Summary: Well, the relationship thing was going fine until he killed her.

Warning: infrequent strong language


"You're dead."

"No shit, Sherlock," Karin grumbles as she brushes off her knees. Then she straightens and places her hands on her hips, narrowing her eyes at the peaceful vista. "This sucks." She says, sighing and beginning to climb down the hill.

The person, the damnable person whose name doesn't even deserve gracing her thoughts, follows her. Karin ignores them.

Go die in a hole.

...Asshole.

"How did you die?"

He finally asks, and she stops. Then she turns around slowly and retraces her last few steps. The look in her eye makes him pale and resist backing away just a little bit.

"How did I die? Would you like to know?"

He stays silent. He makes sure to be tense and motionless, because movement would be very stupid right now.

"How did I die..." she pretends to calm and think about it, but he's not fooled and carries on carefully watching and waiting for the inevitable outburst. "You pushed me off a goddamn fucking cliff!"

He winces, knowing better than to say 'it was an accident'.

"Im sorry," he blurts, and then he shrinks (cringes) away from her, rapidly realising that was a big mistake.

She leans forward, steam coming from her ears and nose and corners of her eyes and everything. She swallows down the 'sorry doesn't cut it, I'm freaking dead!' tangent and sends him a disgusted blood-chilling look before turning and resuming her descent.

After a second, he starts following again. He makes sure to keep a certain distance away.

Where are we going? Do you know where you're going? ...Still mad? How long are you planning on staying this way?

But he says nothing, lips clamped shut with fear.

Karin scares him shitless on a fundamental level, so yes, let's stay quiet and not rouse the beast.

"You are an idiot," she throws over her shoulder some time later.

He doesn't respond, because he knows she's calming down, and is therefore insulting him to show him she's still annoyed. She hasn't forgiven him yet for his mistake, but she will. Soon. Once she gets over the dead thing and looks on the bright side.

"I mean, how stupid can you be? What moronic thought made you decide to do that? Were you using your brain at all?"

You're distracting. It's your fault, really.

"Do you even know what happened? Or were you goofing off?"

I was trying to save our lives. Or afterlife. Or whatever. Point is, I was trying to be helpful.

Too bad I failed.

You'll forgive me. Eventually.

"Because otherwise you would have realised what little desire I had to die, by myself, by falling over a cliff, on my sixteenth birthday. Was this some sort of fucked-up present? No, wait, that can't be it. You wouldn't remember my birthday."

Yes I would. I did.

Sort of.

It's always you Kurosakis, you're magnets for trouble. Of course trying to arrange a nice picnic on the hill would result in being attacked.

Okay, now he's getting bored, and he doesn't want to have to meet Matsumoto and have his balls skewered to the wall behind his desk. He starts walking again, and Karin rushes to get ahead of him, just to really annoy him.

"At least have the decency to lead the fucking way, almighty Captain!" She says the second he's behind her.

He makes a sour face inwardly and quickens his pace, stepping in front of her with ease.

Karin looks at him carefully, eyeing the bloodstained and ripped clothes, the hair with streaks of red, the various scratches she can see on his forearms and face. She sighs silently at the bad one on his neck that's pouring blood down his front.

"You idiot."

She mutters as she tears off some of his captain robe and uses it to bandage the wound, even though she knows Unohana will heal it in a second.

She nearly smiles at the furious look he sends her after he's gotten over the surprise of the gesture.

"You're buying me a new one," he states after a few seconds.

"Oh, sorry, I must've accidently left my money with my body, back on Earth."

He winces and sighs, wishing he could just say sorry without her blowing up. Typical Karin, he thinks. When things go her way, everything's fine, no problem whatsoever, but if things don't go her way she's absolutely livid.

Even when you've died, things don't really change around here.