A/N: Matsumoto/Gin. Chronologically before chapter 3.
Probably, if she hadn't been so restless...
She tried to relax, meditate, whatever necessary to distract herself from the silent world around her. Not even human souls roamed the streets of Karakura these days. Most probably they too sensed the tingling of the atmosphere, laden with spirit power and unrest. A quiet, unsettling calmness in the air, that belied the intensity of the storm to be released shortly.
The quiet grated on her nerves. She knew from today on, from the time when her shift was over, it was exactly one week until the battle against Aizen. Since both parties hat units sensing approaching spirit power of any kind extremely well, it seemed pointless to plan a surprise attack. Alas the fixed date. Like in old times.
She hadn't been sleeping well lately. Small wonder, when 'World's End' wasn't a concept somewhere in the future any more, but steadily, quickly approaching day by day. She felt that their efforts at protecting Soul Society and the Human World would have needed much more time preparing. But as for the moment, they were as well equipped as they could be. Nothing to do anymore, but to wait. No last minute defences to fix, no new strategies, nothing. What could be done had been done.
She had started dreaming of Gin again. Romantic dreams, where all of this had never happened, sometimes, but most of the time, it was nightmares she dreamed, from the point where he had betrayed Soul Society onwards, and she had yet to see a happy ending.
Even awake, she had started thinking what she would do when she encountered him on the battle field finally. She knew they would meet. They had to. She would probably try to kill him. She had spent the last years strengthening her will to do so. But even now, just thinking about it left her unsure if she could really do it. Go at him with all her might.
For hours she sat on the highest building in Karakura, uselessly watching the night around her, and circling thoughts of insecurity and death in her mind. The wearier she became, the faster her thoughts circled in her head, the edgier she got. Even after her shift she wouldn't be able to fall asleep, she knew that.
So when the change of watch came, she didn't immediately return to Soul Society, but started to walk around nightly Karakura, she passed a playground she liked, thought about sitting there under the trees, but her unrest fuelled her steps and she passed it by without stopping.
She strolled beside the small river of the town. The water glittered, illuminated by a nearly full moon. Somewhere ahead of her was a small group of trees and bushes, a dark spot shaded beneath them. She stopped in the middle of a wide open space and listened to the water gurgling softly. She closed her eyes and let the moonlight bathe her face in its silvery glow. Some of her nervousness faded. Although, she reminded herself, she stood in open view from any side for an enemy to attack. How careless. But there hadn't been a living being out the whole day. Why should it now? The only thing to feel was the strong current of spirit particles connecting Hollow Land and Soul Society through the Human World.
The moonlight felt like balm on her skin. Cool, silvery presence, distant and close at the same time; calming, but tempting. In a way, it was like Gin. So close you feel you can touch it if you dare, but so far away, you can't even reach it in your dreams.
Exhaustion and jumpiness can play tricks on your senses. Imagination does the rest. In the moonlight she thought she felt a whiff of his reiatsu prickling against hers. It was like the very slight breeze you didn't feel but if you looked close enough, saw it in the minute moving of the grass blades in front of you. When you are never sure if it isn't the grass making up things. She opened her eyes, and gazed at the moon, not quite smiling and not yet crying. Like when she thought of Gin.
She tore her gaze away from it and wandered on.
Suddenly she gasped in shock. One of the thin, imperceptible threads of awareness she had always spread around her in case there was something lurking in the shadows caught on a soul in the group of trees twenty flash steps ahead. Instant recognition made her recoil. She hadn't expected anyone out here, and especially not a soul this strong. He kept his spirit power under tight control, but there was no way she could have not recognised him. Her breath hitched and she felt blood drain out of her face. Her body stood rooted to the ground, frozen for a millisecond as an onslaught of emotions hit her. She knew a moment of panic. Fury and resentment at his choices mingled with long accrued longing suddenly breaking out. Then there was the fear of him and his power, and the fear of the awareness that she would have to make choices in an instant – choices she wasn't prepared to make.
"Gin..." the breathless gasp escaped her throat as almost a choke.
She knew he was coming. She didn't know what to do.
"And here was me, wanting to surprise ya." His carelessly joyful voice and his trademark grin that smirked down at her.
With an acrid hiss the sheath released her Soul Slayer. She fixed him with a hard stare over the tip of her sword. Suppressing the urge to calm down and to reach out to him. He was an enemy. "Don't come near." A warning, giving her time to overpower anxiety with anger, to feed fear to fury. Just a slight change of balance that her defensive stance became ready, aggressive.
He stepped closer, his arms spread out with open hands, as if to hug her. Her brain didn't recognize it before her body acted. Instead of hugging her, his throat faced the sharp side of her sword. She embraced him from behind, the blade kissing his throat.
"What do you want here?" She snarled. Her cheek was close to his cheek, tickling, their skins almost touching, but not quite.
"Why, to see ya again, o' course."
Her breasts were pressing against his back; she could almost feel his pain where the sword cut deeper. Softly, a trickle of blood started to run down his throat.
"Ah, never has your voice been so cold to me..." The sword bit harder. He lowly groaned as the pain intensified. The cut was not yet threatening, but meant to hurt. Still he grinned, but there was tension around his eyes.
How much she had longed to see him again... She could feel the movement of his torso as he breathed, pressed against him. Smelled his familiar smell, the fine silvery hair tickling her cheek. Her mouth so close to his, she sensed her breath quickening. For how long had she dreamed of embracing him, his body against hers so close? Finally it had come true – with a sword at his throat.
"What do you want here, traitor?" her voice had become softer, but the pain of his treason made it sharp and clear, like a polished sword ringing through the night air. "What does Aizen want of us?"
He turned his head a little, his first stirring since she had him, and the movement sent shivers over her skin. Her lips almost touched his cheek.
"Aizen doesn't know I'm here, Rangiku." His eyes, the one she could see at least, opened a slit and his grin grew wider.
A very, very quick movement, she pushed him forward into a spin, he grabbed for his sword, but got it only halfway out of its sheath, before he had a deep slash down his front, only slightly deflected at the end by his sword. Blood gushed out of the wound in a violent stream. He coughed and stumbled back, freeing his sword completely.
"Liar," she growled. She hated the desperate tone in her voice. She felt the beginning of a tremble, fought to keep it under control. "Tell me the truth," she commanded, but with her voice shaking, it sounded almost like a plea. She needed to believe him.
He coughed, just short of spitting blood. He doubled over, holding his left hand to his wound, in his right his sword. Straightening up, but not quite managing to, he tilted his head to grin at her. "You've become much stronger."
...so that next time, I won't have to look at your retreating back when you leave .She only barely could keep her hand from trembling. ...so I won't have to return to the pieces of the people I care about... Her throat closed, she couldn't trust herself to say anything. ...so you won't leave me again and again and again. She could either wait until her eyes got all teary, block her sight, make it unable for her to fight. Or she could wait for him to hug her, as she so often had, in vain while giving him the opportunity to kill her.
Or she could fight. Which would also probably kill her.
She couldn't afford to die, this close before the deciding fight. Soul Society relied on her, her Division relied on her, her former Captain relied on her. She couldn't let go, and just follow her own wishes.
"I promised something to myself." I would get as strong as I needed, so that next time I could hold you back.Without a warning she charged at him.
The wound did barely slow him down. After a short exchange of blows, there was an opening – for both of them. She knew that if she hit now, she would bare herself to him. But it was worth it, if she could take him out with her.
She prepared for the critical hit. He did as well and as their swords approached, their eyes suddenly locked. He had his opened again, and there was no grin on his face. Somehow, in that instant, it made him look vulnerable. And she knew, despite what she knew of him, what she believed in and knew had to be done – she wouldn't kill him.
His sword stopped mere centimetres short of her throat, hers of his heart.
"You still..." he murmured, eyes not open anymore, but still not grinning.
I still love you. Her heart was racing, as she kept her gaze on his face, his silver glinting sword just at the lower rim of her field of vision. For a moment she saw everything so sharp and clear. His slim nose, the high cheekbones highlighted from the moon above, his upper lip; the rest of his face in the bluish shadows. His silvery hair glowing and fine like spider-silk. She suddenly seemed to perceive every strand of it moving in the barely noticeable cool breeze coming from the river. She almost felt her hand tingling with the feel of it.
"Why did you stop?" She kept her voice low and husky; she could barely hear it over the heartbeat drumming in her ears.
He slowly took the sword away from her throat; the only movement of his body was his arm.
"I could never hurt ya." He smiled as if trying to adopt an innocent mien.
Suddenly she couldn't hold back a laugh that sounded more like a bark. Her involuntary movement pushed the sword forward into the fabric of his coat.
"You don't really think cutting me with your sword could hurt any more?" she bit at him without fervour. Her tone equally sarcastic and teary made an awkward mixture.
She tried to collect herself, keep her voice steady. "You really aren't trying to escape your death."
"Never cared that much 'bout dying." He grinned, shrugging nonchalantly. "But I was actually hoping for something else, ya know."
All the fear, the longing. Fury grew in her chest. The mix of emotions balanced her, so that to the outside she could appear calm. She took the sword away.
"A welcome back?" Sarcasm came easier now. She stepped closer that only a few hand widths separated them.
"Like a kiss?" Grinning.
In response she leaned closer, until she could feel his breath on her face. After all these years, he still smelled the same. Their lips were almost touching. Then she knocked him unconscious with the hilt of her sword.
He woke up, his head buzzing. The wound on his chest hurting. Weak, exhausted, but definitely not dying. His was on the ground, his back propped against a tree.
She sat beside him. Not so close they were touching, but close enough.
"If you undertake anything endangering Soul Society, I will kill you." Her voice was low and close to his hear.
"That's not nice of ya to say, ya know..."
He listened to her breathing; saw her breasts gently moving up and down.
"I did expect to see you again, at the end..." she lowered her gaze and voice, "But not one week before."
"Then why are you here?" he asked, his left hands examining his wound.
"Patrol."
"Liar," he challenged her with a grin.
"Have I ever lied to you?"
"Have you ever told me all the truth?" The comment wasn't supposed to be more than banter.
There was a short pause, and he felt tension rising in her reiatsu.
"I love you..." she finally admitted under her breath..
Suddenly the night grew still around him. He could hear her whispering voice as clearly as if she were speaking loudly.
"I don't know if I can forgive you, any of it. But what's sure is that you can never come back."
He knew her well enough to hear what she wasn't saying. You blew the one chance we had.
"We could hide together." His voice seemed easy, joking - not serious. He knew that she suspected he was.
"I can't leave. Now even less than two years ago." He more felt than saw her lips pressed together in determination, her distant gaze didn't waver. Despite what she may have appeared on the outside, he knew the subtle sentiments in her reiatsu and knew how much it cost her. But she didn't give up. The Rangiku from before would have looked at him with her sad gaze, knowing she couldn't do anything about him always going away.
"You really have become much stronger," he almost whispered. He was surprised at the softness of his own voice, tinted with many things, his ever conflicting emotions, admiration, misery, a kind of giving-up, or acceptance of a fight not really fought, a worst case he had already accepted, but also – a little bit of hope.
"I have." Her voice was soft, determined, and a little sad.
She stood up, brushed some dust and grass from her coat. He noticed her moving, her clothes brushing her skin, her figure not really hidden by them. He could imagine what she looked like underneath, tried not to. Her ample breasts accentuated by her pink shawl. Even her white Captains coat cut according to her style, emphasizing her figure.
"I must go," she told him. The hardness in her voice was only on the surface, not really able to hide the feeling which let it sound like, "I'm sorry."
She sensed his attempt at moving, a slight shift of his body and legs, despite his exhaustion and pain. He had done his best at pretending the wound wasn't as deep as it was while they were fighting.
Her voice stilled his movement.
"I can't. Not only because I have responsibility as a Captain. I won't. I have to make up for what you did, because I was never strong enough to hold you back."
She took a step forward, yet not really away from him.
"You won't even ask me?"
She stopped, and turned her head to look over her shoulder back at him. He suddenly forgot breathing. Her dark form, her eyes and hair shining in the moonlight, the strength of her sad gaze locking with his. For him.
He couldn't imagine anymore what he would answer his own question.
She shifted her weight, the coat caressing her body in a gentle rustle. If he only had the will to stand up.
"Would it change anything if I knew?" she sighed, melancholy in her purry voice. "All I ever wanted was for you to stay."
The answer surprised him. Especially his own reaction to it, the sudden relieve that tingled even in his toes.
It made him feel giddy, and a foolish grin bloomed on his face he couldn't suppress.
"If I came back only after Soul Society won over Aizen, it wouldn't count anything."
She was quiet for a few moments, then asked calmly. "You are so sure that Aizen will fall? Or is it because you don't care if you live or die?" Her question was serious, but the stupid grin wouldn't go away. Even his voice was cheerful, when he said. "You know me best, you should tell me."
"Idiot." She didn't really smile, but he heard the tenderness in her voice.
He watched her walk away, then a few flash-steps and she was gone.
He sunk back against the tree, all tension draining out of him, until only the solid wood in his back kept him upright. He quietly opened his eyes a slit, without a grin, feeling the moisture in them as he watched the path on which she had left.
When he remembered her last gaze at him he thought he wasn't simply gonna die after all, but he suddenly felt what he had felt in that moment long ago. When he had found her, starved; the look she gave him, when he gave her that dried tomato; when they walked out of the desert together. Only now he recognised the feeling from that time. It was trust.
A/N: It has taken me almost a year to come up with the time and a concrete idea for this chapter.
Serania, unfortunately this was not in time for another Christmas present. Although I actually did start it before Christmas, I only had time to continue last week.
I wonder if they were out of character sometimes. But even if, I wouldn't have done it differently. For this story, they are mine. (- Disclaimer ;-) )