A/N: i just feel like i need to address this very interesting relationship. i don't ascribe to the father/daughter thing, but i don't necessarily see it as romantic. sooooo...

Drabble collection: when in doubt, bleach it out

We are the sum of our experiences. We do not tremble. We do not fall. We conquer. -full cast, at various points

Title: let your conscience be your guide

Summary: She was the angel on his shoulder. Literally. –Yachiru/Zaraki

.

.

.

She was so small he could barely feel her weight on the massive length of his shoulder. He could almost forget about her, sometimes, just strolling around Seireitei. Then she giggled.

"Kenny!"

A cotton-candy child with big brown eyes and a smile, sitting on his shoulder, the shoulder that felt so heavy when she wasn't on it. Funny to him, how something so small and seemingly harmless could wreck him with just his name in her mouth. A nickname at that.

Zaraki did not put stock in relationships. He did not put stock in people. He only cared about his strength, the thrill of the fight—for that is where I am most alive, when I have to fight for my every breath—!

"I will not leave, Kenny! Kenny has not lost!" she cried to his enemies in her high-pitched squeal. She sounded like she was merely talking about her lost puppy, but the hard glint in her eyes on these rare occasions gave her age away. This was absolute confidence, learned over centuries.

'Kenny will not lose!"

Oh, and he had to remind himself not to lose himself in the thrill of the hunt, because, because—that voice was calling him home. Because where would she sit, if he did not have a shoulder to offer her, of if his shoulder was so bloody she could not touch him?

And though she did encourage his fights, enabled him forty ways from Sunday to find fighters good enough to challenge him, she also carried him on her own tiny shoulders to safety, to salvation. At these times, he could not remember if he offered her a place on his shoulder, or if she had merely assumed him as her throne.

"Kenny!" she'd call, and sometimes even jingle the bells in his hair, laughing a silver laugh as she did so. "Let's go!" and he followed her finger whichever direction she pointed, even though she was usually wrong. It just felt right; somehow, it felt natural, to do exactly as she said, as if she were a grasshopper whispering in his ear about good and evil.

.

.

.

fin.

A/N: reviewreviewreviewplzkthx