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bleachnessTitle: Ash Chrysanthemum
Author: nehalenia
Pairing: Gin/Rangiku
Rating: PG-13 (maybe)
Warning: dystopic scenario; mention of character death
Summary: Rangiku has a visitor to her cell in Hueco Mundo
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Kubo Tite. This is for entertainment purposes only.
Author's notes: *looks at user name, looks at subject line, looks at user name again* Yeah, believe me, I'm just as shocked as you. I have no idea where this even came from. I was sitting there writing Bleach slash and this just popped out. Apparently, I had to write it before it would let me get back to the smexing. *goes back to writing pron*
“I wanted to bring you here with me.”
Rangiku stares at the fox-faced, silver haired man leaning in the doorway of her meticulously appointed cell. She cannot think of him as Gin. That name is too full of memories, and none of them are painful enough to make her hate him like he deserves.
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because you pulled away.” It is only because she is watching him – because of how she learned, long ago, to watch him – that she sees the way his smile etches a little deeper into his mouth, the way the corners of his eyes pinch tighter. “Don’t you remember? You had my wrist in your hand, and Haineko against my throat, but you jumped back. I told you – you could have held on a little longer.”
She swallows before she answers. “You said you were sorry.”
“I was sorry you let go.”
“I don’t believe you.” His face doesn’t change at all, and that tells her she is right. She wishes that being right didn’t hurt so much – like her heart is damp silk being wrung dry.
“Ah, you’re right,” he says brightly, straightening up and tucking his hands in his sleeves. “That wasn’t a very good story, was it? There should be a better one.” He pauses to consider, then ducks his head a little; a silver fox executing a small play bow, inviting another to a game. “You remember poor Captain Ukitake, yes?”
The pang in her chest is not so great as she thought it might be, but her jaw still clenches. There are names that would have cut deeper, and she’s oddly grateful he doesn’t say them.
“Strange man,” he considers, tilting his head so that his pale hair falls over one crimped eye. “Every autumn he would put out chrysanthemums – the yellow and copper ones with hundreds of petals, maybe a thousand – even though he knew they wouldn’t survive the winter. One year, just when the flowers had bloomed, a storm blew in – no snow, but so cold it hurt to breathe, and with a dry and withering wind. Poor chrysanthemums – they froze on their stems. For a day or so, they looked as if nothing had happened, but when the sun came out, their petals shattered and fell. Do you remember that? How they blew across the courtyards and the walkways, skittering like small, dead leaves, all the colour sucked out of them by the wind? How they crunched beneath our feet for days?” He pauses in his story to sigh a little. “It felt like walking on tiny bones. It almost made me sad.”
Rangiku feels colder now, even though she is sure the temperature of the air has not changed. “Why do you tell me this?”
For a moment he doesn’t answer her. He looks out the one tall window in her cell at the desolate sands beyond, and the moon curled like a white shell in the blackness.
“In Soul Society, if I had called Captain Ukitake a cruel man, do you think anyone would have believed me? No? And yet,” he shrugs, “he took something beautiful – something he said he loved – and put it where it could not survive. How strange,” he muses, “to find that I, Ichimaru Gin, could not be as selfish as that man.”
She feels like she wants to laugh, but she thinks that if she lets herself, she may never stop. “You’re saying—you were too kind to bring me here? To take me with you?”
When he turns from the window and looks at her, there is a brief flash of red. She could count on one hand the number of times she has seen his eyes. Now it will take two.
“This is no place for living things.”
“And yet, here I am.”
“Yes,” he agrees with another small sigh, another dip of his head. “Here you are.”
Her heart tightens when he finally steps into her cell because he walks like he always has, as if his hips hold a clever secret that he might reveal if she is very good. He smiles as if he has a ripe persimmon in one sleeve, and scarlet silk cords in the other, and perhaps she will receive one of these gifts, but only if she chooses the other. When he stands before her, she thinks it is not so strange to see him in white; that if she squints, she can almost imagine that his pale kimono is a Captain’s haori, that they are back in Seireitei, and that he has come to her rooms – uninvited, as always – to drink saki. She stares directly in front of her, refusing to look into his face, into the eyes that she fears will be open and looking back, until he says “Forgive me.”
There is an alien note in his voice. It is something she has never heard before, and if she didn’t know it was impossible, she could imagine it was regret. He stands there a moment longer, and just as her resolve wavers and she starts to lift her eyes, he sinks to his knees before her and lays his head upon her lap.
“Forgive me,” he says again, his words soft against her thighs, “for being happy you are here.”
She doesn’t know how long it is before she moves. She sits, straight-backed as her chair, until she realizes that her fingers are clenched in her kimono, that she is about to start trembling and that when she does, he will feel it. When she opens her hands, it’s as if water lifts them, as if the room is filling with an invisible flood, and her hands, like dead wood seeking a shore, drift naturally to his head. His hair is just as cool as she remembers, and just as fine – the gossamer of spider silk that draws her fingers like moths.
“I don’t like sad songs,” he tells her. His voice, muffled by the fabric of her robe, sounds strangely childlike. “Sing me one anyway.”
But she doesn’t sing. She doesn’t seem to have a voice any longer. She only holds his head upon her lap and dips her fingers into the moonlight of his hair again and again. With each caress, it feels like another petal of her soul detaches and flutters to the floor, bleaching in the hollow air, turning to dust, to sand, to ashes. To tiny bones.
~~
Author: nehalenia
Pairing: Gin/Rangiku
Rating: PG-13 (maybe)
Warning: dystopic scenario; mention of character death
Summary: Rangiku has a visitor to her cell in Hueco Mundo
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Kubo Tite. This is for entertainment purposes only.
Author's notes: *looks at user name, looks at subject line, looks at user name again* Yeah, believe me, I'm just as shocked as you. I have no idea where this even came from. I was sitting there writing Bleach slash and this just popped out. Apparently, I had to write it before it would let me get back to the smexing. *goes back to writing pron*
“I wanted to bring you here with me.”
Rangiku stares at the fox-faced, silver haired man leaning in the doorway of her meticulously appointed cell. She cannot think of him as Gin. That name is too full of memories, and none of them are painful enough to make her hate him like he deserves.
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because you pulled away.” It is only because she is watching him – because of how she learned, long ago, to watch him – that she sees the way his smile etches a little deeper into his mouth, the way the corners of his eyes pinch tighter. “Don’t you remember? You had my wrist in your hand, and Haineko against my throat, but you jumped back. I told you – you could have held on a little longer.”
She swallows before she answers. “You said you were sorry.”
“I was sorry you let go.”
“I don’t believe you.” His face doesn’t change at all, and that tells her she is right. She wishes that being right didn’t hurt so much – like her heart is damp silk being wrung dry.
“Ah, you’re right,” he says brightly, straightening up and tucking his hands in his sleeves. “That wasn’t a very good story, was it? There should be a better one.” He pauses to consider, then ducks his head a little; a silver fox executing a small play bow, inviting another to a game. “You remember poor Captain Ukitake, yes?”
The pang in her chest is not so great as she thought it might be, but her jaw still clenches. There are names that would have cut deeper, and she’s oddly grateful he doesn’t say them.
“Strange man,” he considers, tilting his head so that his pale hair falls over one crimped eye. “Every autumn he would put out chrysanthemums – the yellow and copper ones with hundreds of petals, maybe a thousand – even though he knew they wouldn’t survive the winter. One year, just when the flowers had bloomed, a storm blew in – no snow, but so cold it hurt to breathe, and with a dry and withering wind. Poor chrysanthemums – they froze on their stems. For a day or so, they looked as if nothing had happened, but when the sun came out, their petals shattered and fell. Do you remember that? How they blew across the courtyards and the walkways, skittering like small, dead leaves, all the colour sucked out of them by the wind? How they crunched beneath our feet for days?” He pauses in his story to sigh a little. “It felt like walking on tiny bones. It almost made me sad.”
Rangiku feels colder now, even though she is sure the temperature of the air has not changed. “Why do you tell me this?”
For a moment he doesn’t answer her. He looks out the one tall window in her cell at the desolate sands beyond, and the moon curled like a white shell in the blackness.
“In Soul Society, if I had called Captain Ukitake a cruel man, do you think anyone would have believed me? No? And yet,” he shrugs, “he took something beautiful – something he said he loved – and put it where it could not survive. How strange,” he muses, “to find that I, Ichimaru Gin, could not be as selfish as that man.”
She feels like she wants to laugh, but she thinks that if she lets herself, she may never stop. “You’re saying—you were too kind to bring me here? To take me with you?”
When he turns from the window and looks at her, there is a brief flash of red. She could count on one hand the number of times she has seen his eyes. Now it will take two.
“This is no place for living things.”
“And yet, here I am.”
“Yes,” he agrees with another small sigh, another dip of his head. “Here you are.”
Her heart tightens when he finally steps into her cell because he walks like he always has, as if his hips hold a clever secret that he might reveal if she is very good. He smiles as if he has a ripe persimmon in one sleeve, and scarlet silk cords in the other, and perhaps she will receive one of these gifts, but only if she chooses the other. When he stands before her, she thinks it is not so strange to see him in white; that if she squints, she can almost imagine that his pale kimono is a Captain’s haori, that they are back in Seireitei, and that he has come to her rooms – uninvited, as always – to drink saki. She stares directly in front of her, refusing to look into his face, into the eyes that she fears will be open and looking back, until he says “Forgive me.”
There is an alien note in his voice. It is something she has never heard before, and if she didn’t know it was impossible, she could imagine it was regret. He stands there a moment longer, and just as her resolve wavers and she starts to lift her eyes, he sinks to his knees before her and lays his head upon her lap.
“Forgive me,” he says again, his words soft against her thighs, “for being happy you are here.”
She doesn’t know how long it is before she moves. She sits, straight-backed as her chair, until she realizes that her fingers are clenched in her kimono, that she is about to start trembling and that when she does, he will feel it. When she opens her hands, it’s as if water lifts them, as if the room is filling with an invisible flood, and her hands, like dead wood seeking a shore, drift naturally to his head. His hair is just as cool as she remembers, and just as fine – the gossamer of spider silk that draws her fingers like moths.
“I don’t like sad songs,” he tells her. His voice, muffled by the fabric of her robe, sounds strangely childlike. “Sing me one anyway.”
But she doesn’t sing. She doesn’t seem to have a voice any longer. She only holds his head upon her lap and dips her fingers into the moonlight of his hair again and again. With each caress, it feels like another petal of her soul detaches and flutters to the floor, bleaching in the hollow air, turning to dust, to sand, to ashes. To tiny bones.
~~
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 11:01 am (UTC)And I absolutely loved this. Poignant. Bitter. Filled with so much love. I seriously don't care where they end up, as long as they are together. I still so badly wish Gin would betray Aizen. Or he is a spy for Soul Society or whatsoever.
Thanks for writing this. It was beautiful.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 11:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 11:52 am (UTC)Thank you so very much for reminding me just how much I love this pairing <3
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 01:02 pm (UTC)thank you for sharing that.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 03:02 pm (UTC)*RUNS AROUND FLAILING*
I love you. You poet you. I love Gin's story. I love this pair and their tragic romance.
Thank you for this. YOU WROTE HET, OMG OMG. I remember your saying that you might tackle this couple but I thought you'd forgotten. I was just visiting one of those annoying forums the other day where peeps were having an argument over "most romantic moment" in Bleach and someone mentioned Gin's saying "I would've liked to have been held a little longer" to Rangiku.
Oh yes. Oh yes.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 06:22 pm (UTC)They are so good/bad/beautiful/tragic together.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 09:58 pm (UTC)I'm not going to try and spoil it by dissecting it into the most favouritest bits. That would be akin to the chrysanthemums.
xx
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 10:09 pm (UTC)Besides my very bizarre, and inexplicable HitsugayaxTatsuki pairing (stupid plot bunnies on crack), GinxRan is definitely the het pairing I love - there's something there between them that is not hinted at anywhere else in the Bleach Universe.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 01:54 am (UTC)Some beautiful imagery too--I particularly like this one: That's perfect.
Great work!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-25 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 05:29 am (UTC)I enjoy reading about this 'what if?' for this pairing and your take on it was delightful.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-25 06:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 06:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-25 06:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-09 08:54 pm (UTC)I personally think Matsumoto is insane for having feeling for someone who is basically a serial killer in my mind. But even in canon I have no doubts that she still does.
I believe Gin, as bad as he is, holds Rangiku in his heart in the only way he knows how.
I see both of those suppositions here in this wonderful story and it tickles me no end. I was especially moved by Rangiku's capitulation in the end. As if her love would simply not allow her to let go even on pain of death.
kudos! :D
no subject
Date: 2009-01-25 07:02 am (UTC)Ah, doomed love. I like it.
Thanks so much for the comment!