A/N: This will eventually become a catch-all for any HitsuKarin pieces I write. It only took two Bleach filler episodes for me to fall in love with Tōshirō and Karin. They are so adorable and THEY WORK. There is so much to build upon with the two of them and I hope to do much of that over time. Expect fluff, angst, maybe some smut, etc. I may cover all bases. Who knows?
Karin watches her brother rip at the seams, and she can't help but wonder if she's following in his footsteps, if she's the victim of fateful inheritance.
She never cries at her mother's grave and she never will.
When sea green eyes, unlike any ice or frozen landscape she's ever witnessed, meet her in her dreams, she wakes up, nearly flies out of her body, and her skin is damp and cool. She shivers herself back to sleep.
The last time her rest was clipped by a foggy spectre, she remembered Rukia, the one her brother can't forget even though he's doing the best he can. Back then, Karin thought if Ichigo bagged a girl like Orihime, he'd really be something, and he is. He is a man she no longer recognizes, but he's doing the best he can.
Tōshirō had crossed her mind ever since they helped Yōsuke find rest and laughed on Grandma Haru's porch together. Well, Karin laughed, and she felt free enough to weaken her defenses. Before she knew it, she was asking her brother questions about his existence in death, hoping to glean information about that place. The Soul Society. Ichigo never said much.
"You've fought hollows, haven't you? Well, that's all there is to it."
She wondered when he became such a liar.
After Yōsuke, Tōshirō had made it clear that they wouldn't see each other anymore. As a Captain of the Gotei-whatever, it was unusual for him to visit the Living World, but when she snapped out of Tsukishima's mind tricks, he was there with some of Ichigo's other dead friends wearing the look of sweet relief.
"Of all the people who fell prey to that man's games, I never thought it'd be someone as stubborn as you."
It was his way of saying, "I'm glad you're okay. I had to see for myself. Now I can return to that place that I never said much about in order to keep you out of my affairs."
Before he departed from life back into death, they sat on the roof of her home and she felt that time was running out. They were the sand falling fast in an hourglass. She twisted the fabric of her t-shirt like a wet towel and they were just there in a silence unlike the others they had shared.
"Tōshirō," she started. "What's the Soul Society like?"
He groaned because none of the Kurosakis referred to him properly, but he finally chalked it up to nothing after realizing his former superior was the head of the family.
"Ichigo never discussed that with you?"
She sighed, wanting to shoot him through with simple logic. If she had to ask, then she clearly didn't know, but instead, she closed her eyes from the too-bright glow of the moon and to breathe away the heaviness in her heart. Was this feeling of loss something Ichigo felt when he said goodbye to Rukia? Only time would tell, and it did as the years went by and it hurt more and more to play soccer or to see snow.
But then her brother came home from another war, and he cried until his voice was hoarse and told every truth she'd waited to hear and others she didn't know existed.
"A Quincy?" she said of her mother.
Isshin looked at the floor instead of in her eyes and she felt miles away from him because nothing was what she'd once believed. Ichigo told her that things were peaceful and that hollows didn't come to Karakura Town as much. She knew that already because her skin didn't crawl as if there were flies trapped underneath it.
She thought Grandma Haru was probably lonely because spirits were passing on more easily. It had been a few months since she visited so she pulled on her boots and braved the snow. The bite of frigid wind in her hair and on her cheeks felt like he did when she grabbed his arm or slammed her hands on his shoulders or just when he was near. Karin looked up at the sky, wanting those days again when she was sorting through what she felt for him. By the time she'd figured it out, time was lost to the both of them.
"I thought I might run into you."
Time moved again.
"Tō…shirō." His name broke apart in puffs of cold air.
He was taller. Taller than she was, with a different haircut and more defined muscle underneath some sort of athletic suit. Karin's stomach flipped and ached and she remembered the first time they met and how he'd captured her then. He had kept that power.
"What brings you here? Business?" She didn't mean to sound so bitter, but at the very least, he could have dropped by or sent word back with Ichigo, but he faded like the ghost that he was. How silly of her to have expected something else.
"That's –" he began.
"… no concern of yours," she finished.
They never made it to Grandma Haru's until the next day, and her guilt over it melted on his lips, and the irony tickled her a little. After several rounds of back and forth, she was panting from the chill and the strength of her raised voice. They argued like her brother used to with his shinigami.
He admitted things; his fear during the last war, the sliver of consciousness he retained when he lost his life and was reanimated. She felt like the definition of selfish. She'd written him off as this uncaring asshole, forgetting what he endured and how she'd stayed awake at night worrying about what Ichigo had been facing. They had all risked their lives and all of them were living with the outcome of victory. It was bittersweet.
"Kurotsuchi says I don't have long to live. It's the price of my resurrection."
Karin pressed a palm to his chest to feel his heart beating strong, and she refused to believe it. Before she knew it, her eyes had welled with bloated tears and he brushed them away before they dripped from her face.
It's her turn to visit him now, and Ichigo bids her farewell along with Rukia, Renji, and their daughter. When his eyes falter and Rukia's mirror them exactly, Karin knows that she has not followed in her brother's footsteps, nor their father's. Tōshirō is waiting on the other side for however much time they have left.