Bleach 1. Chapter 1

Chapter One For Whom the Bell Tolls

It was Friday afternoon, and Karin Kurosaki was beginning to regret offering to go shopping with her twin sister Yuzu. She was looking for a new baseball cap, the old one was put permanently out of commission. In some ways, the loss of her hat was awesome, how many girls could say that their head gear was eaten by a giant spectral Hollow? Not many, that's how many. But in most ways it sucked, because now she had to go out and buy another one and she had to keep an eye out for those same supernatural beings from eating anything else on her person, including those parts of her that could not be purchased from the local Abercromby and Fitch.

She could have been playing football, but Karin's football game had been cancelled due to irreconcilable differences between her teammates– she didn't really get what the big deal was, a protective cup was a protective cup and wether one had it in a banana shape or not was... something she really didn't want to know any more about– who found out the rarely discussed drawbacks of sharing.

"But I prefer my member to rest pointing up!"

That jewel of a sentence was the last one before Karin broke up her little journey into boyville and sent everyone home. Did they not realise she was a girl, with no penis to speak of, and therefore should not be subjected to things so cruel and unusual?

From their blank looks, apparently not.

Apart from the complete Eww of the moment, all it afforded was to spoil a completely good time to get in some practice. So, that's how she found herself victim to her sister's insanity.

Karin had become used to her sister's penchant for pretty Lolita dresses, and had Yuzu been only slightly older she'd even go as far as calling it a fetish. She was used to it, but the predictability of Yuzu's reaction to that– that monstrously pink, hideously tooth decaying tulle trussed terror– did not mean that Karin found it any less irritating each time it happened. If Britney Spears got raped by a flamingo in drag that dress would be what it would look like. Karin eyed the exit longingly.

"Oh, Karin!" Yuzu twirled towards her holding the offensive dress adoringly, "Wouldn't–? "

"No, Yuz. It really would not." Karin replied not even pausing on her trek for the front door of the shop.

Karin was already making her way down the sidewalk when she heard the tinkling of the shop bell spring to life, and Yuzu come huffing along beside her clutching a small lilac parcel.

Karin threw a discreet side glance at what her sister lackadaisically swung to and fro as she walked.

"Yuzu, you didn't actually– "

"Buy the dress? I thought about it, but then decided that tulle made my head look fat."

"Oh, yes. God forbid that. Cuz everybody knows fat descends from your head then your arms and pretty soon your ass is as big as a Peugeot and you're eating ice cream right out of the tub." Karin said flatly.

"Oh, so you read Lucky Lean Teen, too?" Yuzu replied easily to her sister's sarcasm. Karin saw some passers by busybodies snicker behind their hands at Yuzu's rather loud comment.

"Yuzu!" Karin's scandalized expression only soured when she saw her sister burst into sparkling peals of laughter.

'Oh, ho ho ho, your face," she pointed with one hand, completely oblivious, "I never get a chance to get you. But this time I just totally flowed right through that one!"

"I'm glad my total mortification pleases you." Karin glowered, though she didn't really feel all that affronted. I mean, it was _Yuzu_. She was as synonymous with 'harmless' as she was to the fruit she was named after.

"Oh, Karin," her sister replied eyes wide with genuine distress and regret, "I didn't really mean it! I was in the groove and everything and you're always so funny when you say things so deadpan– "

See? Wouldn't hurt a fly, Karin thought.

"Yuz, chill. I was being sarcastic." Karin said and raised an eyebrow at her sister's compassion.

"You sure?"

"Oh, yeah. Trust me, it'd take a lot more'n that take me down." Karin replied.

"Oh, good. Because I saw the cutest little eyelet lace trimmed dress that I wanted you to try on–" her sister continued, walking ahead in search of Karin's very possibly worst nightmare.

"Uh, you were right, Yuz, my feelings have been grievously abused and I need to go home and have a cup of tea, or cyanide or– hey Yuzu are you even listening? Don't you dare go in that store!" Karin called after her sister, but the brown eyed girl had already slipped through the double doors. The bells jingled merrily and to Karin it sounded suspiciously like a death knoll.

A god forsaken hour later, Karin was ready for that cyanide laced cup of tea, but Yuzu's radiantly happy face stopped her from saying anything out right. It was Yuzu's first real smile in three days. Oh, sure, she puttered around the house grinning wanly, but since Ichigo had just up and vanished...it was not the same.

Karin was equally parts worried and pissed off. Worried that her brother had finally bitten off more than he could chew. Worried for his safety, and to some extent worried for his friend Inoue who was equally missing. The red haired girl was nice, but Ichigo was an asshole. And that's where the anger came in. Her brother was crowned king dipshit for leaving without so much as a texed 'C U l8terz'.

She was also surprised to find that she was a little angry at herself, as well. Not for anything obvious or even rational, but because she didn't really feel vindicated in her feelings of resentment for her brother, like her anger was pointless if she didn't try to do something about it. And that's where Toshiro came in.

She had not spoken to Toshiro Hitsugaya since that fateful day at the park when she was nearly eaten by a Hollow, and it was unnerving talking to the person who saved your soul from being sucked right out of you. She knew he knew something, but each time she passed by where she knew he was staying (she had not been spying, it was not her fault she had such good hearing, and if she just happened to pick up that he and his big boobed lieutenant were staying at Inoue's so be it. The fact she was crouching behind a dumpster at the time was irrelevant) she ended up getting lock kneed and turning back around. So much for doing something about it. She couldn't even approach the one person who would know something.

Karin sighed, she could feel a head ache coming on. Yuzu had stopped a few yards in front of her at a flower cart and was digging in her purse for change as the florist patiently waited with a bundle of purple flowers extended.

Karin squinted her eyes against the brightness of the day, the flowers a flourescent after image in the back of her retinas as her headache arched. The sudden crescendo of pain, like a spike of steel jammed through her temple, was almost enough for Karin to cry out. The scream startled her, at first she thought she _had_ cried out, but the screams belonged instead to the people out on the promenade. A car careened out of control, screeching tires and burnt rubber high in the afternoon. People scattered like mindless shadows scared witless and slow.

The car plowed through outdoor tables and chairs; yellow umbrellas with bright technicolour logos pin wheeled through the air as the car devolved into a blur of white metal and cacophonous sound. Karin watched in grotesque slow motion as the white sedan headed on a crash course towards the cart of flowers. Towards Yuzu.

Karin acted out of pure terror and reflex, throwing herself those few feet to her sister and sending them both crashing to the pavement just as the car tore through the cart, glass and flower petals rained down on them like at a death march. The car missed them by inches and plowed right into a light post where it was instantly cleaved in half.

There were tears in Yuzu's wide eyes as she looked at Karin, who clung to her as if she expected one of them might fly away at any moment. Karin gathered her suddenly disheveled wits and stood. Her headache as present as ever as she walked towards the smoking wreckage, broken glass and debris scattered aimlessly through out the sidewalk. There was a muted pause and then people quickly sprang into action, calling paramedics and checking for injured when she felt a sudden pull in her chest. She heard a sudden piercing roar and she turned towards it intuitively; she was just able to make out a dark ominous shape as it slammed right into her.

Karin hit the pavement with a dull thud, gravel and broken glass digging into the soft flesh of her thighs. She blinked rapidly to clear her vision and looked around her. She was confused, what had crashed into her? And where did it go?

She looked around feeling disoriented and a little nauseous, she spied Yuzu crouched a few meters to her left. She was leaning over somebody, her face etched in something vaguely familiar, but Karin could not seem to place the look. A few spaces away lay Yuzu's discarded purple parcel, obnoxiously banal and pastel. Yuzu continued to compress her hands over the chest of the supine figure in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. She was a born and bred doctor even at the tender age of twelve, and Karin felt a sudden warmth at the thought. But it was short lived, the warmth falling away from her like ice over a hotplate. Karin stared into her own lifeless face as her sister tried to breath life into her body.

Son of a bitch! Karin thought, but her anger was erased at her sister's expression.

"Please, Karin! You swore we'd d– " Yuzu could not bring herself to finish that sentence, "You swore!"

Yuzu continued the CPR as Karin stood over herself and her sister, her mind reeling, trying to make sense of what was happening. Karin didn't know what to do, she had seen ghosts, had seen those severed chains sprouting from their chests, but she never expected to be one of them! Her hand felt her chest for the chain, when she didn't feel anything she looked down. The chain was not severed. There was no chain.

A strangled sob broke Karin's concentration.

Yuzu's twined hands compressed over Karin's physical chest. Her twin's steady mantra of counting a metronome;

"1,2,3,4...30,"she prayed, "breath. 1,2..."

The invisible Karin counted along with her, "1,2,3– come on Yuzu you can do it."

Two minutes had passed since Karin had been pushed out of her own body. Two minutes had passed since Yuzu started to maintain a flow of oxygenated blood to her body's brain and heart. Karin knew instantly that not even Yuzu could delay tissue death for much longer, and nothing but a defribrillator would restart her heart.

Yuzu was really sobbing now, but her compressions remained as steady as ever. There was a strange glow coming from her sister's hands, soft and golden and warm. Karin blinked rapidly to clear her eyes. But as quickly as it manifested the glow was gone. Yuzu stopped her compressions, hand flying to Karin's pulse point to check for a heartbeat. When Yuzu sighed in gratitude, Karin nearly gave a loud whoop; her sister had done it!

Yuzu seemed to deflate with relief when she spied the paramedics, who immediately made a beeline towards the now hysterical Yuzu as she flagged them down. Karin looked around expecting to be looking out of her own physical eyes. Any minute now, she thought. Any minute, I'm gonna pop right back into my body. But Karin was not in her body. She was alive but her soul remained incorporeal. Karin tried to slip back into her body, but her hand just sunk through like she was made of air. She wasn't sticking!

"Yuzu, it didn't work!" she said to her sister but Yuzu remained oblivious, "My body's alive but I'm still here!"

A siren pierced the air, the red of the ambulance raining down over them like a blanket. The paramedic ran towards them, oxygen mask at the ready.

"She went into cardiac arrest," Yuzu explained in the rapid fire way of one who was trying to suppress their panic, "Karin pushed me out of the way and the car missed us but then she just collapsed– for no reason, she just collapsed, and I...and I didn't know what else to do, but keep up the CPR..."

"You did a good job, miss," the paramedic looked at Yuzu sympathetically, but he kept a steady pump on the breathing apparatus.

Karin watched it all with growing alarm. They strapped her body into the gurney and put her in the back of the ambulance. A little ways away another ambulance was opening its doors, but the body being wheeled in was completely covered by the white sheet and the paramedics moved much slower. Oh, Karin thought a little inanely, the driver's dead too.

Yuzu held her hand as she hurriedly went into the ambulance, fear painted blue on her face like a Matisse. Karin tried to follow but she was not fast enough.

"Wait!" she yelled, trying to reach for the doors, "Stop! That's my body in there!

Panic had settled like a lead weight into her bones and she could not seem to move fast enough as the paramedics shut the red metal doors and the ambulance sped away unaware of her presence.

Karin ran after the speeding ambulance, "Wait!" she yelled but no one heard her. She ran through the parting traffic as cars made way for the expediting ambulance, "Wait!"

Her legs gave out soon enough, and she was left panting in the middle of the street, "YUZU!"

In the distance too far to be seen, Yuzu looked up suddenly and whispered brokenly, "Karin?"

But her sister's body remained still and unresponsive. Yuzu lay her head between her knees and cried.

Karin fell where she stood, panting for breath and uncaring of the cars that zoomed by her. She was a ghost, what point was there in worrying about getting hit by a car? Karin had to laugh, to ease the tension if for no other reason. The irony was not lost on her.

You may be incorporeal, she thought, but you're not brainless.

Karin stood up resolutely, despair was not going to get her anywhere. She needed to think, to plan, but there were too many unknown variables. She didn't know wether there was some kind of mystical time restriction, what if she found a way to get back into her body but was unable to because she wasted too much time? She didn't know how it was she was ousted from her body to begin with. What if she needed a repeat dose of whatever had crashed into her? What if it was a Hollow and it was still after her soul?

Shit, Karin thought.

If it was a Hollow, she couldn't just stand here in the middle of the street like this. All her What If's were just distracting her from getting anything done. If Ichigo were here he'd tell her to quit wasting time.

And then she had it. The answer was staring at her in the face. Ichigo!

He was able to slip in and out of his body, she had seen him do it several times. He'd hold some sort of magical trinket to his chest and a pop and fizz later his soul was out the window.

Karin began to run, even as the plan was forming in her head. She needed to get home, to her brother's room and find that thing– whatever it was– and pop herself back into her body. She wasn't sure it'd work but it beat any other plans she might of come up with.

Karin ran through the front entrance of the clinic, not even pausing to open the front door. Her lithe form slipped through the concrete, glass and wood without so much as a stagger. She ran upstairs and stopped short the red number fifteen stared out at her from the dark wood of her brother's door. Karin put her hands on her knees, wheezing, trying to catch her breath.

She half raised her hand to the door to knock and in the same movement yanked it back down to her side. She flushed a deep red and grit her teeth.

What are you, she self-berated, retarded?

Karin felt doubly stupid, once for forgetting she would just phase through the door and again because her brother was not home and hadn't been for the last three days. Karin huffed and walked through the door.

Ichigo's room was always tidy. A trait she found rather odd in her brother. Not to say that he was a complete slob in other regards– her brother was fairly uniform in his neatness– but she had never seen so much as a book out of place. It was if he didn't live there at all and Karin suddenly wished he _was_ a slob. If only to remind her that he was still around and not a soothing memory in the back of her mind like their dead mother.

Stop it, she thought, don't start _that_.

Karin riffled through the ordered stacks of paper on his desk. She opened the drawers and checked behind the lamp hoping to find what she was looking for. She dropped to her knees and looked under the bed but found nothing. She stood up, her arms resting akimbo and debating wether or not she should check under the mattress. She was unwilling to find anything unpleasant. And by that she meant porn. She didn't think she could handle anymore scares that day.

As she began to reach toward the mattress the door slowly creaked open. Karin snatched her hand away and stood ramrod straight, a rather guilty expression marring her other wise surprised face. The door stood open little more than a handsreath, at first Karin though it was the odd movements of an old crickety house but she soon saw what had opened the door.

"You!"

Both sets of voices blended together rather comically and Karin stood there pointing accusingly at the equally accusing stuffed animal. The little plush lion stood indignantly, one golden yellow paw pointed at Karin, the other clutching a rather large juicebox to his chest.

Karin's shock at seeing the toy become animated disappeared the moment she saw what it clutched between its stuffed paws. She had seen enough weird things in her lifetime and a walking talking stuffed lion was not even a blip in her supernatural radar. The fact that it was walking and talking could be dismissed. The fact that it was drinking her juice could not.

"So you're the one!" she hollered, "I've had to spend all my savings in restocking those, you little rag!"

Kon for the most part just gaped at her and tried to discreetly push the juicebox behind him. His little sewed tail twitched spasmodically as if it knew a secret and wasn't telling.

"You're– You're dead!" Kon stuttered.

Karin sat down on the floor indignantly and growled, "Yeah? I hadn't noticed."

Kon stepped towards her, his little fluffy feet making a swishing sound against the carpet as he circled her with cautious curiosity.

"How did you get dead? Do you even know how badly Ichigo is going to take this out on me!?"

"Oh, I'm sorry if this is an inconvenience for _you_," She said rising to her feet.

"I got tired of always wearing the same outfit, so I thought I'd try a different–more dead– look," she bent over and smacked the stuffed animal hard enough to send it sprawling on its back, the juice box breaking its fall rather awkwardly, "Idiot."

Kon righted himself, rolling to the side and lifting to his feet with as much flamboyant dignity as the plush toy could manage and said, "I was only pointing out the obvious, little sister."

"Don't call me that," she snapped bad mood righting itself, "And what are you anyway? Some reject from Child's Play?"

Kon scrunched his little fabric face in a facsimile of a frown and paced around her dramatically.

"No. I just happen to be a modified soul," he said as matter of fact, then in resigned voice added, "Though my current body leaves something to be desired."

"Modified soul– ?" then she waved her hand as if to physically dispel the question, "Ok, whatever, I don't even care at this point. I'm dead, I guess, and unless you can help me I need to get back to finding Ichigo's soul separating gadget thing."

"But you're dead." Kon reiterated, "That's it. It's the tunnel and bright light for you. I will miss you my dear little sister!"

The plush toy wailed and leaped like a flea and wrapped himself around her neck. She yanked at his little soft body but it snapped back like a rubber band, "Get off! I'm not actually dead– or at least my body isn't dead or... I don't know! All I know is that I'm stuck. Now, get off!"

"Nooo," Kon wailed, "If you leave me that vile creature will have nothing to keep her from molesting me!"

Karin paused for a moment. She'd never heard anybody refer her sister as 'a vile creature' and she thought she'd die before the day ever came that someone would ever accuse the mild mannered Yuzu of molestation. Karin's brow furrowed. Wait a minute, she _did_ die!

"Ugh, enough of your babbling," she said as she finally found a solid grip on the toy and yanked it free, "Now are you gonna help me or not?"

"Oh, anything for my sweet, loving, beloved and perfect little sister!" Kon said, plastic button eyes bright with adoration.

"Okaay,"Karin said eyebrow raised in evaluation, "That was a little much."

Kon brought a paw up to his chin and regarded Karin pensively, "You think so? I thought it was pretty good myself. You know? A bit of descriptive language never hurt anyone."

Karin stared at the lion dully and deadpanned, "It's silver and shaped like a crest."

"Wha– ?" Kon looked dumbly at her as she grabbed him and flung him in the closet.

"Make sure you check everywhere! Leave no space unturned." she commanded as she dug her arms elbow deep into the space between the mattress and the bed.

"Could give a guy some warning!" She could hear the stuffed lion curse wildly inside the closet but she also heard the sound of indignant rifling. Karin payed attention to the task at hand skirting around anything even vaguely magazine shaped until finally she came upon something small enough to possibly be what she was looking for.

Karin opened her hand with anticipation. It wasn't so much crest shaped as it was flat and square.

"Oh god!" she yelped and threw the offending package in the air, "it burns!"

Kon came flying out of the closet in alarm ready for action, but was thrown back when something landed squarely on his face. Kon groaned from underneath the condom.

Karin didn't think the day could possibly get any worse.

AN.

Ichigo probably has absolutely no secrets...

Anyway...This is my first Bleach fic eva, baby. I wrote two other stories under a different penname for two other fandoms; HP and Avatar the last airbender, and that's pretty much all I ever read too, but then I found Bleach. And OMG. I saw that one episode of Bleach with Hitsugaya and Karin and it has just about eaten me whole. I really should finish those two stories, but I caught writer's block and I think the only cure is to write out this story that the plot bunnies have infested me with.

Also, Japan is so cool. I mean, temples and rice paddies right next to the bullet train and a technological powerhouse? One word: Robots.

Awesome.

I love how the old school and the new school are practically kissing, in fact they're having a total love affair and I love those types of liaisons. I was looking into the cultural history of Japan for this story because Bleach is all Shinigami, Kimono, and Reincarnations and I felt I couldn't write a good story without knowing some of that Japanese mythology and what I found only makes me want to participate in the JET programme like whoa.

P.S. that gold glow from Yuzu's hands? The one that brings Karin back to life? That's one of those healing demon arts thingies, I read there were three types: to bind, heal, and blow up apparently. I thought it was really weird that Ichigo and Karin are all Ooooh supernatural spooky and poor Yuzu isn't. I kinda like the idea that Yuzu is the only normal one though, so it was more like a fluke that it happened, borne out of desperation for her sister's life, the magical equivalent of a mother lifting up a car to save her kid.

Does anyone know of any really good Bleach stories out there? I read a really cute one with Renji and Orihime, so any pairing is cool with me as long as its well written.

As for my story, I tend to flesh things out a lot, so this might be one of those rather long tales. Anyway I hope you like this story and please review!

-- Hats off;)


	2. Chapter 2

Also, I forgot a Disclaimer; Not mine. There, done.

* * *

Though I am old with wandering 

through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone

and kiss her lips and take her hands;

and walk among the dappled grass,

and pluck till time and times are done

the silver apples of the moon,

the golden apples of the sun-- William ButlerYeats

Chapter Two  


Karin was once again running through the streets, Kon wrapped around her neck like a fat scowling scarf.

Kon, for the most part, wasn't entirely sure why he was going along with Karin's poorly thought out plan. He should have just dragged her to Urahara's and had him fix whatever it was that was blighting Karin's ability to return to her body. That's what he should have done, it was the sensible thing to do, but Kon didn't want Karin to be thrust into one of Urahara's cabalistic schemes. Heaven's knew he loved the man (he was his creator after all) but Urahara thought strategically not ethically and given Karin's peculiarly strong spirit power he knew without doubt she would become one of his latest pawns for the Winter's War with Aizen.

Kon watched Karin's focused face as she ran through traffic. He had a soft spot for the irascible girl. All that time he had spent in Ichigo's body did nothing to assuage his fondness for the dark haired Kurosaki sister. He had always wondered what it would be like to have a real life and coupled with the fact that he was playing her brother it was sometimes hard to distinguish what was pretend and what was genuine affection.

Kon wasn't much of the family type; he was too perverted in his like for big breasted women to ever think of settling down and starting one. That is, _if_ he ever found himself a proper gigai. But, he wouldn't really mind having a little sister if she was anything like Karin.

They were close to Karakura Memorial Hospital, she could see the tall white wall of its entrance, the glass of the windows shone brightly in a backlight of pale blue sky.

"This isn't going to work, Karin-chan," Kon said.

Karin didn't answer, but she gripped Ichigo's little device to her chest and ran faster. She hoped her sister was okay. She remembered why Yuzu's expression had been so familiar as she hovered over Karin's supine form; it was the same she wore the day their mother died.

Karin staggered suddenly, Kon's strangled yelp escaped him as inertia compelled his little stuffed body forward. He clung to her clumsily and whispered something fiercely, but Karin was not paying attention. Her head pulsed with a nebulous pain that sent her almost to her knees. It took a moment for Karin to figure out what it was he said.

"Hollow!"

She was just barely able to duck the strike to her head as a long spindly Hollow came towards her in sudden jerky movements. It's torso was thin and cylindrical, not unlike that of a wasp. Its face, or at least the white expressionless mask that represented its face, protruded from its abdomen. Its extended teeth glinted dangerously sharp in the daylight as it flexed its jaw in preparation for her. It moved sloppily towards her, its fantastically long arms swung to and fro and ended not in hands but in long talons. The bones in its appendages clacked together grotesquely.

With a screeching bellow the hollow jumped high in the air and breached the distance that separated them, his claws digging deep into the concrete where Karin was standing. The force of the hit threw Karin back and she used the momentum of the blast to propel her body into a somersault. She landed awkwardly a few feet closer to the Hospital where Yuzu and her body waited with baited breath. Karin quickly got to her feet and felt the stinging pain on her knee where a giant raspberry scrape blossomed and bled down her shin. The hollow moved towards her, mindless with hunger and bloodlust. It was at least twenty feet tall, it moved faster than the eye could see, had massive claws and the ability to pulverize anything in its way with a cannon blast from its mouth. Karin picked up a rock.

"Go," Kon hollered as he stood trucunantly before the massive spirit, it was like a cork trying to stop a flood, "I'll distract him."

"Are you kidding?!" Karin had enough time to say before the Hollow roared again and her eardrums clamored with the sound, filling her head with the ringing echoes. The Hollow wasted no time and launched itself towards Karin but the yellow golden lightning of Kon's plushy body rocketed up to intercept the strike. The little lion was not much of a deterrent and Karin gasped in horror as one of its little paws was nearly severed entirely. The fluff scattered around her, falling and mixing with bits of gravel, dirt and blood. Kon wasted no time and like the tiny fly like airplanes in King Kong he circled the Hollow's head annoying it enough to forget Karin for the moment.

But Kon was already wounded and he could not keep up the momentum necessary to elude capture. In a powerful swipe Kon was caught between the massive claws ready to be ripped to shreds. Karin had just enough time to throw the rock in the air and scissor kick it at the Hollows head. It glowed a brilliant blue and hit the Hollow right in the eye. It was not a soccerball but the rock served its purpose, she barrel rolled between its legs and caught Kon when the creature dropped him. The Hollow growled in rage when the rock embedded itself in its left eye, but it did not distract the Hollow long enough for Karin to make an escape and now she was caught with nowhere left to run.

Suddenly the Hollow lurched sideways as his whole left side was encapsulated in rock hard ice. It tried to move once again towards Karin, too hungry for her power to realise its impending doom. The Hollow reeled forwards and then back again as a second strike completely disintegrated it.

Karin took a relieved step back and crouched on the floor, too tired to do anything other than try to nurse the stinging pain of her knee. Kon lay in suspect quiet on her lap.

"Kurosaki?"

Karin more than half expected to hear the voice and immediately looked up. Before her stood the dark clad silhouette of the fair haired captain, his features so delicate they were almost pretty. She breathed out the breath she didn't realise she had been holding. She wasn't sure what it was, maybe it was that she was now dead and was seeing him as ghosts would see their reapers, but he seemed something more cruel and dark and vicious. Even still she was never more glad to see him. With more allayment than she meant to convey, she said, "Toshiro."

Histugaya gaped at her unattractively for a moment and then shut his mouth with and audible clack.

"You're dead!?" he said, an expression of bewildered frustration on his face.

"Thanks for the update," Karin said and raised a hand towards him, he watched her curiously for a moment and then stretched his hand out, grabbed hers and lifted her up to her feet."There's no Chain of Fate."

"So you noticed that, did you, Captain?" Kon quipped needlessly from beside her.

"Yes," Hitsugaya replied but the word sounded an awful lot like '_no Duh_'. His hand still gripped an unsheathed Hyorinmaru and Karin was instantly wary of why that might be so. Karin stepped forward but misjudged the severity of her wounded knee and for a heart stopping moment felt the eeriness of freefalling as she stumbled forward. She felt rather than saw Hitsugaya's quick intervention and she hung on his arms like a meniscus for a moment until she pushed against gravity and straightened. She stood steadily though gingerly, her left knee felt like it was the site of an atomic blast and she carefully shifted most of her weight to her right leg. Hitsugaya no longer held her forearm as a counterbalance, but his canny eyes remained on her knee as if he was mentally dissecting it.

"I should be on my way," she managed to say in a rather strange form of understatement.

"Where are you going?" Hitsugaya asked his bright green eyes lifting to meet her blue ones.

"Hospital. I have a date with a pretty girl; 'bout my height, black hair, kinda gangly?"

Hitsugaya ignored her witticism and stared intently to what she held in her fist. He identified it instantly and the flash of recognition as his eyes flew to pin hers was not lost on neither Kon nor Karin.

"That's not going to work," he replied.

"Oh, yeah. Well, from what this little fluff ball tells me, that's not exactly set in stone," she replied. Distantly, she recognised that she was losing patience at an exponentially swift pace.

"No. It's not set in stone, but I'm pretty sure the ink it was written in was waterproof."

"Well, at least I'm willing to try. Kon, come on. We have business."

She sidestepped him fluidly, but it would have been a whole lot better if she didn't have to contend with the rather pronounced limp. As, it was her exit was fairly lacking in statement. Kon was prepared to follow his limping surrogate sister, when he saw the looming shadow of the 10th Division captain eclipse his own.

Hitsugaya held a firm grip on Karin's pale forearm, an unreadable expression on his face.

"Wait."

Karin stiffened at the power in his voice. It was unwavering and commanding. It was not a tone used with fleeting teammates or friendly acquaintances. It was the inflection of control; a reaper's tone for bringing order to wayward souls. And for that instant she understood him perfectly. The person she had not dared yet call a friend was going to do what he was made to do. Hitsugaya was going to reap her soul.

The realisation was like stepping into a bear trap; quick and brutal. The feeling of barely checked betrayal shuddered up her spine and into her soul. And then came the horror of knowing that if she were to pass through that proverbial veil, she would do so with no memory of who she was. She knew enough about spirits to know that once they moved on to the great beyond, their memories were wiped clean. It was a sort of cleansing, in preparation for their next reincarnated life. She would forget everything about her previous life.

She would forget her twin sister and how she always tilted her head slightly to the left when she asked a question. She would forget that Ichigo had sung her songs when she was sad and thought no one else was around to hear him. She'd forget her old man and how he always seemed to have a ready smile, even when he thought that it might kill him. She would forget her mother... she would forget her mother when there was already so little to forget. She'd forget that her mother loved orange soda or that she smelled like rainwater and pomegranate tea. She'd forget the feel of her mother's hands on her head as she tried to coax Karin's limp black hair into cute little pigtails. She'd forget the colour of her mother's eyes and how she stared out at Karin from her brother and sister's own brown ones.

She'd forget _her_. Imagine? She couldn't even imagine it. She could not let that happen. Not ever.

Suddenly, Karin was gripped with an uncharacteristic feeling to flee, something in her qualified it as the rarely acted upon escapist part of the fight or flight reaction.

She shrugged off Hitsugaya's grip violently, grabbed a squawking Kon and ran. Her feet pounded against the pavement and each step sent an electrifying pulsing pain shooting through her knee, but she ignored it steadfastly.

She could feel Hitsugaya in quick pursuit behind her. His spirit power was like a condensed supernova, a small local pulsar thumping in time to her heartbeat, weaving in and out of her perception. She was startled at first when she recognised what it was, but she picked up her feet and ran all the faster.

She ran through glass and concrete and wood. She was in a building. At first she thought it might be the hospital and felt a giddy kind of elation at the thought that she was so close to being reunited with her body and Yuzu. But then she realised it must have been some sort of business building because she passed through cubicles and swiveling chairs. Men and women dressed smartly in black and grey business suits went about their routine, answering phones and typing on their laptops obliviously. No one noticed the fleeing Karin as she passed by them without so much as a breeze to signify her ghostly presence.

Karin stopped abruptly, Kon dangled from her hand, protesting all the while, but she paid him no mind. The seeming endlessness of a corridor stretched before her, she could feel Hitsugaya near and apparently so could Kon because he immediately quieted his protests. At the far end of the corridor stood broad steel reinforced double doors, the red emergency sign above it signified its purpose. She all but flew towards it. Once on the other side the enclosed space of the winding staircase brought a moment of claustrophobic panic, but she forced herself to take the stairs three at a time. She ran ever upwards until she passed through the last dark door and dived into sudden blinding light.

There was an instant of bemused indecision once she reached the roof of the building, like she didn't really know what she was doing. She walked towards the ledge of the roof and looked down. She could see people and cars far below her. The world from where she stood was rendered in miniature, like something out of Yuzu's room; toys and trinkets she scattered on shelves in random affection. The neighboring building was at least fifty feet across with nothing but empty space between them, and the side of it was at an impossible incline. The wind blew Karin's dark hair into her face and eyes. The sky was a painful blue and she thought, crazily, that if she raised her arms, she'd be able to touch it. She looked at the only exit. Karin was trapped.

"Kurosaki!" Hitsugaya's forced tenor startled her.

She turned towards him, slowly she regarded him, an unreadable expression on her face. She walked towards him three steps, her eyes trained on his unsheathed sword. There was a moment when even Hitsugaya was unsure about what to do and then Karin spun on her heel in a move so wrought with legerity that it would not have been suspect on a ballerina. She turned towards the ledge and ran full pelt towards the side of the building. Karin held her breath and jumped. Hitsugaya cursed and ran forwards but only managed to catch a few strands of black hair as Karin vaulted gracefully over the ledge.

Kon screamed through the entire process, but Karin's lungs had fallen somewhere below her knees and she could hardly make a sound when her momentum suspended her through the air between both skyscrapers. She was still short of her shot by a laughable amount.

When she was young, much too young to leap off buildings and such. When her arms were too short to reach over her own head and touch her ears with opposite hands, when she was still pink from babyhood and her mother was still alive, she used to wish she could hover above the ground. It wasn't flight exactly, she remembered thinking that to fly would be incredible– indefinable– but she also understood that it would not be like so many fairytales would have you believe.

There would not be any of those pretty fictions of effortless grace. There would be blood and sweat and tears. Like dancers en pointe; taut muscles and corded sinews trembling with exertion. It would be painful– difficult dedication– and Karin was an awfully lazy child. So she found a compromise, a midway point in both fantasies. If she could just float above the ground, she thought that she could have both worlds without the effort. It was all rather pragmatic. After her mother died she stopped thinking in abstract wishes, but sometimes in nothing more than forgetful dreams she still imagined herself ungrounded.

Karin closed her eyes and pushed off from thin air.

She only expected to just fall through, but in that moment her foot found purchase with the air and she was able to leap forward. The momentum of her sudden hurdle mid air brought her crashing the remaining distance towards the roof of the other building and she tumbled head over heels until she came to a stumbling stop in a heap of dirt and blood. Kon hollered from somewhere beneath her.

"That was amazing, Karin-chan," Kon said in genuine admiration when he was finally able to stand. A smile bloomed on Karin's face like quick flaring fire, and Kon was momentarily taken aback by the feelings it conjured.

"Kurosaki," Hitsugaya said.

"Toshiro," She had expected him and her voice did not waiver though there was the barest hint of a question in the appellation. The lingering elation of her unexpected flight left her giddy with adrenaline, but she was too tired to keep running. He was too fast and her knee was throbbing something nasty. She wasn't going to just turn herself over to him, but she was willing to hear him out. She straightened her shoulders and faced him squarely. Both feet rooted to the floor like trees.

They stared at each other for what seemed like ages, neither one willing to back down after the scene had been set and die cast. His were for reason's of duty (to her, his creed and caste) and honour. Her reason's were for survival and the knowledge that her's had suffered enough death for one lifetime.

"This is certainly turning out to be a swell day," Kon stepped in between them, interrupting both adolescents with the finality of a judge, "Now, unless that's the sexual kind of tension, I suggest we take a moment to assess the situation."

"Sexual kind of– ! Why you little–" Hitsugaya's face had twisted itself into a spazzed type of snarl, and he reached for the offensive plushy with killing intent until Karin beat him to the punch, so to speak.

Kon flew in an arc through the air and hit Hitsugaya square in the face, the aftermath of Karin's critically accurate kick. Kon immediately wrapped all his appendages around Hitsugaya's cursing face. Karin smiled ruefully at catching two birds with one stone. That'll teach him to chase me around like a headless chicken, she thought.

"I know your violence stems from your unrestrained affection for me, my dear little sis!" Kon wailed as Hitsugaya yanked at him in an effort to shake him off from smothering his face.

"Off!" Hitsugaya barked, finally acquiring a substantial hold on the little fabric beasty and flinging him to the concrete sidewalk.

Hitsugaya turned to face Karin once again. His face an intimation of frustrated determination. His flaxen hair caught the light of the sun and there was an instant of a million tiny stars hanging from each silver strand. Karin watched him warily she didn't trust him as far as she could throw him after he had chased her through half a city block. He looked at something over and across her left shoulder and then sighed.

"I'll help you," he said finally, his eyes shining on her like moonlight.

"No way, you were just about ready to haul my ass to the afterlife– " she began untrusting of his turnaround. His earlier decision had hurt her, inexplicably so, and she was rather quick to defend her smarting feelings, "If you think you– "

"It's what I _am_," he cut her off at her reproach, "You're a spirit. And you're strong. It's like a beacon of bright light to anyone that's willing to see. It's dangerous for you here now. You don't_belong_."

"Bullshit. There's no _chain_," she said gesturing towards her chest, "explain that to me. I don't belong, damn right I don't belong! How the hell can I be dead if there's no sign of a– a...chain of fate?"

"I'm not entirely sure," he said looking at her intently. His eyes were a strange pale green like the eyes of a cat or a bird, rimmed with eyelashes so fair as to be almost invisible. They had a cold unfathomable glitter. His gaze was penetrating, like the unpleasant feeling of someone pushing their finger into your belly button. It was invasive and consuming.

She looked away in frustration, her hands digging into the pockets of her denim shorts.

"Okay," she said at last, her shoulders slumped and she nodded, "okay."

He nodded as if to qualify that very idea and grabbed her hand. The action was so fluid and unexpected that it tightened Karin's throat and caught her motionless in a wondering stare, "What are you doing?"

"Come on," he said pulling on her arm, "the longer we stand around the bigger chance there is that another Hollow will appear."

She looked towards Kon, but the little stuffed lion just srugged his shoulders and followed. Karin limped along, hoping beyond hope that Ichigo's little devise would work. If only Ichigo were here, she thought. But her brother was AWOL and all she had to trust in was Toshiro's steady grip on her hand.

AN

Here's another chapter. Thanks to Karin-chan9473 for the rec's they were pretty good. And yes this will be a Hitsugaya/Kurosaki pairing-- or is it Toshiro/Karin?And thanks to all those who reviewed, your comment's help me get inspired, it's awesome! Please keep the reviews coming I want to hear what you think of it so far.

OMG! I just found out there's a new Bleach movie with Hitsugaya in it. I wanna see it!

By the way the tittle of my fic is a play on the first episode of bleach called 'death and the strawberry'. Ichigo is a homonym for strawberry in Japanese and Karin is a homonym for a quince, but I thought the word Quince was too close to Quincy so I chose to go with another name for the fruit, 'cause a quince sorta looks like a golden apple. Anyway it was the fruit in many greek tales where the hero has to retrieve the fruit from evil clutches or whatnot. In Norse mythology golden apples grant immortal life, so I thought what the hell, if the shoe fits...


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Hitsugaya lead her though the city streets at a relentless pace, but Karin was tired and slow. It was hard reversing gears so abruptly; one minute he was her rescuer, the next her executioner, and now her friend. Sort of, anyway.

Her knee hurt. Suddenly she missed the step of the curb and gasped loudly when the impact of her feet meeting the street anew jostled her bones.

Hitsugaya froze in front of her at the sound. He turned around and all but cursed at loud at his lack of foresight. Her knee was a frightful mottled black and purple mess. Under the drying layer of clotting blood he could see that it was swollen almost twice its size. It was a wonder she had been able to walk let alone almost outrun him. It also made him wonder what exactly Kurosaki Ishin was feeding his children.

He looked at her eyes– a smoked blue color that tried to be grey but didn't quite make it– and couldn't help but feel a tiny tug of admiration at her tenacity.

"Get on," he said when he kneeled in front of her and presented his back.

"Are you nuts!?"

"Not really." he replied flatly.

"I'm not riding pinion, you'll just have to put up with my slow pace."

Hitsugaya felt the tug of admiration at her tenacity being violently upended by irritation.

"Don't be stupid. We don't exactly have time to waste," he turned to look up at her face from where he kneeled, "or have you forgotten you're undead?"

She was about to reply when Kon all but waltzed in between the two kids and said, cotton eyebrows raised suggestively, "Come on, sis, if he wants you to ride him hard– "

He never finished that sentence because Hitsugaya had stomped right on Kon's face and held him under his foot malevolently. Kon's muffled protests from beneath the young reaper's sandal clad foot did nothing to back off the boy. In fact, the rather lewd sounds the plushy was making only enticed the reaper to grind his foot, and with it Kon's plushy body, further into the concrete.

Karin stood staring at the pair, a spark of recognition flashed behind her blue eyes.

She had been trying to place him this entire time. From the moment Kon stepped into her brother's room sipping on her boxed juice, there had been a haze of familiarity about him. It was enough to dispel the shock of finding a stuffed animal magically become animate and recruit him to help her find covenant with her body.

He seemed so acquainted with her, so it was easy to disregard the fact that she should be butt fucked goggled at seeing such a irregularity in the natural order of biological things. Karin was what...?_ Gifted_, with what those hack biddy mediums would call the Sight. And to her sense of Sight, Kon the magically vulgar plush lion was _familiar._

It wasn't like the spiking pain that bloomed behind her temple when a Hollow was near and it wasn't like the dizzying underwater feeling of Hitsugaya's spirit power, but something that hovered eerily in between.

She couldn't describe Ichigo. He had an incredible personal magnetism. She had never in her life felt so much raw force, he was like a typhoon at times and she wasn't sure where he ended and she began. There was everything supernatural about it, too, and _raw_ wasn't exactly the right word either.

Being around Ichigo literally felt like constantly being shocked with electricity. Like the feeling of sticking a fork into a light socket and then being dunked in ice water. She wasn't trying to make a pretty analogy to what her feelings where about when she was with him, but what it _actually_ felt like _physically_. She often thought that if she ever brought some sort of EMP sensor the needle would spike right out of the scale.

It was not like the connection she had with Yuzu, she didn't think there was anything as blood woundingly intrinsic as what she and her twin shared, but it _was_ overwhelming.

As a newborn– memories too short to be remembered consciously, so the information she had of those early months was second hand– she had had an exceptionally hard time adjusting to her brother's extraordinary presence. Her father would always take joy in recounting Karin and Ichigo's first meeting. There was always the oddly half perverted half innocent gleam in their father's eyes when he told his irascible teenage son that baby Karin's first reaction on meeting her brother was to burst into fits of uncontrollable shrieking.

She suspected that Ichigo had a bigger hand in forming Karin's own character and constitution than she did herself. She had lived with his Ichigo-ness– for lack of a better term–for so long that she had relegated it to a deep part of her subconscious.

His power was still present, but it hovered and pulsated in a small corner of her being. It made her heart flutter and flit but it did not render her completely up heaved, like it used to when she was an infant.

So it was an ass felling shock when one day she approached her brother and found that the electricity was gone.

"You're Ichigo," she said in sudden final realisation.

Kon hobbled out from underneath Hitsugaya's foot and looked up at her self consciously.

"I was wondering when you were going to call me out on it," he said.

"You were the one that dragged me home that first night when all this began," her brow furrowed, "All those times and nobody even noticed you weren't Ichigo."

"It is rather hard to tell, Karin-chan– " Kon began, he seemed at once oddly penitent and ashamed.

"Don't Karin-chan me! I knew something was foul, but I could never place it– the lewd comments, Ichigo suddenly and_ repulsively_ chasing after...well..._skanks_..." she pinned Kon with a decidedly acute scowl and he cringed, "I thought it was puberty!"

Hitsugaya held a barely restrained snort of amusement. The sound escaped him anyway and she whirled on him unamused and shot him a critical glare. He stared back at her flatly and said, "As amusing as all this is, we really should get going."

His flat uninflected voice seemed to take out most of the edge of her indignant anger at being fooled for so long by the people she loved. Ignoring Kon and his kicked puppy posture, she squared her shoulders and resolved to, at least in part, heed Hitsugaya's advise. It was time they put an egg in their shoes and beat it.

Hitsugaya crouched again and offered to take her piggyback. She was again glaring at Kon with a kind of put out indignation, but she redirected her focus to Hitsugaya.

"I thought we already went through this." she said.

"It's either this or I fling you over my shoulder like a sack of rice, your choice."

Karin deliberated for a second and made a move to just keep walking and call him out on his bluff when suddenly a sharp white hot bolt shot right through her knee and fried her synapses. It felt as if someone had slipped a glass encrusted noose of cable around the upper part of her knee and yanked it tight. Her vision swam and she clenched her hands so tightly that her nails bit deep into the soft part of her palms, but she didn't cry out.

As the misery of her knee dulled into a thudding ache, she closed her eyes and sagged a little. Wasn't this the _second_ time her knee pitched a fit in Hitsugaya's presence? She was so preoccupied in keeping from screaming in agony that she did not even feel when Hitsugaya pulled her onto his back. She gritted her teeth and painfully arranged her knee to lie flat against his side and curled her arms unwillingly around Hitsugaya's shoulders and neck.

From a dead stand still, the reaper leapt into the air and Karin's stomach suddenly seemed to plummet somewhere near her toes. This was nothing like the easy ascent of being on an airplane or the vertical lift of an elevator. This was _I've-taken-one-too-many_-_crazy_-_pills_ flying. Grabbing on was a good idea, she decided in a daze. Gripping for dear life was an even better one. At least she didn't start shrieking in terror. Kon had decided otherwise and screamed so loudly she thought he might cough out a lung.

Less than seconds later, it seemed, Hitsugaya stealthily landed in the Hospital's triage. The ambulances with their red and white war paint brooked the curved curb of the ER as the reaper, girl and stuffed lion passed by.

Karin still gripped Ichigo's little trinket in one white knuckled hand. She still straddled the reaper's back unceremoniously and the edge of the magical object where it jutted out of Karin's small pale hand poked Hitsugaya's collar bone unpleasantly.

"Which way?" Hitsugaya asked as they neared the labyrinthine antiseptic corridors of the Hospital.

"How should I know?" Karin answered irately. She was tense, her whole body ached with an un-channeled nervousness at what they were attempting.

"You have a spirituous power, even when you were alive it was pretty obvious. Now that you're uninhibited by a physical vessel you should be able to wield it to a significantly stronger degree. Focus your energy in finding your body."

She tried to focus, her eyes closed and the fist that held Ichigo's device trembled with the effort.

"Nothing,"she exhaled angrily, " I'm getting jack shit."

"You're not trying hard enough, you should be able to do this." he shifted her weight on his back and tried to peer up at her face, "Try to imagine you're a string attached to a bigger ball of yarn, follow the energy like you would a rope to its other end."

"What?Yarn? Are you kidding me?"

"Just do it, Kurosaki." he said indignantly.

Karin did what he asked. She imagined she was a thin string sitting idly on the ground, then another version of Karin, a human one this time, picked it up with one hand and began to follow where yarn Karin would end in a ball. The Human Karin wound the red yarn of the inanimate Karin around all four of her fingers until they were swathed in a thick rope of the red yarn. She stared down at her hand and relised she had herself wrapped around her fingers. The connection suddenly snapped like someone sliding shut a shoji screen, the yarn Karin and the Human Karin disappeared from the real Karin's mind's eye and she snatched open her eyes.

"It didn't work," she said bemused, " I thought for a moment I had it..."

"Try it again, we can't very well go searching room to room for your sequestered body." Hitsugaya snapped. Kon was suggesting things again and it was fouling his mood at every word.

"I can't help it if your metaphors suck it, you try to envision yourself as a ball of yarn and let me see how well you make out." Karin said.

Kon opened his mouth to say something when Hitsugaya beat him to it.

"Shove it, Kon." he growled, then to Karin, "Try again."

She closed her eyes. This is pointless, she thought. She didn't feel anything, much less where her body would be. She could feel herself panicking. What if she was no longer able to return to her body and that was the reason she could not locate it? She searched for those energies nevertheless, trusting that Hitsugaya couldn't be wrong about this. I mean he was young sure, and he sucked big time with metaphors but he was elite, he had to know his shit. Karin refused to let herself believe other wise.

It was like picking apart a spider's web, the slivers of silk sticking to her fingers as she touched them unwilling to let go. But still she found nothing of her own spiritual signature. She grit her teeth and tried again, refusing to give it up when all that was between her and her goal was a concrete labyrinth of a building.

Karin kept her eyes so tightly closed that pinwheels and sunbursts of dark spots spread across her creased eyelids. It was vertiginous and soon Karin realised that it was useless, she felt nothing. But Karin did not give way to despair, she didn't even dwell on why that nothingness _was_, she just focused her energies on Yuzu. Wherever _she_was her body would be there too.

She found her sister as soon as she thought of her. A smooth golden glow appeared, wrapped around her and she followed the tendrils of warm gold as they snaked around the corridors.

"Follow this passage up to the end and then turn two rights and a left." she said, she could feel her sister's anxiety through the gold, but just the presence of Yuzu, no matter how distraught, put a calming balm on Karin's finely ground nerves.

Hitsugaya wasted no time and followed her directions to a T. Finally they stopped at the third floor of the Intensive Care unit. They stood infront of the ominous doorway, room number 115. Karin couldn't help it and muttered, "Ichi– Ichi-go."

"Come on," Hitsugaya said with no comment and shifted his weight under her and entered the room. Kon was silent and Karin was thankful for it.

The room was not unfamiliar to her, there were many rooms just like this in the Kurosaki clinic. White washed walls and the sterile smell of oxygenated water and rubber gloves permeated the air. The steady beeping of medical equipment blinked into existence, and beneath that the gentle susurration of the breathing machines.

Yuzu lay with her head on the hospital bed, just right of the supine Karin's hip. Her hand still held her sister's as she had in the ambulance an eternity ago.

When Hitsugaya stepped into the room, Karin on his back, it nearly broke her damned heart when Yuzu turned towards her. Yuzu looked about the doorway of the hospital room a brilliantly bemused expression on her tear streaked face, and yet she saw no trace of her much longed for sister.

Just as Karin moved forward they heard faint footfalls and telltale swish of a doctor's white lab coat outside their corridor. All three adolescents turned towards the door and awaited the doctor to step into the room. The man walked in and there was only the slightest of hesitation as his spectacled eyes pinned Yuzu, but Karin noticed it and she knew that Hitsugaya must have too, because he moved in to stand a little closer to her as if he could physically shield her from whatever the man had to say. It was disheartening and she wished he hadn't done so.

"Kurosaki-san, your father has given me permission to disclose your sister's condition."

"When will she wake up," Yuzu inhaled shakily, "will she be okay?"

The physician looked at her sadly, but beneath the genuine regret Karin could see that he felt no more for Yuzu than he would hearing a sad story in a movie. The anguish and raw emotion of this situation was nothing new to this doctor and although he regretted such bad news it was nothing he hadn't already seen. Karin felt like hitting him.

"I'm sorry, your sister is in a coma. She was clinically dead for five minutes, even if she does wake up, the chances that she would do so without any neural deterioration is...unlikely. Karin will most probably be mentally incapacitated. Your sister is very strong, the fact that her body had fought to stay alive for so long is a testament to that. But I'm afraid the likelihood of Karin waking from her coma is very slim. I've already spoken to your father. I'm very sorry."

Yuzu took all the information in stride, the doctor put a hand on her shoulder in comfort but she very politely asked to be left alone with her sister. The doctor nodded and he left. Yuzu sat stiff backed in her chair, then slowly she seemed to sink into herself and she burst into sudden, terrible, tears.

"Yuzu," Karin said uselessly and reached for her sister from across Hitsugaya's back. Hitsugaya gently put Karin down and she gingerly moved towards Yuzu. The vulnerability in the action left Karin's face naked to things Hitsugaya was unprepared to see.

"Yuzu, don't listen to that man," her eyes shone fiercely and she stood very close to her sister's trembling form, "don't listen, Yuz, I'm right here. I'm _right_ here and _I'm not going to leave you_. I promise.

Hitsugaya felt intensely embarrassed at witnessing such an intimate moment between the sisters, even though one of them was completely unaware of it. He cleared his throat slightly to get her attention because he didn't trust himself not to say something disingenuous. They didn't have a whole lot of time, he could already sense Hollow movement in the city and it would only be a matter of time before their thirst would lead them to the brilliantly powerful light that was Karin.

She turned towards him, the vulnerable expression gone, "Oh, right."

She strode purposely towards the bed, feeling the disconcert of seeing her own body so still and lifeless but for the rising and falling of her chest. Karin held Ichigo's device and suddenly she realised she didn't know what she was doing.

"What do I need to do?" she asked turning to Hitsugaya.

"_If_ it's going to work, the best chance you have is to place the devise to your body's chest," he stepped towards her careful to stay as far away as possible from the distraught Yuzu where she sat in a chair next to the hospital bed, "your soul must have contact with your body and when your body begins to glow for a moment you'll be reunited."

He didn't sound particularly convinced and Karin distinctly heard the unsaid 'theoretically' at the end of his sentence.

"Okay," she said and placed the little silver device to her body's chest.

They both waited what seemed like an eternity. She wanted to lift her eyes to Hitsugaya's but she dared not to in case she missed anything. Her hands were both planted on her body's chest and she held them up just so they sunk a few inches into her chest. She wiggled her fingers experimentally and they peaked out from her body's chest like fish out from beneath the water.

Minutes passed. The little devise stayed as cold and uninteresting as ever. She could hear Yuzu's breathing from across the bed and the muffled sounds of her hiccups. Yuzu always got hiccups when she cried.

The cardiogram steadily beat with her heart's rhythm, but apart from that that was the only movement from the bed. No glow. No sudden reincarnation with her body.

Nothing happened and Karin couldn't hold back the bitter feeling of surprise even though 'nothing' was exactly what a small part of her expected to come out of this whole plan of hers.

Hitsugaya stepped up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder, "Let's go."

"Where? I should stay here. Yuzu needs me." she said bitterly.

Hitsugaya sighed heavily, "This is ridiculous–"

"Well, I'm _sorry_– "

"Hold it with the sarcasm, Kurosaki. That's not what I meant," He waited for her to turn around and look at him before continuing restlessly, "You're obviously alive, but you're also a spirit and you have no _Chain of Fate._ It makes absolutely _no sense._ I can't even reap you properly."

They both half expected Kon to make a vulgar innuendo and half waited for it, but the little lion just stood at the end of Karin's Hospital bed, his button eyes in an all too serious lock on the supine Karin.

"So what do we do now?" she said.

"We go see Urahara."

"This isn't time for a sweet tooth, Toshiro."

He looked at her balefully, "Come on."

Karin gave one more promising look at Yuzu ( soon, Yuz, this is will all be just like some bad dream, she thought.) and then nodded her head. He took her hand and lifted her up on his back, his hand gently slid to lock behind her knees, mindful of her injury although he was clearly pissed off at her.

Karin found the contrariness endearing. She wrinkled her nose in self mocking for thinking so.

"Climb on, Kon." she called the little lion, he shook himself from introspective thought and launched himself onto Karin.

Kon peered in mock curiosity at Hitsugaya, "Don't get too fresh with the idea of Karin straddling you all the time, captain. She's too young for you, for one thing."

Karin shoved Ichigo's trinket in Kon's mouth before Hitsugaya dropped her in his effort to get to the infuriating plushie.

* * *

AN

While it is an AU, this fic takes place while ichigo is off rescuing Orihime, BTW. This was a whole what if moment that popped into my head as I was watching bleach, I was thinking, "where is Hitsugaya during all this?" this and one other very interesting situation gave me the idea for writing this story. You'll see which situation in the upcoming chapters...i'm actually struggling right now not to give it away...fuck it, i was thinking 'you know I bet you Karin is the type of girl who would get into a fistfight with someone who was rediculously stronger than her', I had this image of Karin and Hitsugaya going at it like kids in a playground, all fists and teeth and just raw anger where even though they are both good fighters they're angry enough at_ each other_ to go at it old school. And then of course i had to think of a reason why they'd beat the shit out each other with nothing other than their fists, anyway this whole begining is an explanation for that one scene, my whole reason for the fic.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Hitsugaya readied them both and in a quick sprint began the process of defenestration when suddenly a spiking in spirit power drove them both to an astonished stop right before the ledge of the window. Karin's body sagged wholeheartedly against Hitsugaya and her head lolled forward ungracefully. The spirit power was so close (in fact it seemed to be right in the corridor) and so strong that had Karin not already been off her feet she would have surely collapsed from its intensity.

"Wha...?" she said in pain laced bemusement.

Hitsugaya turned towards the door and let go of Karin. She slid off of him slowly and he held an arm towards her as balance for her ruined knee. His other hand was already on the hilt of his sword.

Kon was still struggling to be free of the object stuffed forcefully down his gullet.

"There's someone in the corridor with enough spirit power to reach Captaincy twice over," he said.

"What does that mean?" she asked, her brain still didn't seem to function in any normal fashion.

"It means we better hope they're on our team, or we're about to get fuc–"

"Kon!" Hitsugaya hissed, "Shut up and make yourself useful."

Hitsugaya pushed the plushie towards the door to check out the probable opposition. Hitsugaya was wary of bringing a fight to a hospital, especially one where Karin's body was being kept alive. It'd be best if they could avoid whatever was out there until he could lure it out ( away from Karin in all her varying forms) and soundly dispatch it to it's eternal rest. So out Kon went, with the promise that if Kon messed up this simple act of reconnaissance– or suggested that Hitsugaya's motives were anything but pure...let's face it, it didn't take the king of perverts to come up with a million different things two teenagers could do in a room, with a bed, alone ( the fact that it was an occupied hospital bed with the girl's twin in the room only assured kink)– so help him Hitsugaya would kill him so fast that Kon's head would spin. And probably literally, too.

Kon might have sensed this from the young captain so he quietly stepped out into the corridor with nary a comment.

Kon knew who it would be before he even peeked around the door frame. How in the world was he going to keep Karin from finding out her father was the ex Tenth Division captain of the Gotei Thirteen? It had been easy fooling Ichigo, but Karin was an entirely different story. The girl was _quick_, and she had a mean roundhouse.

Kon made his way silently towards the two men who seemed to be arguing in the corridor. One of them was the dour faced doctor that had spoken with Yuzu and the other was unmistakably a pissed off Isshin Kurosaki.

"You just make sure those euthanasia lovin' surgeons keep their grubby paws off my little girl and we'll be straight. " Isshin's ever present lackadaisical tone slid over the cold steel of his anger, but the nonchalance only made the rage underneath that more acute. And this alone was enough hint that something was terribly wrong.

The doctor's smooth tenor was a beautiful timbre, but the sound was nothing to the acrid and dismissive pragmatism of the physician,"I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but let's be frank, your girl is probably Hollowed out, and if she _isn't_, a reaper somewhere out there has beat you both to her. She's _gone._"

In one smoothly fluid motion Isshin had the doctor pinned to the corridor wall, the move was familiar to Kon and there was no question to Ichigo's paternity.

"Listen carefully," Isshin pressed his face close to the recalcitrant dark haired man, his hand fisted with the breast of the man's lab coat, "I let you slide the once cus' Ichigo can take care of his own– he took his mother's death the hardest of us and if this is what he has to do to keep from falling to pieces I'm gonna support him with my dying breath. That kid's got more balls than brain but I don't see him failing us anytime soon–" Kon shuddered as the ex captain cum wary father unleashed a reckless amount of spiritual energy and– remarkably– the doctor seemed to respond in kind. The shimmering, whispering fields of power enveloped them both and Kon distinctly recognized two, though different, equally powerful spiritual signatures,"But my girls...my girls...Don't fuck with my little girls, Ishida."

Isshin stepped back and released the doctor. The doctor, Ishida, pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and smirked, unmindful of his wrinkled shirt and lab coat, "What, Kurosaki? Did you think I was anticipating waiting till your girl went Hollow so that I could banish every trace of her existence, just to piss you off? Did you really think me such a petty asshole, Kurosaki?"

"Uh,_ yeah_."

Ishida straightened out his coat distastefully, "Well, at least we're straight on something."

Suddenly a nurse and an orderly came running up to the doctor in a professional hurried panic. The doctor's pager began to vibrate, the constant agitating buzzing drilled as the nurse and orderly came to a frenzied stop in front of the doctor.

"Doctor Ishida! There's a code White, you're needed immediately. There is a flood of code Blues in the geriatric wing. The hospital is short on staff and Triage looks like something out of a war movie. Pathology is having a field day," the orderly began.

"It's an epidemic and it's progressive!" the nurse finished as calmly as she could.

Ishida's face seemed to harden into granite and with one last look at Isshin he took off in the direction the orderlies lead. Kon saw the flashing of the silent alarms and knew something huge was happening. Something very possibly to do with why Karin had no Chain of Fate.

Kon hurried back into the room as fast as inhumanly possible.

"We gotta split, kiddies. There's a Quincy out in the corridor and the dude is a hoot." Kon told Hitsugaya.

The plushy knew right away the captain wasn't going to buy the whole 'there's a Quincy and he's rather mean' bull but he hoped the boy waited till Karin was out of ear shot before he began his interrogation.

Histugaya narrowed his eyes suspiciously and understood right away that Kon was trying to be stealthy but was failing miserably, what with the obvious glances in Karin's direction and the trademark tear drop sweat of liars on his forehead (how the thing was able to sweat was beyond him, though.)

"Alright. Let's get moving, " he gave Karin a firm shake into lucidity, something was stirring in the air and he wanted to get to Urahara's as quickly as possible, "Come on Kurosaki, don't piss yourself over a little demonstration of spirit power."

"Watch it, kid, I just might pee on _you_." her head snapped up mid loll and she answered as she piggybacked him once again.

"She's fine," Kon surmised in deadpan and they jumped out the window, Hitsugaya scowling all the way.

Karin hated this. It was _so_ embarrassing having to ride on Hitsugaya's back, but every single movement, even the wind blowing over her traumatized skin, caused her to freeze into white hot pain. Hitsugaya's hand was a cool contrast to the feverish heat of her knee, and for a crazy moment she wished he would pass those cool fingers over the swell of her knee; anything to be rid of the heat and pain. But before she had a chance to further embarrass herself by more or less knee humping his hand, they had arrived at the candy shop Hitsugaya was sure held all their answers.

What did a creepy dude in a candy shop have to do with those who had problems with their un-life?

A lot, apparently. But Karin was finding it rather hard in focusing all her attention to the unnatural scene unfolding before her. Bizarrely this sweet little ditty would not leave her brain; I'll take you to the candy shop

I'll let you lick the lollypop

Go 'head girl, don't you stop

Keep going 'til you hit the spot...woah.

This was her fifty cent's worth of thought on the matter at hand. The innuendo was thin enough to read a newspaper through it and Karin decided that the worst thing about Kon somehow being able to posses her brother's body all those times was that his perverseness and acuity towards the double entendre was catching.

_If it's not one thing it's another. What is wrong with you today, Kurosaki? What? You mean besides the being dead part?_ She asked herself. She groaned inwardly, and hoped Hitsugaya didn't feel the sound through where her chest met his back.

No sooner had they neared the front steps of the shop, Kon launched himself from Karin's shoulders and rocketed towards a man in a striped green bucket hat. The ball of gold arced through the air but before it could attach itself to it's be-hatted object, a huge bat came flying out of nowhere and hit the plushie out of the ball park. Life was certainly throwing curveballs at her lately, in fact right off the bat she'd say that dying was probably the most normal thing to happen to her today. It certainly gave her and Hitsugaya something to bat around. To say that this all came out of left field, would be cramming in one too many baseball metaphors for her liking.

"You owe me fifty bucks, Kon," said the flourescently red haired Jinta, "Don't think I've forgotten."

Kon struggled to get back up on his two little feet, howling and moaning melodramatically like an old deposed emperor, "Oooh, you wound me Jinta! You know my word is as good as gold!"

"Yeah, right," Jinta said lifting his bat up to rest on his left shoulder, "I'll believe that when you cough up the dough, Jackass."

Kon opened his mouth to say something unnaturally irritating, no doubt, when Hitsugaya cleared his throat.

"Karin Kurosaki has no Chain of Fate, " he said with no inflection, he still carried her on his back and she could feel his shoulder blades flex beneath her chest as he said it.

Karin frowned but the odd man in the bucket hat only smiled at them in amiable vagueness. From what was not shaded in obscurity by his bisected green and white hat, she could see that he was a handsome man. His sand coloured hair curled upwards from beneath the brim of his hat like an inverted umbrella and he had a chin and jaw sharp enough to cut through glass. When he smiled Karin finally understood why the soccer moms at the park always made a point to offer their kids a trip to the candy shop. She sure knew who's lollypop they wanted to lick.

Karin slapped her forehead.

"You'd best come in then," the man said ignoring Karin's outburst and gestured with the cane he held in his left hand.

They were lead through the aisles of the candy shop; stacks of Poky, pyramids of bon-bons– a horde of strategically placed gummy bears lined up as if readying for warfare stared her in the face. She saw Pez dispensers with rabbits sweet enough to literally gave you a toothache and miles and miles of licorice. Oddly enough she didn't feel at all hungry, even though it had been eons since she last ate. Hitsugaya made quick work of the aisles and soon they arrived to the backrooms of the store. The man– Urahara she now assumed– slid open a shoji screen and they arranged themselves quietly in the tatami covered floor. They sat around a low wooden table with Urahara on one side and Karin and Hitsugaya on the other. Karin quailed as she kneeled down to sit and Hitsugaya eyed her furtively for a moment before drawing his green eyes to the older man.

Urahara– throughout the entire process of leading them through the shop and then gesturing at them to take a seat in this small meeting room– had not taken his eyes off of Karin. It was unnerving to say the least but his attention was not unwarranted, it seemed. She could tell he was powerful, whoever this Urahara was he was not just some handsome candy shop owner, he was something unnatural. It would only be cogent that one unnatural being would be curious about another of its kind.

Urahara stared at Karin intently, a strange flickering half smile on his face, "So you're the one that made all that ruckus earlier today."

"Yea– huh?" Karin replied.

Urahara directed his stare to the young reaper beside her.

"Surely _you_ Captain Hitsugaya noticed the strange phenomena the moment this girl's soul was released?"

Karin suspected it was a loaded question, and one that Hitsugaya had no intention of answering. The stoic boy's fair complection pinked with barely restrained embarrassment, but as to what Karin was unsure. There seemed to be some sort of underlying power play between both males, like they were pitting hardened experience against precocious genius.

The boy stiffened his expression and instead of defending his apparent lack of attention he directed the conversation expertly in a direction that would be more suited towards his purpose and subsequently, Karin's.

"It's been established that Karin has powerful spirit power, but that in no way explains why, at point of death, she is apparently with out a Chain of Fate."

"When a person comes close to death," Urahara began. He looked straight at Karin as he said this, "the soul is pushed out of the body, but it is tethered to it by a link– a Chain of Fate– in fact that's what it looks like: in the beginning there was the word and the link was made manifest in chains– "

"Skip the prologue, professor," Hitsugaya said impatiently.

Urahara made an nonchalant dismissive gesture and continued, "As I was saying, when a person then dies the chain is severed and if all goes well a reaper ferries the soul to Soul Society to await reincarnation."

"What if it all _doesn't_ go well? What if in fact it goes completely pear shaped?"Karin asked.

Hitsugaya looked at Karin in bemusement, but Urahara smiled widely at her human idiom.

"I'm glad you asked," he said still smiling, he liked this girl already, "sometimes– rarely actually– a soul will be crossfired. In human terms it would be like a circuit breaker glitch. Like false contact...this would be much better if we had some diagrams– Tessai!"

What Karin took as a weird moment of Tourette's was belied by the shoji screen suddenly being swept open. The door revealed a giant muscled man sporting an apron and handle bar mustache. In his hands he held a large pad of paper– diagrams, Karin assumed dryly.

'Diagram' was giving it too much credit, the chicken scratch on the pad was discernible only because there were captions that read 'soul transmutation' and 'reversal of ectoplastic Deuterium in centripetal force' or 'Amplitude of an oscillation at an alternating current'. All the pictures looked like rabbits.

Karin felt a headache coming on.

"Which reminds me," Urahara had apparently finished 'explaining' and looked at Hitsugaya, "What happened to the centripetal force– the Hollow that crashed into our young friend?"

"I killed it." Hitsugaya replied.

The thing that had hurt her and in effect hurt Yuzu was gone and for the first time that day Karin felt a surge of irrepressible triumph flush through her and she said in morbid satisfaction, "Good."

Hitsugaya looked at her smiling triumphant face and blushed before he knew what was happening to him.

"This is serious," Urahara said after a moment. Hitsugaya couldn't agree more. He'd seen happy girls loads of times before, as far as he was concerned smiling seemed to be some kind of female imperative. But one look at Karin's beaming face, the way she _radiated_, it nearly took him for a loop. Hitsugaya shook his head minutely, it was of course flattering that she would think one of his deeds as satisfying. But he shouldn't let the moment affect him so, not when there were much more important things going on. Besides killing that hollow was nothing, he hadn't even had to release Hyorinmaru.

Imagine how she'd smile at you after she gets a peek at me, the Dragon whispered.

He looked over to Urahara hoping the older man didn't notice his flushed features– after spending all day with Kon, he was paranoid that every action would be interpreted as lascivious– but the older man looked on with a cold serious expression on his face.

Hitsugaya quickly focused his attention on Urahara, "What do you mean?"

"She's upset the Cycle. If Karin remains as she is no more souls will be able to cross into Soul Society and–"

"No souls will be able to be reincarnated." Hitsugaya finished in dread. He understood what was going to happen perfectly.

"Babies will be born without souls." Karin said in horror.

"The worlds– both this one and Soul Society would be reduced to empty vessels. And we'll all be out of jobs, " Urahara continued.

Karin couldn't help but think she had brought on the End of the World. She could picture the caption as Tessai would render it on his pad of paper, capital letters and all.

Before she had a chance to think about what she was doing she pushed Hitsugaya down on the floor and grabbed his sword. And in the next moment was out of the room, the store and into the street, running like the wind itself was carrying her. The thought that she might be causing irreparable damage to her knee never even crossed her mind.

Hitsugaya was startled so completely at her action. The way she had pushed him down– like a parody of a lover's embrace– short circuited something in his brain and his heart seemed to be trying to imitate a hummingbird's wings. He couldn't remember the last time someone had dared to push him down without killing intent, he wasn't sure if anything of the sort actually ever happened.

Hinamori was the only person he could ever say he loved– and even then it was hard admitting it to himself– and not even she had dared to breach his personal space. From the first moment he met Karin she had no compunction about doing so. When he found out her family name, he thought it was a Kurosaki thing. Then, when he found out she had a twin he thought it was a twin thing. People that were so close thought nothing about personal space, and maybe with Karin the trait had bled over to others as well. But whatever it was Hitsugaya understood with disconcertment that Karin was a very tactile individual.

When they first met, even when she knew he was something else, something supernatural, she had grabbed his hand like it was nothing. And then again after he had saved her from the Menos Grande out on the football pitch she had grabbed his shoulders with both her hands and kept him at arms length. Like she could overpower him, like she could keep him forever, like it was nothing.

It did not change the fact that it bothered him; it had bothered him then and it did so now.

He felt like he had run a thousand miles in a very short amount of time.

Kon hopped into the room in a panic.

"Where's Karin-chan going with your sword, captain Hitsugaya?" Kon asked, though he dreaded that he already knew the answer.

"She's going to kill her body." Hitsugaya replied as he took off after the suicidal girl.

Kon stood straight in front of his maker. No way in hell was killing Karin the only way to solve this mess, the stupid girl was so altruistic. Simple little idiot, Kon thought with unadulterated affection.

"What can be done?" he asked.

A maddening cabalistic smile spread across Urahara's face.

Hitsugaya found Karin sitting outside the window of her body's hospital room. She was sitting on the ledge of the tall building with her arms crossed over her knees and her head tucked into them. Hyorinmaru hung from limp pale fingers. When he approached her she lifted her head and looked at him forlornly.

Hitsugaya thought she had been crying but was surprised to find her face dry, there was a calm wounded expression in her eyes.

"I was very close, you know." she said conversationally, "I almost went through with it, I almost ran myself through with your sword."

She leaned her chin onto her crossed arms and looked like she was very tired. He waited until she continued, he glanced at Hyorinmaru but made no move to take the sword.

"Yuzu was still there," she continued, " she's got like zero perception, but I swear she knew what I was gonna do and– oh Toshiro! She threw herself over my body whispering that I promised over and over again."

She looked at him sadly, but her eyes remained clear and tearless. She uncurled her legs from under her and swung them over the ledge. Then she handed him his sword.

A quick mirthless laugh escaped her and he looked at her warily. Was she losing it?

"Stupid Yuzu, always remembering things at the most inopportune moment," Karin replied when she saw the look on his face, "she's right of course. I did promise I wasn't going to leave her."

He lifted his eyebrow at her. His eyes looked golden in the setting sun.

"So you're going to forsake the fate of the world for your sister's sake?"

"Don't be stupid, Toshiro! Of course not. We'll just have to find a way for me to save the world and keep my promise to Yuzu."

He looked at her appraisingly.

"It's Captain Hitsugaya, you call me Toshiro again and I'll be finishing what you started in that hospital room. Promise be damned"

Hitsugaya recalled the moment when she smiled at him at Urahara's and gave her a small triumphant smirk. He wasn't beaming, but Karin felt no less giddy because of it.

Hey!

Look plot!

Code white means pediatric emergency, code blue cardiac arrest. I put it in there because I figure the hospital would be the first place to notice the souls not being able to be born or go into Soul Society. Can you Imagine the mess in the maternity ward? The thing with Isshin and Ishida Sr. actually happened because of a reviewer, so thank desy for the unintentional suggestion.

also nefarious seraph 13 was hilarious in suggesting all those adjectives (?) that was fun reading.

Did you guys notice the startlement on Hitsugaya's face when karin grabbed his shoulders in epi 132? I did, he was all like whoa, for a split second. Anyway please review!


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Karin was perhaps the dead last candidate for going fangirl on you, but on the ledge of the fifth floor of Kurokara Hospital she felt that if Hitsugaya didn't say something appropriately sobering soon she just might geek out on him and start grinning like a wild idiot.

Bad ass as she wanted to be, it was such a relief to know that he wasn't going to ditch her... or worse decide that she was too much of a liability and send her on her one way ticket to the afterlife. As impulsive and altruistic as her recent attempt on her life might have appeared, she still didn't want to die. Again– ? Er, permanently.

"We should–"

When the shick of the window sliding open was heard Karin dismissed it as an orderly venting out a hospital room, but when she saw the hospital gowned man's jittery movement over the pane and onto the ledge her next words died in her mouth.

Hitsugaya's sword was already drawn and he swiftly stood on the ledge. The ledge itself was only about two feet wide, enough for Karin to sit astride but now slippery with evening dew. It was nothing to sit over five stories from the ground if you were already dead, but one miscalculation, one gust of wind too strong and living wouldn't be your present designation.

Karin watched in startled bemusement as the old man placed one bare foot on the ledge and pulled his body forward in a falling motion. He was old, and the blue veins on his liver spotted hands bulged out painfully. The man fell off the window and had it not been for the hospital gown snagging on the sill, he would have surely fallen off the ledge all together.

"Sir, what are you doing?! You need to get back into your room– " Karin began, stepping toward the man.

The wind picked up and shuffled the errant wispy grey hairs on the old man's head. The old man brought his right hand up to pull against the fabric of his hospital gown, Karin could just barely make out the man's name and birth date on the white plastic hospital bracelet he wore on a too thin wrist. The fabric came away with a loud rip just as a young woman, older than Karin but still young enough to convey that odd mix of adolescent outrage and bemusement.

"Grandpa! Come inside right now!" the girl said, fear mutating her voice into a shriek.

The man looked right at Karin– right at her– and Karin's stomach fell out from under her. Since her death that morning she had gone all day without being seen by the general public. Men and women would pass right through her incorporeal body– like passing through early morning mist– without flinching. Oddly enough she had gotten used to it fairly quickly.

But the old man's empty brown eyes locked with her grey ones and she couldn't help but flinch at their cold dead intensity. He opened his mouth in a silent scream and then he simply fell forward, plummeting five floors down but never losing his focus on her until he hit the concrete sidewalk far below.

It happened so quickly Karin had no time to react and the scream that bubbled beneath the surface caught in her throat and all she was able to get out was a strangled gasp.

The girl nearly fell out the window herself in her attempt to reach her grandfather, she looked right at Karin but unlike her grandfather Karin knew she didn't see her. She kept on looking around wildly hoping against hope the old man was just playing one of his old tricks.

Then the girl's eyes looked down to the sidewalk far below and she let out a long horrified and grief sharpened wail, her eyes gone impossibly wide. They were the same shade of brown as her grandfather's.

Karin felt ill.

Hitsugaya stared coldly at the after math, she could see him mouthing some words only from the corner of her eye because Karin's gaze was drawn instinctively down. What he was saying wasn't important to her right now. All she cared about was that she didn't want to see the man splattered on the sidewalk, but her brain didn't seem to be functioning correctly. Karin felt poleaxed. She couldn't yet appreciate how much she would regret seeing this death, but Hitsugaya did and he pulled her as close as he dared and held her there, stepping in front of her and blocking her view.

Distantly she noticed that the girl had collapsed. Fainted in the face of her grief. Karin couldn't even feel the least bit indignant at the stereotypical feminine response to stress.

"You have other things to distress about, Kurosaki. Don't lose focus now."

Karin felt the gorge rise in her throat. She felt like her head was filled with water, and if she moved her head too quickly it would slosh to one side and fall over the edge of her head. Like that old man, like how he sloshed to one side and fell over the edge of the precipice and hit the concrete sidewalk far below.

She could just make out as the paramedics and people ran to get help. She heard a woman's high pitch wail of horror and she turned away.

"But why did he do that? Kami, he just fell forward. Why couldn't I have just reached out? He was only a few feet away I could've pulled him back up, I could've– "

"Done nothing. If you had risked touching him who knows how that might have effected his trapped soul."

Karin recoiled like she had just been slapped, and Hitsugaya felt as low as if he had raised his hand and done it himself.

"His trapped soul– He...he did that because of me?" Karin looked like she might be sick, or collapse or hit him or possibly all three, "because I wouldn't release my mortal coil, because I continue to be the way I am?"

Hitsugaya pierced her with an unreadable expression, but he didn't move from where he stood so close in front of her.

Karin said nothing. But the intensity in her gaze suggested to Hitsugaya that she was about to do something he wasn't going to appreciate unless he said something but quick.

Hitsugaya sighed in frustration. With the shit that came out of his mouth sometimes, he felt like a real asshole, "That came out wrong. You're releasing an almost obscene amount of spiritual energy. Far more than any normal soul. But you didn't need to be witness to that, and I won't lie to you. What's happening is nasty and it won't get any better unless we do something to stop it. Soon."

He had wanted to make her feel better about what had just happened. Instead...instead he had basically told her it was both her fault it happened in the first place and that her touch might have cursed all Karmic receptivity forever. Chivalry was dead, and Hitsugaya had just killed it.

Karin was still standing right in front of him. One hand stretched out– palm flat against the white washed wall of the hospital as if it alone still held her in place.

"I knew it wasn't going to be a walk in the park...those diagrams, well, they were absurd," she tried for nonchalance but it came out something very much like horror, and she could not disguise that jittery quick speech, "but I didn't know it was going to be like this. I had no idea."

"Why would you?" Hitsugaya said honestly, "Your brother may be shinigami, but you're still just a little kid. It's only natural that you'd be afraid."

He wasn't a tactile individual and if she expected a hug...well that wasn't going to happen. He put a hand on her shoulder to try to make her feel better. An action that piqued when it was meant to soothe. Hitsugaya realised too late it was the wrong thing to do. She shoved him and placed her hands on her hips in sharp irritation and resentment.

"_Just a little kid_?! Look at yourself. Do you even _have_ eyes?"

"Of course I have eyes! You're overreacting."

Hitsugaya seemed to have yet to appreciate the importance of a rhetorical question.

"I'm overeacting," the calmness with which it was said did not bode well for Hitsugaya, "I'm _over_ reacting?"

"You're missing the point Kurosaki– "

"Oh shut up! There is no point! I'm dead, you dick. And like you so calmly, and abundantly, made clear I am apparently something of an abomination! I think this is an exceptionally appropriate reaction."

And then she shoved him. Again. For the third time that day.

Hitsugaya was about to retaliate when he spotted Kon's little yellow body streaking from building to building towards them.

"Urahara gave us a good enough explanation to figure out what needs to be done." Hitsugaya said instead.

Karin was taken aback by the sudden turn in conversation. She had been expecting a full out fight, had been looking forward to it in fact. There was a steadily growing tight ball of anger, fear and frustration boiling up inside her. And her rage towards Hitsugaya, was anger towards herself as well. The sudden pragmatism in which he addressed her effectively punctured a whole in her balloon of righteous anger, and she suddenly felt very much deflated.

"Really? And what the hell would that be?" she said deadpan, her headache was coming back.

"That's actually hitting the nail right on the head, sis." Kon said appearing on Karin's shoulder all of a sudden, like a pygmy on crack, his tail twitching like it needed to sneeze. Kon made a grab for it like he was embarrassed at its display.

"Urahara has got to be joking," Hitsugaya frowned ignoring the twitching tail and appearing to have understood Kon's rather ambiguous remark.

"Nope, can't say that he was. He didn't look particularly jovial, but you can't really tell with that guy," Kon replied scratching his head.

"What is? Can one of you make sense for, I don't know, a _moment_?" Karin replied massaging her temple with one hand. She was starting to feel like when she was at that Urahara's shop. Lasciviousness of her thoughts aside she hadn't understood a single thing that blond man said. Circuit breaker glitch? False contact? It was all Greek to her. All she found even remotely graspable was that it really was a Hollow that bumped her out of her own body. How and why still eluded her, but the only thing that had mattered then was that Hitsugaya had made it dead.

Karin looked down at the street. She could still see the paramedics scrambling, and the red and yellow rotating lights of the police were like flashing flames on the whiteness of the hospital walls.

She couldn't see the old man. The dead man. The corpse.

Her mind kept flashing to that one moment when he had looked at her. Really looked at her. Like he knew it was her fault that this was happening to him.

Hitsugaya was talking to her.

"Go with Kon back to the shop, Kurosaki. He'll fill you in on Urahara's grossly unreasonable idea," then he turned to Kon and said, "And you and I, we need to have a talk about what happened earlier today."

Kon only nodded obediently like he was being castigated, then as if remembering what he was about he shouted after the retreating figure, "Oy, Captain! Where are you going?"

Hitsugaya said nothing but he turned around and held her in a fierce unblinking gaze.

"There's something that I need to finish," Hitsugaya replied after a moment and then he was gone.

Karin didn't really care what it was he was talking about, only that the pounding in her head wouldn't cease and she couldn't seem to focus on anything other than getting away from the hospital.

Karin walked quietly beside the ambulating Kon. His tail started to twitch again and he grabbed it with his grubby paws. It had been doing that a lot today, and he suspected it had something to do with Karin's spiritual energy.

At first he hadn't felt anything from her, but as the day passed he felt more and more of what he suspected a hollow might feel towards a powerful soul. For a moment at that roof top, Kon was swept under by the sensation. The energy was intense, but not threatening; he could feel his body hungrily reach out, attempt to pull in the energy and assimilate it. Every molecule in his body felt the pull of the energy, drinking it as though fighting off the ache of long depravation. He didn't know what it meant but he knew it put Karin in terrible danger.

True to form just as he thought the words, the concrete of the sidewalk in front of them groaned and hissed in response, and Kon and Karin scuttled back nervously as it began to quake, a large bulge growing below the surface of the sidewalk.

"What the– "

The bulge stretched and whined until, finally, the pressure became too great and it exploded, spewing whole portions of sidewalk and foul smelling gas into the air. A loose-jointed creature stood not two feet away from them. It looked vaguely human, in the sense that it had a head, two arms, and two legs. But the resemblance to anything natural ended there.

It caterwauled something fierce and came at them immediately, Kon pushed Karin out of its way as she stood there astounded. Kon tried to grab its attention, but unlike the first hollow that they had encountered earlier that day this one was not annoyed by Kon's attempt at distraction. It was coming for Karin. It hungered for her and it was going to get her.

Karin swayed on her feet. There was something wrong with her. She collapsed on her knees and gripped her head fiercely in agony.

The hollow was too fast for Kon and it sidestepped him in grab for Karin. Kon flew through the air when he caught a powerful backhand to the face. Kon crashed into the base of the stop light and was in the perfect position to see a goddess descend from the heavens and cleave the hollow in two.

"Rangiku," Karin said wincing as she stood up and then swayed, "woah."

"You alright, Karin-chan?" Kon asked, but the genuine concern in his voice was belied by the fact that he had his eyes pinned to the bosom of Hitsugaya's lieutenant.

Karin picked up a pebble sized piece of concrete and threw it at Kon's head.

Kon rubbed the spot with one paw and said to her, "Feel better?"

"Not really, I guess it's gonna take a bit more than that to turn my frown upside down." she replied still flinching from the pain in her head.

"Karin-chan! You're dead!" Matsumoto finally had gotten over her shock to speak.

"Yeah, but only a little bit." Karin replied with a bit more snark than she intended.

Matsumoto ignored the tone and asked, "Where's the captain?"

"We don't really know, said he had to finish something," Kon replied once again mesmerized by the woman's breasts, then in all but a whisper, "may I touch one?"

Karin was scandalized but Matsumoto took it all in stride. The blond woman hitched back her shoulders, and began walking towards the dazed Kon like it was foreplay. Her long dark eyelashes emphasized the blue of her eyes, and her soft pink mouth curled in the barest of pouts. Kon's plushy face had contorted into an aroused mix of lasciviousness and I-can't-believe-this-is- actually-working incredulity right up until Mastumoto swung around and punched the plushy right in his drooling face.

Karin winced at such a disappointment, "That was cruel," then she grinned, "Let's see if he falls for it again."

Matsumoto grinned prettily, "They all fall for it every time," then in a more serious tone she said, "What happened to you? Where's the captain?"

Karin shrugged, "He said he had something to do. Told us to go to Urahara's were maybe they'll be able to fix me."

"I'll have to leave you to it then, something is happening and I need to speak to the captain," the woman said worried but very much in command.

Karin nodded, guilt written all over her face. She knew exactly what was happening.

Kon hopped out from the crater in the sidewalk, "How did you know the captain came this way, my gentle goddess?"

Karin rolled her eyes, but Matsumoto said, "I felt the captain near here, his spirit energy did something weird when that hollow attacked. I actually mistook you for him, Karin."

Karin was startled, "What?"

"I don't know. Get to Urahara's as quick as you can. I'll find the captain." she said and disappeared.

* * *

He found what he was looking for in the morgue.. Hitsugaya made quick work of the black vinyl bag that incased the old man's body. The corpse lay on the metallic table, the back of the head a ruined mess of bone and pink matter matted with hair.

Hitsugaya's face was shadowed and sullenly intent. He had understood what that man was going to do even before he stepped out of the window, but being next to Karin Kurosaki did something to him. Made him slow somehow, and he wasn't able to react in time to do anything other than cast a binding spell when the old man hit the ground.

He didn't know why, but something in Karin's spirit energy was different. It was overwhelming. It felt like an old magic, one that pulled and beckoned to his own power. It was invasive and therefore unpleasant.

So he had done the only thing he could have done. He worked his Demon Art in a binding spell to keep the corpse from getting up and trying to kill itself again. And Hitsugaya knew it would. It would batter its body over and over again trying to break itself open like an egg releasing its yolk.

Hitsugaya unsheathed his sword and scowled so deeply it looked like the expression would cut the tendons holding his frown in place.

The man's face showed the agony in which he had died. The weathered lines stretched thin and deep along his face. The mouth was twisted in a cruel 'O' of misery.

He had died in an agony which could have been prevented if Hitsugaya had just done his job and sealed Karin's soul.

And now this man's soul was trapped inside his body, slowly shriveling up, drying like a flower left in the dark. This was not just one soul but countless souls, all trapped inside their corporeal prisons, bashing at the restraints, driving their bodies to mutilation in their hopes of finding escape.

But even with the knowledge that this man's soul would not stop in its drive to destroy its body, he could not leave him bound in Demon Arts magic. It would kill the soul faster and even though that would cease the corpse's movement, Hitsugaya could not bring himself to willingly kill an innocent soul.

Furious and disgusted with himself Hitsugaya ripped opened the top half of the black bag and tossed it viciously aside. The heavy vinyl snagged a medical cart in the way sending scalpels, saws and beakers flying to the ground in a reverberating crash of metal and shattering glass.

With nothing other than his impotent rage to guide him he began to chant the spell to release the corpse from his demon arts magic.

The body spasmed, the remaining black vinyl crinkling loudly as it rubbed against the metal table in the empty morgue. Even before Hitsugaya uttered the last word the body on the table made a low gurgling sound from deep in its necrotic diaphragm.

The corpse jerked to a side so viciously that it fell from the table all together, falling near the scattered scalpels. Gripped by horror Hitsugaya watched as one limp arm shot out and clumsily made a grab for the small knife. Hitsugaya kicked the object away before the corpse could obtain it, but it was not deterred. The body picked itself up and ran full tilt towards the wall, smashing into it over and over.

"Stop it," Hitsugaya growled, anger and frustration and sadness so deep that it made him ill, coloured his voice.

But the man would not stop and instead ran for Hitsugaya's unsheathed sword. Hitsugaya ducked and wove, and in one smooth strike landed the hilt of Hyorinmaru on the corpse's forehead. The seal of the Soul Burial burned bright blue and then faded instantly without much significance.

The old man's body was mutilated beyond recognition now. One arm was bent backward at the joint and it hung loosely from flexing tendons. His face was no longer recognizable, one of the eyes had sunk deep into the socket leaving only a dark hole, the other roamed wildly across the room. Only the misery remained.

The Soul Burial was useless. This soul would not have peace.

Hyorinmaru was screaming in his head; I will not let this come to pass!

The old man tried once again for one of the scattered medical equipment, this time a saw, and something inside Hitsugaya snapped – broke open and poured out of him like a viscous terrible thing– and with a vicious yell he drove Hyorinmaru deep into the chest of the corpse. The sword glowed an incandescent blue and then there was an explosion of light so strong that it nearly drove Hitsugaya back and took his breath clean away with its force.

When he could breath again he looked for the corpse of the old man. He felt the dread pool in his belly for what he might find once his vision focused. Amazingly it was completely still and there on the man's face was the whisper of tranquility. A face gentled by freedom of mind, soul and obsession. But even more amazing was the silent fluttering black butterfly the hovered above it. Dark and gleaming, it pirouetted once and then vanished.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

_The rain to the wind said,_

_'You push and I'll pelt_._'_

_And they so smote the garden bed_

_That the flowers actually knelt,_

_And lay lodged—though not dead_.

_I know how the flowers felt_.

——Robert Frost

Karin walked silently, Kon jogging along to keep up. Every few steps he would slide his eyes towards her and stare.

It was getting real annoying. Karin just tried to concentrate on moving her feet forward. The pain in her head was gone but she had a permanent foreboding feeling wedged somewhere deep inside her chest.

Step, step, stare.

Karin ignored it again as they stepped off the curve and waited for the traffic to clear before they ambled across the street.

Step, step–

"What?!" she barked.

Kon had the gall to look sheepish, "Uh, nothing, sis. It was just you know..."

"You're going to have to clarify that for me," she said contemptuously, then as an after thought, "and stop calling me 'sis'."

Piqued, Kon walked a circle around the girl and, not without some derision, replied, "Oh, my bad, it must of been someone else who just saved your life."

"You're right. It was Matsumoto."

Kon gaped unattractively and sputtered, "Bu- but I helped! And if I hadn't pushed you out of the way we wouldn't even be having this conversation! I think a little gratitude is in order here."

Karin sighed. She didn't mean to seem ungrateful. There were other matters that seemed a bit more pressing at the moment, but she managed a dry, "You're right. Thanks for, you know, not letting me become _food._ I guess."

"Jeez, that was like pulling teeth."then Kon beamed at her.

Karin was going to ignore it, but somehow her face wasn't getting the message and she smiled a tiny little bit back. Why was it that even though she knew she should be feeling completely wronged by the little body snatcher it was probably farther away from the truth than she would have liked to admit? When she found out he was pretending to be her brother for god knows how long she tried to go back in her head all the times that Ichigo seemed alien to her; like he wasn't her brother. She couldn't think of a single instance. Even Kon's offwhite sense of humor didn't alarm her. She had just written it off as puberty. Lots and lots of puberty.

Kon, once you got past the boob mania, made her feel just a little bit better at the end of the day. He was like Ichigo, in that.

"How's your knee?"

"Fine." she replied tersely, she may be fond of him but she wasn't about to announce it. Ever.

"Then why did you freeze like that?"

Kon had a weird catlike knack for snaking in and out from under her legs, she had nearly stepped on him three times already but he would scatter just in time. She shrugged and made to push him out of the way.

When her hand swung down to bat him away, Kon felt his tail go on defcomn one.

Suddenly things were becoming clearer as contact between the girl and the plushie ceased. Kon was not a naturally observant entity, but his life as a stuffed lion doll did force upon him more than enough opportunity to watch people in silence. He noticed for example the way Hitsugaya eyed his surrogate sister ( in what way Kon was not entirely sure, his first inclination would be to think the boy had the hots for her, but there was something else in his eyes that Kon neither wanted to name or knew how to name at all.) and he noticed that his tail only twitched when Karin was around. At first he had only to be near her, but apparently he was becoming immune to what ever power she had because now it happened with touch as well.

Kon stared incredously at his once again flaccid (yes, that's how he saw it, and no one was going to argue diction with Kon) tail. He poked her in the shin. His tail twitched! So there was a connection. But what did it _mean_?

Karin raised an eyebrow at the slack jawed plushie. Her earlier irritation and subsequent essay of her companion cooled over. She was starting to think maybe he had taken one too many hits to the head and said, "You're a little retarded, aren't you?"

Kon glared at her, it was a wonder how much an air of put-out could be imbued in those black button eyes.

Karin just shrugged, cool indifference once again righting itself in her manner, "So are you gonna tell me what you and Toshiro were so keen on back there?"

"Depends. Are you gonna tell me why you just froze?" Kon replied. His discovery would have to wait until later.

"Migraines. I get them some times."

"But...?"

She eyed him deliberatively, "Never that bad. And usually when a...a Hollow is near. Though that hasn't been the case recently. Now it's just been happening whenever it damn well pleases."

Karin shrugged, not giving much importance to the matter, then said, "Ok, so I showed you mine, now you show me yours."

Kon grinned, and only then did she realize whom she was talking to. Kon opened his mouth only to be interrupted by Urahara.

"Welcome back. I take it you didn't do anything I wouldn't do."

They had finally arrived at the candy shop, right back where they had started, with even less than when they had arrived the first time. Hitsugaya was notably...well, not _here._

Once inside, Karin sat with her legs crossed in front of her, her hands planted neatly on her knees in characteristic belligerence. Urahara and Kon sat before her, the former with a calculating gleam in his eyes and a cane across his lap. Why the cane? Karin wondered briefly, there isn't even the suggestion of a limp. _Great_...I'm being instructed by Big Pimpin'. I am_ so_ not going to make it out of this alive...

* * *

This was one more thing he hated about the real world. Collateral damage. Hitsugaya looked around the not so antiseptic morgue. He was glad it was in the basement and therefore was not prone to heavy traffic, but someone was bound to come in any moment and find this mess. The room was more than trashed; it looked like ground zero at Hiroshima.

The soul had been released and put at peace, but the body and room remained a mutilated mess. There was blood and gore everywhere, and the glass was sprinkled around like powdered sugar on top of some kind of ghoulish cake.

He was still unsure of what happened. How was it that he was able to free that soul?

He couldn't remember being subjected to uncertainty in all his life. Everything Hitsugaya did, he did with a clear purpose, with a well thought out plan. His motivations, though subtle, even distorted at the surface, were not without a solid foundation. Only, a moment ago, when he had run the man through, that hadn't been the case; it was an atavistic response unsubdued by the intellect.

Hitsugaya shook his head. Better deal with what I know, he thought. There's no point in questioning myself now.

It was unlikely that Soul Society was going to send one of the squads that dealt with real world damage to fix this mess. Not with what was happening. This was bar none Soul Society's worst nightmare come true. No one was coming to take care of this mess.

There was always the choice of making it look like vandalism. A little vulgar graffiti on the walls and it would look like just another jaunt of idiot teenagers out on a bet or something equally asinine. But this dead man had been through so much already and he could not find it in him to be cruel.

He could just leave the body as it was, but he remembered Kurosaki's face– she had wanted to help this man– and didn't think he could face her if he didn't do something.

Hitsugaya snorted. Since when did Kurosaki's opinion matter? The girl was a spiritual neophyte and more than a little annoying in character. If anything he should feel personally aggrieved at being subjected to helping her in the first place. Baby-sitting the young Kurosaki went far beyond his duty as a soul reaper.

He should just leave it, find Kurosaki and demand she do the honorable thing and die already.

It would be simple, she was already half dead anyway. And it wouldn't be any more different than the countless souls he had reaped.

He viciously re-sheathed Hyorinmaru and began to pick up the room anyway.

Before he knew what he was doing he found himself in the critical care unit. Karin's room.

The room– besides the body that lay in her hospital bed– was empty. The beeping echo of the cardiogram bounced off the walls in a steady rhythm; like the canon of a funeral march.

The thought struck him that she was pretty in her stillness. Hitsugaya blinked purposefully. Maybe the action would un-jumble the mess in his head.

His hand was poised on Hyorinmaru and Karin's prone body lay before him, unsuspecting to the brutality he could inflict. Her skin was supernaturally pale, and her jet black hair proved a stark contrast. She was striking in colouring– not like her fair haired siblings– her hair was the inky black of a raven's wing.

She wasn't conventionally beautiful, the promise of prettiness in the child was still to be seen in the adolescent. She had a wide forehead and her eyes were too big, and her mouth, which was small and mischievous, had a tendency for being rude.

Overall she displeased him, and he didn't care at all for the way her small hands curled inward on the hospital bed. They looked like tiny little doves, or some-such ridiculously frail bird, and even though he knew they probably weren't much smaller than his own hands he couldn't understand how the paper thin skin of her knuckles could spread over such delicate bones without breaking.

It would only take a moment, he thought. He didn't even have to use Hyorinmaru, he could simply lower the temperature in the room to a point below freezing and then the cold would do the rest. It would be like falling asleep.

He suddenly felt sorry for her, and had a strange urge to touch the curve of her neck where it joined her ear just with the very tips of his fingers. He even started to reach out, and was only reminded of what– and to whom– he was about to do when he felt the familiar weight of Hyorinmary settle in his grip.

He wondered if her soul would feel her body's death.

He looked away, his hand fell limply to his side and he felt a heady rush; felt his face become warm with some unknown emotion. The thought of Kurosaki's honor bound death was suddenly, and unexpectedly, repulsing.

He was, perhaps for the first time in his young life, profoundly confused. He frowned momentarily. Hitsugaya blinked again, surprised at the strange twists and turns his thoughts and feelings had taken in the past hour. More and more, he'd found himself acting like... a boy; impulsive and disorganized. The realization was unwelcome, unsettling. Strange.

He was about to take his leave when he felt a flicker of spiritual energy near.

He was not surprised to find her here. This was, after all, maybe the only person in the entire universe whom would always find him.

She had been the one to first find him when his dragon had awoken and had almost frozen his grandmother solid. And again, the night of his first day as captain of the Tenth, when everyone else was merrymaking and celebrating a new steward into the folds of the Gotei Thirteen, she had found him sober and alone atop the roof of General Yamamoto's First Division.

It surprised him because she had been flat out drunk at the time. It was a wonder she could still blink her eyes let alone manage to track him down when the last thing he wanted was to have an audience when on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

The alarm he felt at leading the Tenth never settled in, but his understanding of his flamboyant lieutenant hadn't either.

He didn't understand her enslavement to sake or her haste for impulse and her refusal to plan. He didn't understand how she could live so unconstrained, both mentally and physically (her, ahem, upper torso defied gravity on a daily basis). He didn't understand her chaos and temper and the size of her appetite. _Neutrality_ was something he understood. If anything, Hitsugaya Toshiro defined precision and right down to the pendulous sway of her hips; his lieutenant was anything but neutral or precise.

"Captain."

Hitsugaya lithely turned to meet the gaze of his lieutenant, "Matsumoto."

"Is that Karin-chan?" Matsumoto queried innocently.

Hitsugaya didn't bother to answer the self-evident.

"Hoo-woo," she made a low whistling sound, "Ichigo is_ not_ going to take this well."

"Kurosaki isn't my problem." he said.

"Not the eldest, but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be here if the youngest didn't at least pique your interest." Matsumoto replied.

"Nothing that wasn't part of my duty as Shinigami," he looked at her pointedly, "something that you seem to forget whenever we travel to the real world."

"Those trips to Versace and Prada were completely necessary, captain. Besides, that look you where just giving Karin-chan was not 'nothing'."

"What look. There was no look." he said flatly, "That's my face."

"You had that..." she made a small waving motion with her hand, as if she were conjuring up the words, " that whole 'I want a lady in the streets, but a freak in the bed' look."

"What!?"

Matsumoto continued blithely, "Ah, come on, captain. Like that song. You know what I mean– "

"Matsumoto!" he barked, "Report."

Matsumoto knew that too formal and too sharp tone. She shut her mouth, straightened her back severely, and in a sober voice was all business, "Souls seem to be trapped. Both in this world and in Soul Society. The court of Pure Souls is FUBAR, and not even Kurotsuchi's Twelfth seems to know what is stopping the Cycle."

Hitsugaya gave brisk nod for her to continue. His earlier irritation with his lieutenant was forgotten in the face of what was happening. He thought 'FUBAR' pinned it down quite nicely. Fucked Up Beyond All Reason, indeed.

"Shinigami have been posted in hospitals and Old folks homes around the world, to avoid the general public from becoming aware of the situation."

It was a wise move, by being where people were most likely to pass away a shinigami would be able to minimize any collateral damage. A very large portion of the human population was going to receive memory modifications.

"What have the squads been implementing for prevention of the rising dead?", Hitsugaya pitched his voice to perfect deadpan, "Have they used their swords to incapacitate them, have they run them through?"

Nothing in his expression would belay the fact that he was keenly aware of what he was asking and just how important it was to him.

"Shinigami have been trying to subdue the embodied souls in anyway possible including, "she grimaced, "piercing the flesh."

"To no effect," Hitsugaya kept his voice even, as if he'd foreseen it all along. He made sure that there was nothing to suggest he'd expected anything otherwise in the tone of his voice. Matsumoto gave a clipped sober nod in response, "the only thing that seems remotely affective is to bind the bodies in Demon Arts."

He nodded in dismissal and then in one fluid move he jumped up onto the window sill. Just before he was about to take off, he turned and said, "Keep up the good work. You're CO from now on."

"Yes, captain," she bowed, "but where are you going?"

Green eyes–so clear they were almost surreal– pinned her to the room and stole Matsumoto's breath clean away. Oh, she thought, I'd almost forgotten what it was like to be on the receiving end of that.

"To do what I've been made to do."he said.

And then he was gone.

He found Karin looking like she was about to rip someone a new one. She was standing in front of Urahara, her shoulders squared and her face set in irritation. What ever he had come in on must have been percolating for a while. It looked like neither party was going to back down and suddenly Hitsugaya was very keen in knowing what had gotten these two so riled up.

Karin was _apoplectic._ She flushed and gritted her teeth at the same time.

"Weren't you listening little girl? Regardless of how you may feel about the situation it is factually proven that you are its instigator," Urahara said drily and there was such fatherly condescension in his tone that she responded in the same way she would had it been her father whom she was reacting to.

She kicked his cane right from under him. Urahara made a rather graceful half bow, instead of falling over abruptly, as if he had expected the move all along. For a moment Karin thought he _had_ seen it coming, but one look at his face disabused her of that notion. He was furious. Cold hard anger stared at her from across the suddenly too small space between them.

For a moment she thought he was going to attack her and she took a startled step back. But instead of advancing the man simply turned to look over her shoulder and said in brittle dry voice, "Talk to her. Get some sense into that pretty little head of hers before she ends us all."

She turned to look at whom Urahara had spoken to and saw Hitsugaya staring at her with those jade green eyes; equally bright and just as hard. Somewhere behind her newly turned back she heard Kon say to Urahara, "Don't you think you were being a little hard on her, sir?"

But Urahara was already out of the room and Kon briskly followed suit.

As soon as the shoji screen was slid shut, Hitsugaya grabbed her by her arm. He had moved so fast she hadn't even seen him approach and was startled into placidity. His hand felt larger than it should and interestingly calloused and textured.

"Idiot!" Hitsugaya hissed.

Her body may have been slow in catching up but her hearing was just fine, his verbal abuse jolted her into gear. She shrugged him off violently and took a step back to regain her footing.

"Oh, shut up." she said, evidently it wasn't the best of comebacks but she was still getting over the fact that she had recently misjudged someone so completely. Urahara regardless of how much his laissez-fair attitude may have reflected that of her father's did not mean both men would react the same way to her admittedly aggressive behaviour.

"I can't believe you've pissed off our only source of help," he snapped, "Weren't you listening?"

"Why does everybody keep repeating that! Of course I was listening, my ears work perfectly, thank you very much." she said stubbornly.

"On the rooftop, I told you not to touch anyone," he said in a quelling tone.

The image of that dead man would never really be wiped from their memories. It was as if their horror was a magnifying glass that made things brighter, bigger, more _reminding_ than they had any right to be.

Karin especially remembered that old man.

"I didn't think– "

"That's right you didn't think! I'm beginning to understand that you never think," replied Hitsugaya, obscurely. "Your spirit power is bewildering. When you kicked Urahara's sword– yes that was his sword, not just a cane– you flooded him with it. Until we find out why your spirit energy is different from anything we've ever encountered, control yourself."

Karin was silent for a moment a look of bewilderment shining beneath her down turned brow, "But not you?"

"What?"

"Don't touch anybody, you said. But you? I touch you all the time," she flushed at how that came out, "I mean, you just grabbed my arm. I didn't feel anything of that spirit power you were talking about, only that your hands are like ice."

Hitsugaya flushed at the remark. He hadn't known his hands were cold to the touch, which was probably just another reason why he should abstain from physical contact– that wasn't fighting– anyway. But she did raise a good point, why did her spirit power not effect him ( it did effect him to a certain degree, but it was nothing he couldn't completely ignore: Hitsugaya was very good at ignoring how he felt) like it so obviously effected Urahara? Meaning, anything that would spook_ that_ man out of a room had to be pretty vicious stuff.

"I don't know," he said slowly, "but I'm going to find out."

"Well, that is a good a place to start as any, once we get over there, I mean," Karin said, unexpectedly. She hesitated, then added, "I still want to say goodbye to Yuzu. Just incase, you know..."

Suddenly Hitsugaya was very sure about what Urahara and Karin had disagreed on. The girl had less sense than he had given her credit for.

"So he told you." Hitsugaya replied.

Hitsugaya had suspected it the entire time they had been talking to Urahara before when she hugged...took off with Hyorinmaru. Urahara was a mad genius, and his brilliance did nothing to curb the insanity of this plan; go to Soul Society, use the three pronged golden key– the Ooken– and petition the King of Heaven to return Karin's soul to her body. But to do so would mean treason, on his part anyway.

He didn't think General Yamamoto would just give them the key no matter how nicely they may ask. Especially not when Aizen (along with two other high ranking members of the Gotei 13) intended to take over Soul Society or at the very least regicide. They would have to steal it or at least borrow it with out permission for a little while.

No one had even ever seen the King of Heaven. Hitsugaya had niggling suspicion that no such being existed, and that was why the Central 46 chambers were so easily wiped out by Aizen and no new Chamber had been ratified.

Urahara sure seemed to think this plan would actually work and while Hitsugaya was no neophyte to scheme he knew that Urahara could fold the best strategists into origamis. After all it takes a bit more brains than balls to elude Soul Society's judicial wrath for more than two hundred years. Which only proved that Urahara thought strategically, not ethically; he manipulated people, moved them around like pieces on a chess board. And even though checkmate would work in Hitsugaya's favor it did not make him feel any better.

"Yeah, about that...we're willingly going into Hell? Through an invisible door? That we have to magically summon with a...butterfly?" Karin knit her brows expressively, her blue charcoaled eyes gave him a dry look," I'm going to assume there is a logical and not at all crazy explanation here."

"It's not just a regular butterfly." Hitsugaya groused.

"Oh, yeah. Of course. Cuz regular butterflies only get you as far as Shinjuku Station. I take it were taking the Express?"

"Shut up."

"Nice," and then in a more quelling tone she said, "But really?"

Hitsugaya exhaled (the captain of the Tenth did not sigh) and said, "The gate is called the Senkaimon. Reapers use them to cross between the worlds of the living and dead."

"Urahara mentioned something about a dango?" Karin interrupted.

"The _Dangai_, the prohibiting world. It's what entities without a _Hell _Butterfly," here Hitsugaya stressed the word and Karin rolled her eyes, "have to cross to get into Soul Society. It's a failsafe. Those without a Hell Butterfly– Hell Butterflies are sanctioned by the Court of Pure Souls– to guide them are usually the ones that want to cause mayhem in Soul Society, so the Court uses the Dangai to weed out the undesirables."

"How are they weeded out?" she had a bad feeling that it would not bode well for her, weed or otherwise.

"If you don't make it to the other gate in time you're trapped there for eternity... and the captain of the Twelfth has implemented a few of his more dangerous experiments. He has...eccentric tastes."

"We're not getting a butterfly are we?" she said flatly.

Not if you want to live. Not if I want to keep my job or my_ head_, he thought. Not if I have to admit that I can't reap your soul because I'm a _complete_ idiot, "No."

* * *

AN

Hey everybody! I'm so sorry for the long wait, it's been like two months! Jeez where does the time go? Anyway, this new chapter was meant to be longer with the whole part of them actually going to Soul Society but I got really tired and rather than writting something that didn't make any sense and was probably going to throw me off anyway I ended it here.

On a completely different note I saw Wall-E it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I'm not going to spoil it for anyone but in the end i burst into tears from relief. It was so dramatic, and i wasn't the only one who felt such strong emotion, the entire theater had collectively held its breath: litterally it was awesome, no one was breathing. The guy who sat next to me inhaled sharply at one point and even though a had a bad case of a frog in my throat i didn't hear him exhale for the entire scene, then in the end he let it all whoosh out it a weird oxygen deprived laugh. I wanted to kiss him for being such a dork (he was really cute, too)

I loved that movie. And I suddenly want to _be_ Brad Bird, who also directed my other all time fav The Iron Giant. This movie only strengthened my desire to work for Pixar. But so far I've only just started my Bachelor's in Animation.

Please review and tell me what you think, I only recently figured out that you can reply to the reviewers i haven't done so yet but if you leave me another review I'll try.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Six

_I do believe its true that there are roads left in both of our shoes/_

_but if the silence takes you then I hope it takes me too/_

– _Death Cab For Cutie_

"No."

Hitsugaya's face was a mask of impenetrable and unyielding resolve. What she was asking was stupid beyond all reason. They needed to leave for Soul Society immediately, not cross half a city for one sided good-byes. No matter how cathartic they may turn out to be.

Hollows were searching for Karin's energy right outside their door. He could feel their spirits scavenging the residual power in the city left by her flights of fancy. She was like a big hunk of metal in a magnet factory. And she wanted to go on parade.

"She's my _sister_. This is the least I owe her."

"This isn't a discussion, Kurosaki; this is a non issue." Hitsugaya made to pass by her and the conversation would have ended then and there if she hadn't grabbed his wrist.

He's caught, then. Caught in her hands like in the first twilight they met.

Caught like a bird who has set down on a windowsill, looking for a crumb and finding claws instead. His wrist ached with intensity. He was throbbing through his forearm and his hand was numb. The skin on her palms was soft and warm, the warmest thing he had ever felt; her palm was a tiny furnace and her fingers were fretted torches of intention. Though she only holds his wrist, it seemed just now, his whole body would collapse in on itself.

Was this what Urahara had felt? He wished he could speak to Hyorinmaru, but the dragon had been suspiciously silent these long days since he had met Kurosaki Ichigo's little sister. It felt... weird to have him so far from the surface, so silent and still. Since his awakening it was always a little crowded in his head, there was always the promise of blurring at the edges if they didn't watch what belonged to whom, but recently that thought didn't quite sting as much as it used to.

There really was no one else he could talk to about what was going on; with him, with her, with the souls. He didn't trust Urahara to...He didn't trust Urahara.

There were only three people he would probably ever really trust, and one of them had already betrayed him once. It hurt, still; a bewildering dull ache in the pit of his stomach every time he thought of her. It was the misery of disappointed affection, but it was his own fault really. He was being punished and this pain was proportionate to his crime. Hinamori was one of his special people, he realised, if he could still feel the way he did after she tried to kill him...and after asking for so much afterward. Matsumoto, he thought, had too much to lose if he were to tell her of his plans and Ukitake-taicho was too ill.

Thinking of Hinamori, though made him wonder briefly if Karin was not unlike Aizen and his illusions. If she too was able to twist your perception so thoroughly that you'd think up was down and feel love where none was warranted.

God he hated that type of zanpaktou!

This was the only explanation for what tumbled out of his mouth next.

"You have five minutes, Kurosaki."

Karin's breath came to her in a whoosh of air she hadn't realized she had been holding. And when she noticed she still held his wrist she let go as if she had been burned. Hitsugaya looked at her with a flat unreadable expression and she wondered how anyone could be so wooden and still be able to fight with the fluidity of water.

A moment later the two silent figures leaped from roof to roof through the quickly darkening night. Karin had almost been sure that Hitsugaya was going to force her to sneak out to say good-bye to Yuzu. It was stupid and poorly planned and dangerous, but it was _Yuzu_. And the idea that Karin might not come out alive from all this was not so frightening if the last thing she saw before she went was her twin's face. She wished for Ichigo, too, but he was gone and she could not have them both.

Kon lay huddled between the juncture of her neck and shoulder hanging on by the nape of her shirt. He took great caution in holding on without ever directly touching her.

Karin lead the way, her feet barely touching the ground as she leapt forward. Hitsugaya pivoted back and forth behind her keeping guard for any Hollow that might be near, his sword was drawn and when she spared a glance at him over her shoulder she saw his features were drawn in a tight scowl.

She remembered when he had chased her through this very street and smothered the coiled feeling of betrayal that was still firmly lodged in her chest. For that one perfect moment she had understood him absolutely, and she wondered if he could really blow off everything he was made to be and choose between a single unimportant soul and two entire worlds. She wondered how she could do the same. Karin didn't want to think about it. She had his help now, and that is all that mattered.

Karin braced herself and with a burst of speed she jumped from one roof to another clearing the fifty foot gap and a tall tree that grew between the two tiled roofs. Since her jump to escape Hitsugaya's intentions earlier that day this whole levitating thing was getting easier with each jump she made and she reveled in her new found flight. The wind buffeted her freefall and the leaves swivelled around her like emerald teardrops.

She could just make out her home across the distance, the soft yellow glow of light illuminated the black block letters that read Kurosaki Clinic at its front.

She turned and felt before she saw Hitsugaya stop behind her.

"Keep going I'll catch up with you," he said and she had no compunction to do anything other than what he asked. Kon groaned something that sounded suspiciously like, 'he's going to _murder_ me!' but Karin didn't find this to be any news and didn't stop to question him. Hitsugaya had threatened the plushy constantly since they met. And she only had five minutes, after all.

Hitsugaya braced himself for the fight he had been anticipating since he and Karin left the Hospital. The spirit power that emanated from the north was massive and it was closing in fast.

In a moment the white figure stood before him in the direction that Karin had disappeared to and Hitsugaya couldn't have been more surprised had the man been wearing a tutu made out of candy floss and a thong. Hitsugaya took the offensive and flipped right over what seemed to be an imposter of the Gotei 13, but as he landed gracefully behind his opponent– and effectively keeping him away from the path of Karin– he saw the unmistakable black marks on the white surcoat: the equilateral cross.

_Fucking Kon! _He thought. This was obviously what had made the plushy skittish back there. Quincy his ass!

He never really cared about what had happened to his predecessor, but maybe he should have paid better attention.

"So this is who they got replacing me," the man said smiling, "they sure have started them young since I left."

"My name is Hitsugaya Toshiro, Captain of the tenth," Hitsugaya replied stonily, "and I am not _young_."

The man's face dropped the insouciant grin, he was serious and Hitsugaya thought the look didn't suit him very well, the man said, "But my daughter _is_."

"Good for you, but I'm not interested."

"It didn't look like it from the way you were just chasing her down, reaper."

There were precious few moments when Hitsugaya's jaw dropped in you've-got-to-be-shitting-me incredulity, this was now one of them and he clicked his jaw shut before it hit the ground.

Ichigo and Karin _clearly_ took after their mother in looks.

"Kurosaki-taicho," Hitsugaya deadpanned. He should have seen it coming. No wonder his children were such impossible psychopomps; it wasn't what Kurosaki-san was feeding them it was whom was doing the feeding. Of course Karin's father was the ex-captain of his division! The irony did not escape him.

"Smart kid," the man said, Hitsugaya's scowl deepened and Isshin smiled, but there was a far away look in his eyes when he said, "I was... a captain once but I didn't wear that name."

"But you still wear the robe."

"Yeah. I still wear the robe," and he attacked.

Karin made it as far as the top of the stairs. Poltergeist was Yuzu's favourite movie, she thought it was fun and exciting. Karin hated it, and it wasn't even because it hit so close to home either. It wasn't hard to make a connection between a family being haunted by the ghosts of a desecrated graveyard because of a well meaning father, and their own.

It was that stupid hallway scene. The one where the mother tries desperately to reach her endangered children only to have the hallway elongate in grotesque endlessness. It gave her the willies.

The room that Yuzu was in was maybe ten steps to her left but the corridor looked like it was made of rubber with the way it stretched.

She didn't feel so hot, her knees felt like they were made out of custard.

"Karin-chan," Kon's voice cut through the haze. His eyes were serious– how could buttons betray such emotion!– but he smiled crookedly.

"Right. Five minutes and all that," she tried to smile down at him but if she moved her mouth too much she might throw up on him instead, and it was a bitch to get barf out of faux velvet.

"Yeah, you wouldn't want to endanger that stick Hitsugaya has up his ass," Kon's face was the picture of serious, concerned intent, but his tone betrayed him, "I really think that if its pushed farther in it will sprout and the next time he opens his mouth a tree might bloom right out. And then where will we be?"

The image was...it was too much. She laughed, "Don't...ah, don't ever tell him that!"

Yuzu was, of course, in Ichigo's room. The door was left partly opened, but Karin could not cross the threshold. She could see her sister curled up on their brother's bed, in her hands she clutched a little purple shopping bag.

The sight of it made her shake her head in brisk almost humorless incredulity. Leave it to Yuzu to keep her head while the world went to shit around her.

She was standing right by the door, right in front of her sister. Just a few feet separating them, but the distance was a vast insurmountable gulf.

Karin reached out a pale tentative hand and then dropped it listlessly.

"What's the point," she sneered, mad at herself for forgetting her sister couldn't see her, couldn't hear her words. What a fun game! Drop the emotional bomb and watch it explode, she thought.

"Uh, Karin? I may have an idea about how you can say goodbye to your sister." Kon stared up at her, an idea suddenly struck him, "it might be a little tricky at first but can you trust me?"

"I don't think I like the sound of that," she said carefully, then she sighed, "what choice do we have, we came all this way already, why not hang for a sheep as a lamb."

Kon grinned up at her.

"Ok then! I'll be right back!" and with that he was gone, a flash of yellow out the window.

Karin sat cross legged and leaned her head back against the wall. She was very tired and she closed her eyes.

It seemed only a moment later that Kon came back. He sat beside her but she kept her eyes closed.

"This is probably going to get a little weird, but I've never been averse to a little kink!"

She snapped her eyes open and pined him with a glare, expecting to find the soft yellow face of the little lion, only to stare dumbfounded at Hitsugaya's face as it hovered inches apart from hers.

"What the– Toshiro!" she nearly shrieked and moved hastily back an her hands and knees.

"Only in the flesh!" replied the boy, Kon's unmistakable drawl dropping from the pale mouth.

"You– you crass, tasteless, unrepentant pervert!" she pointed a finger at him but she couldn't smother the smile that was spreading across her face, "How did you–? Where did you get that body?"

"That's the funny thing, Hitsugaya must have stashed it before he went to rescue you from that Hollow in front of the Hospital. I saw it hiding earlier and that's what gave me the idea." Kon didn't mention that he found it in her backyard. Stal_ker_. Who knew the pale boy had it in him!

"Toshiro is going to _dismember _you!" she said, but her eyes said something entirely different. She looked at him with intense, unpretentious gratitude. They shone a bright blue, like liquid nitrogen trapped in a bubble of water.

"Yeah, yeah. So let's do this," Kon said flushing darkly as he impatiently scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment.

Karin hesitated.

"I don't know about this...it's a little gross." she eyed the body skeptically.

"Hey, you needed a body, I got you a perfectly good one. What's the big deal? Two arms, two legs... it's nothing you've never seen before."

"I beg to differ," and then, damn her, she blushed.

"Now who's the pervert?" Kon grinned with Hitsugaya's face, but then he was all seriousness, "We should do this. Sheep for a lamb, remember?"

"Yeah. Okay," she straightened and took his hand and smirked, "so how does this work?"

Kon blushed, again, he'd forgotten how easy it was to do so with a real body, "Uh, well, first you have to take me out," then he gave his best sadomasochistic look, "punching me in the stomach should pop me right out."

Karin didn't even blink at that and pulled back her fist.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Kon backtracked, "I don't look like you in spiritual form."

"What?"

"You basically look like your corporeal self; arms, legs, breasts." Karin rolled her eyes, but he ignored it, "I'm more of the marble type."

"You look like a ...marble?" she lifted an eyebrow.

"You better believe it and sexy as hell to boot," Kon grinned self deprecatingly.

She didn't bother with a retort, there was a strangeness to the way he said it, and said instead, "You ready?"

Before the punch hit he said sincerely, "Hey, don't drop me, okay?"

There was soft 'poof', like someone popping a paper bag filled with air from a far distance, and then a smooth green marble– Kon– burst out of Hitsugaya's body. She caught Kon instinctively and only after she had him between her fingers did she realise that she had done so with Hitsugaya's hand.

"Weird," she whispered, and examined the small green orb to keep from thinking exactly why it was so weird to be using Hitsugaya's body like a borrowed pair of cleats.

She bit her lip, she didn't have a whole lot of time, and her sister was waiting. But at the moment she couldn't feel anything but sadness for her small perverted friend. It must be sad, she thought, to live with such a large part of oneself missing. To live with a borrowed life. She recognised the look on Kon's borrowed face when he was talking about his soul self; it was wistful and regretful and bitter all at the same time.

She sighed and placed Kon gently into Hitsugaya's breast pocket. Then she walked into her brother's room.

Yuzu sat up on the bed and wiped her eyes, "Sorry, the clinic is limited to the downstairs front."

"Yuzu," Karin began and then scowled at the floor. How to begin? Hi, it's me, your disembodied twin sister in the guise of a arrestingly attractive green eyed reaper. How was your day?

"Do I...do I know you?" Yuzu watched the boy intently. There was something in the way that he turned his head and scowled at the floor that was strikingly familiar. And the voice... Yuzu closed her eyes and pictured jet black hair and blue eyes. Too afraid to hope it to be true, she whispered, "Karin?"

"What you don't recognise your own sister?" Karin joked but inside she felt a coil of relief unfold.

Yuzu was already on the way, half off of the bed with emotion, her eyes moist and her lips quivering and pale. Yuzu didn't even dwell on the strangeness of hugging this pale haired boy. There were tears of relief streaming down Yuzu's cheeks and Karin couldn't tell if she was crying or laughing. Probably both.

"What–how?"Yuzu wiped her nose with the back of her hand and then straightened up like all that didn't matter, "What do we do now?"

"That's just it. _We _don't do anything. I came to say goodbye."

Yuzu was not a violent person, you would have never figured that out with the mean right hook she just landed on Karin's jaw. Karin bent over double, and made a deep cavity with Hitsugaya's body. Her soul self even slipped out a little bit as she reeled back and the boy's body fell forward. She balanced on her heels for a moment one translucent hand in an iron grip around Hitsugaya's elbow. Using her bodies as counterweights she slipped forward and settled into the boy's form, only to fall promptly on her– or his, as the case happened to be– ass.

"Don't you dare give up, Kurosaki Karin!" she yelled, " when mom died we made promises! We promised that I would take care of the House and you... you promised to be steadfast and certain and efficient. And then we promised that if we should die– when we would die– we would do it together. We promised it to Mother and I'll kill you right now if you even think of breaking them!"

Yuzu raised her fist again, but Karin put up her hands in a placating gesture, rubbing her jaw from soreness, "Calm down, Yuz. That's not what I meant!"

Yuzu dropped her fist and stomped her foot, "Well then, dammit, I hate violence!"

They looked at each other for a moment, still brown eyes to green, and then together– like they did everything else– they burst into laughter.

It felt good. She had forgotten– can you believe it?– how good it was to laugh about nothing at all with Yuzu. Karin laughed at getting punched in the face by her pacifist sister, and the thought that Hitsugaya's face was the one to take the beating just made her laugh even harder. She wondered if Hitsugaya would mind terribly that she was probably going to leave a few well worn smile lines.

Yuzu stopped laughing first, "Ooh, Karin, I'm sort of sorry I hit you!"

"Sort of?"

"You deserved it, scaring me like that! But also...I don't like causing you pain," she said and gave Karin a shy regretful smile.

Karin gave her a rather gallic shrug, "S'okay, not my face anyway."

"Sort of begs the question, though–?"

"Who's face is this– ?"

"Not some secret paramour!" Paramour. Yuzu and Ichigo obviously had some sibling bonding time over Shakespear. She sounded appropriately scandalized but Karin knew better.

Karin, scoffed, "Not on your life! Or mine for that matter,"

"That's not funny." her sister frowned.

Karin had forgotten that speaking with Yuzu was like riding on a rollercoaster. You went up and down the whole emotional spectrum. She shrugged, "Yeah, I know."

"Oh!" Yuzu suddenly exclaimed as she jumped up from her sitting position.

"I got something for you," Yuzu tossed over her shoulder as she dug behind Ichigo's bed in a mad dash to retrieve something, " I was going to give it to you when we got home but– "

"Stuff happened," Karin nodded in perhaps the understatement of the century.

"And you looked so cute in that dress," Yuzu continued as was wont to happen, "I couldn't help myself and got you a gift."

Karin's rather alarmed reaction kinda made her want to find a mirror just so she could see what Hitsugaya's face looked like during human facial acrobatics, "Yuzu, you didn't actually buy me that...that _thing_, because let me tell you right now– and this will probably be the first time the idiom would be true– but not even over my dead body."

Yuzu made a clucking sound with her mouth, tongue pressed quickly against the back of her teeth, and said, "Don't be melodramatic, rin-chan."

Karin rolled her eyes at the name but Yuzu's back was already turned to look under the bed when she spied the purple shopping bag. Somehow it had landed on top the lampshade, "Aha!"

Karin eyed the violet parcel warily.

"Well, here you go," Yuzu grinned at her sister expectantly.

It was a baseball cap. Or the fruity version of one.

It was red, and it wouldn't have been a Yuzu Gift if it didn't have some super cute insignia on it, and it did; a bright pink heart on the left hand side of the visor.

"Thanks," Karin said simply because her chest felt too full and it took a great effort to draw in enough breath to say all the right things that needed to be said.

Yuzu beamed.

"You can wear it when you go...wherever it is you need to got to get fixed," Yuzu continued, "It'll probably get cold seeing as its fall and all and heat escapes primarily from your head...and at least this way I actually get to see one of you listen to me for once."

"Ichigo never listens." Karin agreed dutifully.

"And I even make it so easy for him when he's not...earthbound," Yuzu pointed to the bedside table where a hat sat idly, "see?"

Karin saw, but here sister's phrasing had caught her unprepared. _Earthbound_. It was almost beautiful. Karin shook her head, leave it to the sister who was_ not_ a psychic to notice that her brother was not as he should be. Not earthbound.

"How did...?" you know, even when I didn't, she finished in her head. She was embarrassed to have let Kon get away with something so big.

"Yuzu shrugged noncommittal like, "Ichi-ni is right handed...without exception. He can barely scratch himself with his left let alone serve three cups of tea and sew a stitch on one of my dolls dresses when I cornered him into it."

Ha! She thought, Kon _sews_. And serves_ tea_. Karin knew what serving tea with Yuzu entailed...it was the farthest thing from 'just tea' even in Japan. It was an exhibition. Yuzu called the colors that adorned her guests Blush and Bashful. Karin saw Pepto-Bismol.

Karin put on the hat.

Her sister's eyes goggled and she had a sort of sappy dreamy expression, "Oooh!"

Karin recognised it right away. She could feel Kon vibrate in her breast pocket with what was either glee or anticipation. How the marble-Kon was able to do so was beyond her. Did he even _have_ ears?

"No!" Karin yelled louder than she meant to, and pointed at herself up and down, "I'm not going to let you dress me up! It's not even _mine_!

"Oh, come on Karin, pretty please!"

"No! And Hitsugaya is a boy– "

"Not a problem– "

"Moonlighting as a transvestite?" Karin sneered and crossed her arms over her (or his) chest.

Yuzu shook her head, "I mostly just ask your soccer buddies for fittings, but they're nowhere as pretty as this one."

Karin felt violated. Her teammates? No wonder they blushed so hard whenever they saw Yuzu!

She had to stop assuming all the weird stuff boys did was because of puberty.

Karin scowled, "I'm not ready to see the person who was going to reap my soul naked."

Yuzu gasped, "No. Really?"

And then she circled Hitsugaya's body scrutinizing until finally she stopped raised her brows in the same way Ichigo was wont to do and said, "All the more reason to do it."

Karin smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand.

This was taking longer than five minutes. Hitsugaya thought as he parried yet another strike. Kurosaki-taicho, or whatever, didn't even look like he was trying.

Until he smacked Hitsugaya over the head with one meaty hand.

He should have been paying more attention. He could practically hear Ukitake-taicho: Absence of evidence should never be considered evidence of absence...

"What the hell, old man!" Hitsugaya grimaced.

"And that's why I can't kill you properly," Isshin replied. And then– Hitsugaya took a step back– Kurosaki-san went all googily eyed on him.

"My babies say the same thing when I drop kick them!" he wailed.

Hitsugaya curled his lip. The grown ass man _wailed._

Isshin put one hand to his forehead dramatically and used the other to pound heartedly on Hitsugaya's back.

"You remind me so much of them," Pound, "that I can't even kill you, "Pound, "When you so obviously deserve it," Pound, "for trying to chase my Karin-chan down and do evil Shinigami things to her!" Pound. Pound.

Hitsugaya was ready to chop off that hand. He didn't think Ichigo nor Karin would appreciate that. Even though if he had, really, he would be doing them a favour.

"I wasn't going to reap her soul," Hitsugaya ground out through clenched teeth summarily, then, "If you don't remove your hand from my shoulder. I. Will. Cut. It Off."

"They say that too!" And then Isshin engulfed the boy in a bear hug.

Kurosaki-Taicho wasn't dead, but he sure seemed to be asking for it.

His life was saved by seconds. Isshin and Hitsugaya heard the front door of the Kurosaki Clinic open. Isshin leaped a mile in the air, crouched comically behind Hitsugaya and hissed, "She can't see me like this!"

"Move, you idiot! You're twice my size," Hitsugaya said in utter disdain and pushed the behemoth Kurosaki behind the roof of a nearby house, out of view of the figure that was exiting the clinic. When Hitsugaya saw that it was his very own gigai, he cursed Kon to the very pits of hell. Being a Death God, Hitsugaya was pretty sure he could send the little rag doll first class.

AN.

I like writing Yuzu. In the show we don't really know what her character is like so I like having room to explore. I see Yuzu as potentially perverted, but too innocent and naive to ever be considered kinky. Like when people are around her they don't know who is the perverted one; them for thinking it or her for suggesting it or them for thinking she suggested it. Or something.

I had to tie up some loose ends in the real world, so the next chapter will be...off to Soul Society!

Sorry there's no romance yet, in fact Karin and 'Shiro are barely ever in the same room, but I have to build it up. So if you're after a 'wham, bam, thank you, ma'am', then this story might not be for you.

Please review!


	8. Chapter 8

Well I'm not paralyzed  
But, I seem to be struck by you  
I want to make you move  
Because you're standing still  
If your body matches  
What your eyes can do  
You'll probably move right through  
Me on my way to you

Paralized--Finger Eleven

Chapter Eight

Hitsugaya's eyes followed the figure that walked out of the Kurosaki clinic intently. He watched as his faux body looked around, the movement awkward and jittery. Even from this distance and the poor overhead lighting Hitsugaya could tell that his gigai was blushing furiously. So intent was he that he didn't even notice Kurosaki-taicho was nowhere to be seen anymore.

Why that look? What did he have to be nervous about? Hitsugaya thought. He mentally tallied the facts: Kon was a perverted freak. Kon had made more than a few suggestions which he wasn't even going to repeat, not even for the purpose of this mental count off. Kon was alone with Karin. Kon had somehow gotten a hold of his fake body and had used it while with Karin. While he and Karin where together. Alone. For much longer than five minutes.

There were lots of things two people could do in five minutes. Suddenly Hitsugaya couldn't think of a single _decent_ thing.

This wasn't making him feel the least bit less alarmed. In fact Hitsugaya was pretty sure he was going to go into a raging frenzy.

There would only be one reason for that look, he thought as he made his way towards the gigai. The thought that Kon had most likely behaved in any number of depraved ways with Karin caused a blind seething rage to shoot through him. It felt like a bolt of lightning had struck the base of his spine and made its way throughout the rest of his body. He wasn't even entirely sure what he found more infuriating; the fact that Kon would be so crude with Karin or the fact that he would be doing it while using his body.

Hitsugaya reached the gigai and when the other saw him the faux body burned scarlet and scratched the back of his head in a gesture that was so riled with guilt that Hitsugaya couldn't stop the reaction it caused in him.

Hitsugaya reached back and sucker punched him right it the face.

--

Karin was still in Hitsugaya's fake body when she came out of the house. She was still a little embarrassed. She could never really deny her sister anything and while Karin staunchly kept her face pointed towards the ceiling as she undressed and redressed it was...not something she wanted to remember with any detail. After the whole human doll fiasco, in the end saying goodbye to Yuzu wasn't like saying goodbye at all. They talked to each other like any of the countless conversations they held, neither quite sure how it had come to be that this might be their last conversation.

It was weird. And so, as they usually did when faced with issues of emotional significance Karin let Yuzu take the lead, but she didn't know where to begin either so they hugged and Yuzu went to bed.

When she saw Hitsugaya walking swiftly towards her she couldn't help the feeling of guilt that swelled up in her. Who was she to give permission on how someone else's body should be dressed?

She was about to apologise– even though he wouldn't know the reason behind the apology– when without preamble he floored her with an uppercut. So shocked was she at the onslaught she didn't even have the thought to try to sidestep it. She tumbled back, her sight gone black with pain and she saw star bursts of red and white.

When she fell the action loosened the marble-Kon from her breast pocket and the green sphere arced through the air and landed in her still gaping mouth. Instantly she was pushed out of the faux body and Kon was cradling her dizzy head as she lay sprawled and half senseless on the pavement. From her position she looked up at Kon and what she saw surprised her still reeling mind. Kon glared fiercely at Hitsugaya. His normally pleasant face grew hard and stern. The expression did not look at home on his face but neither was it faked or insincere.

For a moment Hitsugaya's face wore an uncharacteristic uncertain expression that made him look, somehow hatefully, boyish. But it was soon replaced with the more familiar neutrality that she had come to expect from him.

"What the hell is your problem!?" Kon yelled.

Karin struggled to sit up she could see Kon's eye already begin to bruise and swell and his nose had begun to bleed. Karin wiped at her own nose and was not surprised to find blood there too. It looked like Hitsygaya's fist had hit both the physical and spiritual bodies. Her face throbbed.

Kon hovered over her like a worried mother hen and she batted away his attempt to place her behind him in a protective move.

"Yeah," she said matter-of-factly, "I could ask the same thing. If this is about me taking more than five minutes I can tell you that it was dully undeserved. I think you broke my nose."

She gingerly touched the bridge of her nose. It hurt like hell but it wasn't broken.

Hitsugaya looked at both of them with that flat green look of his. Karin shivered. It had gotten suddenly very cold out here, she looked around but her thoughts were cut off when Hitsugaya finally spoke.

"I thought you were Kon." was all he said. Karin opened her mouth but anything she might have said died in her throat.

"Hello out there!" came the cheery voice.

Karin turned around mechanically, it was as if the whole universe had centered in that single voice behind her. The voice of her old man.

She was about to say something in return but that desperately earnest moment when she realised he wouldn't see her caught her so unprepared that she froze– mute– mid turn.

Her father had seen Kon. At least, the Kon that was using Hitsugaya's faux body. Neither she nor Hitsugaya himself would be perceived by her father's human eyes. She didn't know what to do with herself.

"You wouldn't be one of Karin's soccer buddies, would you?" her old man put one hand on his chin in a pensive look, "I think I remember you...No matter, a friend of Karin's is a friend of mine!"

Her father walked up to the speechless Kon. He passed right by her, close enough to smell his aftershave and that clean sort of rubbery under smell that came from years of using latex gloves. His white lab coat almost touched her. Almost. She didn't think something like the almost touch from her old man's lab coat could bring such a clear sharp pain. She swallowed hard.

Kon nearly flinched when the man put his arm over his shoulder.

"Yeah," Kon stuttered, a strange pleading look on his face, "I heard Karin wasn't well so I came by to see how she was doing."

Her old man didn't miss a beat, "Oh, don't you worry about our little Karin-chan she's a real fighter. But you must know that, being one of her teammates and all. She'll be up and kicking balls in no time!"

She didn't know wether she wanted to beat his face in for his optimism or kiss him.

"Yeah," Kon agreed good nauredly, he shot her an amused look, "she's a real ball buster."

To Kon, on the other hand, she knew exactly what she wanted to do.

"Well, I should get going," Kon replied and discreetly made a grab for her hand, it was a pointless effort but she understood, and was grateful, "my mom'll probably be worried. See ya!"

Kon lead her away.

Kon looked at her. It was a soft look, sad in the way he tilted his head and asked without asking. She nodded and began to walk away with him. It was easier this way. Not to drag anything out. It was better to walk away without any pointless gestures that would go unseen anyway. A thought struck her. If she were visible if she hadn't been half dead to begin with would she have acted the same? Would she still act so sang-froid?

She stopped at the realization that she didn't know. Turning quickly she raised one hand and said resolutely, "Bye, dad. You'll see me soon!"

She turned back around quickly, unwilling to see his oblivious face, and jogged back to Kon. Kon gave her a silly half crooked smile. She made to elbow him in the ribs half heartedly. Even though she couldn't touch him, his presence beside her was a comfort she couldn't begin to express. She looked straight ahead afraid of what she might see in his face and she hoped he wouldn't look at her face either sure that her expression would betray her.

Neither of them noticed that Hitsugaya had yet to follow or that at that very moment Kurosaki-san had leaned over to whisper in the captain's ear, "If I ever catch you doing that again, not even my daughter's presence will keep me from tearing your arms off and merrily beating you with them."

Hitsugaya looked at the older man fiercely his face contrite and embarrassed for his colossal mistake (he sucker punched a little girl!), but he said instead " I see you switched one white coat for another."

Kurosaki-san's face twisted with a chagrined grimace. The man had the gall to be embarrassed about something as trivial as_ that_? Where was his sense of duty and loyalty when his daughter had just been forced to believe her father was unable to see her possibly last goodbye?

If he wanted to Hitsugaya could recall many delicate moments from his childhood. None of them where with his father. Maybe this was why he now lashed out, "That was cruel. She deserved the truth– "

"– that's none of your business." the man said through gritted teeth.

Hitsugaya's expression instantly hardened, "I suppose it isn't."

Hitsugaya began to walk away when a hand on his shoulder stopped him and the voice that followed could not hide the fear.

"Take care of her," Isshin Kurosaki said, "please."

Hitsugaya didn't turn around but the action did not hinder his conviction, "With my life."

They arrived at Urahara's with no further incident. Hitsugaya was in no mood for oblique platitudes and his stony silence hopefully clued them into that fact. But it seemed as if Kon was not going to let the matter drop.

"Aren't you even going to apologize. If not to Karin– who let's face it can take it– " he shot her a barely polite smirk, "then to me, when I've been nothing but helpful throughout this entire ordeal."

"I'll show you 'helpful', you little– " Hitsugaya snarled ready to climb over Karin in order to get at his doppelganger.

"Toshiro! Relax! If we start to kill each other now we'll never get anywhere," she said hands planted neatly on his chest, "Kon, stop being an ass and go tell Urahara we're ready."

Kon nodded, a self satisfied grin spreading through his features. The punk was mocking him!

"Oi!" Karin commanded, "I told you to cut it out."

He was about to walk away when he saw her touch the bridge of her nose gently.

"Ouch," she said in a quiet grimace.

Hitsugaya sighed. He had the strangest urge to cup her face in his hand. To what purpose he was unsure but the darkening bruise in her right eye was a sore to see. He smothered the feeling and said instead, "I...apologize for causing you pain. It was...not my intention."

"It's what I figured, but...Jeez, that apology was like pulling teeth," she grinned. She figured that now they were even, but when she realised that was what Kon had said to her not too long ago the smile dropped off her face, suddenly embarrassed, "uh, yeah. Okay. Apology accepted."

"Children!" a voice sang mockingly from behind them. They both whirled around and Urahara continued in a flat but amused tone, "Now that I have your attention. Follow me."

They made their way to the back of the store through a door marked Storage and stepped into another universe. The place was cavernous. There was no visible ceiling, the walls just receded upwards into darkness and the room itself stretched at least twice the space provided for it on the lot the store was built on from the outside. It seemed empty save for semi circular control panel of some sort in the middle of the room. The lights flashed ominously. There was no logical or physical way that this room could exist inside the Urahara Shop but here it was. Karin frowned.

"So where's this Senkaimon I've been hearing so much about?" she asked.

Urahara smiled at her, the relaxed air of his face did nothing to disguise the calculating gleam in his eye. "I knew I liked you for a reason," he told her, he turned and addressed Hitsugaya, "As you know, captain, accessing the Senkaimon would most certainly alert the Seretei of our visit. Seeing as how we're trying to be a little more discreet than... well, normally, it is very fortunate for us that those of noble blood have their own Gates to use at their discretion with no interference from the Court of Pure Souls."

"That's all fair and true, but who in their right mind would agree to let us use their Gate? I doubt there are many nobles who feel the need for a little community service."

"Come now Captain Hitsugaya," Urahara replied stepping closer to Karin towards a panel with flashing lights, he pressed a green button,"surely your memory is not that faulty?"

Hitsugaya's eyes widened, "She wouldn't dare!"

Urahara's clever eyes lit with an unearthly glow as a sudden burst of light surrounded them. A doorway appeared from thin air. Circular and in the style of Shoji screens, "You give her too little credit. She_ is_ still your grandmother."

Kon looked at Karin apprehensively. He was still in Hitsugaya's faux body, but it was no longer disconcerting for her at seeing double. Kon and Hitsugaya were as unalike as apples and oranges.

The doors slid open silently and Urahara pushed her through the light.

She was blinded by the light and stumbled forward. The first thing she noticed was the trickling sound of water. There was a narrow beaten dirt path before her. Shrubbery and trees lined the passageway but everything around it faded into white non existence. It was like being in an unfinished painting, the green of the tops of the trees fading into the bleached gesso of the canvas.

A hand on her shoulder nearly made her jump out of her own skin. Hitsugaya lifted an eyebrow and said, "We follow that until the other gate."

He moved on ahead. Kon looked at her questioningly but she shrugged and followed. Kon trudged along at her side.

The sound of rushing water intensified but she saw nothing of it's source. Other than the trees and the path there was nothing that would indicate water. No stream or fountain. Just the sound lapping away on her very last nerve.

"What's with the water sound effects?" she asked.

"What are you talking about?" Hitsugaya replied he could just make out the other gate not twenty feet away.

"I don't hear anything." Kon agreed.

The moment stretched, pulled taut and uncoiled with a sigh. And that's when she realized something was terribly wrong.

Suddenly the path swerved, somehow, like a great silent earthquake centered somewhere below the narrow path of dirt. The sound of water soon became a torrent, a tsunami, and she was thrown to her knees.

It started as a whine. A low, keening wail from far away, and Karin felt dread settle into the pit of her stomach when she saw the swirling mass of luminescence before them and the shrill cacophony of screeching and bitter cold. The trees and path were sucked into the vacuum of light without mercy.

The howling got louder, and the light got brighter, oscillating in a whirlwind around them.

The wailing came full force now, no longer the sound of water but a freight train screaming down the tracks, and Karin could barely make out the muffled cry of her name from somewhere beside her.

She turned and saw Kon shouting for her. Too close, she thought. It surrounded Kon. The incandescent light swallowed the boy whole, lifting him off the ground with the force of its intensity. With a sharp cry, Karin was unable to do anything more than reach out for him. Their fingers touched, barely, before the light took him. It would have taken her too, if Hitsugaya hadn't grabbed her wrist just in time.

She was pressed into his chest. She could see her breath, could make out ice crystals materializing all around them. Coalescing and linking into each other forming a protective sphere around the two small bodies within. Karin looked at Hitsugaya's face and knew instantly: the ice was his doing.

It was overwhelming. Her face contorted in a mixture of agony and anger, but she could not cry.

Kon was gone and it was like staring into the face of that Hollow the first night. How it had ignored Yuzu and had come for her. Only for her.

"We have to help him!" she could barely attribute that the hysterical sound was coming from her.

"I'm sorry," he whispered bringing his head close to hers in a gesture that could either be from pain or affection.

She struggled against him until she adjusted to the painful truth; Kon was gone.

They were jerked to the side suddenly, but the sphere of ice held. A great hollow thud resounded through them right down to their bones. The wall of ice shook and rattled with each hit. Like a giant playing soccer and they were the ball. Or like the wolf trying to blow the house down.

Karin held onto Hitsugaya's hand tightly when she saw the hairline cracks in the ice– where even now the light had begun to shine through– and wished.

She wished she were home. Watching Ichigo and her old man spar while Yuzu cooked dinner.

She wished she could have the chance to make fun of Hitsugaya for being as pretty as a girl.

She wished Kon had a body. A real one and not a borrowed vessel. A body as irritating and special as his soul.

She wished he weren't gone but the sphere of ice cracked in two and everything went dark.

When they came to, they were both lying on their backs in a field of grass. Hitsugaya knew he was home.

They were in Soul Society.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity; his breathing slowed and he let the echo of the wind ease him into his senses and bring him back, slowly, to some measure of control. The feeling of doom was still there but as his senses were strung together he was able to push past the overwhelming outpouring of spiritual power and find equilibrium.

Suddenly he heard a masculine shout of exultation and he reflexively sprung up on his feet immediately. Sense of equilibrium shattered when he saw Karin being swung around in the arms of a very naked man.

The moment the other put Kurasaki down Hitsugaya sprang forward, sword unsheathed and pinned to the throat of the interloper all in one swift move.

"Who the hell are you," he snarled.

The young man smirked. No, Hitsugaya thought. It can't be.

"What's the matter, captain? don't recognize me?"

Karin shook herself free of shock at being manhandled, "Kon, stop antagonizing people. And for the love of god get some clothes!"

She didn't seem to be at all perterbed by the fact that their disembodied friend was no longer...well,_ disembodied_.

Kon's short dark hair hung over his eyes charmingly, and although it was an odd colour, the deep royal purple complimented his dark skin. He was lithe, sculpted like an Olympic swimmer; all sinew and grace. His eyes were two golden suns peering capriciously from behind a curtain of fringe. Kon was not just attractive. He was stunning. If Hitsugaya disliked him before he sure as hell hated him now.

Hitsugaya kept Hyorinmaru pressed to the neck of the dark haired punk. He frowned. There was something familiar about his looks.

"Like what you see?" Kon said suggestively, Hitsugaya rolled his eyes, "Hey don't roll your eyes, you know you want a piece of this."

"I'll roll your whole head!" Hitsugaya replied put he removed his sword from the other boy's neck. He was still reeling from the fact they were all still alive.

"Toshiro," Karin said, and when he turned she had her hands pasted to her eyes, "will you please give your white over coat to Kon. He's a little too al naturel for my tastes."

"Why don't you give– " Hitsugaya shut his mouth and reddened. Smooth, Hitsugaya, he thought to himself, ask the_ girl_ in the group to give up her shirt.

"What? Oh, hey! What happened to my clothes!" Karin looked down and saw that she was no longer wearing a shirt and shorts instead she found herself wearing a thin white yukata. Oh well, she conceded, at least I'm not naked. So she let it go.

Hitsugaya took of his captain's robe and handed it to Kon, "You mess it up and I'll kill you."

Kon didn't doubt him.

He took the robe and put it on, "It's a good thing you didn't try anything funny or I might have had to take a swing at you."

"You couldn't swing if you were nailed to a pendulum."Hitsugaya replied and all three of them began their trek to grandma's house.

AN

Ok here it's going to get really really AU. I don't know anything of hitsugaya's background other than he lived with his grandma when he was even youbger than he is now. So I'm taking many creative liberties...also Kon has a body! I thought he deserved one after he was all knight in shining armour for Karin.

Anyway plese review. I love to hear your input.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Her head slammed against the tree and she slid to the ground. _Birdies! There were birdies! And stars! _She thought.

She could hear the newly human Kon fluttering around her, yelling at Hitsugaya, but everything seemed fuzzy around the edges and her hearing was muffled like someone had shoved two large cotton balls into her ears.

She hadn't been watching where she was going and– how humiliating!– had walked face first into a tree.

After all that had happened she was taken out by... vegetation. If she hadn't been only semi-conscious she might heave screamed.

When Kon realized she was no worse off for the wear, he unceremoniously grabbed her beneath her armpits and dangled her onto her feet as if he were doing nothing more than hanging old sheets out to dry. _He's really reveling in his new body_, she thought dryly.

Then he began to dust her off with more gusto than was strictly necessary.

"Hey! Watch it!" she squawked before dusting_ herself_ off, "I can do it myself."

But her protests dried up and died when a wave of dizziness hit her and she wobbled on suddenly boneless legs.

"Take it easy, sis." Kon put a tan hand on her shoulder to steady her, "That was a lot of power you used up earlier," he glared at Hitsugaya, "I told our fearless leader over there that we had to take it slow, but the ass wouldn't listen."

Hitsugaya's face showed flat uninterest.

"Ass." Kon repeated and continued to insist on helping Karin dust herself free of nature, to her infinite protests which he dutifully ignored. Her knees still felt a little boneless and, crazily, the state of her legs reminded her of chicken. Or a nice cut of boneless beef, sauteed on the grille with those little tiny onions you put on kebabs. She wanted the spinning to stop, sure, but what she could really use was a sandwich. Yuzu made great sandwiches.

Karin sidestepped Kon's further attempts at what had seemed to be more like flaying than helping when suddenly Hitsugaya– who had been silent and tense and very far away this entire time– reached towards her and plucked a single red leaf from her disheveled head.

Karin stared dumbly. First, at Hitsugaya who went about as if he hadn't done anything at all, and then at the bright bit of red caught between two pale fingers. Karin suddenly thought of Shakespeare and gloves and hands and her face flushed so darkly she thought she might have caused some permanent damage to her capillaries.

"We'll rest for an hour," Hitsugaya decided and turned and walked away, but not before giving Kon a hard furious stare.

Karin sighed and sat down right where she stood, too weary to even guess at why Hitsugaya was once again pissed at Kon.

She looked up at her self-ascribed surrogate brother, "What'd you mean by a lot of power? It was Toshiro who got us out of that...," she made a vague loopy loop gesture with her hand," vacuum of death. You vanished and I was just along for the ride."

Kon threw her a half skeptical half incredulous side glance, "That wasn't the captain, Karin. That was all you. You even brought me back!"

He scuttled close to her and took both her hands in his, "you gave me... you _made_ me. Do you even know what that means to me?"

Kon looked at her intensely, and she stuttered and floundered for words unable to react to this new, sincere side of Kon. It was like staring into two liquid pools of gold, like lightning and autumn and heat. Like cats eyes...like Hitsugaya's only differing in color.

"Do you know how much ass I'm going to get!"

And the moment was gone.

Karin yanked her hands free of his and pushed him to the ground. He was still grinning like the sun shone from her direction, oblivious to his own crudeness.

"I should have known you're only ever sincere about one thing," she replied in deadpan, but her eyes betrayed her amusement. She watched him as he began to be absorbed with his hand, once again in fascination with his body.

Karin watched him for a moment.

"You're not telling me something," she said finally, "you and Toshiro keep alluding to some mystic power, but you never actually tell me a damn thing. Only giving me vague commands to not touch anybody. Or to try to reign in spirit particles or some such metaphysical nonsense that sounds more like fiction than mythology and is not at all practical."

She had begun to pace at this point and was only half surprised to find that Hitsugaya had once again deigned them with his presence.

"What would be the point of telling you anything else when you did such a _splendid_ job with both those 'commands', as you put it." for all his apparent indifference Hitsugaya's sarcasm was tip top.

"Maybe I'd do a lot better if you'd explain it to me!" she said.

"Well, you sure as hell can't do any worse."he growled.

"I'm doing my best." she countered.

"Shows how much you know."

"Exactly my point!"

By that point they had devolved into shouting and the forest reverberated with both their combined voices. Karin wasn't even entirely sure why she was screaming, she wanted to know what was going on, but she knew that throwing a fit was probably not going to get her anywhere.

"If I may interject," Kon said, standing up like a parent or professor calming his unruly students. And, she hated to admit, he certainly looked the part. Kon was at least a foot taller then either her or Hitsugaya.

Hitsugaya glared furiously at Kon but he didn't stop him, "Urahara-sama and I had a long talk about your situation, Karin. He believes– and it seems as if captain Hitsugaya has come to the same conclusion– that you are, somehow, one of the heavenly guardians."

"That's nice." Karin replied flatly.

"Actually," Kon continued, oblivious to Karin's incomprehension," If we were to compare your abilities yours are somewhat like Orihime Inoue's, only the power source is multiplied in you because you're actually related to Ichigo as opposed to just being close in proximity– and we all know Ichigo is a supernatural _freak_, even to Soul Society's standards– it happens sometimes in human reincarnations. Urahara-sama believes it's a little like convergent evolution."

"Right. I don't think we covered that yet in seventh grade biology." Karin said, "wait a minute, you said I _made_ you? I don't remember doing that. I think that's something I'd remember doing."

"Yup, you sure did Karin-chan. You're like my sister and my mother all rolled into one." Kon said excitedly.

"Alright. As creepy as that thought is. How is that possible?"

"You wished for it." Kon said as if this explained everything.

"This," she waved around, "is not a Disney movie and Hitsugaya is not the Blue Fairy. I can't just wish someone into a _real boy_."

"But you can. You're special. Why do think you weren't able to touch anyone back in the real world? Because every time you did you'd distort the spirit particles that make up every living being."

Kon grabbed her hands and swung her around. Hitsugaya, tired of the commotion, pushed him off with more force than was strictly necessary.

"Kon's getting a little ahead of himself. Nothing is certain yet, especially not something as astronomically unlikely as being a heavenly guardian, they haven't been around for millenniums and I don't think they're about to get reincarnated into a little girl in some backwater town in Japan. No offense."

"I'm sure." she replied not a little sarcastically.

"But it's true Hitsugaya. Urahara even said that it makes total sense because she's the opposite of you in every way!"

Karin looked at Hitsugaya's frowning face. Her head felt full, suddenly, and her stomach was empty and she felt like she should sit down or something, but she stubbornly kept standing because this was _important_, damn it!

"What Kon means is that you're different. Be it because you're...a guardian, or because you were always in such close contact with your brother, in the end it's all the same. You have the potential to be far more powerful than anything we've ever known."

At this point Kon gave a rather loud– and fake– cough. Hitsugaya glared. "That's irrelevant, _Kon_."

"No it's–" Kon began but was cut off by Karin suddenly slumping in his direction. He caught her and she felt her head loll back unpleasantly.

Hitsugaya was already in her line of sight and he looked at her intently as she wavered on the edge of consciousness.

"Kurosaki!" he barked, "I'm going to ask you an important question and you have to– listen!– answer me with the complete truth, understand?"

"Yeah," she said almost incoherently, she felt like the earth was melting downwards and she was sinking into the hole it made. Like slipping through into a pool of half melted chocolate.

But she tried to hold on to consciousness, to hold on to Hitsugaya's voice because he was talking to her, acknowledging her, and it was important.

He stared at her with his green feline eyes and said finally, "Are you hungry?"

_Eh_? Karin tried to answer but sunk deeper into the chocolate, instead. _Was she hungry?_ Ha! Of course she was hungry she tried to say, she was thinking about diving into a pool of chocolate, for crying out loud! Was she hungry, what a ridiculous question! She was starving! But her mouth seemed to be made of molasses, so she just nodded.

"On a scale from one to ten how hungry would you say you are, Karin-chan?" Kon asked from somewhere above her.

"Idiot!"Hitsugaya hissed, "hunger isn't measured in scales! We need to get her something to eat."

"Well, how far are we from where we're going?" Kon replied.

"About a day." Hitsugaya hedged.

"Are you kidding?! _About_ a day? I thought this was your relative's house, how do you not know exactly how far away we are?"Kon said incredulously, Karin still gathered limply in his arms.

"I'm not a homing pidgeon," Hitsugaya bit out, "Let's keep moving. Arguing here is not going to help Kurosaki any."

Hitsugaya readjusted the sword at his back– something he had been doing with increased tendency– and began to walk away.

Kon helped Karin stand as he murmured to her gently, "Come on Karin-chan just a little further and we'll have a buffet, I promise."

She took a weak step forward, but Kon held most her weight. She felt stupid.

"This is stupid," she said.

At the words, Hitsugaya turned scowling and was beside them in a flash, "What the hell are you doing? Carry her on your back, moron."

Why did her role in life suddenly get relegated to backpack? She thought fuzzily.

Kon lifted the weary Karin onto his back, her legs tucked neatly at his sides and her arms around his neck.

"You know, captain, it wouldn't hurt you to be a little nicer to me."

"We can only hope." Karin mumbled from behind his back just loud enough for him to hear.

Kon snorted his laughter. Even half dead Karin was still the life of the party.

Karin felt horrible. If her hunger had been intense an hour before then the intensity of lightning was a wink of light across the sky. If she had been hungry before she hadn't known the meaning of the word. She felt like her abdomen was being punctured repeatedly by thick sharpened spears of iron. Like her stomach was slowly, torturously, twisting itself into nothingness. When she opened her eyes it was as if everything was coated with a thin film of grey. Grey that slipped into black at the edges of her vision. The pain had been so intense that she didn't even wonder at its novelty.

Her body felt hot, too. Like she was baking inside her own skin. If she looked in a mirror right now, she wondered what she would see. If she would recognize the eyes that stared back at her. Something, a snippet of memory she can't quite place flashed through her mind: familiar brown eyes with foreign, unnatural, pitch black irises behind a white mask.

"Ichigo..." she mumbled feverishly.

Kon glanced at the girl worriedly, by this time they had switched off on carrying the moribund Karin. Hitsugaya was not only much faster than Kon but had that weird ability to keep his body temperature cool when Karin was like a small localized furnace on his back, "Captain, I don't think she's going to make it much farther."

Hitsugaya rolled his shoulders in an attempt to insight some kind of response from the girl on his back, but her head just rolled to the side listlessly.

"You're right." he said darkly,"You go on and scout ahead. See if you can't find anything useful."

They descended as one from their position in the sky when Hitsugaya noticed a thin plume of smoke between the tall trees. He made to call Kon but the other boy had already taken off in the opposite direction of the smoke.

Odd, Hitsugaya thought, why hadn't we seen that as we where approaching?

He could have sworn it hadn't been there a moment ago. Hitsugaya moved in towards that direction, hoping to find anyone who could give Kurosaki anything to eat. He had been cursing himself the entire afternoon about the whole situation. Of course a soul as strong as Kurosaki's was going to need to eat.

Especially in the first few hours of being in soul society. A strong soul needed to eat the food of the spirits. The consequences of neglecting to do so were dire, but no one was sure which it would be; disappear into the ether or transform into a hollow. Usually these sorts of things were a coin toss decision, but Hitsugaya thought it appalling after all this time that they should be taken out by something that was written as shinigami protocol.

The smell of burnt timbre was wafting closer and he could just make out a huddled brown shape poking a stick into a newly made fire. He smelled the cooking fish before he saw it.

Karin, brought back to life by the tempting smell of food, struggled in his grasp.

"Don't drool on me, Kurosaki. We're almost there." he said.

Nearing the camp, Hitsugaya could see that it was indeed an old man who was out in the middle of nowhere. Cooking. It was suspicious right away, but Karin didn't seem to care and she all but sprang from his back and made her way towards the vagrant.

"Hello there, sir," she began haltingly, "I know this is crazy but I'm starving, haven't eaten in days, and I was wondering if I could have some of your fish."

The voice that answered was raspy, like nails being dragged across a corrugated piece of metal. "What's a meal without company, I always say. You'd be doing this old man a service. Come sit, sit, sit," he patted the dirt floor beside him and looked up at Hitsugaya, "your friend too."

Hitsugaya refused to sit in the space proffered, Karin was too involved with her fish to notice, but Hitsugaya realised what bothered him most about this old man that had so surreptitiously come across their path.

It wasn't his sudden appearance, or the fact that he was eating when his spiritual energy was close to zero, and it wasn't even that he hadn't sensed him coming. Hyorinmaru was usually vigilant towards these kinds of things, his silence was more than a little alarming, and yet this wasn't it either.

He looked like the old man at the hospital.

It wasn't anything obvious, the shape of the face and chin were all wrong, but the eyes. The eyes were brown and the way the stray silver hair brushed across the forehead was eerily identical.

Hitsugaya watched them both carefully; the animated Karin as she accepted a triangular onigiri from the amiable old man.

"Your friend's not much of a talker is he?" the old man said.

"Toshiro? Nah, he's just upset that he had to carry me all this time." Karin replied.

Hitsugaya eyed her sharply, "Yeah, right. You keep packing all that food in and I'll need a crane to lift you off the ground."

Karin's mouth gaped unattractively for a moment, "Oh, yeah? Well maybe if you weren't so scrawny that wouldn't be an issue."

And then she took a huge, exaggerated bite out of her riceball. She chewed and swallowed, but after wards she put it down and stopped eating. Which was his intention to begin with. Hitsugaya didn't trust the old man at all and taking anything more he offered than was strictly necessary was out of the question.

The danger of Karin's hunger was passed, and they needed to get going. Every minute they spent in idle wait was another minute that a soul was trapped in its mortal coil.

Kon had probably already found what they were looking for and he wasn't completely ready to face his past yet, but any more time spent with this creepy old man was surely to drive him crazy.

"So, what brings you two into my neck of the woods?" asked the old man.

Karin opened her mouth to answer, but Hitsugaya cut her off.

"We're going to visit my grandmother." it was safe, and more or less the truth, and best of all completely innocuous.

"Shinigami have grandmothers? Don't think I don't recognize the black hakama, my dear boy."

Hitsugaya looked ready to kill. He'd forgotten he'd given his white robe to Kon. The captains robe was less easily recognizable then the black garb of a Death God.

"Yeah, well, he's not that great at it. Nearly got me killed. Uh. Again." Karin interjected.

"No one was asking for your opinion, Kurosaki. Maybe you should try helping out once in a while instead of shooting your mouth off." Histugaya warned.

"You're right. Maybe I should just _wish_ us to where we're going."

Hitsugaya's eyes popped out of their sockets. He couldn't believe she was being so reckless. Who knew who this old guy was and she was giving away group secrets?!

Karin grinned at the small victory.

"We should get going," Hitsugaya stood up and gave a short bow to the old man then he looked at Karin, "Kurosaki."

It was a clear command and she rolled her eyes, made a hasty bow, and followed.

The old man waved and said, "Be careful, you two! There might be wolves waiting at your grandma's house."

But Hitsugaya didn't seem to hear and Karin was too busy trying to keep up to bother with an old man who had obviously read Little Red Riding Hood one too many times.

As soon as they had gotten a good distance away, keeping an eye out for Kon, Karin poked Hitsugaya in the shoulder. Huffing to keep up she said, "Hey! Slow down, will ya? Kon's got be around here somewhere. What was that back there, anyway. That old man was kinda nice. We could have asked him for directions at least. Or waited for Kon to get back."

Hitsugaya didn't look at her but he slowed his pace a bit.

"He gave me a woody." Hitsugaya replied seriously.

Karin's mouth dropped in complete astonishment and her face went candy apple red. She sputtered for a moment in incredulity, and looked down at his hakama.

"A woody?" he clarified when he took in her reaction of bewilderment, "I've heard you use it once before, when you didn't trust someone or they made you feel a sense of paranoia— "

"The willies!" she all but shrieked, she cleared her throat and continued, "The term is 'he gave you the willies'."

"Right. That." Hitsugaya replied.

Karin swallowed nervously and tried to keep her eyes from straying to his hakama to check, just in case.

Kon was a bad influence on her young mind. She looked up at the sky and kept walking forward.

AN

Sorry, this has taken so long to post. It's also very short. Sorry for that too, but my finals have really kicked my butt. I hope you like this chapter. Please review!

PS. About Kon's appearence? I had this whole theory about why Kon resembled Yoruichi, but I have totally forgotten why that was. Let's just suppose I thought it ironic that the lion Kon would be morphologically similar to the feline Yoruichi. It was a cute twist. I don't know.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

It was difficult... for him as a child. How do you learn to love a woman who resents your very existence? The woman who thinks of you as the sole reason her own child was taken away? How do you understand being the product of rape?

_You don't._

When he was still a child, his enraged grandmother looked on as Hitsugaya took Hinamori Momo's hand and never looked back.

Karin Kurosaki was _making_ him look back and he was irritated.

"Stop making so much noise as you walk, Kurosaki!" he snapped, "do you_ actually_ want to announce our arrival to the _whole_ of Soul Society?"

"Jeez, Toshiro!" she stopped and crossed her hands over her chest in an annoyed manner, "Who pissed in your Cheerio's?"

"What does that even mean!" he cried in exasperation.

"It means," she replied, " that you need to relax because at this rate you're going to have a massive coronary even before we meet up with Kon."

He snorted, "that's a stupid expression."

She looked at him askance and said, " It's almost night. Kon must have gotten lost because we've been wandering in these stupid woods forever. What god decided to put this many trees in one single place? I can barely see the woods for the trees."

He looked at her blankly.

"That," she explained, "was another expression. Try to keep up. You don't think he got lost?"

"In a brothel, maybe." Hitsugaya replied unthinkingly.

She sat down by the base of a tree, "Why would Kon want to make soup? He's– "

"What are you doing?" he asked in exasperation.

"Look, I know we have to keep moving. That we have to find this key to reach the King of Heaven. I _know_. But I'm...," she shrugged and looked away in frustration, it was hard admitting this, "I'm not okay. I'm tired. Whatever made me pass out back there threw me for a loop. I just need a moment, okay?

After he too sat, looking at her for all the world as if she was going to spring up and devour him she continued, "Plus, I heard that you shouldn't go running in the woods for at least an hour after you've eaten."

This was patently untrue but Karin didn't think Hitsugaya was all that informed about such sayings. She was starting to understand he wasn't that keen with human idioms.

From his meditative position Hitsugaya opened one eye, "Isn't that about swimming?"

While Karin lay on her back staring at the darkening blue sky, Hitsugaya began to meditate.

Soon he was in a frozen wasteland. It would look harsh and forbidding to anyone else but to Hitsugaya this was hearth and home. He knew every icicle, snowflake and glacier. He walked forward through the frozen tundra until he came to a cave made completely of clear frozen ice.

_Hyorinmaru_, thought Hitsugaya, but the great dragon did not appear.

"Hyorinmaru," Hitsugaya called loudly, but his voice only brought about the frozen stalagmites to shudder in response. He tried to think of the last time he had felt the cold presence of his other half, but his mind come up a blank. He stepped forward but the cave seemed to give one short thrilling breath and then caved in with snow. Hitsugaya began to feel a bleak sort of terror rear up from somewhere within him. _Hyorinmaru is not here._

He ran forward and fell onto his knees, he dug wildly with his bare hands in the snow.

"Let me in!" he shouted, "I can't be alone again! Hyorinmaru!"

There was a bright light and he was pushed back with the force of its intensity. When he was able to shake off his snowblind there was a figure emerging from the snow.

His relief was nearly palpable. It was Hyorinmaru, the version of him that was a tenth his size. He was the size of a very large dog. Hyorinmaru reared up and curled himself on Hitsugaya's shoulders.

"Why can't I hear you?" he asked outloud. The small Hyorinmaru jumped and landed on the ground in front of Hitsugaya, his tail curled back as if pointing towards a certain direction.

"What is going on?"

The dragon ignored him.

"Fine, have it your way. But I _am_ getting back in there."

Hitsugaya stubbornly replied and began to dig in the snow anew, but the dragon was having none of it. It paced back and forced and finally lunged forward and bit Hitsugaya on his hand in the juncture of his thumb and forefinger.

He looked at the familiar Hyorinmaru and then down at his bloodied hand.

"I can't believe I'm having an argument with myself." But he followed the little Hyorinmaru to where it was he wanted.

Soon they came to someplace Hitsugaya had never seen before. It was still his mind, but the snow had melted enough so that he could see the hard dark dirt underneath. It was dark and foreign and Hitsugaya was no longer so sure that he knew what was going on.

Hyorinmaru dashed forward and disappeared into the shadows. Hitsugaya continued forward and soon he was able to feel the presence of something else. The feeling of some large animal very near. He could feel the slow inhalations and it made the hairs in the back of his neck stand on end like the snow never could.

He came to a barred door and crouched low to the ground, he could just make out the slithering footprints of his Hyorinmaru as they disappeared through the bars. He raised his hand to grab one of the bars and get a closer look but as soon as his hand touched the warm steel something huge slammed up against the bars from the other side.

The huge animal reared back, its cold silver eyes looked down at Hitsugaya and the boy suddenly realised this was no door at all. It was a cage.

And inside it...Hyorinmaru.

But this wasn't the small familiar animal that greeted him in his own mind, it was the Hyorinmaru of the Outside. The dragon made of ice and snow that towered massively over everything.

Hitsugaya stared dumbly for a moment. The animal snorted and placed its massive head on the ground and waited.

"What happened to you?"

The dragon just snorted and looked at him intently. Hitsugaya came forward but just as he was about to touch the massive head the dragon reared back and bellowed.

And instantly he knew: Kurosaki was going to do something stupid.

Hitsugaya was thrown out of his mind just in time to see Karin start running towards a dark shape in the distance. There was a someone laying on the floor a few meters ahead of where they decided to rest.

"Kurosaki, wait!" Hitsugaya warned but Karin had already taken off running.

A blur of images and feelings passed through Karin like a river of multicolored ribbons._ I can't let this happen again, _she thought. This woman needed helpand unlike that old man on the hospital ledge she'd be fast enough, good enough to save her.

"Are you okay?" she asked as she crouched near the fallen figure. The woman wore a white yukata, much like Karin's own, but it was a little frayed at the edges and she wore a blue shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She was laying face down beside the bank of a long river, her long dark hair was tied with a loose piece of thin leather and spread around her like a dark halo. Karin was able to make out a glimpse of the woman's profile. She would be young, if it hadn't been for the yellowish leatherlike quality of her skin. From what Karin could see the woman's closed eyes were sunk sickly into the sockets and her mouth was lined and chapped like two old pieces of rope pressed tightly together.

The woman let out a low pain filled groan.

Hitsugaya moved his hand over a large wound on the woman's side– right below her ribs– and began to chant. When nothing happened Hitsugaya looked at his hand quizzically as if a little betrayed. He began to chant again but whatever Hitsugaya expected to happen didn't and the wound did not heal. Hitsugaya grit his teeth in frustration and resorted to pressing down tightly on the wound instead.

There was a huge stain of blood on the stomach, but when Hitsugaya moved his hand to it, the woman cried out and tried to escape.

"No!"the woman whispered and grabbed Hitsugaya by the elbow pulling the boy forward.

Hitsugaya pulled his arm back, as if he had been burned. Karin felt the fire. The woman squirmed away from her nearness and Hitsugaya caught her sad eyes as she moved farther away, taking herself out of her line of sight. And for the dying woman this worked; out of sight out of mind.

"We ran after the third was Called," whispered the woman. Her eyes were bright, but they saw something other than Karin and Hitsugaya. "Night and day we ran. Yoichi's ankle was useless, and I couldn't...couldn't carry him."

Hitsugaya tried to hold the woman still, the more the woman moved the more blood poured out of her, the woman shrieked and fought against his hold.

Karin did not want to admit that there was nothing they could do for her, though she could feel her soul ebb and flow.

"It was Harutomo, then Shingen and Yoichi...Oh, god, Wakana!" the woman sobbed.

"What can we do?" asked Karin looking to Hitsugaya almost wildly. "What– "

"They were _Called_," said the woman, coughing. Blood came out with river water, bright in the moonlight. "After the first...he was trapped in his Calling. We buried him in the end. Then the rest... I told Yone and Wakana to prepare...Wakana is four and her bear was lost– "

"It's all alright," Hitsugaya said with such beautiful certainty and calm that had she not known otherwise she would have never doubted him, "They got away."

Karin wanted to reach across and hold the woman's hand, like Ichigo used to do so long ago now. But she remained motionless.

"If we could just cross the river and make it to..." continued the dying woman. "The river."

"You made it," said Karin gently. "This is the river and Wakana...Wakana will be waiting on the other side."

"Ahh," sighed the woman. And then her eyes closed.

Karin instinctively reached for the woman's shoulder to shake her awake. "Lady! Wake– "

The moment her bare hand touched the woman's bared shoulder the world seemed to tilt and go fuzzy around the edges. What had been a sickly woman a moment ago was now a amorphous cloud of bright luminescent dust, like tiny stars thrumming through the night time air.

Karin gasped and scuddled backwards on all four limbs like a crab. Her eyes wide and panicked with disbelief.

A shadow pressed against her and she looked up at the face of the cold impassive Hitsugaya.

"I–I–Ididn't mean to!" She told him. _I killed her_, her insides wailed.

She got up, moved back and forth like a great cat in agitation_, _her hands gripped her elbows until her knuckles turned white, "I'm so stupid! How could I be so stupid!"

Hitsugaya didn't answer. He sat staring past her, out at the moonlit river.

She sat, pulling her knees close to her chest. She rested her head between the crook her bent knees made and felt rather than saw Hitsugaya somewhere near her right. She was breathing rapidly and it took a moment for her to catch her breath.

What happened? She wanted to ask but was afraid of the answer. She didn't want to hear that she had just eradicated a soul. That she had forever taken away someone's sister, or aunt or mother.

He finally looked at her. She was expecting to be yelled at, to be cursed and shamed. She would deserve it. He had told her. Don't touch. She waited. Karin's blue eyes seemed huge in their sadness and guilt.

At the sight of her– pale and wan– Hitsugaya thought she looked very lost, and was surprised to feel a pang of concern instead of anger. Was this her first death? He had been dead for so long he had forgotten what it was to see death for the first time.

"There's no use for sadness here," he said instead, but not unkindly, "When we find the King of Heaven they will all be reborn."

Karin watched him silently, sadness still painfully obvious, "It makes no difference."

Histugaya glanced away, "No. I suppose it doesn't."

Karin lifted from her knees and moved further away from the bank of the river, farther away from Hitsugaya. She clambered over thick raised roots and threw herself down at the base of a tall tree and hugged her knees as hard as she could. Eventually, Karin's grip loosened, and she slid down. Sleep had claimed her.

Hitsugaya watched the sleeping Karin for a moment then returned his gaze to the river, his hand still on Hyorinmaru.

"You can come out now," he said to the water. A few seconds passed and three slinking shadows separated from the darkness of the trees that lined the riverbank. As one, the shadows jumped into the air and three men in black materialized. They stood in front of Hitsugaya in a V and dropped to their knees in a severe bow, foreheads nearly touching the still wet earth. Hitsugaya was surprised at seeing the man before him, but he hid it exceptionally well.

The man nearest to Hitsugaya was the only one of the three who's face was completely uncovered, the other two wore masks of blue cloth over the bottom half of their faces. All three were dressed in black, but they didn't wear the kimono of a Death God, they wore the garb of what was known as shinobi-no-mono. All three were dressed identically, except for the maskless one, who– not unlike the Gotei 13 lieutenants– wore a crest of some sort on his upper left arm; a strange four pointed star. These men were, at least for the here and now of it,_ ninja_. The maskless man spoke, "Hyorinmaru-sama,"

"Don't call me that," Hitsugaya hissed, "My name is Hitsugaya Toshiro."

"Apologies, Hitsugaya-sama. It has been a long time and I forget myself," the man said head still bowed low. "Sensei has requested your presence."

Hitsugaya made a half irritated motion and the men immediately stood at ease.

"Sensei?"

Histugaya turned abruptly at the sound of her voice, Karin stood behind him trying to rub the sleep out of her eyes even though she had slept only briefly. He turned and looked at her._ Be quiet_, the look said. She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest, _no way._

He grimaced, lip raised in a snarl but then he looked towards where that woman had died and his face became stone cold. Emotionless, except his eyes... _please._

Karin lowered her eyes_._

Hitsugaya would wonder later when it had become so easy to hold such an advanced form of non verbal communication with the insolent girl but for now he nodded and turned back to the three men, "How long has she known I was back in Soul Society?"

"A day at most, Hyo– Hitsugaya-sama." the man replied.

"There's business I must attend to. Tell Sensei that I regret I must decline." Hitsugaya said though Karin could tell he was anything but regretful at ditching this 'Sensei'. Karin watched the man without the mask.

He was older, maybe only a couple years older than her old man. He was not handsome, at least not in a conventional way. His eyes were too small and his mouth too long and she knew that if he were to smile, it would be a wide endearing smile; all teeth showing and gums bared. It made her think, oddly enough, of a Bobo doll. Not that she meant any disrespect in thinking so, but she imagined him to be the type that if you hit him hard enough he'd just bounce right back, ready to fire off his long looping grin at the unsuspecting.

He was looking at Hitsugaya intently head cocked in subservience, but there was familiarity in his posture as well as if this man was caught between wanting to bring the boy into a fatherly embrace and honor him as a samurai would his emperor.

"Hitsugaya-sama, if you'll excuse my impertinence, it's imperative you meet with Sensei. We know what you found in the woods. It was not an isolated case, Hitsugaya-sama. Sensei– "

"I know what comes next," Hitsugaya said in a mixture of annoyance and brazenness, "'Sensei will tell us more when needs must'."

"Yes, Histugaya-sama." the man bowed as he said this.

"Tell Sensei that the years have been unkind to her memory and if she still thinks I'm at her beck and call anymore then she can kis– "

"Shiro! Enough!" snapped the man, surprising Karin. She had never heard anyone speak to Hitsugaya like that. It was clearly a shock to Hitsugaya as well, because he let go of Hyorinmaru and took a deep, dignified breath.

"You can't talk to me like that anymore, Togan-san."

The man, Togan, looked at him, tried to take an even deeper breath than Hitsugaya, and failed. His breath came wheezing out of him like a toad that had been stepped on. It was clearly a recognition of Hitsugaya's authority, if not a very dignified one. Karin immediately felt bad for him, she didn't know their history, but she was sure that Big Grin Togan didn't deserve such incivility.

"You said it was not an isolated case, where else?" Hitsugaya said.

"District 88, Hyorinmaru-sama." Togan replied, his voice low and mournful.

"District 88? How many?" Hitsugaya was so surprised at the mention of the 88th district that he didn't even catch the misnomer.

"Too many," the man said. Karin realised at once that Togan– even with such a wide grin– was highly trained in hiding his emotions and that one of the victims in this 88th district was one of his loved ones. Maybe even his family. Karin turned away.

"How far are we from Toko-ji House?" Hitsugaya said at last.

"If we were to leave now, we'd arrive well before sunrise," Togan replied stoically then he added, " There is a boy. He says he's 'a dear and loved friend' and would be 'direly missed' if anything where to happen to him. He is waiting at Toko-ji."

Karin nearly grinned. Kon.

Hitsugaya nodded once and Karin realised that this Togan, whoever he was, commanded more respect from the boy than she had expected. So he does care, Karin thought.

One of the masked men stepped towards her and kneeled in front of her, presenting her with his back.

"It will be faster this way," explained Togan. Karin stared at him a horrified expression crossed her face and she went white with terror. She shook her head hastily, unable to say any words (don't touch,don't touch,don't touch) and backed away.

"I-I can't–"

"She comes with me." Hitsugaya interfered giving her a hard forbidding look. There were no explanations. Hitsugaya for once didn't have a single thing to say, he just nodded at her and kneeled.

Togan looked on curiously, "let's go."

Everything seemed long ago as she clung to Hitsugaya's back, much more than just the single day that passed. But it was not at all like a dream. Karin knew that the face of that last woman would stay with her forever.

She was tired but she did not fall asleep, instead she watched the changing landscape slip by underneath her as she traveled pinion.

Toko-ji was located in a narrow dale at the base of a water fall with countless clusters of houses all huddled close to one another. The people there were homely, but they were by no means like the ragged and sickly poor that they had encountered as they traveled. Karin was surprised at the abject poverty in Soul Society, it was not what she had expected the afterlife to look like at all. At any rate, Toko-ji was a glaring contrast compared to the other towns they had flown past.

Togan lead the procession, with Hitsugaya right behind him and the two blue masked men flanked at either side. They came upon toll gates, Karin walked cautiously beside Hitsugaya. The men guarding the gates saluted them, but as soon as they caught a glimpse of Hitsugaya's fair head, they dropped into severe bows.

It was a sea of people, the look of expressionless exhaustion and inevitability stamped into their faces. Karin thought they looked a little like the aftermath of a tsunami that hit the Northern coast of Okinawa a few years back. It was the blank look of survivors from a great natural disaster.

The river they had followed all this time seemed to disappear into a great cloud that smothered the cliffs and the land beyond was covered with mist created by the water fall at its back. Then just for a moment the mist parted and she could see a bright tower, its red tiled roof catching the moonlight. It looked like a mirage, shimmering in the clouds, but Karin knew she had come to Toko-ji House at last.

From what she could see of it Toko-ji House was massive. It looked more like a temple than a proper house, with more red tiled roofs emerging from the clouds, hinting at more buildings grouped around the main house. But she couldn't see more because the whole island that the house was built was covered in a giant undulating quilt of white. Only the red tiles and some treetops were visible.

The one who had offered to carry her took the role of tour guide, "It doesn't look like it, but the island the house is built on is more than three hundred yards long and a hundred yards wide."

Karin had a funny feeling. It was certainly, as Hitsugaya would have liked to say, the willies. There was something off about the whole thing, and Hitsugaya's silence was not helping. She wanted to elbow him but he looked so stiff that she thought he might shatter all together if she so much as breathed on him wrong.

"There's a garden," the her makeshift guide continued, "and an orchard as well as the House itself– you can just see the apple blossoms on the trees to your right. It's nothing compared to the Court of Pure Soul's main council building in size, but its bigger than it looks, and there's a lot packed into it."

Karin nodded along vaguely, trying to catch Hitsugaya's eye, but the reaper seemed too preoccupied in his own thoughts.

They soon reached the house proper. The atmosphere was hushed as if all the inhabitants had slipped into the shadows of the house. Karin saw no one as they where lead through the wooden paneled corridors of the great house. The moonlight slipped through the shoji screens that lined the walls. The pale rice paper seemed to glow with the silver light of the moon from its back.

Karin was reminded of a Chinese poem Ichigo had once read to her;

The moon is shining bright,

I think that it is frost upon the ground.

I raise my head and look at the bright moon,

I lower my head and think of home.

Sensei had told Hitsugaya that he had never died. He was born to a mother just as any human child was. His birth was in no way unique, there where no fireworks or fanfare, no men and women gowned in hospital scrubs or words of encouragement for a birthing woman. What Sensei hadn't said was that she was alone, his mother had crouched on her knees one night and quietly pushed until the infant Hitsugaya slid out from the darkness and into the bright world of Death.

It was only him and his mother. But it would not last, soon after his birth his mother was Called and he was raised by the woman who would be his grandmother in all but name. After, she had stood before him, her hair still elegantly black and streaked with gray, and told him, "You're starting to goo-goo-ga-ga till the cows come home. In no time you'll have a name for me, no doubt."

So, she made this perfectly clear: he was not to insult her with one of those mundane G words like gran, granny, grams or gramma. Sensei was aware that it was innate in an infant to produce hard sounds and soft vowels in response to maternalistic stimuli but if he had to call her anything at all, then let it be 'Sensei'. The gender neutral Japanese word for teacher or master. At least this had some dignity.

Little more than a year later, the child had marched up to his grandmother and commanded, "Call me Hitsugaya."

AN

that last bit about Hitsugaya's grandma was inspired by a book by Tom Robbins. I remember reading something like it a long time ago. And it reminded me of Hitsugaya.


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