I -love- GinRan. This is not a healthy relationship. A large bulk of canon material would seem to suggest that this man is, at heart, a genuine sadist and a sociopath. This is a man who goes out of his way to emotionally torment a woman on the eve of her execution for no other discernible motive than for shits and giggles. This is a man who basically sees other people as a means to his own entertainment, who delights in hurting people. This is a man who, fundamentally, does not see other people as people deserving of dignity and respect.
And yet - despite these strange, amoral tendencies, this horrible ugliness at the core of his character, this inability to value the interiority of others - he saves someone. We don't know why for certain, but he does. Something in him compels him to save Rangiku, and it is the defining act of his life. From that moment on, Ichimaru Gin is slowly walking the path to his own demise.
He would easily kill for her, which is not difficult for him in the slightest. But he would also die for her too - and he does just that, in the end. She becomes valuable enough to him for him to sacrifice his entire adult life to her, to the cause of restoring her stolen soul and to claiming vengeance for her. He doesn't seem to value her interiority enough to tell her still. His actions are wholly selfish - but this relationship is the one that makes Ichimaru Gin's inner life complicated.
And then, Rangiku. Rangiku, who had been on the cusp of starving to death. Rangiku, who has had her soul ripped in two. Rangiku, whom no one had bothered to help. Rangiku, abandoned, on her own, alone.
I've always found it so interesting that we see Rangiku deal with her feelings alone. She helps Kira and listens to him and she makes Orihime speak to her about her inadequacies and her struggles, but Rangiku does not -ever- share her feelings with others. She internalises them. She deals with her pain alone.
So here she is, beaten and bruised and saved by the monster of the story, the strange sadistic killer. We, the audience, feel a chill - "oh shit!" we yelp, "the serial killer's captured the hero!". But it doesn't go that way. The monster suddenly finds himself confusedly becoming a care-giver, a source of warmth. Despite all the flaws in his nature, and they are manifold, something changes, even if only for her, and it transforms him. He loves her so much that he will die for her.
But he isn't equipped to live with her. And it doesn't change his nature. He cannot love her in a way that doesn't hurt her. He leaves her - again and again, this girl who had been abandoned on the road side - and given her past, it is almost the worst thing he could do to her. He lies to her - because he's an egotist and his feelings have always been more important than other people's (and he conceals this because he knows she would never let him do it otherwise, and he wants to do it desperately, for her). And he can not change that essential ugly part of him that seems to delight in hurting people. He is still strange, still monstrous, even if he is now a monster capable of love.
And in spite of it all, in spite of her growing inability to deny the monstrous in him, he saved her when she needed him most. He didn't just feed her - he saved her. He became her friend. He loved her and did so probably before she even felt she was loveable. How powerful, for someone so lonely!
And so she loves him- but love can never excuse or make right the things that he has done.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/?
Rating: Mature
Relationships: Emma/Norman (The Promised Neverland)
Characters: Emma (The Promised Neverland), Isabella (The Promised Neverland), Grandmother | Sarah (The Promised Neverland)
Additional Tags: Pregnancy, Medical Procedures, Survival, Childhood Memories, Alternate Universe - Emma Becomes a Mama (The Promised Neverland)
Summary:
She still dreams about it sometimes - the time before.
“They say that lovers doomed never to see each other again still see the higanbana growing along their path, even to this day.”
A girl collapses on a dusty road one day. A boy takes her home.
The girl lives.
—
(The boy doesn’t.)
What kind of beast are you, Ichimaru Gin?
What are you becoming?
--
--
--
(What could drive a man to kill a god?)
--
Aizen played white. Gin played black.
He held territory on both corners of the board, but it wasn't enough. He could see the tide beginning to turn against him, white beginning to eat away slowly at his lines. Aizen was closing in. There could be no escape.
The board and the pieces were finer than any he had ever played on. The stones were not, in fact, stones at all, but rather perfectly carved pieces of bleached and blackened lacquered wood. They felt smooth in his hands, hands that had once been rough and calloused from the filthy work of keeping himself alive.
It was quite the step up in the world, he thought idly, to be playing on an actual wooden board, and not some scrap of cloth on which he'd had to draw clumsy lines - and quite something to be actually playing someone who as proving a challenge to beat.
He was going to lose, he realised distantly, and on his first time playing on an actual board as well. He hadn't been playing his best, but it still rankled him to be beaten. He frowned in concentration at the board, and seeing no path to victory, chanced a quick glance up at his opponent.
That was a mistake - Aizen caught his eye and held his look, and there was a glint of casual, entertained cruelty there.
He knows, Gin realised, brows furrowing only slightly. He knows he's got me beat. An’ worse, he knows I know he knows. What does he want? Where do I go from here?
There were four games going on; the game of go, with all its exciting swapping of pieces and setting of traps; the game of minds which had always existed above the game of go, the manipulation above the game at which Gin had always excelled, and then -
Aizen's game. Gin's game.
He’s won the first game, and probably the second. But they don’t matter, he thought with a hard stare. This one does. This matters. I’m beat, but -
“I forfeit.”
Something dark lit up in Aizen’s eyes, like an ember suddenly come to life in a breeze.
“You’re very good,” he said appreciatively.
Gin shrugged carelessly. “An idiot could have seen it comin’.”
Aizen gaze was dark and his tone mild. “Could they, though?” he murmured. “You’d be surprised at how much an idiot does or does not see. You played well, for what it’s worth. Up to the point where you didn’t.”
The man paused, and he leaned forward.
His eyes were brown, Gin couldn’t help but notice; a warm brown, like honey, like rich wood. There had been a Rukongai girl with eyes like those, once upon a time, and Aizen had killed her. Her essence had faded into the air like tea in hot water.
“Why did you kill the third seat?” Aizen asked, the look in his eyes searching.
A lie came to him easily. It came easily because had it been any other person he had murdered, it might not have been far from the truth.
“Jus’ felt like it,” Gin said simply.
That seemed to entertain Aizen. “Oh?”
“Ain’t no ‘oh’ about it. That’s it. I killed him because I felt like it. Because I was strong. Because he was weak. Because I was bored.” Gin waved a hand abstractly in the air and stretched out.
“And that’s all?”
“Yep. Sounds about right.”
Aizen considered it a while, and then he smiled patiently.
“Are you a beast then, Ichimaru Gin? Is that all you are? A creature that blindly follows its impulses? Nothing but a creature of nature? An animal that eats when its stomach growls, kills when the impulse befalls it, and defecates when its bowls tell it to?”
Is that so far from the truth? Gin wondered.
He let himself fall backwards towards the tatami mat with a delighted laugh. There was still blood on his eyelashes and under his nails.
“I think that’s exactly what I am, Vice-Captain Aizen.” Gin informed the man, grinning. “I see that the armband of yours ain’t just for show.” He rolled over onto his stomach, and let his chin fall into his hands. “Yes. I’m a beast. Let me be a snake,” he said playfully, and the words rang with truth. “Cold of flesh and devoid of heart. My tongue flicks back and forth, always in search of new prey, and if I like what I find…” He caught Aizen’s eye and grinned for him this time. “…I swallow ‘em whole.”
He sighed theatrically. “Poor old Mr Third Seat.” The words rang with menace, and the grin was like a sickle. “Poor, poor third seat. I did like him. Best be careful, Vice-Captain. I might end up take a likin’ to ya’ too.”
Aizen looked down on him, and smiled strangely.
“A snake...” he considered, weighing up the notion. “A snake. Yes. Slithering through the mud on its belly, rising to strike; vicious, poisonous even...” His voice trailed off. “But a small snake yet. Sit back up.”
There was a command as strong as iron in that voice and so Gin dragged himself from where he had been lying. Aizen took a slow, thoughtful sip of his tea.
“You were messy. I can’t help but wonder at that. You were not so far removed from the fifth division barracks that no one would stumble upon you at work. Like a beast indeed, to kill so openly and without thought. Strong, to have bested a third seat. Skilled, to have graduated in only a year. And clever...” He looked down at the go board. “Without a doubt, clever.”
He looked Gin straight in the eye.
“It will be a shame when I tell Hirako what you’ve done.”
Gin’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, and he bared his teeth.
“Ah,” Aizen said, a dark gleam in his eye. “Were you labouring under the impression that I wouldn’t turn you in? That we’d play a while and I’d let you go on your merry way? I’m afraid not. They’ll send you to the Maggot’s Nest for this.” He paused. “It will be an absurd waste of talent, don’t you think? Verging on criminal itself. But they must have their justice. And it costs me nothing to give it to them.”
The irony was not lost on Gin as he gritted his teeth. It had been a long shot, he knew, playing to Aizen’s hunger for knowledge, his sense of intrigue, in the hope that he would take him on.
But it was not over yet. Black still had pieces on the board.
“Must they? Why? Why bother?” he asked lazily.
“‘Why bother?’” Aizen said in imitation, a small, victorious smile playing about his lips. “Why am I going to turn you in, you mean?” he said casually. “Because you’ve lying to me, and it would offend me to let you think I hadn’t noticed it from the instant we began this conversation. Trying to lie and failing, for what that’s worth, though you surely must realise that now. I’ll ask once more, and only once: why did you kill the third seat? Lie again and I’ll know.”
Gin was silent for a long moment.
“Well?” Aizen said, triumph in his eyes.
“I-“
Let him see something of the truth. Let him see what kind of beast you really are.
All of a sudden, he felt his muscles relax. He let himself fall forward again onto his forearms, slouching comfortably again on the floor.
“I wasn’t lyin’,” he objected. His voice sounded half a whine, but at least it didn’t tremble. “Got caught up in a passin’ fancy when I saw Mr Third Seat out and about walkin’ so late. But ya’ right, Mr Vice-Captain - very forgetful of me, would forget my own head if it wasn’t stuck on my neck. Missed a bit out of my story, didn’t I?” He paused dramatically, grin back on his face.
“I wanted ya’ to see me, Vice-Captain. Wanted ya’ to see me with your own eyes so that ya’d know what kind of beast ya’ve got on ya’ hands, so that when the moment came and I asked, ya’d know.”
Aizen paused a moment, his eyes searching Gin’s face intently.
“You know?” he said, realisation immediate, words fraught.
“Bingo,” Gin said, delighted.
Aizen gaze was soft with menace. “Oh,” he murmured. “But of course you know.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Gin confirmed with a grin.
“And I take it you’ll take no pains to divulge to me how you learned of such things?”
“Ya’ a smart man, Vice-Captain.”
“A smart man would not let you live long, Ichimaru-kun,” Aizen said, and the threat was delivered levelly.
“Maybe, maybe. But there’s more than one way to gut a pig if ya’ a creative sort, and I think ya’ know that.”
Aizen leant back and considered him in silence. His chestnut hair hung about his face and his glasses gleamed in the lamp light. He made no move to speak further. It was a dangerous silence flung at him.
Gin shifted impatiently where he sat.
“I want in,” he said bluntly. “Don’t throw away a tool ya’ can use, Vice-Captain. Mr Third Seat wasn’t even third rate. He was trash. His guts were on the floor before he even thought ta’ suspect me. He was shit on someone’s boot. You want me quiet, then keep me quiet – but I think ya’ve got more about ya’ than to resort to somethin’ as borin’ as killin’ me, not when ya’ could try me out.”
Aizen’s silence was heavy and threatening.
Nothing from him. Nothing at all.
Let him see something of the truth. Let him see what kind of beast you are.
“They’re weak,” Gin said suddenly. “All of them. Worse than weak. They prate and they shuffle about to do your biddin’ and they bleat “Aizen-sama, Aizen-sama” like sheep. When they kill, they don’t kill for you. They don’t even kill for themselves. They do it because they’re nothin’ and they want to be somethin’ so badly and they’re so – so small that they can’t even grasp the kind of something they want to be, how pathetic what they desire is, how little they know how to become it. They’re so pathetic that they’re not even worth hatin’. They’re just… Nothin’. I don’t understand that. I’ll never be nothin’.”
It took Aizen long moments to speak. An expression began to pull at his lips. His smile was slow and predatory - and yet something of an alien humour danced in his eyes.
There was nothing gentle about the look. Gin had never seen its like before, and had he no knowledge of the man, he might have called it a kind of respect.
Riding high for a moment, he did not anticipate the question that came next.
“Nothing? Really? If they’re all so small, then why do you kill them, Gin? If they’re nothing at all, then why bother? Why even notice them? If they’re so small... Why do you do what you do?” Aizen asked softly.
He’d said too much and realised it a second too late. Panic began to creep up his gorge and sweat pricked at his skin.
Because that was the heart of it, wasn’t it? The suffering he inflicted – what it revealed – it was interesting. It was fun. They... were fun.
But no one else could know that. They would kill him if they knew.
The question pried at places that were too secret, too intimate to see the light of day– warm, dark places into which light had never shone, places so murky that they would swallow up the light. He had never before let himself be uncovered as blatantly as this, allowed himself to be so exposed - not to someone he then hadn’t gone on to kill.
There had been one time – a time long ago – when he had killed four men in town and had trudged back to Rangiku doused in their blood and smelling of their burnt flesh. It had ruined his yukata and the blood had settled into his shoes, never to be washed out. He had trembled to think of what she might say to him, certain that she would leave. She hadn’t.
But she hadn’t acknowledged the truth either.
Here and now, the question could not be avoided. Not if he wanted to see her again. Not if he wanted to make her whole again.
The price of tangling with the devil had always been to stake your soul. He knew, down in his gut, that he could never have expected to escape unscathed. But for a moment, he let resentment boil up in him.
For a moment, it was aimed at her too.
“What I-“ he stopped, and he drew in a deep measured breath. He found that despite his immense self-control, he could not keep looking Aizen in the eye. When he found the breath to speak again, his voice was low. “When I kill I – I see somethin’ true. In their eye. Ya’ see them dance. Ya’ see the truth they’re always hidin’.”
Aizen’s expression was warm. It was appreciative. The hair on Gin’s arms raised in a shiver of disgust. “That was the most honest thing you’ve told me all evening, Gin,” he murmured. “I appreciate your honesty. Truly.”
He rose slowly from where he sat and moved to look at the moon still hanging overhead in the sky, bloated and corpulent like fruit gone foul.
“Mutual bondage in co-conspiracy, you and I,” Aizen said slowly. His voice was low and rich. “No detail that you could divulge for fear that it would stick to you too. For every finger I drag through the dirt, a corresponding trace on your fingers; a stain for every stain of my own. An elegant, symmetrical solution. You know that your age will stand as no defence were you to betray me, and you know that I know where the bodies are buried.”
Aizen turned to him, and Gin knew suddenly that the wage had been deemed paid.
(Everything that happens now happens because you made it that way.)
Black was still on the board.
“The position is yours. We start again tomorrow.” Aizen smiled. “I look forward to working with you, Gin.”
---
And just like so, he became a shinigami and apprentice to Aizen Sosuke.
And for a time – the first time, in fact – Matsumoto Rangiku began to fall slowly from his mind.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Rating: Explicit
Relationships: Pieck/Zeke (Shingeki no Kyojin)
Additional Tags: First Time, Cunnilingus, Angst, Age Difference, Explicit Consent
Length: 9,101 words
He knows that the eyes of others linger on him, knows the embers of lust that smoulder in their eyes, and knows the furtive encounters in darkened rooms, with men and women both, that those embers spark. But he has never much concerned himself with his appearance.
His body is Marley’s weapon. It has been forged for Marley, and its existence will find its end at the bottom of a titan’s stomach. At the end of the day, the beauty of his body is incidental, currency to be traded for sex when the mood takes him. His body does not belong to him. Neither beauty nor body are his.
headcanon:
-After Regina takes Aleksander home with her, after he strips his sweater off and she has to clean the blood from his bullet wound - after he’s done writhing and sweating with the pain of having his wounds painfully sterilised with whatever booze Claudia has lying around - Aleks knows bone deep (after! only! one! day!) that Regina is his ride or die girl and he’d fistfight God with his bare hands for her if he had to.
do you not ever sit and think about how wild Aleksander and Regina’s first meeting was? they’re babies, he straight up threatens some local teenagers with a gun because they’re disrespecting her, he’s covered in blood and can barely stand, she carts him home to treat his gunshot wound with ZERO MEDICAL TRAINING because this shady dude doesn’t want to go to hospital, and they’re both like:
[heart eyes] ah, yes. that’s the one, the one for me. that’s my future husband/wife.
wild.
for like, the next week and a half, this will be a Netflix’s Dark (2017) blog as I desperately try and process my Feelings (tm) over the ending of the show.
Spoilers are gonna be tagged “dark spoilers” and “dark netflix”. I don’t want to accidentally ruin the show for anyone so please be cautious and blacklist!
Also, if you like complex, aesthetic, philosophical tv shows about: 1. time-travel, 2. families, and 3. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, plz watch this underrated gem of a show.
“They say that lovers doomed never to see each other again still see the higanbana growing along their path, even to this day.”
A girl collapses on a dusty road one day. A boy takes her home.
The girl lives.
—
(The boy doesn’t.)
What kind of beast are you, Ichimaru Gin?
What are you becoming?
--
--
--
(What could drive a man to kill a god?)
--
It is a cloudy night. There is not a star to be seen as he sits, his sword flat on his lap, and waits. The air is calm, the night is still, the sky is gray, and he waits and he waits and he waits whilst the moon ripens behind the clouds.
The student barracks are empty. Everyone has long since made the journey home since graduation, to warm and joyous families keen to celebrate their success and the prospect of their glowing futures. The halls are silent.
(He had also made the long journey home the day before, out into the dark woods of the far flung districts of Rukongai. Such a journey - a journey which would take an ordinary person weeks of foot-travel - had taken him mere hours. But there had been no warm and loving family to return to, no celebration of his success. The house had been empty but for a letter written long ago on a torn piece of sack cloth.)
Empty.
This is good. There will be no witnesses - no one to see him leave. No one to see him return.
It would not do to be seen coming back from the site of a murder.
A lurid, jittery excitement coils up in him - the sort of excited anticipation a child feels on the day of their birthday. He tries to quell it, but he can’t. The occasion warrants more caution than this, more ritual sanctity. Everything rests on the outcome of tonight. If it were to go wrong… It is no excuse to play, to indulge himself in a little petty cruelty. He has to be quick; he has to be sharp. This murder is not for him- it is for her, and so he should treat it with the seriousness it deserves.
Everything he has done has been for her.
But, he cannot help but think, squirming with the excitement of it all, it will be fun to see how it goes.
He is a prodigy, a genius, a wonder child - no one has ever graduated the academy as quickly as him, not in a thousand years. His opponent (victim) is a seated officer, and not just that, but a third seat, third only in power to the Captain and Vice-Captain.
This might end up bein’ more difficult than I gave credit for, he muses. But he can do it. He knows he can.
After all, he has to.
He cannot dampen the small thrills running through him, the urge to whistle, the brightness shining in him. It is beyond him to feel any kind of remorse for the pain he is about to inflict. He will enjoy it too much, and for once, his cause is righteous.
Tonight he should be calm. Tonight he should be still. If tonight goes to plan, there will be only one man standing in between him and the satisfaction of his vengeance and his labours will almost be at an end.
The thought makes him giddy with a twinned delight - one part ecstasy in the anticipation of bloodlust, the other part a tenderness so soft it hurts.
He turns his attention to his sword in a bid to distract himself. It is a short blade, a blade perfectly sized for a child-murderer’s hands, and his face shines in the reflection in its blade.
Shinso. Shinso, he sings to his sword happily, keen to share his excitement with someone.
But if Shinso has something to say now, it is keeping it to itself. Gin waits a moment for a response, and then aims a mental kick at his sword.
It says nothing, and he frowns in annoyance.
The night before he had walked into the darkness in his mind, slipping down, down, down into the empty hole where his sword’s spirit dwells within him. The labyrinthine dark is as familiar to him now as the sight of his own hands. He had spent long sleepless nights at the academy learning its winding passages, its eerie, quiet dead ends, its blind and looping paths.
There are times still that he cannot help but feel like he has been swallowed whole, that he is wandering in the coiling, twisting insides of a snake.
There had been a figure in the darkness, the night before. It had sat there, its legs dangling impossibly into the thick darkness. They had kicked very slightly and childishly in the nothingness.
As he had walked closer, he had seen that its hair was amber-bronze, its skin sun-kissed and freckled, the light down of the hair on its arms golden.
He had held his breath for a moment, and then exhaled, a white grin fixed on his face. And then he had walked up to it.
It had turned, the thing wearing Rangiku’s face, and it had copied his bright smile. So often, it has her dimples. So often, it wears her beauty mark.
(When he sits across from it, there are only black holes where there should be eyes.)
“Are we ready then?” Shinso had asked in Rangiku’s girlish voice, a voice like sunshine, its head tilting like hers had.
Gin wonders what it says about him that Shinso does this. Shinso does this, he thinks, to unsettle him- to hurt him- to get a response, maybe. Maybe because Shinso thinks it funny.
Maybe because Shinso is everything that he is, monstrous cruelty included.
Gin had given it a cursory glance, trying not to dwell on that eyeless face. He had squinted into the darkness resolutely. “Reckon so,” he had said to it.
“Do you know how we’re going to do it?” Rangiku’s voice had echoed cheerfully.
Rangiku would never sound so cheerful to be preparing for murder.
He had known. He had known the plan down to the smallest turn. He is not so confident in his ability to defeat a third seat that he hasn’t dwelt obsessively on the details, hasn’t spent sleepless nights dwelling darkly on how it might be done. In the end, he has decided to play it safe, play it conservative. This murder is not for him and so it needs to be done carefully. It needs to be done right.
“Same plan as last time.”
Shinso’s stolen face had fallen, and its stolen lips, pink and perfect, had stretched into a look of alien disgust. Rangiku’s mouth cannot twist like that. Her teeth are not that sharp. “That’s boring,” Rangiku’s voice had announced, and it had echoed as if coming from a mile away. “Boring.”
It was boring, but Gin had shrugged. “Everythin’ hinges on how tonight goes. Can’t fuck it up.”
The bottomless pits of Shinso’s empty eyes had snapped to him, snake-like. They bore into him, those empty sockets. Every time he looks at them, the memory of eyes soft and blue as forget-me-nots stirs in his soul, and the memory disquiets him. But Gin always stares back, undaunted.
“You’re going to fuck it up if you do it that way. He’s going to want a show.” Shinso had told him. It had seemed to find the thought suddenly funny. “He’s going to want to see a show, the sicko. Give him a show. Excite him. Let him see us, see us how we really are. Let him get a peek. That’ll grab him.”
The irony of calling anyone else a sicko had seemed lost on Shinso, but it was right, Gin had realised later. If he is to pull this off, he’s going to have to perform, he’s going to have to draw him in.
Seduce him, even.
“Think ya’ might be right on this one,” he had admitted reluctantly, and he frowns now, in the present, mulling it over.
Let him see us, see us how we really are.
It is a troubling thought.
No signs of softness, no signs of weakness; never let them know where your heart lies. He had heard those words, in a different place, in a different life.
Shinso had padded towards him through the darkness until there had been scarcely any space between them. Its footsteps do not echo. The blackness it wraps itself in is gentle as velvet. It had pressed its (Rangiku’s Rangiku’s Rangiku’s) head against his own tenderly, and Gin had frozen. It has Rangiku’s hair, it has Rangiku’s face, but its skin is always so cold.
“Have you thought about my questions?” It had uttered with a smile. It had whispered in his ear, but there is no warm puff of air when Shinso speaks, no sound of breathing, just the sound of dust, a hiss. “Do you know what we are yet? It is a choice, Gin. Commit; and do not turn back. Everything that happens now happens because you made it that way.”
It is a choice, Gin. Commit; and do not turn back.
When he had looked into those black hollows, he had known what it was he had to do. He had known what he had to be.
He thinks he has begun to understand what he has to give up.
(But he hasn’t. Not really. Not yet.)
“I know.”
He had swallowed. There had been nothing more he could have said.
In the present, the excitement bubbling away in his chest finally dies down. He sighs and runs a hand through his fine-stranded hair, knowing Shinso to be right.
It had all started to become so complicated, somewhere along the line. When he had seen him, the man, Aizen, in the forest for the first time, it had been so simple.
Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him for what he has done. Kill him for even daring to touch her, his heart had screamed bestially.
Time had passed and he had tracked them all down, one by one, each of the animals that had laid their hands on her. But still Aizen lives, still Aizen thrives, and his heart rages now with impatience to see his vengeance wrought.
Aizen -
And one more.
But not for much longer.
It had taken so long already. Who knew what could have become of her in a year?
Unbidden, his mind drifts back to the letter she had left for him, dried mud and ash on a grey-brown sack, in a wooden hut and a shitty town, so, so far away.
Suddenly, it is too much effort to stay upright, and so he carelessly pushes Shinso from his lap and lets himself fall back against the tatami mat.
He had known that she would be devastated when he left her.
He’d left anyway.
It had been more important to him, at the time, to leave.
(That maybe, just maybe - he hadn’t cared enough to stay.)
The thought is small and ashamed.
He’d thought about her often when he’d been at the academy, on cold starless nights in shared dormitories where her hair did not tickle his nose and he didn’t have to manoeuvre around her clumsy, kicking legs in the night; where he had not woken in the night to screams that he alone had been able to soothe.
When his mind had turned to her - as had been inevitable because the thought of her had been as inescapable as gravity - guilt and remorse had twisted up inside him like a snake wrapping itself around his insides. It had been a novel feeling, guilt. He had not liked it then, and he doesn’t like it now.
It had always been a cruel thing, the sight of her crestfallen face as he left her, the way she would look dully at her hands and the way that the light would drop out of her. Something about it stung at him, and so he had tried bitterly to avoid thinking too long on how she was coping, what she doing, how she was faring.
It had been difficult, but having taught himself to steel himself against it, he finds it is the uncertainty now, the fact that he does not even know what she is doing, that she could be with anyone, which makes his heart do strange things.
His smile is strained.
I don’t even know where ya’ are anymore, he thinks distantly to himself. Did ya’ even exist? Or did I dream ya’ up to keep me company? Where are ya’ now, Rangiku?
“I’m not angry that you left,” she had written for him. “Not all of the time, anyway. Sometimes I am. Sometimes I hate you. But most of the time I’m just sorry that you felt like you had to leave. I just wish I knew why.”
“Thank you”.
“You’ll always be my friend.”
My friend, he thinks fervently. My only friend.
He sighs.
The letter had just been further proof of what he’d always known: that when all was accounted for, when all was tallied up in the book of their lives, she was a better person than he was, and always would be. She had that elusive ability to care for others, and the even more elusive quality to forgive.
It wasn’t that she didn’t get angry.
(He shakes his head ruefully at the thought. He had suffered too many punches to the arm to think anything otherwise).
It was just that her anger had always been quick and passionate - fierce, but quick to burn itself out, gone almost as soon as it had arrived. She could be shouting and throwing things at him one minute, but she’d be joking with him the next, all wrongs forgiven as if he’d never done anything wrong in the first place.
Would it be naïve to hope that he could be forgiven this time?
He has rarely felt remorse for anything in his life. Remorse means caring that you have wronged another person. Remorse means having the ability to know, know in your heart, that there is such a thing wrong in the first place.
But Ichimaru Gin does not care. He lacks that compass inside of him, that invisible magnetism, which seemed to guide everyone else towards the good. He has heard talk of evil, but it had always seemed to him a label which people gave to the things they disliked, to the things that caused them disgust or pain.
It is still an alien sensation to him, this prickling, this strange curling and twisting inside of him, the feeling of guilt. If he’s honest, he’s still not even sure he knows what guilt is, but it hurts him to have hurt her and he figures that must lie close to the essence of it.
Rangiku was considerate of other people, he thinks stubbornly. Though she had hidden it well, she’d had a melancholy streak in her that ran a mile wide and as deep as the blue sea. It was born of abandonment, he muses, of fear that she would be left alone again. She was always considerate of other people. Too considerate, he thinks to himself. When something went wrong, she always sought to smooth over the edges, to please people. As far as he was concerned, they could die in a ditch.
She’d have done anything to avoid being abandoned.
He’d done it to her anyway.
(Simply, shamefully – it had been more important to him to leave than it had been for him to stay. There was nothing more to it than that.)
Had she managed to convince herself that he’d left because of something she’d done?
The thought twists at his insides. It troubles him.
It has been a year since he had left. He had eschewed all academy holidays in order to concentrate on his goal, had endured the braying of the idiot sons of Seireitei noble families, had shut himself in libraries night after night, had sweated and bloodied himself and ran himself hoarse on the training field, all to graduate as quickly as possible. All to murder Aizen Sosuke in cold blood for all that he had done to her.
Does she still have nightmares? Has she learnt to fight ‘em off without me?
Does she still-
He cannot bring himself to complete the thought.
(-need me?)
But him?
He has grown strong without her.
He will be graduating as a seated officer. He is a legend, a prodigy, the first person to graduate from the academy in a year.
Tonight - tonight he will carry out his plan. He is a boy, a child. No one will suspect him. No one will know. Everything will go as he wants it to.
It is an easy thing to convince himself that it will be easy. Aizen will never see his true nature, or at least, he amends to himself, not enough of it to know what he intends. The man’s blood will dye Shinso scarlet soon enough, even if not tonight, and Gin will laugh and laugh and laugh to see it gush out of the man and to see his corpse crumpled on the ground, like trash.
The excitement is back, the lurid satisfaction, and he lets it bubble away merrily inside of him.
He has found his smile again, and it is like a sickle.
He hums to himself in pleasure, and rocks forward to a sitting position. He grabs Shinso from off the floor, and he jumps to his feet jauntily.
So what if it has taken longer than he had planned?
Nothin’ worth doin’ was ever done easily, he thinks to himself and he tries not to think of the heartbreak on her face as he left.
It is not as complicated as he had made it out to be. It is simple. He will steal back what was taken, and he will return it to her, and then he will return himself to her, and it will be over.
Over.
And then-
Unbidden, the words of what feels like a life time ago rise up in him. His pale fingertips ghost over his lips for a second.
She had rushed the words out, trying to explain herself to him.
"I could never hate you completely, not really. Not if you tickled me for hours, not if you made me dig up the garden and dangled every worm in my face, not if you made fun of every other person on earth-" her breath had hitched, and he had watched her, dumbfounded "-not even if you left me, not even then. You gave me this birthday, and for as long as I live, I'll wake up today and think of you because you saved me and you gave me a home."
He remembers every word. It has been over a year, and yet he remembers it as if she’d said it yesterday, this morning, an hour ago.
How could he not? She had-
(-kissed him. It had carved away at his insides like a disease, rent apart his chest, ripped him to pieces. The memory sat in the hole it had hollowed out, flush in the space between his heart and his soul, reigning like a king over his body.)
He will never again be rid of it.
It had been like a promise; it had been like a vow.
Nothing more had ever been said about it.
What did it mean? What did it mean? What did she meant by it?
But still that memory warms him. He can feel the lingering traces of the dizzying delight he had felt in that moment each time he closes his eyes and remembers it. His lips quirk upwards.
An eerie, tuneless whistle emerges from his mouth. He cannot help himself, not when the world is so alight with possibilities.
He has murder in his heart, a sword in his hand, a whistle in his mouth, and the ghost of her kiss on his lips.
He smiles.
Time to go.
--
It is a masterpiece of theatre.
He coaxes the man into the woods with a few wide-eyed, warbling words of praise, some pathetic, snivelling dross, all dewy-eyed innocence. The man doesn’t question it for a second.
When they are safely hidden by the canopy, safely ensconced in the darkness, he strikes. The air heaves and writhes with his killing intent, and the third seat crumples beneath the pressure like he is made of paper. A paper man. Goin’ ta’ fold him up and put him in my pocket, Gin hums to himself. He smiles brightly.
Nah, goin’ ta’ rip him up.
He is on his hands and knees in discomfort, retching into the soil, thick, suffocating saliva forced from his mouth. The sweat trickles from his brow, leaving a sheen; the hair on the back of his neck stands on end, mimicking the response of all prey since time immemorial. The man is frightened. It is written all over his face.
He should be. He’s going to die.
The third seat tries to rise, but he can’t.
“Come on!” Gin cheers him on. “Ya’ the third seat, so act like it. Come on up and get me, Mr Third Seat! You can do it!”
The man grits his teeth and lets out an inhuman roar of effort, pushing with all his might to try to get to his feet.
“So close now!”
The man has made it off his hands. Gin makes an appreciative noise and claps his hands at him, delighted. He has only the most rudimentary knowledge of that thing called empathy, but if he were hard pressed to guess, he would say right now that the man must be feeling something akin to hope.
The third seat stumbles low to the ground, and Gin cheers for him.
And then, his expression never shifting for a moment, white grin still stretched across his face, he aims a vicious kick straight to his head. The man’s nose bursts across his face.
He collapses to the ground again, making a low, heaving noise. Gin wonders vaguely whether he’s crying.
“Oh no!” Gin sings at him. “Whoopsadaisy! Ya’ve fallen over, Mr Third Seat! How clumsy of ya’!” He shakes his head at him theatrically. “How clumsy! Fallen over ya’ own feet!”
The man seems to have given up on trying to stand with Gin’s spiritual pressure beating down at him again and again like a hammer against an anvil, and so he begins to crawl, hands and knees, across the forest floor, blood gushing from the splatter that had been his nose.
“Oh no, no, no,” Gin says to him, grin wide. “Let me help you up! Mighty third seats shouldn’t go crawlin’ through the forest on their hands and knees. That’s for bugs.” Something burns in his eyes for a second, but it is gone the minute it appears. “Or vermin.”
The third seat looks back with fear-filled eyes. He inhales and exhales rapidly, in the broken breathing of the terrified. His hands are scratched from where broken branches have torn at them.
“So stubborn!” Gin bends over, wiping his hands on his black shihakusho, and drags the man to his feet by the collar. “Up we get! Was that so difficult, askin’ for a bit of help?”
The third seat is not stupid enough to fail to see where this is going. His face twists into an animal snarl. He has realised what should have been obvious since the beginning: that he will be permitted to leave with Gin’s permission, or not at all. His stupid, ugly curtains of hair fall into his face as he grabs for his sword. His beady little eyes have blown wide with hatred.
Just try. Just ya’ try.
He tries.
His zanpakuto comes free from its sheath, and he swings it brutishly, clumsily, at Gin’s side. Shinso is in his hand in a second, and he knocks the third seat’s blow aside with an almost clumsy laziness.
“’S not very nice to take your anger out on other people like that, Mr Third Seat,” he says reproachfully. “’S not my fault you can’t get up.” There’s something hysterically funny about that. His grin widens.
The third seat swings again, and again, and again, until he is trembling and sobbing with exertion.
“Shhh, shhh,” he soothes. “Shhh. It’s nothin’ to cry over! ‘S just a fall. ‘S just a fall. We all fall down sometimes. Gotta tell ya’ self it doesn’t hurt.”
He pauses dramatically, looking behind him to the thinning tree line. Aaah, he thinks coldly and he turns back to the man. Good timin’.
“This though,” he says, turning Shinso over in one hand casually, “this is goin’ ta’ hurt like hell’.”
He pushes the blade through the man’s stomach, slowly, slowly.
Shinso is sharp, but the organs of a grown man are thick and spongey, filled with gristle and muscle and gore and blood. It explodes outwards in a thick stream, making his hands and his chest slick, and as he slices upwards, it spurts in a hot, unexpected shower across his face, the wetness. He can hear the dull slap of the man’s guts as they slide out and hit the ground, the shocked intake of the man’s last breaths.
There is no performance now.
He lifts the man by his collar, still lodged on his blade, and looks at him, watching his eyes cloud over.
It is a strange thing, a heady thing, to watch. A person is never more themselves than in extremis, never more honest in their desires, in their choices. Those categories called good and evil- how easily they seem to be forgotten in the overwhelming impetus to survive. How much more, he thinks, people seem to resemble himself in their final moments. How clear it seems then, that there is no good, no evil- only people. Beautiful, ugly, strange people.
The man’s eyes were brown. In death, they are black.
It is done.
He shuts his eyes for a moment and raises his head towards the sky.
Behind his eyes, he sees her as he had first seen her, collapsed on the ground, the man's hand buried to the elbow in her chest, taking something vital and shining from her. Rangiku's yukata had been bunched up around her thighs, and her face had been wan and marred with bruises like storm clouds. As the man rose, he had cupped her face almost tenderly, caressing her cheek. And then he had slapped her, and the sound had rung out through the deserted road. There had been dirt in her golden hair.
The nightmares she had suffered, how she had struggled to walk for days after, the blood on her face and her fat, split lip-
The man had turned to his companions afterwards, and he had laughed.
He had laughed.
There is fury boiling in him. He has forgotten the performance.
Gin only regrets that he cannot kill the man twice, regrets that he had not thought to inflict more pain while he still had the chance. Overcome by rage, he sends another kick crashing into the man’s face, and then another, breath hissing through his teeth.
Overhead, a gap forms in the clouds. The moon emerges; it is eerily bright. He readies another furious blow.
“Ah…”
And then he stills, exhaling a shaky breath through his nose.
The voice, rich and lazy and loathsome, issues from behind him. He had wanted an audience, and now he has one. He had almost forgotten in all the excitement.
“They weren’t exaggerating then. I’d heard, but I had not given much credence to such inflated rumours. A mistake, obviously. What’s your name?”
Gin turns, and as he does so, the moonlight falls on him like a spotlight. The blood, which had seemed black in the shadows, has painted half his face red, like a mask. His fine hair is soaked with it, and it has separated into damp strands. He looks at the man’s face.
Aizen’s eyes are warm, and honey brown, and so gentle.
Except they aren’t.
Gin has known enough monsters to recognise a face put on for polite society when he sees one. He has seen this man obliterate people, seen them blur into thin air, like tea in hot water. He doesn’t dare buy for a second the look he sees on this man’s face.
He looks closer.
Cruelty. Amusement. Intrigue. Hunger.
(The eye of a fellow connoisseur; the eye of a fellow artist.)
(The thought sickens him.)
He steels himself for what he’s about to do. His heart fights against his ribs to burst out of his chest. He has never done anything so terrifying.
(He thinks of her.)
Perform. Perform, he thinks desperately. Keep his attention while you have it. And he lets his most blood-chilling smile stretch across his face, a bright rictus grin.
“Good evenin’, Vice-Captain Aizen!” he calls out sweetly, the third seat’s guts at his feet. He can feel the blood starting to soak through into his tabi. “Lovely moon we’ve got out tonight.”
Nothing like surprise crosses Aizen’s face. If anything, he looks rapt- darkly pleased by Gin’s response.
“Good,” he murmurs softly, before smiling. “You’re even better than I’d heard. I’ll ask you again. What is your name?”
It is a choice, Gin. Commit; and do not turn back, Shinso had told him. Everything that happens now happens because you made it that way.
“For as long as I live, I'll wake up today and think of you because you saved me and you gave me a home.”
Gin takes a deep breath, and hopes that Aizen will blame it on the exertion of murder.
I’m doing it. I’m doing the dumb self-congratulatory egoism thing.
GinRan have been symbolically married since they got caught out in the sunshower in chapter 7. This is why they both keep thinking about what went on in that chapter all the bloody time.
In Japanese (as anyone who has seen/read XXXholic will know- OG manga-), sunshowers are known in folklore as ‘kitsune no yomeiri’, or, in English, as the fox’s wedding. Our resident silver-haired dude is our fox (except, confusingly, when he’s a snake), the sunshower demands that there be a wedding, and the bride is Ran, striding up to him devil-may-care with a bouquet of flowers.
Except those flowers are red spider lilies, the flower traditionally planted by gravesides, associated with a famous folk tale about two lovers who guard the flowers only to get separated for all eternity by the gods. Our bride carries with her a bouquet of flowers that scream “DOOM! DEATH! THIS IS NOT GOING TO END WELL.”
So we have a fox’s wedding, but to a bride with a bouquet that can only portend nasty things for the couple.
We also have a scene in chapter 8 where he accidentally pokes her with a needle, drawing blood and he fusses over how his clumsiness hurt her. Symbolic consummation. Just sayin’. Ya girl wondered how much she could get away with.
And then I just gave up on subtlety and Gin gave her a ring lol. But oh no! After Ran talks with Kyouraku, and admits that she loved him and begins to process being abandoned, she finds that she’s outgrown the immature love it represents. Ran is trying all the time to grow up. She’s come to terms with the pure but childish love she had and the way that she was mistreated; she can’t wear the childish symbol of their love anymore.
But her friends, in their love for her, transform it from a symbol of childish love and refashion it into something new - Yuki provides Ran with a chain to wear it on and Sayaka and Ayame come up with a new way for her to wear it. In its new form, it is also a symbol of the love between her and her friends. She can take her childish love with her, but like her, it has had to change.
“They say that lovers doomed never to see each other again still see the higanbana growing along their path, even to this day.”
A girl collapses on a dusty road one day. A boy takes her home.
The girl lives.
—
(The boy doesn’t.)
The next few days were hellishly busy, as Yuki had predicted ominously, and the four women found themselves devoting every spare moment to scraping together plans and contingencies for the future, which raced relentlessly forward.
It was decided, in a quiet moment where Rangiku, Yuki and Sayaka had sat with their heads together and discussed the matter in hushed voices, that each of them would give Ayame what they could spare from any savings and spare cash they had on hand.
When they had told Ayame of their plans, their expressions focused and serious, her face had been ashen and her fists had clenched by her sides.
Ayame had always been fiercely self-reliant, a girl whose grand plan had been to lift herself out of poverty and into comfort by the sweat of her own brow, and it was galling for her to have to rely on the kindness of friends. But she had agreed in the end, frustrated, but ultimately beaten down by the simple fact that there was no other way. It was that, or starve on the streets.
Rangiku was not so much of a saint that she did not mourn the cakes and clothes she could have bought with the money she was giving away. She allowed herself a few hours of moping and self-pity, where she pathetically sploshed her mop around and imagined the yukata she could have bought for next year’s tanabata. But she was doing the right thing, and the thought tided her through the sense of loss.
“It’s mostly my winnings from betting on my fight,” she informed Ayame begrudgingly. “You better call the brat ‘Rangiku’ after all this, I’m telling you.”
“What if it’s a boy?” Ayame asked with a wobbly smile, her hand placed self-consciously on her belly.
Rangiku was pulled up short, and she glowered at Ayame for pointing out the obvious problem. “Then he’ll be the first boy in Soul Society to be called ‘Rangiku’, and he’ll be proud of it!” she insisted.
Ayame snorted. “I didn’t want this, but I don’t hate the poor baby. I’m not going to consign him to a life of teasing.”
“Or her,” Rangiku pointed out.
She paused as a thought crossed her mind. She smiled, and it was a soft, warm thing.
“I used to have a friend,” she told Ayame breezily, “a friend called ‘Gin’, of all things. And he-“ she caught Ayame snorting in surprise, and she leapt on the reaction with delight “-yep, ‘he’, not ‘she’- even had silver hair.” She sighed, and the look on her face was nostalgic. “So try hard, right? And such a weird name too. Who’s actually called that?”
Ayame laughed, and it warmed Rangiku’s heart to see it. “Poor boy,” she said. “Did they pick on him?”
Rangiku scoffed. “No. He picked on them.” She pulled herself upright energetically. “See? It’s character building.”
Ayame gave her a gentle, considering look. “You know, I think that’s the first time you’ve ever mentioned someone you knew before you came here.” A warm, teasing smile played about her lips. “I just thought you had no friends because you were too lazy.”
It was the first time she had said his name in three years, and Rangiku had caught herself by surprise with it.
It didn’t hurt. Not anymore.
She turned to Ayame, and she glowed. “Nope, you’re right,” she said cheerfully. “I spent all my time in bed, all day, every day.” She giggled to herself. “Gin was my servant. And he was rubbish at it.”
Serves him right, she thought contentedly.
Ayame just snorted.
By far the hardest thing to find was a place for Ayame to stay. Rent was expensive, and people willing to board with a pregnant whore few and far between. Yuki, Sayaka, Rangiku and Ayame herself scrambled haphazardly trying to get the word out that they were looking for a place, but between the clientele of the Floating Moon and their unorthodox working hours, they had little luck in their search.
Or at least, they did until Rangiku went out one morning, her mouth a thin line of determination and her eyes bleary having scarcely slept the night before. She came back with a familiar face in tow.
She looked around, her face inscrutable.
“Ah,” Hisana said curiously. “So this is where you work?”
Ayame and Rangiku shared worried looks, fearful of her judgement.
Hisana paused. “No wonder you were both struggling to keep track of time. Days and nights, weeks and months must blend into one in your, ah-” she coughed delicately, “-line of work.”
“Can she stay?” Rangiku asked urgently.
Hisana took a long look at Ayame’s pale and tired face, at the hand resting on top of her belly.
“You both know I’m from Inuzuri?” she said gently.
They nodded fearfully.
“Then you should know that I will never judge what another person does in order to stay alive.” Her eyes, usually so gentle and placid, were intense. “I’ve lost that right. Of course you can stay. You can stay as long as you need.”
Rangiku whooped and engulfed her in her arms. “Hisana!” she exclaimed joyously. “You are our hero!”
Hisana blushed in her arms. Rangiku turned excitedly to look at Ayame, but when her eyes landed on her, they softened at what they saw.
There were tears on her cheeks. “Thank you,” Ayame said quietly, and she stared hard and blinking at her lap. “I don’t know why everyone is exerting themselves like this for me.” She looked at her hands. “For me.”
Hisana extracted herself from Rangiku’s overenthusiastic embrace, and went to sit by Ayame.
Rangiku, who knew well how it felt to be alone, to have no one and nothing in the world and then to have everything all in a moment, said nothing.
“No tears,” Hisana said, smoothing away Ayame’s tears with her thumb. “No tears. Everything is going to be alright. We’ve got you. You’re going to be alright.”
Ayame cried quietly for several minutes, and the three of them sat and weathered it together. They were all pulled sharply from the moment when Ayame suddenly jolted.
“We didn’t even offer you tea!” she wailed.
Rangiku smiled to herself, and went to put a pot on. Somehow, down in her bones, she knew that everything was going to be okay.
---
The day eventually came when Chiyo found out.
It was a simple thing, and brief for all the trouble it caused.
They had been preparing for opening when it happened. Sayaka had been resplendent in a yukata of emerald green, her dark eyes narrowed with focus as she bent over to paint a thin charcoal line on Ayame’s eyelids. The charcoal had been wet and emollient; the smoky smell had lingered in the room.
Chiyo had slid the door open. It had not banged, or clattered, or made much of any noise at all, but their hearts had all plummeted into their stomachs as one all the same, and they had eyed her with fearful eyes.
Sayaka had flinched, and the delicate line had smudged.
There had been something absurd about that.
Ayame had gone pale, and Rangiku had moved instinctively to place herself between her and Chiyo, but she had found herself next to Ayame, not in front of her, as she had intended.
By her side, pressed against her thigh, she had felt Ayame’s hand brush clumsily against her own, and she had squeezed it tight.
Bravely, white-faced with fear, Ayame had raised her chin to look Chiyo squarely in the eye.
The old woman had sighed deeply, and Rangiku had blinked in surprise, only for fury to coil in her gut.
How dare this woman sigh as if she wasn’t the source of all their misery, as if she was sorry for what she was about to do.
“Be gone before opening tomorrow, Ayame-kun,” Chiyo had said. It had sounded regretful. It had sounded remorseful.
It had sounded like poison. Rangiku had wanted to hit her.
Chiyo had turned on her heel, and she had left as suddenly and silently as she had come.
Rangiku had paused. Rangiku had ran.
“Hey!” she had shouted, “Oi!”, until she had caught up with the old woman.
Her fists had curled into balls by her sides, and her hair had been a wild mane of gold about her head. Her eyes, soft like blue flowers, had flashed defiantly and proudly.
“I’m leaving too.”
It had been like an electric thrill in her skin, like a roar in her heart, like the defiant snarl of a wildcat.
“I’m leaving too.”
She had expected pushback. She had expected something.
Chiyo had looked like her she was nothing, like she was less than nothing. The last words she said to Rangiku were cold.
“So be it.”
--
That night Rangiku bantered and hustled and worked like she had never worked before in her life, joking, laughing, grinning, and smiling as she went.
Part of it was a keen awareness that she needed to make as much in tips on her last night as she could, to keep herself fed until term started in Seireitei.
But the other part was a keen sense of catharsis, of freedom, of closing the door on this part of her life and bringing it to a close.
“Ayame and I are off! We’re leaving!” she announced loudly.
Some of her regulars cheered, some shouted in dismay- some even cried, and she smiled sadly to herself to see that somehow, without even realising it, she had touched these people. She knew suddenly and certainly that she mattered to these people, and the thought had her eyes welling up.
Her voice wobbled. “We’re going to go and become outlaws. Sexy bandits,” she joked, and someone patted her on the back. The crowd laughed at the image, and she suddenly ached to leave them, and this place, behind.
But no party could go on forever.
She consoled herself by telling them that she’d be back soon, in her shiny new uniform, and she’d be unbearable and she’d be brilliant, and she would see them all again.
She smiled and laughed and tossed back her hair, but she knew deep down that it was time.
The evening wore on, and eventually the music stopped, the dance floor emptied, and she watched as happy businessmen and yakuza and made-up women clung to each other and stumbled out the door. They bumped into each other, and walked like strange three-legged beasts, grasping at each other as they went, but they laughed and sang all the same.
Outside, the cold, winter sun was beginning to rise over the horizon, and its eerie light played on the water.
She climbed the stairs for the last time, the muscles in her calves aching.
In their room, a scene which was already becoming the strange stuff of nostalgia played out, as it had a thousand times before.
“I can’t believe you!” Ayame complained heatedly. “It’s our last night, and you-“
“I didn’t! And even if I had-“ Sayaka grinned wolfishly, “would it really be worth all this fuss? It can’t be good for the baby.” The light danced in her eyes.
“You’re impossible!” Ayame huffed, her brows furrowed. “But I’m going to miss you anyway.” She laughed in disbelief. “What does that say about me?”
“You’ve got good taste, that’s what,” Sayaka teased.
Rangiku left them to their bantering. Yuki was beckoning, wooden comb and silver-backed hair brush in hand.
“One last time for old times’ sake?” She asked hopefully.
Rangiku sat cross-legged in front of her, her yukata in inelegant disarray about her knees, and pressed Yuki’s soft, gently lined hand to her cheek.
Yuki got to work gently untangling the rough knots laced throughout Rangiku’s hair.
“I’ll miss this,” Rangiku confessed quietly. “You’ve always been the best at this. You’re so patient, and gentle. You should give up the game and become a hairdresser.”
She had said it before. Yuki had always laughed and said nothing, but this time she paused, and Rangiku turned her head to look over her shoulder at her.
“Maybe I will,” Yuki murmured. “Maybe I could get out too.” She looked at Rangiku, and she smiled a secret smile. “Maybe Kanae and I could open up shop together. Could you imagine that?” Yuki laughed, and Rangiku felt a secret delight to see it. She tried to hide her smile, and as she moved her head, a few loose strands of hair fell in her face. She pushed them back behind her ear with her fingers.
Yuki was silent for a moment, eyeing her fingers.
“What happened to your ring, Rangiku-chan?” she asked with quiet surprise.
Rangiku’s fingers drifted to where her tin ring had once sat upon her finger. There was nothing there.
There had been nothing there for weeks.
“Oh. That,” she said absent-mindedly. “It doesn’t fit anymore.” She looked up at Yuki with honest eyes. “I outgrew it.”
Yuki’s lips pursed in thought. “Hang on a minute,” she said in determination. “I’ve got an idea.”
Sayaka, evidently bored of antagonising Ayame, flopped down on the floor next to Rangiku. “We never did get that story,” she said waggling her eyebrows suggestively.
Why not? Rangiku thought. What a sad, pathetic story. This time I’ll make it a tale worth remembering. I’ll make it worth her hearing it.
She hummed lowly, mind set to spinning out a story. She paused, for a moment, gathering her thoughts.
“Well…” she intoned with great drama. And so her story began.
“Once upon a time, in a far off land under the mountains, in a land surrounded by dark and haunted forests, a girl was walking along a road.”
“Was she sexy?” Sayaka demanded lethargically.
Rangiku eyed her disdainfully.
“The sexiest,” Rangiku said, insulted.
“Anyway,” she resumed, “this girl was wandering in the woods on a bright and sunny day picking flowers, when the weather took a peculiar turn. She had just reached an odd forest clearing when it suddenly started to rain.
But this was no ordinary rain. The rain fell but still the sun shone, water and fire mixed high in the air, and it was like one great, illuminated curtain of diamond-light. She was so struck dumb by its beauty that she just sat there in the rain, red flowers in her hands, waiting for the world to end.”
She paused dramatically.
“Air-head,” Sayaka jibed.
“Hey!” Rangiku said heatedly. “Do you want the story or not?”
Sayaka motioned her hands lazily in the air, gesturing for her to continue on.
Rangiku glowered.
“The shining curtain drew back suddenly, and there in all its glory was a great wedding procession, with lamps and fine-robed guests. A retinue so grand could only belong to a noble, she thought, and in a moment, she was proved correct.
The long, snaking line parted, and from its head descended the fine lord to whom it belonged. Only, when the girl saw him, it wasn’t a fine lord.”
Sayaka snorted, but she raised herself onto her elbows to listen more closely.
Gotcha, Rangiku thought triumphantly.
“It wasn’t obvious at first, but when I- the girl. When the girl looked closely, she could see the tails hidden beneath his embroidered coat, and the glossy coat of silver fur which covered them. The two of them, girl and boy, stood silently beneath the glassy rain for a moment. Her hair was plastered to her face, and all of a sudden, her heart was in her throat. The rain battered the leaves of the persimmon trees and the sunflowers were almost bent double under the weight of the water.
He bent down on one knee, and he said, ‘Matsumoto Rangiku,’-“
Sayaka laughed a great squawk of a laugh.
“Matsumoto Rangiku,’” Rangiku pressed on, feigning seriousness, “’you’re the hottest dish that ever existed in Soul Society and I’d ravish you right here and now, but my parents raised me to do things properly, so I guess that means we have to get married first.’”
Sayaka giggled.
“And so he gave me this silver ring-“
“Come on, Rangiku-chan,” Ayame chided primly. “You’re too old for fairy tales. And anyway, there’s no way that old thing is made of silver. Just look at it! You’d be lucky if it was made of tin.”
“Shut up, Ayame!” Sayaka ordered. “I wanted to hear about Rangiku getting down and freaky with the nine-tailed fox.”
“So anyway,“ Rangiku continued at a higher volume, ignoring Ayame, “he said-“
But Yuki had returned to cut off their squabbling before it began, a long, metal chain necklace in hand and Rangiku’s ring, fished out from beneath her pillow.
“See?” Ayame said. “Just look at it. Rangiku’s fox was a cheap-skate. You’d think that he could afford better.”
We could barely afford food, Rangiku couldn’t help but think all of a sudden. And yet he wasted the money on me.
He had never made sense. He never would.
Yuki looked at Rangiku earnestly. She proffered the ring and the chain to Rangiku in an outstretched hand.
“Your ring is precious to you and you should be able to wear it. It makes me sad to see you without it, knowing that someone out there gave it to you out of care for you. Put it on this chain, and you’ll be able to wear it again.”
Rangiku’s mouth formed a small ‘o’. She shook her head vigorously. “I can’t take something like that from you! Look at it! Ayame’s right. It’s probably worth twice as much as the ring!”
Yuki was adamant. “Rangiku, I want you to have it. Think of it as a goodbye present, from Sayaka and me. We want you to have it.”
“Huh? Oh- erm- yeah!” Sayaka stumbled, nodding her head enthusiastically, as if she hadn’t just been roped into Yuki’s justification a split-second ago. “You should take it!”
She paused, and looked at Rangiku with a rare serious expression. “If you never accept anything from anyone, you’ll end up with nothing. If you don’t ask, you’ll rarely get. Take it.”
Rangiku took the chain reluctantly.
“Put it on!” Yuki encouraged, and so she did.
The chain was too long to wear conventionally. Worn as a normal necklace, the ring sat almost near her navel. She looked at the other two in confusion.
“I think the chain is a little bit too long.”
It was pragmatic-minded Ayame who engineered a quick solution. “Wait. Loop the chain through the ring.” Seeing Rangiku struggle with what it was that she was describing, Ayane slowly manoeuvred to her feet, and did it for her. “No, no. Not like that. Like this. There we are!”
It was Sayaka’s turn to frown. She shook her head. “No, no,” she said agitates. “Not yet.” She pulled the dangling end of the chain, and quickly placed it between Rangiku’s breasts. She whooped wildly. “Now we’re talking! Look at her!”
Rangiku looked at herself in the mirror, and an irrepressible grin of her own rose to meet Sayaka’s.
On Rangiku’s right, Ayame with her chestnut hair and her heavy belly, her hand placed on her right shoulder, a rare and bright grin on her face. Behind her, Yuki, with the soft crows’ feet at the corners of her eyes and her gentle smile, one hand in Rangiku’s golden hair. On her left, Sayaka, with her sharp features and her thick brows, her arm slung around her.
She had been a small, frozen child when she’d arrived here, having walked all the way through snow-filled roads and tracks in summer sandals. Her hair had been cut ragged with a knife, and it had sat at her shoulders. She’d had no hips to speak of when she was shown to this room for the first time by Ayame, who had watched her with small, pitying glances, and given her a space in which to sleep. Her clothes had been threadbare, and so too had her soul.
Her hair was long; her eyes were bright and keen; her hips and breasts had grown full and thick. Most important of all however, she thought, turning to face these women whom she had loved, she had never been allowed to feel loneliness again, not whilst she slept in their room, not whilst she stood by their sides.
Her fingers traced the ring at her collar bone, and the long, shining chain around her neck.
“Ladies,” she announced. “I think we’ve got something here.”
She gave them all a coquettish wink in the mirror, and then turned to meet their eyes.
She was met with three soft, reflected smiles.
“Thank you,” she said, and it was as simple as that.
---
When she woke late the next morning, she looked around the room for the last time, and her eyes lingered on the hairbrush, the mirror, the door which Ayame had once dragged her into, almost giving her a concussion.
The room had a small, slotted window, barely more than a shuttered square to help ventilate the brothel during the humid heights of summer.
Rangiku peered out through it. Snow drifted across her vision, and pale walls stood like giants in the distance.
your character meta is a++ which is why I was wondering: do you have any bankai hcs for the characters who never got them in canon? because I think about this literally ALL THE TIME. (I’m thinking specifically momo, izuru, rangiku, and yumichika, who were absolutely ROBBED in that final arc+time skip. shuuhei doesn’t count because he got a novel all to himself). also please picture momo barbecuing aizen to a crisp with her flamethrower of a bankai, thank u for coming to my ted talk
So, the short answer (which I am sure is not the one you’re looking for) is… nope. Not the kind you think, anyway, but I am thinking about it today, Anon, just for you.
I think about character stuff constantly, and I think about zanpakutou, but I am not a powers person. I hate making up powers. I made up an OC with a poetry zanpakutou. I am bad at this.
Most bankai aren’t even coherent. They’re either (a) shikai but more, (b) a weird agglomerate of high concept nonsense, or (c) a giant, flying skeletal snake that can shoot a cero, aka, the only valid bankai.
The main bankai headcanon I have is this actually: I don’t think everyone should have bankai. I think very few characters should have bankai.
This is from the scene where Byakuya reads the flavor text on bankai out of the Shinigami Players Handbook to Ichigo :
I love this crap. This is the sort of world-building that resonates in my bones.
That being said, I don’t think having bankai makes you a better person. I think getting bankai is a sign of being single-mindedly at one with the driving force of your zanpakutou. Here are the kinds of messed-up people who achieve bankai:
Complete drama queens (Byakuya, Rose, Shinji, Aizen, Urahara, Kyouraku, Kurotsuchi)
People who are off-the-chain ride-or-die for their friends and/or principles; would throw their life away for not even one corn chip (Ichigo, Rukia, Renji, Hitsugaya, Ukitake)
Idiots with one brain cell who can’t hold two conflicting thoughts in their head at once anyway (Ikkaku, Isshin, Zaraki, possibly Renji again)
Lots of us take meandering paths in life. We don’t like the career paths we’ve chosen for ourselves. We get divorced. We try things and we don’t like them. That doesn’t mean we can’t do meaningful things or fall in love or have an interesting and fulfilling life. You can be a good and interesting character without getting bankai. I want more stories about the kind of people who never get bankai, actually.
Out of the characters you’ve listed, the one I actually would like to see get bankai is Momo. I think Momo has gone her entire life trying to be someone that other people wanted her to be, and I want to see her come out of the Aizen debacle determined to become the person she wants to be. Momo is every friend I have who has managed to escape the shitty partner who made them small and I want so many good things for her.
First and foremost, Tobiume appears to be a baby seven-branch sword, and I read once that Hinamori means something like “young tree”, so obviously, I want her to keep growing more prongs the stronger she gets, and I want it to reshape into a full 7-point rack when she goes to bankai. The guiding principles I would use in designing a bankai for Momo are (1) it needs to be distinct from Yamamoto’s and Isshin’s, and (2) it needs to be such that she can have epic throwdowns with Bankai Rukia, look fam, I know what I’m about. The answer is obvious: L A V A. Earth fissures, magma spray, encasing people in rock, and most importantly, I want Momo to selectively turn parts of her body into molten earth, this bitch is unstabbable, what are you gonna do now? I want her and Shinji to have a combo attack where she turns the ground into the set of Dante’s Inferno and then Shinji flips that shit upside-down. It will be called “The Ceiling is Lava” and Renji, Izuru and Shuuhei will be re-enacting this classic Supa Hot Fire reaction gif from the sidelines.
I don’t think Rangiku can ever get bankai because she’s missing part of her soul. I’m sorry. It sucks, but it just seems like a huge no-go to me. But, if I were a Gin Ran person, particularly the sort of Gin Ran person who likes to keep it as a Tragedy That Can Never Be, and if I were into writing 200k fanfics, I would definitely write an AU where he manages to leave her a piece of his soul that she can use to fix her own, except that it’s still like Gin’s soul, so it’s legit awful, and there would be, like, a whole bunch of inner world vision quest stuff and she would have to face the parts of herself that she doesn’t like and realize that she is strong enough to handle his power and take control over the ghost of him and it would be wild. In this case, her bankai would basically be recreating his bankai with her own-- forming the ashes of Haineko into bullets that can move at supersonic speed and explode into ash inside you. It would be super terrifying, she would be the second most powerful person in Bleach (after Orihime).
I do not want Izuru to get bankai. Sorry, I just don’t. The only way he could get bankai is to lean into the crushing despair of his soulvoid and to admit that he is defined by his depression. If I keep going, this is gonna get real personal, real quick, so I’ll keep it at this: there are ways in which mental illness can make you extremely successful professionally at the cost of your personhood and I am not going in that room right now. No bankai for Kira.
I don’t think Yumichika is destined for bankai either. He negs his zanpakutou. Ruri'iro Kujaku is never gonna give it up for him. Like Rangiku, he’s going to need a Narrative that would involve him taking agency over his life, possibly leaving Squad 11. Maybe Ikkaku dies? I don’t know, but it would have to be extreme, and… that’s not a journey I want for Yumichika. I like him the way he is, a weird, bloodthirsty chorus kid hanging around with the wrestling team and helping them get through Algebra I. That being said, Yumichika absolutely falls into the “drama queen” category, and I think we could never know what his bankai is, because if he used it on you, you would lose your mind instantly and never be able to describe it. His shikai is already high enough concept to be a bankai. He would make Rose’s and Kyouraku’s bankais look like community theater productions of Into the Woods. Glittering peacocks would come down from the sky. Elton John and Beyonce would be involved. It would be Cats (2019) only you would be inside it.
Also, I love Shuuhei, but everything I have heard about Can’t Fear Your Own World just makes me angry (except the Shino parts, give me all the Madarame family feels please and thank you), so I am taking Matsumoto road and denying that he has one, no matter how much evidence I am given to the contrary.
“They say that lovers doomed never to see each other again still see the higanbana growing along their path, even to this day.”
A girl collapses on a dusty road one day. A boy takes her home.
The girl lives.
—
(The boy doesn’t.)
Stars still shone in her eyes as she climbed the stairs.
It had been one of those nights - one of those brilliant, shining nights - where the sake had flowed and the music had run in her blood like a drug - where the night had seemed to last only for the intervening moment between closing and opening her eyes.
She had been freed from her duties behind the bar an hour early and told to enjoy herself, and so she had dove into the crowd to the cheers and whoops of her regular customers, who beckoned her with open arms into the throng.
She had passed the hour twirling on the dance floor, passing from one pair of arms into the next until the flush was high on her cheeks and she was caught up in giddy, breathless excitement.
She had swayed and she had rocked and she had raised her arms into the air wildly and arched back her head. She had bared the delicate column of her neck and her golden hair had cascaded down her back like a waterfall and her golden lashes had fluttered shut as she smiled a heady smile, her white teeth flashing.
Men’s eyes had raked over her, and she had eyed them back with careless abandon from under heavy-lidded eyes, and they had been hypnotised by the movement of her hips and the secret curl of her mouth.
They were hers, those men. She had not had to pay for a drink that entire hour, and she had not spoken as much as a word, preferring to dance and pull them closer and into her arms, only to drop them as she found someone new.
That was all her. They wanted her. They all wanted her.
Her fingers tried to find the tin ring on her finger as she danced, but her fingers found only skin. She had taken it off weeks before. It was too small for her fingers, these days.
Her head was thick and heavy with the alcohol, and she had to watch her step as she stumbled up the stairs. She would likely pay for her fun in the morning, but morning was morning, and now was now.
It had been so bright, she thought feverishly, and so beautiful. Her thoughts were hazy, but they were filled with light, and she felt so close, so attached, to her new friends that she felt she could cry, cry happily and helplessly and hard.
She sang a mumbled song under her breath and she shimmied as she climbed. She did not know the words but it didn’t matter one bit. Her back was sore, her feet were sore, and her legs were sore, but she found that she could grin through the pain.
What a night it had been. She deserved some rest after a night like that.
She had reached the landing where her room was when she heard a strained shout echo from down the corridor.
“You stupid girl!”
Rangiku looked around thick-headedly, but the shout didn’t seem to be directed at her.
That was strange - as far as she knew, she was the resident stupid girl, though it was usually only Sayaka or Ayame who would venture to call her that.
It didn’t matter in any case. She was drunk and she wanted her bed. She grabbed the wall for moral support as she stumbled along the corridor and pulled the door to her room.
She blinked blearily.
Yuki, white-faced and livid, had rounded on Ayame, who shrank back from her, the whites of her eyes visible with fear. Neither noticed Rangiku squinting in the bright light and attempting to sidle along the wall.
Sayaka was watching, and her expression was dark.
“You fool,” Yuki hissed. “How long?” she gritted out.
Ayame’s eyes were glassy with fear.
Yuki took her by the shoulders and shook her violently. “How far along?” Her eyes were mad and intent.
“Yuki-“ Sayaka tried to break-in - but Yuki would not be dissuaded.
Uncomprehending and afraid, Rangiku watched on. Her hands balled up in her yukata and she looked wildly between the three.
“Yuki? What’s the matter?” she tried to ask, but when she spoke, it came out as a confused half-mumble.
Ayame trembled pathetically where she stood; her brown eyes were bright with unshed tears, and she looked up into Yuki’s face in mute terror.
Rangiku was reminded suddenly of something she had known in the back of her mind the entire time she had known Ayame, but never before felt as keenly- that Ayame was young, almost as young as Rangiku herself.
At that moment, she certainly looked it. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her middle, and her mouth was parted. She looked like the child she was.
When she spoke, her voice broke in her throat.
“Five months,” she whispered, as if whispering could somehow make it any less true.
Something in Yuki deflated then, and Rangiku watched on, still drunk and terribly, terribly lost. She did not know what was happening, only that she hated it, that seeing these two women fight made her feel like she was going to start crying helplessly herself.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Yuki asked, her voice raw. “I could have helped. I have savings.” Yuki looked at her beseechingly. “You didn’t have to suffer alone. Ayame…”
The tears that had been pooling in Ayame’s eyes began to fall then, trailing glistening tracks down her cheeks, but still she said nothing.
Rangiku turned to look at Sayaka, begging her with her eyes to intervene, but Sayaka was as helpless as she was.
Unbidden, something that Ayame had said to her drifted into her mind.
“When I'm gone, the first thing she'll do is coerce you into whoring yourself out for her in my place. I'm on your side, and I will be even when no one else is- you have to listen to me.” Ayame had begged her. She hadn’t understood then, and she didn’t understand now. It made no sense. Why would Ayame leave when she wanted to save enough money to start life on her own?
“Tell me you at least have a plan, Ayame. Tell me that you’re not this stupid,” Yuki begged, looking into her eyes.
Ayame’s lip began to tremble, and she shook her head slowly. She couldn’t meet Yuki’s eyes, too overcome with shame.
Yuki turned and her expression was dazed. “She’s going to find out,” she murmured. “She always finds out. You know that, right? She won’t let you stay. She never does.”
The words were familiar, somehow. Rangiku had heard them before.
It was then that everything suddenly became clear.
The afternoons where the first thing Ayame would do upon waking was throw up.
The way she would always try to pass it off as Rangiku’s cooking, but would always eat anyway, and the way that no one else but Ayame seemed to get ill anymore.
Her anxiety around Chiyo, who had the power to throw her out into the street.
The fact that she had been walking around like she had a death sentence.
The four of them had usually started to bleed within days of each other, almost always without fail. It had almost been something of a joke between them. Yuki had laughed gently about it, and said “Women’s bodies know each other in ways that go beyond what we can see. Think how terrified men everywhere would be if they knew we conspired together.”
Now Rangiku thought back on it, she could not remember Ayame complaining of cramps for months.
She turned to look at her, stumbling as she did so.
Ayame had always been willow-thin and slender, her stomach flat and taut, her limbs long and almost gangly. But if you looked closely, looked beneath the intricately wrapped obi, so meticulously placed and tied in such a way as to create a natural bulge at her belly...
Rangiku’s mouth dropped open in sudden horror. She looked around, and saw everyone’s expressions in a new light - Yuki, bleary eyed and haunted. Sayaka hovering uncertainly, her dark brow tight with worry. Ayame, weeping openly now into her hands.
Rangiku’s eyes were wide.
She knew her role. She was the clown, the child. It was her job to smile brightly and make them all smile. It was her job to make them laugh. It was her job to keep them safe, not just from dangers that came into their beds, but the dangers in their hearts too.
But they were beyond smiling, and so was she. All she could do was bite at her lip till it was red-raw.
Sayaka shook her head in pent-up agitation
“I’m going for a walk,” she snapped suddenly, stalking towards the door.
Yui’s eyes narrowed. “Be careful,” she said softly. “Sayaka?” Sayaka turned viciously, her eyes wild. “Don’t be temp-“
Sayaka didn’t let her finish. “Don’t,” she snarled. “Don’t you dare tell me what to do.”
Rangiku couldn’t help but notice that she wouldn’t meet Yuki’s eyes. The doors banged in their frame as she left.
Yuki’s head tipped back, and she heaved a heavy sigh. She turned to Rangiku for the first time since she had made her way drunkenly up the stairs, and Rangiku flushed self-consciously to suddenly be the subject of attention with Ayame still sobbing plainly in front of them.
But there was something empty in Yuki’s glance, something absent and lost.
“We should all sleep,” Yuki said quietly. “We’re in for a hard few days.”
She spoke with a kind of flat inevitability, and the words echoed out of her as if coming from a place a hundred miles distant.
Rangiku was struck suddenly by the notion that Yuki was not really present, that though her body was there, Yuki herself was lost somewhere else, lost in the same place, lost in the same situation, and lost with the same powerlessness, but with a different crying girl, from a different time.
Alone, Rangiku thought miserably. Sayaka is gone. Yuki is gone. Ayame is gone.
It’s just me. I’m the only one here.
Yuki’s eyes were dull as she lowered herself onto her sleeping mat, and when she curled up, she buried her face in her hands, and turned to face the wall. Her fingers played with a faded length of braided string strung about her wrist.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ayame crawl blindly into her bed, red-faced, her shoulders still shaking.
Rangiku stood on her own quietly, in the middle of that small, but crowded room, and she opened her mouth, to give voice to the small and lonely thing crying out inside her.
Her eyes travelled beseechingly from one side of the room to the other, but all she saw of her room-mates, of the women who had grown to become her best friends, the women she loved, were their backs.
Please, she wanted to say selfishly, say something. Tell me everything is going to be alright.
But nothing was going to be alright. Not even she was innocent enough to think that.
For long moments, there was nothing but silence.
Heart-heavy and eyes resigned, she trod quietly across the tatami and she blew each candle out with a small puff of air.
She lay on her back and stared into the darkness. Her limbs were like lead. Her mouth felt thick with cotton wool and the floor see-sawed slightly beneath her.
Outside, snow dusted the ground like rice flour. Outside, the air was chill and crisp with the first touch of winter.
Inside, it roasted, and coupled with the alcohol, it made her head throb. Inside, the stale, second-hand heat of bodies on the dancefloor had risen through the building to keep them all warm. But inside and out, the night was still and blank.
In the darkness, she could see nothing, and when she blinked, there was no difference between the sight of the back of her own eyelids and the world around her. In the absence of light, she felt herself grow conscious of herself, of the weight of her body against the ground, of the taut and aching muscles in the arch of her feet and the back of her calves, born of a long night spent tending the bar.
Her head ached and her mouth felt like something had died in it, tomorrow’s hangover hanging perilously over her.
She felt like the only wretched creature left alive, abandoned in the darkness.
But that was not quite right.
But there was sound in the darkness, and it kept her away from the aching gravity of her heart and grounded her in the waking world; gentle, tissue-thin sobs sharpened by the darkness made their way into her ears as she stared out.
Because she knew it was there, her ears were filled with the sounds of airy crying and it was impossible to ignore. The noises ripped at her heart and slowly, her shoulders began to shake. Her own lip trembled in sympathy, and her eyes flooded with tears. Her heart ached, and she could not bear it.
She was drunk. She was so drunk. She was four-sheets-to-the-wind plastered.
But as clumsy and wobbling as a new-born animal, she rose to her feet and determined, she stumbled her way through the darkness to where Ayame lay. She stumbled, and she almost fell, but her heart was full.
Matsumoto Rangiku was many things.
She was a ditz. She was an airhead. She was melodramatic. She was vain and she loved the sight of her own face in the mirror, and would practice coy pouts and make kissing faces at herself.
She liked the thought of kissing boys, the hunger in their eyes, and she would throw a tantrum if they didn’t give her the attention she felt she deserved sometimes.
She was lonely and she clung to people fiercely and sometimes she felt like she might be the saddest person in the world. She was greedy and she was lazy and she liked to scam free drinks from men, just because she liked the honey-sweet taste of power and the feeling that someone, somewhere, was paying attention to her.
But she would never let someone cry alone.
She slid under Ayame’s blanket. She still had her work clothes on, and she was not so drunk that she didn’t take a moment to think Oh, Ayame will hate that. She moved blindly, working from the suggestions of heat and noise in the pitch black to find the contours of her friend’s body. She bumped gently against her, like a moth falling against a dim light.
When she did, when she had eventually found her in the darkness, she wound her arms about her tightly and pressed her lips clumsily against her chestnut hair.
Something in them both broke then; the tears that Ayame had been just barely suppressing fell thick and free, and Rangiku felt her grab at her hand as she trembled in her arms.
It was as if Ayame’s feelings became her feelings too; she felt her heart tighten in her chest, and before she knew it, she was crying too, crying into her hair and into her neck, and she squeezed Ayame’s hand with a desperate ferocity, as if to say “I’m here, I’m here. I’ve got you and I love you.”
Her thoughts travelled in a figure of eight, drunken and incoherent and repetitive even in her own head, and each cycle brought with it a fresh wave of misery. She could not help but think of Ayame- Ayame, alone and helpless on the streets with a squalling baby in her arms, Ayame cold and bruised and empty like Kanae, Ayame defenceless, Ayame hurt- and the thought made her howl and cling all the tighter. Eventually, she could not tell who the tears on her face belonged to- whether they were hers, or whether they were Ayame’s.
It didn’t matter. They stung all the same.
They lay like that a long time, young and breaking apart, both incapable of speech and neither willing to let go, still awake even after Sayaka returned several hours later high as a kite. Sayaka paused to see them, and crawled under the blanket from the other side, her limbs cold and chilled and her teeth chattering. She wrapped her arms about Ayame from the other side, and the three of them lay together, their hair mingling.
The sun rose high in the sky, and Rangiku’s head felt like it would split open with the double pain of a night of tears and a vicious hangover, and she realised dully that the night signalled the end of something, that some gentle and innocent thing inside her had withered away for good with the fading stars.
She had thought the brothel a home, and the girls her family, and even when warned, she had gone on believing it to be something pure and good and beautiful.
She had been a child.
She should have known better. How could this be home when she could be thrown out so easily, like she mattered as much as trash in the street? How could this be a family when they would cast out one of their own into the cruelty of the world and leave her to fend for herself? How could she live with a fear like that hanging over her?
Time after time, she had built up castles on the sand and cried like a child to see them washed away by the sea.
Tucked into the crook of her neck, Ayame was breathing softly.
Outside, snow was drifting softly across the sky, as it had on that night so long ago, the night when she had been abandoned and forced to start over again. Not far off, the river was moving gently under the saffron-coloured bridge, and the snow covered that too.
There was no bird-song. All was quiet.
Rangiku tucked a wayward strand of hair behind Ayame’s ear, and her expression was firm.
It had been a long time coming, but she had made up her mind at last.
She was no longer a child. She was done with building sand-castles.
Oh well, the Devil makes us sin -
But we like it when we’re spinning in his grip.
-
Love is like a sin, my love -
For the ones who feel it the most.
Look at her, with her smile like a flame -
She will love you like a fly
Will never love you
Again.
When she returns to the Falcon later that night, she has to bandage her bloody knuckles. She takes lengths of old scraps of fabric, ever practical, and has to use her teeth to keep them tight. It is a task best suited for two, but what task isn’t?
She knots the bandages tight enough to make her fingers ache (-his hand would be large in hers. If they were to intertwine their fingers, maybe hers would ache slightly because-) and within minutes, there are red spots bleeding through.
In the aftermath, Rey travels.
read on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21976024
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