She's too good for me. I know that. I've always known that, but it's so damn obvious, so apparent when she patiently listens to my words, my excuses and explanations. She listens silently as her breath hits the crook of my neck as her fingers play with my hand.

And when I finish, when my words run out, she places her hands on both of my cheeks, and she stares deeply into my eyes. I can already see the forgiveness swimming at the surface with no resentment or anger lurking beneath it. She has accepted it all. She has accepted me even though I had hurt her so much.

She's far too good for me.

She presses a kiss to my forehead, to my cheeks, then to my nose, and then finally to my lips before apologizing to me, crying quietly as she tries to offer me solace, stating that it must have been hard for me to carry all of this by myself. She's trying to comfort me because she thinks that I've been hurting while holding onto this secret, that I've been lonely because of it. She's apologizing as if she hurt me.

I am unable to refute her reassurance or her words because I'm in awe. I'm in admiration. I'm in fear.

"We will figure it out, Ichiban," she states fiercely. I smother a chuckle at the use of her pet-name for me, a bit of nostalgia brewing when a memory of our first date swirls in the forefront of my mind; the fear dissipates. "I'll talk with Urahara-san and see if we can somehow harness my powers so that it can maybe contain or reverse your enormous spiritual pressure. I mean, I've been doing it when I can, you know, because I felt that it was getting to be a bit…overpowering, but I didn't think…it doesn't matter! They can't take you away from here! Your sisters would be devasted!"

"Just my sisters? Not you?" I tease.

She shakes her head, and my eyebrows raise in surprise.

"I would go with you," she admits quietly as she averts her eyes. "I always would have gone with you if they thought you were too unsafe for this world."

Again, that fear unfurls and latches into my throat, rendering me speechless.

She interprets my silence in the wrong way. She stumbles out, "B-but I wouldn't be a bother to you! I would have given you space, and I would have—"

With haste, I press a bruising kiss on her lips, cutting her off. Overwhelmed with feeling, overcome with desperation, I pull her closer. I plead with her with my tongue, and she forgives and relents with hers. What should have been a sentencing ends up as rehabilitation as she matches my intensity with her own. Her shield coils around my flaring reiatsu as her hands run through my hair while my hands pull at her clothes.

It's not long until we sink into each other. Not long until I sink into her love. Not long until I slip and sink into that fear. But it recedes as she kisses it away, as she declares that she loves me.

And I am able to live with it. I am as we work with Urahara-san to use her abilities to stabilize me. I am able to keep the fear at bay when their work comes to fruition, and I am finally able to use my Shinigami powers in the world of the living with the help of a special device fused with her powers that only activate when my reiatsu reaches a certain level; there's some weird transitive property thing that also happens, but to be honest, I zoned out at the long explanation. I am even able to ignore it as she makes me able to use my own strength to protect the people and the places I love, as she gives me the ability to be me again, to be a better me. I am able to pretend it never existed in the first place.

Until it grabs me and ensnares me in an unescapable grip.

I go to pick her up from work. She's working the register, and when she looks at me, she grins. She makes a sudden move as if to run to me, but she immediately falls onto the ground.

I rush over to her, and I try to figure out her struggle to right herself before I scope her up in my arms. She squeals in surprise at my sudden movements, but she quiets down as I sit her in an empty chair. I take the one next to her, pulling her legs onto my lap.

I tilt my head at her as I glance at her tied shoelaces. She blushes as she launches her story. She explains that she has always wanted to tie someone's shoelaces together, but she never wanted to hurt anyone, so she decided to try it on herself. She thought it would be funny, but she forgot she had done it once she saw me.

I am unlacing her shoes while listening to her. I glance up at her, and it's when she smiles at me, her eyes shining with love and appreciation, that it hits me in the face. The fear hits me right on the mouth, pries my lips open, slithers over my tongue, down my throat, and it drops into my stomach. It then spreads until reaches every part of me. No part of me is left unscathed.

I thought my whole life has been filled with light. Even after my mother died, after my sun had left the world, I thought that even if my life darkened, there was always light. But now, sitting across her, sitting with her in my reach, I realize something.

I have been living in a never ending total solar eclipse. I've lived my life satisfied with the dimmed light. I never thought much of it. I lived with it as if it were normal. But now, the moon has passed, and I am bathed in the full light of her. I am scorched by her. By my sun.

She's it. Why now, I do not know, but the truth is there. She is the most important source of energy for me, a source of life. She gives me warmth and illumination. She keeps me centered. She is larger than life. She's my sun, the center of my universe.

I pull her face gently to me, placing a small kiss on her lips. She blushes brightly. I am not one for public display of affections, but I could not help it. I am overwhelmed again by her. I am overflowing with the love I have for her.

I tell her that I had stopped by because I have to go somewhere, but I wanted to see her first. She looks disappointed, but another quick kiss squashes any protests. I place her fixed shoes on the floor before standing up. I lean down, pressing a longer, lingering kiss before whispering an "I love you" to her.

She looks worried when I leave, but my mind is set as I take a bus to the one person who'd understand. It doesn't take too long before I am walking the familiar path that I've hated and grown to cherish. I stop when I reach it.

"Hi, mom. It's been a while, right?"

I breath deeply as my hands dig into my pockets.

"I didn't bring flowers today. Sorry about that. It was kind of a whim that I'm here, you know. I mean, it's not every day that I…" I trail off.

"I never really paid attention to Fate. I never really cared if everything was predestined or if freewill played a part in our lives. I've always just done what I thought was right. I always just kept moving forward."

I crouch down to adjust the flowers in the vase leftover from the previous visit.

"Maybe it's our choices, maybe it's fate, or maybe it's both, but mom, whatever it is, I have fallen in love," I whisper.

"It's kind of embarrassing to say it aloud. It shouldn't be, but it is. Or maybe it's because I'm saying it to you." I sigh loudly. "You would have loved her, Mom. She's…" I struggle to elaborate. "Just trust me. You two would have been thick-as-thieves."

I move so I am now sitting in front of the grave.

"You are probably wondering what I'm doing here. Well, if you were alive, you would have been the first person I would have wanted to tell. To be honest, you'd probably would have already known before I even knew. You were always perceptive like that.

"I'm going to ask her to marry me, Mom," I confess. "I never thought it would be possible to love someone as much as I love her, as much as I loved…you, but I do. I love her so damn much. I really do," I admit with a smile.

"If you could imagine it, I think," I pause as a lump starts to form in my throat, "I think she loves me just as much. And God, I don't deserve it," I whisper. "I really don't deserve her or her love. But against all odds, against better judgement, she loves me." I look up at the setting sun. "I mean, the way she looks at me sometimes," I take in a shaky breath, "it's like she sees something more than who I am, like she sees something worthwhile there. It's like she sees who I was, who I am, or who I am yet to be, and she still loves me."

"And to me, that's so fu—" I cut myself off. "It's so scary," I amend.

At the admission, my eyes stray downwards. I play with the grass with my hands, pulling at the blades gently. "But I think that this, me and her, it's our destiny. All the choices we have made always lead us back to each other, so I can't help thinking that it's all inevitable."

I look back at the headstone, and my eyes roam over the carved letters.

"You know, Dad told me once when I was younger that my name means to 'protect one thing,'" I muse. "I couldn't protect you back then, but now, I'm stronger. I have the strength to stand on my own, to fight. So if it's true, if I am only able to protect one thing, it has to be her."

I sigh as I stand, dusting off my backside.

"I think it's a bit selfish of me, but just this once, it's okay to be selfish, right?" I smile at the lack of answer.

"I don't think I ever said it, but thanks, mom. If it weren't for you, I would've never met her. I would've never had the chance to make her happy. So thanks for loving me, for protecting me." I press my lips against the tips of my fingers before placing them on her name. "Love you, mom."