So… here's chapter nine!! Uhh… it could be really… really… crazy. Enjoy, I guess? Read and review!!

Chapter Nine: Meltdown

He was staring at her.

Her voice had been small, getting softer and softer as she finally muttered the words out.

"…I like you, Toushirou." she had said.

Oh. Friggin'. Hell.

He continued to stare at her, wide-eyed, shocked, completely taken aback. He was horrified, what with his heart beating faster and faster, so fast that his head began to spin, his thoughts spinning out of control, he wasn't sure what was going on anymore.

She was glaring away from him now, forced to pull her gaze from him from her sheer embarrassment, from the shame that she had done the very thing she'd sworn not to do.

It took him a while to reply. His heart beat so insanely out of his chest and when he did, his face showed something like held-in insanity.

His blue-green eyes stayed wide open, his mouth was stretched into something like a half-smile, but there was no cheer at all on his face. "…what?" he asked.

She didn't say anything, continued staring at the ground.

This meant that Hitsugaya had heard right. She… dammit! For crying out loud, what was wrong with this world?? How the heck…?? She… Crap, please no!! She…

She liked him??

He jumped to his feet, the sudden motion and energy burning and flowing insanely through his body shocking him. He felt insane. It was as though his arms and his legs were heating up, burning, there was so much tension contained within him he didn't know what to do with it.

He couldn't laugh it off, nor cry it off.

This was madness.

"…what?" his eyes were so wide as he stared desperately at her. His voice was pleading, hopeless, begging her to tell him she was joking, and then it grew more and more furious. "WHAT??"

Karin had to look at him in horror now that he'd snapped.

The expression on his face was one of shock and hopelessness. "Karin, how could you-? I can't-!! You-!"

He could not even finish his sentences.

Karin got to her feet and stared at him with wide brown eyes, surprised and scared at his anger.

He took in a deep breath, tried to but failed at calming down and finally managed to spit out the words burning in his throat. "ARE YOU FRIGGIN' INSANE, KARIN?? You can't like me!! YOU CAN'T!!"

He looked around him, breathing heavily, his fiery eyes burning. "I don't get it, Karin!!" He exclaimed, throwing up his hands. "How could you fall in love with me?!?"

Her eyes were dark brown and stared at him, watching as everything fell apart. She felt numb, shell-shocked, and unable to move. Even her thoughts seemed unable to function as her heart ached.

"Out of all the bloody people in the world you could choose to like, why did you choose me??" he demanded.

"…I… I can't…!!" He shook his head and gritted his teeth as he ran a hand through his white hair. He breathed in and out, deeply, trying to find some composure, some sanity. "And I… I thought that this was all over!" He said loudly, towards the ground at his feet. He laughed bitterly. Laughed hard so that his stomach hurt.

"What a joke! This isn't going to end! Ever!! No matter where I go, where I run to, whoever I meet, whatever I do, it's always gonna end up badly, isn't it?? I'll never find refuge anywhere!"

His thinking cleared for just a moment as he lifted up his head to gaze at Karin standing there, in front of the swing. The swing next to her was still moving, swinging back and forth, even though there was no-one on it.

"I thought… that maybe I was getting better." he said, "I thought that maybe for once Yamamoto was right, that being down here in Karakura I was recovering. Like all the crap and pain and everything I was holding onto might actually vanish, all the burdens and weight on my back might be lifted, at least a little. But no… no, instead… it's gotten worse!"

"You… You can't help me, Karin. You can't save me." His icy eyes pierced straight through her. "…I've been ripped apart already; you can't put me back together. I… I think I always knew that this time was coming… Ever since all those things happened in Soul Society, I always knew that I could only hold it in for so long before I really and truly broke down."

"You wanted to know about the girl I liked, right? You wanted to know why I had to come here, to 'recover'; you wanted to know why I looked like such crap when I first got here. You want to know what made me into such a mess…" Hitsugaya's voice dropped lower and lower as he glared intensely at the floor, his white hair falling limply over his eyes.

He seemed to have calmed down from his explosion before and now he breathed lightly, though deeply, staring at the ground beneath his feet.

"I… I really loved her, okay?"

And all of sudden, all the fury and anger and shock from before completely left him; he was filled with only sadness.

His voice was full of pain as he told her of the things that hurt him. "I really, truly loved her, like no other man could! I would've given anything for her, I really would've!! Even thinking back about it now, I… I can't stand it… not because she didn't love me back… that hurts like hell, but what made it all so infinitely worse was her betrayal!! She… she had to listen to that bastard Aizen who used her and manipulated her!! She turned her sword on me- her childhood friend- someone she's known for so long- someone who loved her so much!!"

Hitsugaya took a deep breath, obviously all this spilling out was exhausting the already weary self he was. "And then… even after Aizen was exposed as a traitor, even after it was clear that he'd betrayed and used every single one of us… even then-!!"

His voice broke, and he squeezed his eyes tightly shut. "Even though he'd hurt her and even attempted to kill her, as well as Kuchiki and all the others, even though he was so clearly evil and manipulative… and even though she knew- she damn well knew by then- that I loved her, she had… she had to…" His voice dropped lower as the pain became even harder to bear. "…smile at me… with those tears in her eyes… the bandages and wounds clear on her stomach, looking so weary and worn out… she still had to tell me, with the love and tenderness dripping from every word out of her mouth, she had to say that she would forgive him. She said that she still loved him and cared for the Aizen-sama bastard so much that she asked me not to friggin' hurt him!!"

"I… I couldn't handle it, okay?" He shouted out loud, finally lifting his head and turning to glare at Karin with hatred and tears mixed up in his icy eyes. "You tell me how it feels!! You tell me what it feels like when the person you would frickin' give your life to tells you like that that they still love the most evil, twisted, cruel bastard in the world!! You can't bloody help me, Karin, you can't do anything, you can't understand until you feel the way my heart broke that day!!"

His blue-green eyes were wide and furious, the thumb of one of his hands jabbed at his chest. "You… Karin…" he seemed to falter over her name as he spat the words out, "…just…" his voice grew tired once again as he stared at her, the sorrow drowning out the anger in his eyes now, "You… just attempt to tell me what it feels like!!"

There was silence as Hitsugaya's meltdown seemed to slow for a moment. It was hard to explain, the way someone would ride the wave of their emotions at a time like this. It would be furious, crazy and angry, their words shouting out so cruelly and then everything would drop to weariness, tiredness and just plain sadness as they tried to hold in the tears in their eyes and in their heart.

But the words had already hit.

And she'd already understood, at least why he had tried not to tell her about what pained him, about why he was here, why he had been so emotionally battered and bruised. And she hurt for him, as she heard his angry yet sorrowful words.

But… his very first reaction- how he'd gotten so angry and so furious at her love for him… that cut her even more.

And in Hitsugaya's little stop for air, for rest, as he raised his head, somewhat more sane, to look at her, he saw clearly.

The way Karin stood there, at the swings, one hand still loosely held on the chain of the swing; and the tears rolling down her cheeks.

And seeing the way her wide brown eyes shone with the tears in them, the hurt expression on her face… for a second, he broke from his insanity and saw it all so clearly that his heart broke even more.

He breathed deeply. In and out. He looked back down at the ground. He raised one hand and swept it over his face and through his limp hair.

"…but… that's not all." he murmured, his voice soft and tired. "It was bloody hard enough to handle all of that… but it got even worse as all of us in Soul Society had to pick up the pieces and slowly put ourselves back together again after the three captains ditched. There was… a lot of pressure on everyone, for me, as a Captain. And it's tough being the youngest one out there, but at least before I'd been able to deal with it. But I was so friggin' sick of everyone- every soul reaper in my division, all the shinigami who knew me- everybody repeatedly coming up to me and patting me on the back- feeling sorry for me, because they knew what I'd gone through with Aizen and Hinamori! It was so bloody annoying, the way they stared at me, the way they offered their useless one-sided sympathy when they would never, never understand!!"

His voice had picked up as he continued his painful rant. "And I thought that after all she… all Momo had done to me… I thought that I could hate her at least; at least I could turn away from her after those words that ripped me apart! But noo, she had more things up her sleeve!! After being stabbed by Aizen, she gradually fell into a coma, where she remains still, right now!"

He lifted his head, his fingers trembling as he stared at Karin. "And I should be angry at her, and damn it, I am so pissed off and hurt and torn apart by everything she has done to me!! I should not be so affected by her being comatose!! But I… I can't leave her alone! She's like… captured me, and I can't get away! Everything about her, the memories between us, all the crap she's done to me… just keeps coming back!! And over and over, my division suffers and all I can ever do is swear at that bastard Aizen inside while I continue to visit her unconscious body!"

"And it so friggin' hurts me and kills me inside, but I continue to be devoted to her, even while she is comatose and can't see or hear me! And I keep visiting her, day and day, for hours at a time, just standing there and looking at her, even though I know that she will never ever look back at me, whether she is awake or not!!" He cried out.

Karin couldn't even begin to grasp the heaviness inside her, the tight grip that was wounding itself inside her stomach, gripping tighter and tighter so that she was having trouble breathing.

Because all this time she'd wanted to know about what had happened to him, why he'd been in such a broken state when she saw him again. And he told her, and he was exploding and bleeding on the inside, in so much pain. She couldn't even try to understand, she didn't have any idea at all how much it hurt him, she couldn't get anywhere near the suffering he'd been through.

Her voice was weak as she finally spoke, her eyes fierce as she stared desperately at him, worried. "…Toushirou…"

Like he had before, his eyes seemed to clear for a moment. Whatever his whirlwind of thoughts were, they paused in their chain of insanity. And this time, when he broke away from his ranting, his meltdown, his icy-blue eyes were the clearest she'd ever seen as they gazed directly at her.

His words now, they were clear, they were serious, forceful.

"…So I decided I had to pull myself together. And I told myself I had to get better, that I had let myself fall too far, been ripped apart too hard. I knew… that I was already in pieces and that I might never be put together again! The only thing I knew I could do… was bandage myself up."

He took a deep breath and straightened up, drawing himself to full height. His meltdown seemed to be passing by now, and the pride and strength in his gaze seemed as though it had been there all along.

"It was like I'd been stabbed repeatedly with bits of glass and my insides continued to churn, my stomach had been ripped to shreds and the blood that kept spilling to the floor couldn't ever be recovered. And there was no way I could ever be the same again, I could never walk around being Captain Hitsugaya Toushirou again. I'd fall into worse pieces than I already was… so I…"

His eyes narrowed as he went on, his voice growing cold. "I grabbed everything I could, everything I knew! I pulled everything toward me and wrapped them around me, as tight as I could, like bandages. Then the pieces of me would at least stay wrapped up and held together, as much as it hurt inside! And I could never open my mouth or explain to anybody that asked what I had been through, because I had been bandaged up! Everything- all that hurt, all that bled was supposed to be covered up, pushed away, buried deep down inside, never to be spoken of again!! I had to keep the bandages on… or everything I am, everything I used to be would fall undone and never be put together ever again! I couldn't… I couldn't let anyone know, anyone see the truth! But as… I walked around, trying to be normal, they sent me here- to Karakura- to try and make me recover. 'cause it was so darn obvious to those around me by my lack of sleep, my haggard appearance and my slack leadership over my squad, that I wasn't 'okay'."

Karin froze as the Tenth Division Captain paused and walked towards her so that he stood in front of her, just a metre away. Their eyes were still locked, his were cold and hard and unwelcoming, and hers were wide and concerned.

"When I came to Karakura and I met you again… for a moment I forgot things and it seemed like I might actually get better. You… gave me hope for a bit, Karin. But… now…" Even though he kept his eyes angry and harsh, his voice faltered and weakened. "…now… after you… you said that, I… I can't stand it, okay? There is no way I can be me again! I can't… remove these bandages… they're the only things holding me together! But they are… they're choking me, because I keep layering them on, hiding everything. And they're suffocating me."

"I thought… that maybe I could get better. But I can't. I have nothing left. I… I can't accept your feelings, there's no way! I can't love ever again, because that is another thing that's been ripped up and wrapped up and shoved away! All it's gonna do is unravel everything I've tried to hold together and I'm not strong enough to take another beating, another ripping apart because I'm already in pieces."

He took a step closer to Karin and it was impossible to read the emotion in his eyes. His voice was strong now, steady as he muttered, "So you can't love me, Karin… You shouldn't have fallen in love… with someone like me."

Yeah… a lotta dialogue, eh? Sometimes, I get told off for illustrating my stories with mainly just dialogue, but it's the way I do things. I always need a climax, a meltdown, when characters just yell and let loose. It's more of a monologue actually, and it's the kinda thing I'd love to act out myself, just shout and say all those things! Wow! ^_^ So… you all get why the title has stuff to do with bandages now, right? Anyway, it's been a long chappie and some of you might be kinda shocked… but thanks for hanging on with me for so many chapters. Please review and tell me what you think! emichii