Chapter 14

When Rangiku could breathe again, she crawled to her feet and stepped through the senkaimon.

That was it. It was over.

There was no use in crying, moping, drinking herself into oblivion. She'd chosen this, and she had her reasons. She needed her own life, one that didn't depend on Toushirou for, well, everything. Her every bit of happiness had come from him, or through him, for as long as she could remember. If she'd been lost since he'd tossed her away as his fukutaichou, it was because she didn't know how to live without him.

"From now on," she whispered, making her way to the Thirteenth Division, "I'm gonna learn how to make myself happy."

"That's a good attitude, Ran. I'm glad to hear you say that."

"Juushirou!" She spotted him leaning against a building to her left. "What are you doing here?"

Green eyes reproached her. "A man can't go looking for his fukutaichou when she chases another man down the street and then goes missing in action?"

She paled. "I apologize, Ukitake-taichou," she whispered with a bow. "I should not have left my post without permission." She was supposed to have returned to her squad after the meeting, her time in the living world over for the moment. Going away without leave was unforgivable. "I will accept whatever punishment you deem appropriate."

She wanted to roll her eyes at herself. Was she turning into Toushirou, retreating to formality when she felt uncertain? Was she going to become her own person by becoming him?

"Hmm," her new taichou hedged. "I think this time we can let it slide." He was at her side now, and she matched his pace, letting him lead her back to the office. "You caused quite a scene back there."

She nodded. Better to embrace it than feel embarrassed. "I know."

His eyes on her were searching. "Are you ready to tell me what's been bothering you?"

She stopped then, studied him. Her boss, but before that, always her friend. Maybe the nicest guy in the Seireitei. "Yeah," she said finally. "Yeah, I'd like that."

His smile lit up the sidewalk. "Do we need sake? Should we make a detour to Shunsui's?"

"No on the sake, but let's go find Shunsui & Nanao-chan anyway." If she was going to tell this, she only wanted to do it once.

She ended up caving on the sake, but she'd have one glass for strength, and no more. She sank into the sofa in the Eighth Squad's administrative office with Juushirou on her left and Shunsui and Nanao across from them. Their gazes beseeched her, and she downed another sip of liquid courage.

"I don't know if any of you noticed," she began, proud she didn't stutter, "but for the last several months, I've been sleeping with Taichou." She dropped that bomb as if it weren't both the understatement of the year and the most ridiculous thing she'd ever said.

Shunsui and Nanao rounded on Ukitake, who threw up his hands. "Not me!"

"Hitsugaya-taichou!" Rangiku clarified, blushing. She took in their expressions of shock. Well, they hadn't noticed.

"Ran-chan, why don't you start at the beginning?" Shunsui suggested.

So she did. She told them the whole story, minus some of the juicier parts, starting with her feelings for him and that fateful night at the bar in Rukongai, and culminating with her leaving him with his hands full of reincarnated Momo. When she finished, they all just stared at her in silence, and she stared too, at her hands cradled in Juushirou's, overwhelmed by the whole of their relationship when she'd only ever thought about it in pieces and parts. You didn't end up in this kind of madness by looking at the big picture.

Nanao spoke first. "Wow. I can't believe you kept all that a secret. I know I told you, you keep too much to yourself, but jeez. I never thought . . . ." she trailed off.

"I didn't want you to think," Rangiku muttered. "And officially, this never happened, got it?"

"Do you love him?" Shunsui asked her, the brim of his hat shielding his eyes from view.

"What do you mean, does she love him?" Nanao demanded. "What does that change? It's over, and he's an asshole!"

"It changes everything," he said, his voice soft. "You don't give up on love, even if the one you love is stupid and an asshole. Where would you and I be if . . . I'm not going to finish that, no matter what, it'll be bad for me."

Juushirou laughed, but Rangiku didn't.

"Of course I love him," she muttered. "But you're wrong, it doesn't change anything, because he doesn't love me back. I spent so much time pretending like it didn't matter, like I could be happy with whatever he could give me, but it was all a lie." She closed her eyes, the future unfolding behind their lids. "I could stay with him. So easily. If I stay I don't have to change, I can just spend my life running after him and clinging to whatever scraps of affection he's willing to toss out. Staying is safe." She pictured his face, those striking eyes, that smile he showed to far too few.

She breathed deep, scrambling for the edges of the resolve she'd forgotten she had. "I'm not leaving him because I can't stay, I'm leaving him because I'm worth more! I'm leaving because if I don't do it now, I'll never have the nerve again. He doesn't love me, and who could blame him, I don't even know who me is any more. And I'm never going to find out if I stay in this cage! I have to spread my wings, on my own, fall down and pull myself back up again and remember that I'm strong too. Somewhere in me is the strength that led me here, and it's time for me to find it. Without him."

She looked up, and this time she knew the doubt, the fear, the insecure wavering were all gone. She was moving on.

"So what are you going to do?" Nanao asked her.

"I'm gonna concentrate on me. I have to stop trying to find what I need in someone else and learn how to make myself happy."

"I'll do whatever I can to help," Juushirou offered as he squeezed her hand.

Nanao and Shunsui agreed.

It felt incredible to have the support of her friends, to have all the secrets exposed to the light and thrust firmly in the past. Like a weight off her shoulders and a giant bear hug at the same time.

"Ugh, but Hitsugaya-taichou can just wait until he gets back to Soul Society," Nanao threatened. "I'm going to rip him apart!"

Rangiku glared at her. "Nanao, don't! That's still the man I love you're talking about, and he's still a good man. It's not his fault he doesn't love me. If it means anything, I think he's tried to."

"Hmm." Shunsui didn't seem so convinced.

Toushirou wanted to fall apart after she left, just sink into the ground and wait, silently, until the world stopped spinning, but there wasn't time. Search parties had to be organized. Momo's parents had to be found. Life was like that sometimes. The life-altering moments came, and even when you realized their significance, there just wasn't an opportunity to react. Life got in the way of life, or in his case, afterlife.

And so days later found him perched on a rooftop, Momo's reincarnation dozing in his lap. He'd had no luck convincing the others that they needed to send her as far away as possible from him, them, their whole fucked up shinigami world. It wasn't like they knew where she'd come from, and his search for her parents had turned up no leads. For all he knew, Yammy had killed them already. There wasn't anywhere for her to go.

"Momo," he murmured, stroking her hair. She burrowed deeper into him. "I'm sorry." This was the last thing he'd wanted. She had always been too good, too innocent for the job of reaping souls. He'd wanted her to have a life, friends, family, a home where her trusting nature would be a benefit, not a weakness. He'd wanted her to have the chance to be normal. And he'd planned to stay as far away from her as possible, so there would be no chance any memories of her afterlife might surface. So she didn't have to remember betraying him, being betrayed, dying on his sword.

But it didn't seem to matter what he wanted any more, if it ever had. Life was full of disappointment, whether it was the original or the afterlife.

Ichigo plopped down next to him, disturbing his solitude.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"Done moping yet?"

"Tch." He couldn't beat the hell out of Ichigo with a child in his lap. "Feeling brave, Kurosaki?"

"So it's Kurosaki now, huh? One thing goes wrong and you just retreat?"

He didn't respond, just stared out at the sky, watching the clouds gather. If he watched long enough, he knew they would disperse and fade away to nothing. An endless cycle. A reminder that, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Kurosaki, like the idiot he was, didn't take the hint. "Are you really just going to let Rangiku go? That woman's the best thing that ever happened to you!"

"You think I don't know that?"

"Then what the hell are you still sitting here for?"

"It doesn't go both ways. She's better off without me, and she finally realized it. End of story."

"Funny how you always think you know what's best," Ichigo scoffed, his aim true as ever, his words sharper than any sword. "And that best always involves pushing people away. You think the further they are from you, the better for them, and so you hurt everyone around you to make them go away. Why? You think it's so you can't hurt them? Please, it's so they can't hurt you! You want to go on living behind a wall of ice where you don't have to connect with your emotions so you don't have to feel regret, so you can't get hurt any more than you already have." He paused, shaking his head. "I never thought I'd say this to you, Toushirou, but grow up."

Toushirou sighed, leaning his head back and closing his eyes, one hand making sure the child on his lap stayed steady in place. "Look, thanks for the pep talk, but you have no idea what you're talking about."

Ichigo stayed quiet for a minute, long enough to make Toushirou uncomfortable.

"So, is this it?" the teen mumbled.

"What now?"

"Is this it?" he repeated, louder. "The good life. Is this the best it gets?"

Knowing he was going to regret it, Toushirou let himself bite. "What are you getting at?"

"How old are you, Toushirou?"

"Sixty-seven." Sometimes he felt ancient.

"Sixty-seven years is a long time," Ichigo mused. "That's retirement age for humans, you know."

He hadn't.

The teen drew lazy circles in the dust on the roof tiles. "I bet you have a lot of memories."

Too many.

"A lot of regrets."

More than you'll ever know, kid.

"How old do you think Ukitake is?"

Huh? Talk about a non-sequitur. "A thousand, at least. He and Kyouraku are older than dirt."

"Hmm. Wonder what they regret."

"Huh?"

But Ichigo was already shunpoing away.

Damn it. Toushirou hated it when people acknowledged his intelligence. It was much easier to scoff at the conclusion when they fed it to him with a spoon.

Are you going to regret wasting the rest of your life on regrets?

It was a long road, but Matsumoto was finally starting to make some progress.

The first few nights without him were absolute hell. Withdrawals like she couldn't believe, hot flashes, burning need, an empty ache that wouldn't be soothed. And the terrible, mind-numbing fear that it would always be this way, that she would never get over his touch.

The only way to get any sleep was to work until she passed out. So Rangiku threw herself into being Thirteenth Squad fukutaichou. And now that Juushirou knew she needed a real position, he made one for her, putting her in charge of squad member development, which boiled down to training and recruiting.

She created new routines, modeling many of them after the ones she'd run with Toushirou, and made the squad run through them over and over. When Juushirou was feeling well enough to help, there were two of them, so they were able to split the squad into smaller groups and really work on the gaps in each soldier's skills. She learned more from training them than she'd ever learned focusing on her own growth and development as a fighter. Not that she'd ever focused much before.

It was fantastic, the most fun she'd had doing her job, well, ever. But she couldn't help but wonder who was training her—Toushirou's—soldiers. With him away and her transferred, who was supervising, training, recruiting, making sure that the troops were healthy and fed and ready for anything that came their way?

She had to know. One day about two weeks into her self-sufficiency plan, she tapped lightly on Juushirou's doorframe as she walked into his office. "Juu-kun?"

"Oh, hi Rangiku! What can I do for you?" He eyed her carefully. "Anything wrong?"

"No," she said, honestly. "I'm good. I was just running through tomorrow's training regimen, and it made me worry about my squad. Do you know who's in charge of the Tenth while Toushirou's gone and I'm here? I was thinking maybe we could have them over and do a joint training session a couple times a week. You know, just until Toushirou gets back."

His eyes flickered, and he flipped from Taichou Juu to Counselor Juu in a single breath. "Rangiku, what is this really about? Are you really worried about your squad? Because, if you are, I can promise they are in good hands, that they're taken care of and there's no need for you to worry. And if you then want to check up on that, I'll tell you who's in charge. But I don't think that's what this is really about, is it? I think you're looking for a connection with Hitsugaya-kun. Be honest, isn't that what this is?"

She didn't know how to answer that.

About a week later, she was over at the Academy, scouting for the next crop of recruits. The students who were ready to graduate had finished their classes, and now the squads had a week to evaluate them and bid on who they wanted. The recruits would rank the squads, too, and then a computer program Kurotsuchi had created would take all those preferences and, oh, hell, she didn't know how it worked. She just knew that she and Juushirou wanted the best newbies they could get!

Getting the recruits to rank Squad Thirteen high wouldn't be hard. Juushirou had a great reputation, and if Rangiku knew one thing, it was that she was personable. Men would come to look at her, women would come to be her friend (except for those who were jealous, and weren't worth the trouble anyway). The problem was how to rank the recruits. She could do anything to test them, short of harming them. Kurotsuchi required full medical and psychological assessments, Shunsui performed interviews, often over a drink, and Kuchiki-taichou gave each recruit a skills and endurance test. She wasn't sure what Toushirou did, she'd always left recruiting up to him.

Rangiku had already spoken with each of the recruits, knew who she liked, but there was only one way to find out their skill levels.

"Listen up!" she called to the group. "Each of you are going to engage me in a one-on-one fight! Don't worry," she called to a couple of the girls, who were shaking in their tabi, "I won't fight back. You'll get the chance to hit me with your strongest kido and then your best zanjutsu attack. That's it, two attacks, so make them the best of your life and don't hold back. If you've got shikai, I wanna see you use it, all right?"

She called each one up and they came at her, one after another. Some of them were all right, some of them were horrendous, and some of them had an extra spark that she knew meant they'd rise above the rest. But no matter their skill level, she couldn't help giving each of them a little advice. "Nice hado incantation, but your kido will be stronger if you say it like you mean it!" "Your form is good, but your eyes are telegraphing your next movement. Try looking the opposite way before you swing to break that habit. Not as you swing, before, got it?"

It took nearly two hours to get through them all. When she finally finished and collapsed into a puddle on the training grounds, one of the professors came up to her.

"That's an interesting assessment method you have, Matsumoto-fukutaichou," he remarked, sitting down next to her. "I'm Higarashi Daiki, the upper-level zanjutsu professor."

"Nice to meet you." She wished he'd go away so she could take a nap.

"What would you say if I offered you a job?"

She started overseeing an upper level zanjutsu practicum the very next week.

If she were going to work herself into exhaustion, well, at least she was helping someone in the process. Damn, it felt good to be needed.

Toushirou was a wreck; he couldn't live in his own head. So he did what he did when he needed to stay busy: he planned. This time they weren't going to wait for Yammy to attack them. They were going after him, and they were going to settle this, once and for all.

A/N:

There comes a point where something isn't an aberration any more, it's just the norm. No apologies. It's concise, it took months, and I'm owning it; that's just the way this fic is sometimes. I hope you like it anyway. Thanks for reading, and please review!