A/N: This is the second little dabble. I think I like this one a bit better, actually. I hope you enjoy it!

A Hundred Goodbyes

Rangiku had never been very good at saying goodbye. She avoided awkward farewells like the plague, preferring to disappear until the person was well and gone then drink herself to oblivion in their absence. That way she didn't have to give shaky hugs, or smile teary smiles when all she wanted was to curl into herself and cry. She didn't have to fake her bubbly personality, or force herself to tell white lies...

Luckily she hadn't been faced with many really important departures in her lifetime, especially since she had started with absolutely nobody. People who moved in and out of her life quickly weren't a problem, and until recently there were very few people who were truly fixtures in her life.

Gin was the first person she had ever been attached to. He had made himself a place in her life the instant he appeared in it, his fox-like grin embedding itself in her heart as a reminder of her first home... the home he had given her. Even years later as she listened to the hushed murmurs about the frightening Third Division captain and his snake-like grin, she couldn't help but feel at home when she saw the familiar expression on his face.

"What are ya smilin' about, Ran-chan?" he had asked her once when he had caught her absorbing the familiar expression. His face tilted curiously to the side and his grin grew dangerously wide as he spoke.

"What, can't a girl just be happy?" she had responded, since they never told each other the truth. She had a feeling he knew anyway.

Their entire relationship was like that. It was a constant series of half-truths and omissions she had grown adept at interpreting over the years. The only problem was that for as much as she did understand there was always twice as much she could never grasp, and Gin, who seemed to understand everything, seemed perfectly content to leave her in the dark.

It may have been this tendency or it may have been something else entirely, but it hadn't taken her long to realize that he was the sort of person she was doomed to say goodbye to over and over again. His penchant for leaving without telling her where he was going or what he was doing certainly saw to that. It wasn't quite the same as those hated farewells, though. She knew how to say goodbye to Gin, whether it be from practice or because she always knew he would come back. She could do it without the tears or the sake... she could do it without feeling much at all by the end.

But this was different.

This time Rangiku was sure he wasn't coming back. He wasn't going to appear seemingly out of nowhere on the steps of their little dirt shack, smiling at her like he had never been gone at all, or show up in the middle of the night with a small white flower to tuck into her hands and an insincere apology on his lips.

"What have you done this time, Gin?" she heard herself murmur into her cup of sake, unable to think about anything except the one man who she was just now realizing she had never really let go of. It seemed that for all the hundreds of little farewells they had, she never truly let herself really say goodbye to him after all.