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'tbelong."

"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

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, and 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...