femslashficlets | [1] Janelle Monae Lyrics (Bleach)

Title: Nightmares
Fandom: Bleach
Pairing: Matsumoto Rangiku/Inoue Orihime
Rating: Teen & Up Audiences
Warnings: None
Prompt: "Little rough around the edges but I keep it smooth"
Word Count: 950 words
Summary: Rangiku still has nightmares following her zombification at the hands of Giselle Gewelle.

In the very depths of her darkest dreams, Matsumoto Rangiku can almost remember the soft lull of the Sternritter’s sweet, bubbly voice and the sensation of her limbs moving without her consent to wound her allies and her friends.

Most of her nightmares up until that point where consumed by Ichimaru Gin’s laughing, fox-like face as he loomed over her and reminded her that in the end, she was incompetent. She was unable to save him. She was unable to save her dearest friend, the first and only person she could claim to love. Instead, she wept over his dying body and held him in her arms as his lifeforce drained from his broken, bloodied and torn body while his killer turned his attention to a more formidable opponent. She was not even worth the potential of a vengeance battle, though Aizen Sosuke would have killed her with a single swing of Kyouka Suigetsu and never thought once more about her.

There would be no peace from that failure. Even as she accepted that this would be a part of her life, she would have never foreseen something far worse coming her way until it was too late to do anything about it. She knew the Sternritter were fearsomely powerful, but it was only upon waking from the capsule that she learned to fear the name Giselle Gewelle and everything that had been done to her without her knowledge.

She used to wake from the dreams of that dark voice and Haneiko swinging through the air screaming, clawing at the darkness and the shadows and thinking, for a breath of a moment, that her limbs were moving without her consent again. By the time her captain appeared at her side to calm her down, the worst of the damage had been done.

Despite this, she always presented the image of a lieutenant who had everything put together, whose life was continuing onward as if she never dreaded the nights to come and the nightmares that would leave her exhausted and trembling and wishing she had died on the battlefield rather than to survive with the memory of her own unlife just out of reach.

It would have been easier if she remained alone, and she knows that. It would have been easier if she locked herself away inside and let her facade continue on without the concern of anyone else discovering the truth. Instead, she finds herself gently shaken awake for the third time this week, her heart beating perhaps a touch too fast, but Giselle’s voice did not even have time to find her in the pitch black before this moment.

“Rangiku-san?” The soft voice next to her ear does not startle her, does not grip her heart in a vice-like squeeze of control. “You were having a nightmare again, I think.”

Dragging her fingers across her eyes to wipe the sleep out of them, shoving herself into a sitting position, Rangiku turns to find Inoue Orihime staring up at her from her side of the futon. Concern is etched into the soft lines of her face. “Was I? I don’t remember it.”

“You kept saying no over and over again,” Orihime murmurs. “And you were whimpering.”

That makes her chest hurt. She doesn’t want Orihime to think of her as weak or pitiful at all, considering she was the one with her life together when they first met. She was the shoulder for Orihime’s pain. Making Orihime into the same for her feels selfish and wrong especially when there is nothing that can be done to fix this.

“I don’t remember anything. Huh.” She tries to play it off as she lies back down, drawing the blanket up over her body once more. Wondering what lies she would have told Orihime if she had been her during the old nightmares. If she slept just a little deeper, not so easily woken by Rangiku’s softer pleas. If it took screams to pierce through her dreams.

“Oh?” Orihime presses up against her side, fingers brushing Rangiku’s tousled hair off of her forehead. Her fingers are so soft against Rangiku’s skin, her voice more tangible than Giselle’s has ever been. “I guess that’s for the best if it scared you that much.”

Rangiku rolls onto her side, slipping down enough to press her face against the front of Orihime’s throat. She can feel the exact moment when the younger woman tenses up in surprise before she softens, pulling Rangiku closer to her. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it.” Orihime’s fingers comb through her hair, then urge her face just a little closer. This near, Rangiku can hear the soft sound of her heartbeat. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Maybe one day,” Rangiku says. Not a promise, but better than nothing.

Orihime kisses the top of her head and Rangiku smiles softly as she closes her eyes once more, pressing her hands against Orihime’s back as she tries to let herself fall asleep once more. She may never be ready to tell Orihime, who is so gentle and kind and warm despite everything that has happened to her. Such horror may be where Rangiku must draw the line and internalize the experience so she can move on with her life without tainting the one person who has never looked at her as though she is weak and fallible.

As long as she can keep it together, she will. If she breaks, Orihime will be there to help her pick up the pieces and put them back in place where they belong, even stronger than she was before.