Title: Mother
Author: Tempest
Disclaimer: If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended. That you did but slumber'd here while these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme is no more yielding then a dream. Gentles, do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend (Shakespeare). I don't own any characters recognizable from Bleach; Tite Kubo owns them all. No copyright infringement intended.
Author's Notes: Inspired by a scene from chapter seventeen of the manga, just a 15-minute ficlet written to a livejournal prompt on the 15minuteficlets community.
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Karin's father thought that she'd been too young to remember their mother's death, to remember their mother at all. Her father was always talking about "mother," as if she were some foreign entity, as if Karin had no grasp of the concept of "mother." Her father didn't think she was truly aware of the void mother had left when she died.
They were always telling her that her mother had gone to a better place. "Where did she go?" she remembered asking as a young child, and she still wanted to know what place was better for her mother than home. When she was little, she would pretend that her mother was still there beside her until that game became too painful to play.
Despite any personal walls she'd constructed to protect herself, they would never be strong enough to protect her from the pain she felt every time she thought about her mother. She had no distractions to protect her from her thoughts of mother like Yuzu and Ichigo.
Yuzu lost herself in domestic bliss. Ichigo had his ghost thing. What did she have? Nothing. There was nothing for her to occupy her mind unless you counted the countless hours she spent in the Kurosaki clinic where outdated equipment and limited housing space reminded her all too much of the reality of not only her situation but life in general.
True, she had few living memories of their mother. Most had faded over time and were eventually replaced with an image of her mother's smiling face on a oversized picture, but the few memories that did remain she held on to desperately, knowing that all too soon they would be gone, too. She didn't want to forget.
She didn't want her mother's memory reduced to some photographic likeness of her. She wanted to remember her mother singing to her as a baby, holding her tight, telling her everything would be okay. She didn't want her mother's memory bastardized in her mind any more than it already had been by her father.
She didn't doubt that her father missed her mother. Some nights, she would wake up to find him in the kitchen staring into space as the tears rolled down his face. "Go back to bed, Karin," he would tell her, his voice laden with tears. And for that brief moment in time, she actually wished their was some way to ease her father's pain—to ease all their pain. But any pain her father felt, he masked behind his immaturity and insensitivity, much like she hid behind her sarcasm.
She had often encountered other kids like her who lost a parent who believed that their parent's death had no bearing on their current attitude or their outlook on life. She wasn't naïve enough to fool herself into thinking her mother's death hadn't been a factor in her scathing sarcasm or her biting wit. Her sarcasm was her sword, smiting all who dared to pity or ridicule her. Her wit was her shield, protecting her from their false sympathy.
She learned to become self-reliant in the wake of her mother's death. Her death served as a reminder that she could only live for that moment. Life was constantly evolving with or without their consent. Tomorrow, she might die. Whenever that thought crossed her mind, she thought that death might not be so bad, but her chest always constricted in rebellion at the thought. Her body betrayed her mind.
Maybe if her mother were alive she wouldn't lay awake at night thinking about things like death. Maybe she would like cutesy dresses and the color pink. Maybe she would be more concerned whether her science partner thought she was cute or not. But since her mother was dead, things like that was of little consequence of her. There were more important things in life to worry about than dresses and stupid boys. Life wasn't meant to be wasted on that trivial shit.
There was a saying that time healed all wounds, but the wounds had done nothing but fester in her family. They all went about their everyday routines, feigning some sense of normalcy, but the death of their mother had left them all with a heavy burden. There had been no real closure, at least not for her. Where was her sense of finality, the relief of life moving on? There was none. Not for her.