Disclaimer: Again, neither Bleach not its characters belong to me.
And the story progresses...
Hope you enjoy!
"What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal." -Albert Pine
After wandering for about an hour, trying to calm herself and control her anger, Karin found herself at the Urahara Shoten, sitting in one of the rooms in the back with Ururu and Yoruichi, still fuming.
"How dare he!" she half shouted. "After all I've done here! Those Soul Society reprobates don't even appreciate...don't even acknowledge I-"
"Because they don't know what you've done," interrupted Yoruichi. "They have no idea how far you've come. If they did, you'd have more to worry about than Hitsugaya-taicho."
"I don't see the big deal, though. I mean, they're fine with Ichigo. Why would they have a problem with-"
"You?" Yoruichi finished, interrupting her again. "You only know of Ichigo's relationship with Soul Society the way it is now. It wasn't always so...well disposed; they were hardly 'fine' with his rampage through Soul Society as a Ryoka. They would handle your...ah, situation, with the same grace and efficiency they initially decided to handle Ichigo's case: with a callous backhand. They simply don't care. They don't like change."
"They wouldn't see me as change, they'd see me as a threat. But I cannot change what has been done to me; why can't they accept that and see me as an asset?"
Yoruichi shrugged, losing interest in a stale argument.
"It will be all right, Karin-chan," assured Ururu meekly.
Karin looked at the young woman who had become her friend. She had spent a lot of time with both Ururu and Jinta--to whom her feelings were no longer as affectionate once she found out about him and Yuzu--after her accident. They'd helped her recover, both physically and mentally, and they'd shown her how to come into her new, otherworldly powers. She was older looking now--like Karin--but her timid and docile nature had not changed...unless she was on the battlefield. Karin had only seen her fight once and did not wish to witness her fight again.
Then she looked around. "Where is Jinta?" she questioned.
Ururu avoided her gaze and her question. "Out," she answered, pouring more tea.
"With my sister?" Karin questioned, standing.
"Sit down, Kurosaki-chan," Urahara said calmly, though pushing Karin down with such force her knees buckled beneath her.
"I told you I didn't want her spending any more time with him," she said to the shopkeeper, folding her arms across her chest defiantly.
"Ah, not even I could stop blossoming love, Kurosaki-chan, even if I wanted to."
Karin pouted for a bit more, let her anger steep. She hated not being in control. Love or not, she didn't like it. Yuzu new nothing--or relatively nothing--of this life the rest of her family was living and she didn't want Jinta exposing her to it; she was too sweet, too innocent. She deserved a normal life.
She decided to change the subject. "Yoruichi-sama?"
"Hmm?" the purple-haired woman responded as Urahara sat down next to her.
"Do you know if Hitsugaya-taicho and I were friends? You know, before the accident? He said we were--well, not in so many words; he kind of implied it--but..." she shrugged, "nothing came back to me when he tried to help me remember."
Urahara, however, was the one to respond. "You mean you actually spoke with the ice captain? A rare feat indeed."
"What do you mean?" Karin questioned.
"He means," Yoruichi answered, "Captain Hitsugaya Toshiro is one of the most serious, driven, and emotionally frozen shinigami in all Soul Society. He does not 'chat,' especially with strangers, especially with strangers who disregard the laws he practically worships. I'm surprised he didn't drag your lawbreaking ass straight to Yamamoto-sotaicho then and there. A few shinigami are already vocally opposed to sotaicho's leniency in handling your brother and all his...situations, especially this latest one; it wouldn't surprise me if Hitsugaya was one of them."
"Situations? What's Ichigo done now?"
Yoruichi looked a little bored and sipped her tea before answering. "Soul Society has laws. One of them is no shinigami is to live 'a second life.' You could argue neither your brother nor his wife have broken this law, as they spend about the same amount of time in both worlds--and your brother is far from being held accountable anyway--but bringing a part-shinigami child into the world of the living is evidence that attests against that argument."
Laws? Part-shinigami? Karin wasn't sure she even wanted to know.
She pursed her lips. "I don't know, Hitsugaya-taicho didn't seem that bad. He threatened to turn me in, but he didn't." She decided not to mention that he probably would have turned him in had she provoked him anymore.
"That kid's had it pretty rough. I wouldn't be as affable and handsome as I am if I'd gone through what he has," Urahara said.
"What's he been through?" Karin asked, ignoring the stupider, vain part of his comment.
"Ah, but that is his story to tell you, Kurosaki-chan," Urahara said, now sage-like. "If he called you his friend, you definitely had some sort of relationship. Hitsugaya-taicho calls very few 'friend.'"
Karin nodded. She hated not knowing. She hated having this impenetrable wall in her memories! "He looks pretty young to be a captain. I thought most of them were, like, a lot older, like Rukia's brother and Ukitake-taicho. And he kept stressing that point: that he was a captain. 'Hitsugaya-taicho, to you,'" she mimicked.
Both Urahara and Yoruichi smiled wide smiles. Yoruichi bit her cheek as Urahara answered, "You should have seen him not a decade ago. His time in the world of the living and in Hueco Mundo brought on a sudden...growth spurt. He's not as young as he looks."
A thought struck Karin and she sat up a little straighter. "Yeah, he said something about that. He said age is different in Soul Society. He said he, like, aged ten years in just the few years we knew each other. How's that possible?"
Urahara grinned as he pushed the brim of his hat down, covering his eyes. "Hitsugaya-taicho was quite chatty tonight, I see," he mumbled. Then he answered so Karin could hear, "Yes, shinigami in Soul Society do age differently than both humans and shinigami residing in the world of the living."
"How so?" she probed.
"Well, I'm not certain," Urahara said, scratching his chin, "but I'd estimate your new friend--though he looks to be in his early twenties, correct?--is roughly between two hundred and four hundred Soul Society years old. To be honest, I haven't quite figured out the conversion scale yet. It seems to vary on how much time a shinigami spends in Soul Society and in the world of the living." He observed the confusion on Karin's face but continued his explanation, still rubbing his scruffy chin. "You see, old man Yama is said to be at least two thousand Soul Society years old. But, on earth, that, of course, is biologically impossible. But if he were, say, one hundred, one hundred ten--judging by how he'd appear as a human--earth years old? That would make the scale twenty Soul Society years for every one earth year. You with me?"
Karin nodded even though she was terribly lost.
"However, Rukia-chan observed upon first meeting your brother that she had lived approximately ten times longer than Ichigo's lifetime--which, at the time, was fifteen--and yet she too was physically aged only fifteen years, making the scale ten to one. As your brother trained in Soul Society, however, he aged. He grew taller and wider and was capable of developing muscles fifteen year olds don't even know exist yet, a feat I attribute to the abundant reiatsu Soul Society is composed of. It physically aged him greater than his fifteen years. Even now, his body has retained that 'aging' and appears older than his twenty-two years, though only slightly.
"Yet Hitsugaya-taicho had lived in Soul Society his whole life and aged very little, until his postings in both the world of the living and Hueco Mundo, which, I presume, had some effect on his growth. He then grew--rapidly, I might say--in both stature and discernment, hailing his real 'coming of age.' He looked about how old?"
Karin struggled to find words. It was too much for her to take in. "N-no more than t-twenty-five," she stuttered.
Urahara nodded. "It's anyone's guess at this point." But it was obvious he was satisfied with both his theory and his explanation.
Karin leaned back on her hands, processing this information. She still didn't fully understand, but she didn't really care about the Soul Society year-earth year conversion scale. Thinking about it just hurt her head. She just wished she remembered more about the white-haired young man.
Suddenly, she smirked, a different thought entering her head. "So how old does that make the two of you?"
Yoruichi glanced at Urahara with narrowed eyes and Karin knew it was time to leave.
Karin went home but waited until her sister returned from her date to go to bed. It was four-thirty and she still couldn't sleep. She stared out the window--now securely locked--and tried to shut her mind down, but it just wouldn't stop. That one image of him as a child, sitting on a wall--a railing?--frowning at her flashed through her mind over and over again. It wouldn't go away. She grunted and rolled over. She needed to sleep, she had classes in the morning--correction: in five hours.
But she couldn't.
Instead, her mind was invaded with memories--at least she hoped they were memories--which she couldn't make sense of. Images, faces...and pain! An unbearable, indescribable pain.
"Kurosaki-chan! Grab my hand!" someone shouted. A man.
She reached. "I can't!" she cried.
"Karin!"
She sat up with a start, sweat beading her lower back and forehead. "Damn," she whispered, clutching her head. Her alarm said it was only five forty-five. She sighed; she was exhausted and had a killer headache.
She decided to dress, throwing on old soccer shorts and a tee and sneakers, not caring that, in her state of fatigue, she was reverting to her old tomboy phase. Well, supposed tomboy phase; she wasn't sure she could believe all the outlandish stories her family told her. These days, she only wore soccer shorts to soccer practice.
Yuzu was so proud.
She grabbed a soccer ball and dribbled it to the park, pushing herself hard, trying to shove back last night's dreams. She had just arrived at the park when the sun broke over the horizon. She was drenched in sweat but endorphins flooded her brain as oxygen flowed through her veins. It felt good--really good--to run.
Still, the could not shake the feeling, the feeling of hopelessness, of pain, of uncertainty.
She ended up skipping both her classes. She didn't think her mind or body would remain still enough to focus. She skipped soccer practice too. She went home and crawled back in bed, feeling sick to her stomach, sleeping away the rest of the day.
At eleven than night, she left her body in bed and made her way to Urahara's. The night was dark, quiet, but clear enough to help her sift through her thoughts. All was quiet--on the outside, at least--at the shop. She entered to find Urahara and Yoruichi the only ones up, sitting together in a back room. They looked deep in discussion, but ceased their discourse when they spotted her.
"Ah, Kurosaki-chan!" said Urahara. "Just in time. Yoruichi and I were just discussing your training for tonight."
"Yeah?" she asked languidly. She couldn't believe it had been almost twenty-four hours since she'd been here last; the day had slipped by so quickly, it felt as if she just left ten minutes ago. Her whole life was beginning to revolve around her other life, and she wasn't sure if she was proud of that fact.
"Yes," stated Yoruichi. "We'll work in the training room tonight."
They descended the stairs. "So what are we focusing on tonight?" she asked. "Defensive sword techniques? Shunpo attacks?"
"No," Yoruichi said, reaching the bottom of the stairs, where two mats lay on the dirt floor. "Tonight we will be working on your meditation."
"Meditation?" Karin questioned, watching Yoruichi sit cross-legged on one of the mats.
"Yes. Now sit."
Karin complied wordlessly.
"We have been strengthening your powers for two years now. I had hoped it would come on its own, but you have not yet learned the name of your Zanpakuto. I will teach you some basic meditation techniques that will help you focus and, hopefully, become acquainted with the soul of your sword.
"Your sword is more than just a weapon; it is part of your soul, part of your being. You are incomplete without it. Perhaps that is why you still are missing pieces of your memory. Meditation will help you concentrate, clearing the connection to your Zanpakuto.
"Now close your eyes and breathe; deep, calming breaths. Clear your mind; eliminate all distractions. Focus."
Despite her instruction's distracting qualities, Karin did as Yoruichi instructed, as banal and ridiculous as it sounded. She doubted they ever made Ichigo try this. She did try to focus, however, tried to clear her mind, but the fuzziness remained.
Her mind went dark. Everything around her faded and she was left in complete darkness. She continued her breathing.
The darkness wasn't like night, not even a starless night. It was as if she was in a room painted coal black, with no windows or doors. She was trapped; but she was not panicked.
"Karin," someone called.
"Who's there?" she asked, unable to sense or see who was speaking.
There was no answer. She questioned whether she had actually heard someone, and she waited, listening. Still, there was no reply.
Silence. Complete, utter silence was the only response.
Karin eyes shot open. She was now alone in the training room.
"Dammit," she mumbled despondently, picking herself up and heading upstairs.
She entered the back room and discovered it to be light outside. Ururu entered from the main shop, her arms laden with boxes, and her eyes lit up when she spotted Karin.
"Karin-chan!" she greeted cheerily. "It's nearly noon. You were downstairs all night."
Karin rubbed her head. "Yeah, I guess I was. Where'd Yoruichi go?"
"Oh, meditation is a very private process," she said, serious, "and, once she got you in the mindset, Yoruichi-sama left you so you could focus on your own. Excess spirit pressure sometimes distorts the growing connection between new shinigami and Zanpakuto."
Karin nodded. It made sense, but her meditation had taken all night? And had only seemed a few seconds? And had yielded a net success rate of zero?
"Thanks Ururu. I-I'll head home. See you tonight," she said, leaving the store.
"'Bye Karin-chan," Ururu offered, resuming her work.
Daylight burned her eyes as she stepped into the sun. She couldn't believe she had been in that trance--if you could call that waste of time a trance--for almost twelve hours.
She went straight home and crawled back into her body, back into bed, realizing she'd be missing class again today. She was turning into a chronotype; kicking the habit was beginning to look hopeless.
Yeah...this chapter had a lot of drawn-explanations; I'll try not to do that again--unless it's absolutely vital to the plot line.
Hope you enjoyed! Thank you for all your encouragement and reviews! You keep my stories alive.