WENDYBIRD CHRONICLES

VII. FATE


Seventy, and Karin is struggling not to laugh.

"Yes, my grandson is rather adorable, isn't he?" Karin says to the waitress who approached them and started cooing over what a good grandson he is. She reaches out to pinch his cheeks. "Such a good boy."

Toushirou says nothing but he's fuming inside.

It's weird to think that once upon a time, this would have been a nightmare, when actually, now that that Karin is actually living it; it's the funniest thing in the world.

As soon as the waitress is out of earshot, Karin starts cackling.

"I am older than you!" Toushirou hisses, red faced and glowering, much to her eternal delight. "I am so much older than you!"

"Oh, please," Karin smirks. "Who's going to believe a brat like you?"

"Mature, Kurosaki," Toushirou scowls. "Real mature."

(He never did like to use the surname she has now.)

"You should respect your elders, young whippersnapper," Karin says, just because she can, fully relishing in the moment. "Haven't I taught you better than that?"

"Hag," Toushirou mutters.

"Ooh, good one," Karin snarks, unfazed. "Never heard that one before."

"I can't wait to escape you in the afterlife," Toushirou grumbles, but there's no real bite to it. Karin knows him far too well to recognise genuine vitriol.

"No way, kiddo," Karin shakes her head, smiling absentmindedly. "You're stuck with me even then."

"Why's that?"

"You'd miss me too much," Karin replies simply, "I bet you'd start looking for me after a month."

"You wish," Toushirou rolls his eyes, scoffing, but there's something sad in his voice regardless. He gazes away for a moment, considering, and Karin lets him be, sipping her tea. It's nice to get out of the house like this, with Toushirou dropping by every once in a while.

They fall into a comfortable, companionable silence.

The sky is blue, the clouds are white and love is in the air.

They're young couple, Karin would guess thirteen years old at most, but they hold hands as they walk by, and Karin cannot help but overhear.

"But you promised that you would buy me some cake!"

"Yeah! But only if you scored over seventy!"

"Oh, come on… please? Pretty please?"

"Young love," Karin cannot help but smile at them, and look back at Toushirou. "To be that age again."

"Would you do anything differently?"

"Mm?" There's something about this conversation that rings a bell. Like they've had it before, long ago. She thinks back, furrowing her brow, casting herself back in time, rifling through her memories. And then she finds it, beneath desperate stars and soft summer breezes. "Now that I'm old enough to have regrets, you mean?"

She was nineteen then. It feels like only yesterday. It feels so long ago. What was she even worried about back then?

He flushes.

"I was kind of hoping that you forgot I said that," Toushirou mutters, looking studiously at his empty cup, sheepish.

"Nope," Karin cheerfully tells him, shaking her head. "I got the memory an elephant, you know."

"Sure you do," Toushirou says, flatly, not in the slightest bit convinced.

That's alright. Karin doesn't have to prove herself to him. She doesn't have to tell him that what she wanted back then was for time to stand still — to return to that day when she was eleven years old and enjoying the snowball fight they were having that day and she didn't know any better, didn't know what it meant to fall in love with a shinigami, didn't know how much it would hurt — now, she's not so sure that's where she'd want time to stand still and stretch on endlessly.

"Answer the question, Karin," Toushirou says, intrigued despite himself. "What would you change if you could?"

"Let me think."

Back then, she regretted not kissing Toushirou when she had the chance.

But Karin's thought about it since then — what if she had?

What if she had, and they decided to date, but their inability to choose one world over another caused a rift between them that they were unable to mend?

How long could the relationship have lasted, with that in mind? A year? Two at most? It would have been over in a blink.

Would Karin have resented him for it? To have known what it was like to date him and then hate the fact that she was getting older while he looked the exact same, year after year?

(Still. Still. Even now, as Karin is seventy, she looks at Toushirou and sees him as that elementary student that she met when she was eleven.)

It could have gone a different way. Maybe in one lifetime, they did decide to forgo their world to be with the other, like a romantic fool who thought happily-ever-after could be attained so easily.

In one version, it's Karin who sacrifices her world for love, and studies hard to be a shinigami, just to be with Toushirou a little longer. She wouldn't be able to visit the world of the living as much as she hoped. She'd miss her family so much. As much as she enjoys being friends with Renji and Rukia and Ichika, they can only visit a couple of times a year, and that simply isn't enough.

She'd be miserable with her premature death.

In another version, it's Toushirou who deserts his post, and gets a job in the living realm. He'd turn miserable real fast, having to rebuild his reputation and never feel like he could do enough to be respected by his peers; he might lose the power he had to protect the people he loved.

She can't see him being happy like her father had been.

Maybe she's wrong, though, turned bitter and cynical by old age, and there's a version of them where it works out, and they make the right calls, and they're happy together, whichever world they chose. Maybe there's a version where Karin dies a natural death — in a fire, in a car crash, by a piano from above — and things go from there.

That's not what happened, though. That's just speculation and fantasy. What could have been.

For Karin, who's thought about the alternatives all her life before she got to a point and decided that it's best for her to stop dwelling on the what-ifs and maybe, she prefers the hand she's been dealt.

Even though their relationship never did turn romantic, never reciprocated, Karin likes that her friendship with him always remained solid.

No, Karin muses, reflecting, it was better not to have kissed him after all.

Because then Karin thinks of the life she's lived. The people she's met. Loved. Tadashi. Yuuta. Amue. And her heart can't help but swell for the family that she's formed.

If she had the chance to make time stand still and stretch on endlessly, it would be holding Yuuta in her arms for the first time, Tadashi by her side with tears in his eyes. How sweetly the birds sang, and how brightly the sun shone.

Haru was right: life had a funny way of working out. Karin likes the life she's lived. She's proud of it.

So what if this isn't the life she thought she had when she was a child, just a girl with an idealistic heart? She's changed so much since then. She's become a different person. That Karin, that old Karin, has been lost to the annals of history, and Toushirou remembers her, watched her grow up and become the person she is now.

(Wendy Darling's fate has never been a tragedy. She got her happy ending, after all.)

"Nothing," Karin decides, happy with her answer. "I wouldn't change a thing."


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