I am so sorry for delaying this story so long! I've had this serious block as to where I wanted to take this story. I have all these awesome ideas for later on in the story, and I don't really want to have a time skip again, especially so soon in the story. So sorry guys! Enjoy~~

Kumiko stood by her bedroom window, hand on her belly. She stroked the soft fabric of her nightshirt in circular movements, recalling how her mother would do so when Kumiko, herself, was barely even one. It still surprised her; how one could remember such meaningless memories even after such a long time.

"How old are you, Kumiko?"

"I'm twenty-seven."

Her delicate fingertips flinched away from the baby, finding better comfort in slamming against the glass. She pressed her palm against the window. She hated it. This was her first place, other than when she was living in the Kuna household, that had windows. She hated them. They blocked the sound of the birds, obscured the colors of the leaves on the trees, and made her feel imprisoned; trapped; stuck in the same place with no means of escape...she hated him.

The glass splintered, shattering into millions of microscopic fragments of sand. Kumiko stared at them as they scattered around her feet, cutting into her fair skin. Her hand still felt hot from the sudden burst of reiatsu that she had released. She silently burrated herself for letting her temper get the better of her... but it was hard not to get upset when Kisuke entered her thoughts. Enter...who was she trying to kid? He never left them, even after he left her.

The first weeks after Kumiko had been released from that wretched hovel prison, she had done nothing but fret over Kisuke's wellbeing. Central Forty-Six had ordered countless of "civil" interrogations, having Kumiko questioned about Kisuke's whereabouts and his plans.

"I won't ask you again Sakurai," Soi-Fong paced predatory circles around her, slow and deliberate. Kumiko's teeth gritted against one another; her ears sensitive to the echo of the footfalls. The faint smell of blood and sweat hung in the air of the interrogation room, and Kumiko laid a hand over her swollen belly.

"Fucking moron, how many times do I have to tell you," Kumiko smirked up at the newly appointed captain, "It's Kumiko Kuna."

She jumped as Soi-Fong brought her palm down against the wooden table, sending earsplitting rings through her head, "I don't give a damn what your name is Kumiko! Tell me where the hell Urahara is hiding!"

"I don't know!" Kumiko screamed back. Soi-Fong stared at her fallen comrade's face, painfully witnessing as tears welled up in her eyes. Kumiko bit her lip and, finding that it wouldn't stop the flow of tears, hid her face in her hands, "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know."

"I don't know…" She muttered, feeling her palms heat up again as her temper began to snap for the second time that morning.

Walking away from the window, Kumiko headed toward her cupboard to get dressed. She stared at the uniforms she had been using for the past months. Now with her baby bump, her uniforms obviously didn't fit her anymore. And seeming that the Seireitei was making her pay for the imprisonment bill for both Kisuke, Yoruichi, Tessai, and herself, she didn't have the money to buy new uniforms. So, in desperation, she had ransacked the Twelfth Division of their former captain's Shihakusho.

"Urahara Kisuke" was labelled on the inside of the collar. The name sent warm sparks through her fingertips as she brushed against the label. It still smelt like Kisuke, like smoke and peroxide and other various chemicals that Kumiko could never remember the names of. But most importantly, traces of his reiatsu still clung onto the shitagi, woven into the fabric along the cotton threads. She could still feel his strength wrap around her as she slipped into his robes.

"You feel that, baby," Kumiko whispered to her belly, giving a rare smile at her child, "That's the power that courses within you."

Kisuke had been so powerful, so rigid. Kumiko found it hard to believe that he had gone on such a violent rampage...but what if what Soi-Fong had told her was true? What if Kisuke had in fact snapped, and tortured his fellow Shinigami? Was there any way she could have stopped that?

Was all this her fault?

"No," she clenched her fists, "No. No I didn't know." Kisuke was good. He was too kind to hurt anyone. She, of every person who knew him, would know that. She was the one who felt his fingers brush against her skin every morning, the one who had witnessed his generosity, the one whom he had saved. Not for a second would she doubt him. Yes, he had abandoned her, but that didn't make him a guilty man.

The guards knocked on the door, startling the woman inside. "Sakurai-sama, we are here to escort you to your office."

"Coming," Kumiko called as she hastily tied her obi and ran her fingers through her hair. She should have brushed it, but she couldn't be bothered with looking semi-decent right now. The guards would bust down her door if she didn't hurry.

Snatching up a banana as she opened the shoji door, she was faced with four guards. It was ridiculous that Central Forty-Six thought that she needed to be escorted by more than two guards. Being only thirty-seven years old, she posed little to no threat. Her reiatsu would only be fully developed in another two decades if she was lucky.

"Let's go," She grumbled, not waiting for a single guard as she sped toward the office building. They caught up with her with ease, and she blamed it on unfair disadvantage. "Slow down, boys, I have twenty-eight more pounds on me than I'm used to, remember? I'm not going anywhere."

"The ultimate choice for a man, in as much as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate."

- Erich Fromm.