AN: Hey look! I'm turning this into a series of AU one-shots that are loosely connected? Does that make this an actual fic? I don't know. Thanks for the reviews! I hope my writing style in this second chapter isn't too flowery or dense. Let me know what you think! c:
"Hey, Toshiro. I'm dead."
Nothing would be quite the same after that.
She had always been like the sea to him: A place to go on a holiday and a retreat to fresher air. Their time together was fleeting, just as fleeting as the time it took for the tide to breathe against the golden shore. They had never been what one would consider lovers, or even friends. But they had shared some strange sort of companionship. That had always been enough. He indulged in her, however secretly and selfishly. He used her to recharge as well as to lash out against. He dipped his feet in her cool waters, but he also beat back her waves with impotent oars. They played games, and she was not ignorant of that. Her surface wasn't always glassy and smooth, but often churning with teasing provocations aimed dead at his heart. The sea could never be tamed, even if he was invited to swim.
They could never achieve balance, and that was what drove them away from each other.
But that had all been while she was alive.
So many years had passed since he saw her last. She had barely turned seventeen, and people had begun to ask if he was her little brother. They got shave ices and ate them in the park, doing nothing remarkable. When they parted ways, he gave no indication that he had no intention of returning. She had a life to live, and it was doubtful that there was room in it for him anymore.
He had lost the will to swim against the current.
Eight years. He spent eight years telling himself that he had a life to live too. They had their time together, but -as he'd learned from a book he had once borrowed from her- nothing gold can stay. He belonged with his division, and she with her family. That isn't to say he didn't think of her. He did so in the most unexpected moments. He imagined what she would be like at twenty-one and twenty-five; a budding romance with a poor kind-hearted guy who would be absolutely cowed by her, the beginnings of her own family, the foundation of a life. All of it was intended to seal off any strange foreign aching he felt in his chest. An aching that didn't belong there. If he told himself he didn't want it, it didn't hurt when he couldn't have it.
Eight years. He spent eight years lying to himself. And now Karin had reappeared as an unapologetic specter. Mere months had passed between their last meeting and her final breath. She never had any idea that he had tried to cut himself out of her life so easily as she'd never gotten the time to figure that out.
She haunted him in a way words could not capture. Though not a member of his divison, she had apparently been fast friends with his fukutaichou from day one. Her jubilant laughter filled his barracks during Matsumoto's nighttime drinking parties and her wordless smirks colored his dreams. She was everywhere. The tide he had tried to run from had rushed up the shore to meet him, this time refusing to subside.
The imagined future that he had constructed for her was crumbling away, and he was dismayed to find that he was thrown back into her affairs.
Two months after she critically disrupted his world, he discovered something he would never forget. Summer was bearing down on them, the air growing thick almost to the point of tangibility. Thunderheads gathered in the sky and the whole world settled into silence as if awaiting the burst of those first few drops of rain. When the storm began, the curtains of rain shimmered to the ground in a torrent that was a welcome reprieve from the still, heavy air.
"You're dripping all over my floor." Hitsugaya hadn't even looked up from his desk to reprimand her. He hated to admit it, but he'd recognize Karin's reiatsu anywhere.
She began to wring out her hair, letting a few extra droplets slide to the floor in a display that any of his other subordinates would be too frightened to perform. She caught his gaze, not looking away as she did it. "I can't control the weather, unlike some people."
He gave an exasperated sigh before getting up to retrieve a towel from a drawer across the way. He knew Matsumoto kept those around in case she spilled her hidden sake in the office. He made a move as if to toss it to her, but she met him halfway and plucked it from his hands with a shit-eating grin.
"Matsumoto's on an errand," He explained matter-of-factly, as she dried off her hair. "And knowing her she won't attempt to return until the storm passes."
Karin paused in her ministrations, "I can wait."
It was the first time they had been alone together since her arrival. It wasn't clear to either of them if they had consciously avoided this or not. He still hadn't learned how she died. It was a question he'd never had to ask anyone before, seeing as most shinigami had no recollection of their life on Earth. She studied his eyes for a moment, as if making some sort of decision. The air between them became charged with an energy that reflected the steady rolls of thunder overhead. It was the perfect moment for something. The tragedy was that neither of them knew what.
So she plopped onto the couch, and he returned to his desk. The moment had passed but it had not gone from either of their minds. She looked so at home there, eyes closed and arms folded behind her head as she listened to the storm. She had an easy way about her that proved irresistible to many. Perhaps even to him. But they'd gotten too close for him to believe that was all there was to her. He'd been teased too many times and heard her curse at too many people. But in his office, she had chosen to make herself vulnerable to him again. Her guard seemingly dropped.
It was only when she opened her eyes again that he realized he had been staring.
She didn't seem to notice, "What exactly had you been planning to do?"
His eyebrows knit together, "Kurosaki, I have no idea what you're-"
"You weren't going to come back." She said it easily, as if commenting on the weather. "If you had, you would have learned that I'd kicked the bucket and my trick wouldn't have worked."
The pen slipped from his fingers, "A taichou has duties and responsibilities to uphold."
"If you didn't want to hang out with me anymore, you could've said so." The words were delivered with a shrug and she closed her eyes once more. "I don't see why you think you need to use your duties as a taichou as an excuse or anything."
It was as if she could walk away from him as easily as he had tried to walk away from her. He could feel the tide pressing down on him, barely allowing him to raise his chin above the surface. She knew. She had known all that time and yet hadn't treated him any differently. At least not when they were around others. He had tried to push her away, and failing that she was considering slipping away on her own. Could he blame her? They had never been great friends, or enemies, or lovers. He made her feel unwanted, and in turn she'd reacted with as much grace as she could muster.
He wasn't supposed to feel like this. This aching in his chest that had been nursed by fictional ideas about her future was stoked to life again by her words as they twisted in his side. There was no melodrama in her voice. She sounded adult and mature, which only served to make the threat more real.
"Oh, Taichou~! My clothes are so wet and slippery my breasts almost popped right out!" Matsumoto put the tension to an end, arriving in the kind of excited flurry she carried with her almost everywhere. "Karin-chan! Sorry I'm late! I have an umbrella in the closet we could use on our way to the restaurant."
Karin stood and gave Hitsugaya a slight bow, "I'll see you around."
He didn't watch the women leave. He didn't look up from his paperwork to see the strange glances his fukutaichou sent to Karin or how her gunmetal eyes drifted back to him one last time. The sounds of waves were roaring in his ears, whitecaps frothing relentlessly.
He needed to learn to swim again.
