Karin fell onto the cushiony sofa with a heavy sigh. "I think it's safe to say today was a fucking disaster," she said, with a roll and a pop of her sore shoulders.

When did she get so old?

"Disastrous is a bit of a stretch…. Theoretically, it could have gone more smoothly, but reality rarely obeys theory to a tee," Toushirou replied. He reached for the top shelf of the alcohol cabinet. "Does riesling sound good?"

"I'd rather have a beer, but riesling would be nice." Curse her sweet tooth. "Why do you think it's a stretch?"

"Truthfully, I was worried there would be mutiny. There have only been a handful of women in juuichibantai. The men there have been led by one man for some time now. I was afraid they would become reactionary or unduly familiar since Kurosaki was one of the guys, so to speak. But neither has happened from what I've gleaned."

"Nay, they know better."

Toushirou sat next to her with two flutes filled with riesling. "I'm glad. I should have more faith in your authority."

"No, I certainly agree with you; even if juuichibantai knows better than to contend with me, it's not to say they like me or my promotion. We'll just have to see what the future brings. I'm not sure what else to do about it." She paused for a split second before she downed her wine. "I want another."

"Alcohol isn't good consolation. I doubt you're even mourning Zaraki's death, Karin."

"I'm not drinking because of that and you know it." Karin's closest connection to Kenpachi Zaraki was her niece Ichika Abarai. Ichika graduated into juuichibantai thanks to her inheritance of her father Renji's combat skills and temperament. Ichika was fonder of Ichigo and Rukia than Karin was, naturally loving of their mother and mother's close friend, but Ichika was respectful of Karin's history with them, and a child so boisterous was not hard to adore to begin with.

Ichika was deeply hurt when her idol Kenpachi Zaraki was slain. But like her father, Ichika didn't show much emotion after the initial shock. Ichika just focused on taking down the upsurgence of escaped Maggots Nest prisoners like the rest of juuichibantai afterwards. If Ichika grieved at all, she hadn't taken it to Karin.

Needless to say, Karin had little to do with Kenpachi Zaraki before his passing. She knew him by name and face, of course, but she had only spoken to him twice and seen him thrice since she entered the academy many years ago. His murder wasn't one of her major losses.

Summarily; Kenpachi Zaraki's murder wasn't what weighed on Karin's mind. She wasn't even worried whether or not she could lead a squad of egocentric sausages. Karin was worried her men had yet to acclimate to a new leader, and one who was a woman at that. It had been some time before Karin was "one of the guys," and even longer since she was wantonly violent. Could she build rapport and respect with her men and just after they lost their leader?

Karin pulled her pipe from her shihakusho and lit it with kidou. There was nothing better after a long day than a smoke and a drink. "What I meant was I'm worried how my squad will cope with me as their leader. It's a misogynistic culture there. Yachiru Kusajishi and Ichika Abarai have been the only other women in juuichibantai in recent years. Juuichibantai hasn't had a woman lead them in generations. I'm worried the drastic change will lead to difficulties."

"Oh yes. Matsumoto said Ise was worried about the same thing. I can't promise you it'll be easy, but thinking back on everything else you've been through, any mutiny will only be a mild annoyance."

Karin smiled. "I sure fucking hope." She leaned back and pulled Toushirou against her side with her smoking arm. "You know I don't deal with change well. I'll need to acclimate as much as my men."

"You'll be fine. Like I mentioned, Karin, you've battled hollows in a human body, you survived for seven years in a dysfunctional home, you were one of Shinou's top students, you achieved shikai and bankai before any of your peers, you graduated with a seated position and one of leadership and flourished in that position, you promoted within months, and here you are now. You're qualified enough that only two captains voted against your promotion! Ten out of twelve captains wanted you to lead alongside them. I can't promise you everyday will be great, but I have absolute faith you can and will successfully lead juuichibantai."

"You've always been so supportive, Toushirou. I can't begin to tell you how much it means to me."

"Hardly... I just call a spade a spade."

"Well, whatever it is, you've always been there for me and I can't begin to express how much it means to me."

"I'm just I'm glad I can help." Toushirou swirled his yellow-tinted wine. "I watched you wither away and it was one of the scariest things I can recall. I felt hopeless. Useless."

Toushirou had quite a load of uselessness, more than just Karin's tumultuous adolescence. His dear sister Momo's abuse and injuries occurred right under his nose, where he believed he should have seen it. Toushirou continued to burden some of the blame for Momo's abuse, despite Momo's objections that it wasn't his fault. Karin's emotional deterioration certainly didn't help his pain. Karin was one to allow people their individual grief, but Toushirou meant so much to her, he and Momo were the two most important people in her life, and imagining how painful it must have been to watch her slowly kill herself made her chest ache.

"I'm sorry. I know I've apologized for it in the past, but I continue to feel awful about it, Toushirou."

"You were a child. You have nothing to apologize for, and anything you have done to warrant an apology for has been long forgiven and forgotten."

She smiled. "You've always been like this, you know."

"Like what?"

"Kind. I've heard about how cold you can be in the past, but it's never been the case. You're so caring, Toushirou. You always have been. It makes me think back to when I was a child."

Karin couldn't remember most of the weekend. Friday and Saturday felt like a dream.

When Toushirou visited Sunday, she could barely remember what they did before they went to Tachibani Grill. It was all a bad fucking dream. She could tell you what happened, but she couldn't remember having done any of it.

It had to be a dream.

"Can you hear me?"

Karin looked up from her blue cheese-sprinkled fries to Toushirou. In the grill's lighting, his eyes were blue like the mold spots in her cheese sprinkles. "What?"

"Are you okay, Karin? You've got a thousand-yard stare going on."

She picked at her soggy fries like a chicken pecked the ground. "Am I ever okay?" Karin couldn't tell Toushirou about Daiichi's murder (which she was sure was a dream, even if she got error messages when she tried to text him) but it was a secret that scratched at her insides like a caged animal desperate for escape.

"I-I need to tell you something, Toushirou."

She watched his breathing altogether stop. "What did I do?"

"I-It's not you. It's Daiichi. You know, Daiichi Kojima. He-he was my bo-boyfriend here. You met him before."

"I remember him."

Karin's chest ballooned. Her words were stuck in her throat. She forced them out like a cough. "He took advantage of me. Like a-a lot. We-we broke up on Fr-friday."

"Oh. Karin, I'm so sorry." He reached across the table and squeezed her hands. "Oh my god. I'm so sorry I didn't see this. You've… you've been hurting all this time thanks to him, and I haven't connected the dots."

Karin's eyes shut as she cried. "Pl-please don't apologize. I didn't know un-until now."

Toushirou sat beside her in her booth. They were flush, and for once, she was glad to be touched. Toushirou's skin was cool. He was like an ice pack on her ever-burning body.

"God… I'm sorry. I didn't think this would happen again."

Karin wouldn't pry. She hated herself that she told him, Toushirou looked like she ripped him in half like a piece of paper, but she felt like her toes could finally touch the ground when she was adrift for two days. "Please… please, don-don't hate me."

"I don't. It's not your fault, Karin, it never was."

Toushirou embraced her. Karin squeezed back with her nose buried in his shoulder like a tissue.

He really was her only break.

Music played from her portable stereo precariously balanced on the edge of the tub. Karin shuddered. Her face was so fucking puffy, and her nose was so gross, all gunked up with snot.

"Okay," she panted. She reached from the warm recess of the water and grabbed the knife she smuggled from the kitchen off the floor. "Okay," she breathed, easily, as she placed the tip on the inside of her elbow. "Okay," she told herself, "like a bandaid. Like a bandaid..."

Karin cut up her arm up to the tiny bones in her wrist. For a cut so superficial, it bled profusely, and spilled into the bathwater like food dye in a glass of water. Her eyes clamped shut as she bit back a moan. How could her fascination with blood, when chunks of skin stained black and her shoes coated in pink didn't faze her, vanish when it came time to kill herself?

God, it fucking hurt! God, how she was dying to just join Toushirou, to glue herself to the only person in all of fucking existence known to have made her feel okay. Why was it painful whenever he was away?

Her phone buzzed on the floor. Jinta's number displayed on the screen. She picked it up and held it to her ear. "Can it wait? I'm in the bath."

"Karin, it's me. Are you okay?" Toushirou asked.

Karin sighed. "Am I ever okay?" Only when he was there. When Toushirou was with her, she was less miserable.

"No. But... I don't know, I just have a bad feeling. I know you're sad, but are you okay? Physically?"

Karin counted three drops of her blood fall into the bathwater. "No," she answered. "I cut myself with a knife trying to kill myself." He was the only person she would be honest with.

She heard the phone hit the deck. "Shit, where are you?" He asked when the phone was back in his hands.

"In the washroom."

"Sit tight. I'm coming. Jinta, stay on the phone with Karin. Let Urahara know if she hangs up."

"Fuck, Toushirou, I'm not a kid you can just fucking talk about like I can't hear you."

"He's... he's gone," Jinta said. "Just stick with me, okay?"

She sighed. "Whatever."

"A-are you gonna kill yourself?" Jinta's fear was palpable. It made Karin's tongue dry.

"I don't know," she answered. "I don't think so. Inoue can just sew this shit close if I end up dying now that I think about it. I didn't think this all the way through. Shit…."

"You're my best friend. You can come to me when you're fucking miserable like this, Karin."

She snort. "I feel like this daily, even if I don't cut myself. Y'know I burn myself everyday? Twice, just earlier, before I decided enough was enough. Can you talk me down day after day?" Jinta didn't have an answer for that. The fox only needed to be lucky once before it caught the rabbit. Karin knew the one time Jinta couldn't pick up would be the day she successfully ended her life.

"I'm going. Toushirou's almost here." She hung up.

Toushirou crept through the window some minutes later. The bath was pink like roses by that time. He didn't bat an eye, though.

Karin wept on the other hand. She couldn't keep her face pretty for him. She was an ugly crier. Her face twisted and her nose was stuffy again.

"Does it hurt?" he asked as he kneeled.

"Yeah."

His hands glowed blue. He held the light above her arm, and it sealed shut with only a faint scar between her arm bones. "Still hurts?"

"Yeah." Her arm didn't, but Karin was always in pain.

"Can I stick around tonight?"

"... please? I don't want to go to bed yet."

Karin toed her body onto its belly without so much as a bat of her eye. It was an object. She didn't even recognize herself, her hair a black pool beneath the remains and her lips blue.

Weren't her lips red and ripe?

Was it supposed to be funny how much death altered the body?

The next thing Karin knew, she was on dry land. Rukia squeezed the living hell out of her hand.

"Karin?"

Karin opened her mouth as if it could clear the pressure built up in her ears. She pried herself out of Rukia's grasp. "What the hell are you guys doing here?"

"Wh-what are we doing here?" Ichigo scoffed. "You fucking killed yourself."

"You're not supposed to be here."

Ichigo cried. His face was as red as rhubarb, and his cheeks were puffy. "Fuck, Karin, what the fuck is wrong with you?"

Karin turned as she heard rubber soles skid across the weathered concrete walkway. "Holy shit."

"Jinta? Ururu?"

She was engulfed in her friends' arms before she fully processed what happened.

"Holy shit, you're soaking wet," Ururu said. She squeezed Karin so tightly, she wondered if her ghostly spine would rip in half. "Shit, your soul chain hurts. Shit, shit."

"Look... we need to get Karin to the Seireitei as soon as possible. Her reiatsu is leaking, she's gonna attract hollows like piranhas," Rukia said as she pulled out a gikongai pill dispenser from her pocket. "I can give you guys a couple minutes at most. The sooner we do this, however, the safer we are."

Rukia was right. Karin died to go to the Soul Society, didn't she? So she could escape the World of the Living and live as a shinigami?

"Yeah, but how the fuck is Karin gonna land by the Seireitei? If she lands in the outer districts, she'll be walking for days if she's not mugged or fucking killed." Jinta pulled away to rake his hands through his hair. "Fuck, I'm calling Toushirou."

"There's not time for that."

"N-no, Rukia, maybe he's right," Ichigo chirped.

"I just love being in the middle of a debate about my wellbeing, so I think the load of you should fuck off if you can't lend me a phone." God. Sometimes she really hated the living.

Ururu hastily handed her a soul pager. "He should be in speed dial."

"Tsumugiya, no. I need to perform konsou as soon as possible. She's leaking reiatsu like a broken fire hydrant."

"Great. I hope we're all eaten so I don't have to listen to this anymore," Karin said as she dialed. She overheard Rukia cuss as she held the pager to her ear.

"It's Karin," she began, "don't get mad, but I'm dead."

"... I know," Toushirou said. "It's okay. I'm coming. Can you pass me to Jinta or Ururu?"

"Sure." Karin pulled the phone away from her ear. "He wants to speak with one of you."

Jinta plucked the phone out of Karin's hand, and Ururu returned to her place cocooned around Karin.

Karin wondered if everything would be okay when she pushed out of her chrysalis of Ururu's warmth. When she was in the Seireitei, would her misery molt like skin, would she emerge magnificent? Could she emerge like a butterfly, or would she be unremarkable like a colorless moth?

What if it was all for naught and she was sentenced to misery in every nameable realm?

Did she care?

She thought the river froze her heart when she inhaled. It was too close to her water-filled lungs to have not felt the chill.

A Senkaimon appeared not a minute later, and he appeared through the pastel rays it opened from. It slid shut the moment his sandals landed on the concrete.

"Thank god you're here. We need to get Karin out of here as soon as we can," Rukia said to Toushirou.

"We do. But there's enough power here in Karakura that we should be fine if a hollow does invade. If you could step aside now, Kuchiki, I need to attend to Karin," Toushirou said.

"Karin..." he murmured. Karin's hair still dripped and her clothes still clung to her like saran wrap. She must have been as pale as his hair, too, her death shed any pigment leftover. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be." Even hit with a pang of guilt finally, Karin couldn't bring herself to apologize. Come to think of it, what could she have said? Her soul chain was separated from her body for longer than fifteen minutes. If she could shove herself back into her body as a plea for forgiveness, he'd love a corpse that couldn't wipe its ass clean of shit anymore. A whole lot that would do. "What's the game plan?"

"I'll have to perform a konsou. Your soul will then be transported to the Seireitei."

"Okay."

"Can you hold out your hand?" When Karin lifted her arm, he clipped a chunky bracelet around her wrist with its circuitry visible through the clear plastic case. "This bracelet will assure your spawn in the Seireitei when I perform konsou."

"Is... is this really it?" Ichigo whimpered.

"Yes. For a long time. For the rest of my fucking life, I hope," Karin replied numbly before Toushirou could even utter a syllable. "Kurosaki, if things had gone differently between us, I might've been open to you visiting. But we burned our bridges a long fucking time ago. Get over it."

Jinta wiped his face. "Shit... are we ever gonna see you again, Toushirou? Can we at least say goodbye?"

Toushirou squeezed Jinta and Ururu. "You two have been so brave," he said. They wept fresh, with tight brows and their bottom lips puckered. "Jinta, you're so funny. You take everything in stride, with a good laugh, and I know that's helped Karin over the years."

"Shit, dude, I'm gonna get snot in your hair if you keep it up."

"Sorry," Toushirou said. "And Ururu, you've gone above and beyond what teenagers like you are capable of. I know this has been one of your biggest fears, but if it's any consolation, I know you've been an irreplaceable light in Karin's life."

"I'm gonna miss you so fucking much, Toushirou."

Ururu sobbed. "Me too."

"I will too. But nothing is permanent, not even separation."

Ururu nodded furiously, her nails bit into Toushirou's back. "Can we have a minute more with Karin before you guys go?"

"Of course."

Jinta and Ururu swept over her like a blanket thrown overhead. She squeezed them tightly.

"I think the only thing I'll miss is you guys," she said. "You're the only good memories I have of this place. I hope you guys live full lives and forgive me before I see you again."

"We love you so much, there isn't anything to forgive you for so long as you're happy," Jinta told her.

Toushirou's hand slipped into Karin's. He pulled her away from her only living friends. Karin realized he was warmer than she, for once. He was frosty but she frosted over.

Would she thaw?

"It'll be okay. This bracelet is locked onto the research division's location, so once I perform konsou, you'll reappear there. Matsumoto will be waiting for you."

"She's your subordinate, right?"

Toushirou cupped her cheeks and rest his head against her's. "Yes. I shouldn't be gone any longer than five minutes, okay? We'll take care of you. You won't be alone for a second." He pressed a kiss against her lips. "I love you, Karin."

He slipped away. Karin's legs gave, and she fell as she scrambled for his hands again. The last thing she saw was the butt of Hyourinmaru descend upon her forehead.

And when her eyes opened, he was above her, his green eyes aglow with love, and for the first time for years, Karin's chest wasn't tight.

Wasn't it like every other time she was miserable? It always came back to Toushirou when she felt better.

After Karin regaled Toushirou of a handful of his many kindnesses, she set aside her pipe.

"I dunno. I just feel bad that I haven't shown you the same support you've shown me," she said.

Toushirou was visibly moved. His eyes were watery. He wiped them on his sleeves. "Wow, I-I honestly don't remember the last time I felt this appreciated," he said. "Just... I don't want you feeling like you haven't done anything for me. You have. You've been the only person I've been able to open up to since I lived with my grandmother. That's saying something, Karin. I've known Matsumoto for thrice as long as I've known you, we've fought unbelievably difficult battles together, but I'm scared opening up to her. I don't dare open up to Momo while she still struggles with her own problems."

"But you? It's another ball game altogether! God, I can be vulnerable with you, even when you're vulnerable, like we're rocks in the ground leaned together."

Karin held Toushirou tight. She pressed kisses against his handsome cheeks. "Is it corny to say I can't describe how much I love you?"

"No," he said, with an adoring smile, "we're perfect together. We'll always be. "