixture of the middle class and the slums near the outer edges, where Gin and Rangiku lived.
"Rangiku!" She heard Gin calling after her.
"I'll just be a minute!" Rangiku shouted back. "I just want to see what all the commotion's about!"
Rangiku ran down a narrow street towards the source of the maddened sobbing, her long legs skinny and white between her knee-length skirt (Rangiku had long since outgrown the kimono she wore). When she got to the edge of another street, she stopped.
An elderly woman sat on her stoop, howling her lungs out. Two men were carrying out the corpse of an elderly man, most likely the woman's husband, an emaciated, bony body.
"Died of hunger, it looks like." Gin's voice sounded softly in her ear; his hand settled on her shoulder. "Though I have to say, you looked far worse when I found you."
Rangiku shot an unappreciative look at her friend. "Gee, thanks."
They continued to watch, as the corpse was carried down the street away from them. The woman kept on sobbing her heart out, uninterrupted, screaming a man's name out to the unfeeling sky.
"Such sorrow," Gin whispered, relishing the moment with an eagerness Rangiku found slightly disturbing. "She doesn't seem to know that in just a few years, she'll most likely join him.
Rangiku's unappreciative look became slightly irritated. "You know, you're pretty creepy when you do that."
"I'll stop then."
The woman's hoarse cries still rang clearly in Rangiku's ears. It bothered her immensely, though she knew exactly what was going on. Death had been a part of Rangiku's life since she was born, but somehow, she was still affected by all the death around her.
Gin, not so much.
He stared down the street with a sort of fascination that Rangiku couldn't recognize, with his turquoise eyes wide open for once. It was so strange to see Gin not have his eyes squinted so that they were almost shut.
"Rangiku… How do you want to die?"
Rangiku had learned that for Gin, no question was too strange to ask; she'd come to accept it, welcome it; it led to such interesting discussions. "Not like that," Rangiku murmured, eyes haunting the sight of the men with the cold body as they disappeared from sight.
Gin nodded, satisfied. "I didn't think you would. It's much better to die on your feet than die like that."
There was a soft rustle of straw as Gin picked up the wicker basket he had been carrying and they began to walk home. A roll of thunder threatened overhead.
.
"Really?" Rangiku couldn't understand why her voice was suddenly so hoarse, why the revelation made her so sad, in such a poignant, nostalgic way.
She was sitting on her bed in the girl's dormitory; Gin had had to sneak in to talk to her. He stood leaning against the wall, his hands tucked behind his back, with an absence of the usual smile.
"Yes, I've passed the graduation test. I've been assigned to the Fifth division under Hirako-taicho."
Rangiku shook her head and smiled, half in disbelief, half in shock. "But you've only been here a year."
Gin tipped his head to one side, that inquisitive expression he'd had since he was a child, that made it to where Rangiku couldn't read his thoughts at all. "Aren't you happy, Rangiku?" A slightly hurt tone—whether false or not, Rangiku couldn't tell—entered his voice.
"No, of course I am." Rangiku stood up, and walked so they made eye contact, standing close to each other. "I'm just surprised is all. I don't think anyone's ever graduated after just a year at the Academy before."
Her teenage friend shrugged. "Well, I don't think it's much of an accomplishment." He shot his head towards the door as the sound of footfalls came ever closer. "Rangiku… I've been ordered to move my belongings to the Fifth division headquarters, effective immediately. I'll…see you around." A slight note of compunction colored the syllables a deep shade of blue.
Rangiku smiled slightly, her lips shaking slightly. "Yeah, I guess so." She leaned up and hugged him. "I'll try to catch up to you quick, okay?"
"I'd like that."
Rangiku spent the night awake, staring up at the darkened ceiling. That night was unbearably silent, even with the soft snoring of the girl in the bed next to hers.
.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Rangiku hissed in his ear, as she tightly gripped his wrist with one hand and held her zanpakuto across his throat with the other.
Gin was perfectly unapologetic, bizarrely serene as all the chaos went on around them. "I don't know what you mean, Rangiku."
Rangiku snarled in response, as the night began to darken in earnest. "Why did you ally yourself with a traitor? Why did you betray Soul Society?" Her voice caught in her throat, as pain rose up in her chest. "Did you ever think of everyone around you, about the people who still cared about you? Did you think of what this would do to them?"
A slight hint of a turquoise eye met Rangiku's vision. "You are strong, Rangiku. You can handle it."
"But why?"
Gin shrugged. "Aizen-taicho holds the winning cards. It was a good investment to make, casting my lot in with him."
Her eyes stung. "Have you ever…cared about life at all? Did you ever know what it was, or were you just willing to throw it away for a lunatic?"
For the first time that night, Gin seemed slightly surprised. "Of course I know what life is, Rangiku."
"Did you ever care?" Rangiku cursed silently as her voice quavered slightly on the rising and falling syllables.
Gin tilted his head, as the smile softened slightly. "I had you, didn't I?" he asked, softly enough that only she could hear.
Rangiku felt her eyes widen.
Before she could react, a brilliant shaft of light came down from the sky, separating them, and Rangiku was forced to step away, throwing up an arm against her eyes to shield them from the blinding initial flash.
She couldn't move, though she was neither hungry nor dying. Rangiku's feet were made of lead, her shock and thwarted anger giving way to a strange, encompassing sadness.
"Too bad…" Rangiku could barely hear Gin's voice over the din, a sound like rushing water between her and him. They stood barely feet away from each other, but were worlds apart already.
As Rangiku watched incredulously, Gin went on. "It would have been nice if my capture lasted a little longer. Farewell, Rangiku."
He turned, and flashed one final, utterly false smile at her. "Sorry."