Author Note: This is set after the defeat of Aizen and during the battle with the fullbringer anime episode. This story will focus closely around Karin and Toshiro with highlights of Isshin and Ichigo and some minor background couples.
Chapter One:
Karin Kurosaki feels the coldness of the air bit into her skin, seeping through the layers of her clothes. Her gloved fingers tighten on the handle of the bag she picked up from Kisuke's shop.
"Utter useless crap," she mumbles to herself.
Yet she keeps going back every few weeks since Ichigo fought his last spiritual fight. No more black robes and a sword for him, no more hollows and chain souls. No more running away to protect. So now she goes to see the eccentric looking man with blonde hair, Kisuke Urahara, to get stuff to ward off these creatures called hollows. He says it will help hide what little spiritual pressure that lays still dormant in Ichigo because he never truly unleashed his full power, not his Shinigami power.
"This stuff doesn't work... Ichigo still feels them, but he sees them no more than Yuzu can." she chastise herself but it's hope, and she needs that while she protects her brother, even if it's with useless trinkets and not a sword. The blonde idiot wasn't even there this time, it was the other person she sees there all the time, a large man with a handlebar mustache that always has an apron on.
This time it's a ridiculous statue of some cloud dude with skinny arms and legs painted green to hide in Ichigo's room, a strawberry sticker that should stay on Ichigo for at least a week that he will not be able to see or feel. The last item is a silver bracelet that looked delicate with intricate weaving clasped together with a red stone. She assumes that the final piece is for her. Now she just has to wait for Ichigo to even come home, he's been gone for two days.
Home is just another two blocks down the road, but the air around is starting to feel heavy, the pressure beginning to build more with each step. Karin knows if she turns around she might see one of those things, a hollow. She's always been able to see spirits like Ichigo and even the monsters too, she's just ignored it for as long as she can remember.
Her legs feel a fire licking up the backside between the chill in the air and the creature behind her growing fear inside her. Karin pushes past that fear though and starts to run with the weight of the bag in one hand and the items strapped in her backpack and soccer ball hanging off the side of her bag. A thought clicks in her head, she remembers hearing her brother and Rukia talk once, about always aiming for the face, break the mask. She's even seen one soul reaper do it in front of her twice.
So she pushes her body harder, runs a few more paces ahead before dropping everything and unhooking the soccer ball, she tosses the ball in the air and moves to back kick it putting everything in it that she's got. All the power that her 15-year-old self can even muster up and just aim straight at the head. All she knows is she needs to slow it down and get home. Doesn't have to kill it, someone else will who is better than her at this protecting business.
"Why aren't you here already!" she screams into the air, her breath coming out like small puffs of smoke.
The ball moves stable and fast, its aim to the creatures head. This time it's a large one, it's height reaching the power lines. Pink fur covers its body, the legs of a horse and humanoid torso and arms. A bone mask covering its face with one horn dead-center for a nose with a pair of glowing red eyes. It's hollow mark dead center of its throat.
The soccer ball hit the nose on the creature, causing it to crack and the tip to fall off. It lets off a scream that makes Karin's ears feel like bursting, and her body freezes up.
And just like that, the idiot finally shows up. He seems more significant in this form, in his pure form as a soul reaper. He still has that goofy grin though, "Awww… so proud of you! My Karin is so grown now!"
"Stop talking and kill that thing, old man!" Karin manages to bark back at her father.
Isshin Shiba, now known as Isshin Kurosaki turns around to looks at the creature and with just a flick of his finger he sends the thing flying before releasing his sword and in one strike its over. He looks back at his daughter and gives her a thumbs up.
Karin rolls her eyes and manages to move her legs just a step, but something feels off, her balance isn't right and why can't she hear her father anymore? Her head feels like it's trapped inside a bubble like someone just flipped a switch, and she can't hear anymore. Isshin smile starts to drop from his face as he grabs Karin by the chin and turns her head side to side, looking at the blood pouring from her ears.
He gathers her into his arms and then their moving. Her body feels like it was being torn, her mind can't keep up with how it's being moved, like moving between space and fragments of time. Karin doesn't know if it's how their traveling or something her father did, but she thinks she saw two of his fingers touch her forehead before this wave of complete sensory depletion is washing over her.
The world just fades to black.
Karin dreams about the night her father told her a love story, how he had met her mom, who she really was and how he lost his powers to save her and stay beside her without a second thought. It was the day after the war had ended with Sosuke Aizen.
Seventeen months ago, her father walked in their house with Ichigo's body draped in his arms with Rukia, Renji, Toshiro and Rankigu surrounding him. And Karin for the first time in so long wanted to cry.
Isshin was wearing the same black garb she grew to hate that Ichigo wore before disappearing for extended lengths of time and always coming back a little more broken. The only difference is that her father had a white cloak hanging off one shoulder and his usual demeanor was different. His eyes weren't soft with lines creasing on his face from laughter; instead, everything in his face was hard and carried an aura of command.
On that same night, she walked in on Rukia and Renji with their fingers twisted together looking over her brother. The right side of Rukia's body was wrapped up, and her right arm splinted up with her only the left of her body holding the top part of her robe up by the shoulder. Renji's entire top half looked awful and was probably worse under those white bandages wrapped around his midsection. Only his black shinigami pants remained on him with his sword resting on Ichigo's desk.
She didn't move in on them but watched, she knew those three had a bond that no one could break. It's a friendship so tightly tied together into knots.
"Renji ...I won't abandon him. I don't care if he's losing his powers. I will always look over him", Rukia whispered to the redhead, her eyes never leaving Ichigo's face. Renji smiled a devil's smile Karin had seen a thousand times, he often smiles like that at Ichigo before they get into a screaming match over the stupidest things. So she watched the redheaded soul reaper who was always a constant challenge and fight in Ichigo's life keep hold of a girls hand (who she knew loved her brother) while he pressed his lips against Ichigo's, "Baka... wake up."
Karin felt her heart twist weirdly and didn't know how to process what she had just seen, she felt guilty for even witnessing it. It was private and maybe special. "Did Ichigo even know that he had two soul reapers who cared for him beyond friendship?"
Toshiro had found her outside on top of the clinic's roof later that night. His nonchalant demeanor is still intact as he sat next to her. She had met him twice since her brother was on this wild ride of being a soul reaper and she feels a strange attachment to him. He did save her twice, maybe that's why. Perhaps a feeling of gratitude?
"Your brother saved us all, it cost him his power. He will wake up in a few days and then it's only a matter of time before his power just fades away. Though I suppose that will make you happy, now that he is here and human again. " Karin felt rage at his words and let her hand slide across his face, and she knew the second those torques eyes trapped hers, he was allowing her to have this slap.
"Ichigo barely came back this time... and now, my dad is .. he's going to leave too, just like Ichigo would, because Ichigo can't anymore. I can feel it." Karin tells him with a dry tongue as she refuses to cry. No tears have fallen down her face since her mom died.
"Your father was a Captain and from the Shiba clan, a respected Nobel clan that upheld the balance between the living world and the dead. He gave it up for your mother and even when she died, and the tie that knotted them together broke, he stayed for you, Yuzu and Ichigo even with his powers fully intact again. I doubt Captain Isshin will be leaving you now. He only helped this time because he knew it had to be him to assist Ichigo on how to win this fight, to end the war this time." his words sink in, and she watches the way he just stares at her with a blank expression. The slap she gave him didn't even phase him, there isn't even a mark on his skin.
"And what about the next war?"
"You ask too many questions for a child. Just be happy your family is home and whole with beating hearts," he replies back with a bitter tone, averting his gaze forward. Thoughts of Momo drifting through his head, the image of her body hanging off his sword, the slowing of her beating heart echoing in ears. It's a memory that will haunt him.
"I'm not a child! I'm thirteen. And don't ignore my question." Karin feels appalled at his question, his height barely towering over her. The sword lying next to him seeming too long for his body to handle, Captain or not. He looked no older than her.
"You're a child, so is your brother. Or should I remind you that I'm over a century-year-old. The next war is something the Soul Society needs to grow stronger to fight on our own." Toshiro replies, and there is grit in his teeth and Karin catches the way his hands ball up into a tight fist.
"Did you lose someone?"
"Goodbye Karin Kurosaki," he tells her, and in a flash, he is gone.
That night Karin let her father hug her like she was a child for the first time in a long time but she didn't cry.
"KARIN … KArin… " it's a soft echo, but it's getting louder, and her eyes feel heavy but her vision isn't right, everything is orange and yellow, and she moves her hand up, but something is blocking her. It feels warm and safe though, and familiar, but she can't recall ever seeing it before.
Strong vibrations crawl up against her skin, someone is running down the hall from her bedroom door and then it's Ichigo swinging her door wide open with her dropped bags gripped in hand before they are thrown to the floor, and he is rushing to her. His hands are pushing past this barrier, and suddenly it's gone, and she is crushed against his chest.
"Karin." he squeezes her tighter, and she realizes she can hear him but it's still not right. It's not all back.
"Ichigo.. Where have you been?! You've been gone for two days you idiot!" she yells at him, and it's like a dam breaks inside her small frame, over a decade of emotions finally surface like a violent hurricane.
"I know, I'm sorry… I had to try something, do something. I'm home now though. You don't have to protect me anymore", he tells her, and his voice is raw, and his tears are just as real as hers.
And through those blurred tears, she notices Orihime sitting in the corner of her room with a look of relief but also pain, like she was barely hanging on emotionally. And then in clicks inside her head, what powers Orihime has. How in the past, whenever Ichigo would come home broken and battered, the beautiful ginger would come over and then he would be walking around as if nothing happened.
She wants to go up to her and thank her properly, but Ichigo isn't letting her go.
"Orihime... Thank you." she chokes out a sob to her and the beautiful ginger just smiles at her before she leaves the two siblings alone.