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The sun had fully risen by the time Karin convinced Ichigo to let Hitsugaya stay in Yuzu's bed. Hitsugaya himself couldn't have cared less where he slept, nor was he really paying much attention. The baby had woken up again, and Hitsugaya had taken over the task of calming him down since Karin was too busy arguing with her brother.

"I need to get us gigais," he announced, cutting into the sibling's bickering. "And then I need baby supplies. I don't have any."

"So you're going to tell Urahara about him?" Ichigo asked.

"Do I have a choice?" Hitsugaya grumbled. "Better him than Kurotshuchi. He'd probably want to experiment on the poor kid. Although, I'd really rather keep him a secret from everyone else related to Soul Society, but I can't see another way to get him a gigai."

"You know, you don't have to tell him about the baby," Karin said thoughtfully, her lips pursed with contemplation. "You could, you know, just appeal to his ego." Hitsugaya raised an eyebrow.

"Translation please?" Karin grinned.

"Not very creative are you?" she teased. "Looks like you'll need my help sooner that you thought." Hitsugaya scoffed.

"Whatever." Karin went back to her room to change out of her pajamas and returned a few minutes later clad in a thick red sweater and canary yellow snow boots. She had a woolen scarf covered in black and white soccer-ball-style checks wrapped around her neck, a red winter hat on her head and a white, puffy down coat slung over her arm.

"Ready," she said. "Let's go Toushiro."

"It's Hitsugaya taicho," he retorted, securing the still squirming baby into the pouch on his back and throwing the cloak around both of them. Karin looked at him like he had just grown a second head.

"Um, is that really what you're wearing?" she asked incredulously. Hitsugaya looked down at himself. He was dressed in his normal shihakusho and haori. The only addition was the black cloak. Well, and the baby carrier, but he couldn't help that.

"Yeah," he replied, not sure how exactly to interpret her statement. "This is what I always wear."

"You know it's like negative a billion degrees outside, right?" Karin said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "You're going to freeze to death before you're even out the front door." Hitsugaya shrugged.

"Cold doesn't bother me," he replied nonchalantly. "My zanpakto's made of ice, remember?" Karin considered him for a moment, then left the room and returned with a hand-knitted, hot pink blanket covered in stars and mini-rainbows.

"Don't give me that look," Karin preempted before Hitsugaya could even mold his face into any semblance of an expression. "Yuzu made it for me for Christmas. I can't burn it for at least six months or I'll hurt her feelings. I know it's tacky, but it's the best I've got."

"I'm not wearing that!" Hitsugaya shot, instantly on the defensive. Frankly, he'd rather freeze to death than be caught, well, dead, with that on his body. Karin rolled her eyes.

"It's not for you, moron. It's for the baby. Just because you may have infinite tolerance to cold doesn't mean he does."

"Oh," Hitsugaya replied, feeling just as foolish as Karin was making him out to be. After making sure the baby was sufficiently warm, Hitsugaya and Karin bid Ichigo goodbye and slipped out of the house before, as Karin put it, "oyaji wakes up and begins his daily waterworks about missing Yuzu and forces me to make breakfast, which will just end up being cold cereal anyway since the last time I tried to cook, I managed to produce something resembling a hockey puck and a tortured turtle before I nearly blew up the house." Hitsugaya didn't fully understand her statement, but he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to.

As they walked, they could see the telltale signs of Karakura town waking up. Paper boys dressed up like the stay puffed marshmallow man trudged through the frozen tundra to deliver the morning news. The scent of hot coffee and frying eggs wafted out of the doors that were open and shut as quickly as possible to retrieve said newspapers. It was still early, too early to see the sun above the buildings of the city. The sky was a crisp, piercing blue, unmarred by clouds, making it seem all the more infinite. And all the more freezing. Even Hitsugaya, who thought he was immune to such sensations, could feel the chill. Karin's breath hung in the air as a visible, heavy mist every time she exhaled and her face quickly turned a bright rosy color. In her red hat, white coat, and yellow boots, Hitsugaya thought she looked quite like a plump chicken, but he knew better than to say so. Her hands were buried deep in her coat pockets for warmth as her feet crunched softly in the thick snow. Hitsugaya on the other hand, remained on top of it, not wanting to produce any footprints in his invisible state.

"How do you do that?" Karin asked him through chattering teeth.

"Do what? Ignore the cold?" Karin shook her head.

"No. Avoid making footprints. That's so neat."

"It's all a matter of controlling spirit particles. I can use them to support me so I'm technically not standing on the snow at all. I'm walking above it."

"Woah!" Karin marveled. "Can you teach me to do that?" Hitsugaya smirked.

"Unfortunately, despite your incredibly high reiatsu, you don't seem to have acquired any special abilities like your brother's friends. You don't seem to be particularly affected by him." Karin scoffed.

"Yeah, just my luck. I'm the only one who can see everything that's going on who can't do a damn thing about it. I mean, is babysitting really all I can do to help the cause."

"Babysitting's plenty," Hitsugaya assured her. "I don't know the first thing about babies."

"You're assuming I was referring to the baby weren't you?" she chided. It took a minute for that to sink in.

"I don't need a babysitter!" Hitsugaya snapped, but Karin was already laughing at him.

"You're something you know that," she said in a voice that actually sounded mildly impressed. "You accepted my help so readily even though you knew I was going to give you hell for it. Were you really that desperate?"

"Something like that," Hitsugaya replied vaguely, looking away from her. The truth was, although he did tremendously need her assistance, he couldn't help but feel slightly pleased that she had offered. He had thought about her more than once since he had helped her in that soccer game; how strong she was, how brave. How much she cared about her friends and family. She had a rough exterior, but he could also tell that inside, she had a soft heart. She reminded him a little of Hinamori, who stopped at nothing to reach her goal. But Karin had a biting wit and strength of will that Hinamori could never match. He had never met anyone quite like her. It was strange, but for some reason, he found that he was comfortable in her presence. Like he could actually be himself around her. He was surprisingly grateful for the opportunity to spend this time with her.

"So," Karin continued. "What's his name?"

"Huh?"

"The baby, dolt. He's got to have a name right? You never told me what it was."

"Well," Hitsugaya said awkwardly, "actually, he doesn't have one." Karin raised an eyebrow.

"What? You mean his parents didn't bother naming him? Don't they care?"

"Of course she cares!" Hitsugaya barked without thinking. "She just…wasn't in a condition to name him before we had to leave."

"Poor girl," Karin said sadly. "She doesn't get to spend any time with her infant son."

"Yeah," Hitsugaya agreed, thinking back to the image of a pale Hinamori lying lifeless on a sterile bed. It was so miraculous that she had even been able to have a baby, considering how fragile and comatose she was. "But I don't think she's in a condition to care for him at the moment either. She's…pretty injured." He left it at that, hoping Karin would simply think that he didn't want to talk about it. Luckily, she took the hint.

"Doesn't he have a father?" she asked. "You only mentioned the mother." Hitsugaya shifted uncomfortably. This was the most taboo topic they could possibly bring up.

"He is…away from Soul Society at the present time," he replied, choosing his words carefully. "That is all I can say about him. Sorry, but I can't reveal the parents identities. For their protection, you see." Karin nodded.

"Alright. But I still think we should give him a name. We can't just keep calling him 'it,' or, 'the baby.'" Hitsugaya smirked slightly.

"I guess so. But what?" Karin shrugged.

"I don't know. You know the parents right? What do you think they would name him?" Hitsugaya thought about that. He and Hinamori had never really talked much about having families or children. It wasn't something that had ever interested him much as a child, and Hinamori had been too young at the time to worry about such things. If he dug back into his memory bank, he could only think of a single time when the topic of children had ever been brought up.

It was a hot summer evening, and the two of them had abandoned their sweltering room in favor of sleeping outside where they hoped they could catch a chance breeze. They lay head to head on the porch, gazing up at the stars.

"Shiro-chan?" Hinamori asked.

"What do you want, bed-wetter-Momo?" he grumbled sleepily.

"What do you think our lives will be like in the future?"

"Ha?" he growled. "Why the heck do you care about something like that?"

"Don't know. Just thinking." She paused for a while. "I think I want to be a shinigami."

"Yeah, yeah, you've been saying that, but you know you're never going to do it," he retorted.

"Moh, have some faith in me Shiro-chan!" she whined.

"It's Hitsugaya-kun!" he snapped. Hinamori didn't respond.

"Neh, Shiro-chan," she began after a while.

"Hmmmm?" he drawled.

"I think, after I become a shinigami, I want to get married and have lots of babies. Lots and lots of babies! As many as the stars!"

"You're going to need a really big house," Hitsugaya replied, and Hinamori giggled. "Now go to sleep bed-wetter."

"You're no fun Shiro-chan," she pouted, but Hitsugaya was already snoring.

"Hoshi," Hitsugaya stated simply. "Let's call him Hoshi."

"Hoshi?" Karin said confused. "Really? It's not really a name."

"Well we're not really naming him," Hitsugaya pointed out. "It's just a nickname so that we have something to call him while we're taking care of him. He can get a real name after this whole fiasco is over."

"I love how quickly you switched from 'I' to 'we,'" she joked. Hitsugaya checked.

"I thought you said you'd help…" he began, but Karin just snickered.

"I just find it ironic that the big powerful taicho needs help from a little eleven year old human girl." Hitsugaya scowled.

"I've already admitted that I know nothing about this topic," he defended.

"Oh, and I do? I'm not exactly the motherly type." Hitsugaya shrugged.

"You've got to know more than me." Karin chuckled.

"Why, because I'm a girl?"

"No," Hitsugaya stated coolly. "Just because, well, you seem like the kind of person who cares about others."

"Oh, and I guess you're not," Karin teased. "Have you ever taken care of anything before?" Hitsugaya glared at her.

"I'm a taicho!" he said indignity. "I take care of a whole squad."

"Yeah, but I mean like actually taking care of another living being. Or well, I guess a dead being in your case, but you know what I mean." Hitsugaya didn't really want to answer that. The honest answer was no, but that just sounded heartless.

"Have you?" he asked by way of reply, purposely avoiding the question.

"I had a cat once. Toodles. He lived in a shoebox in the backyard for a week. I brought him fish. Then he ran away."

"That was sweet of you," Hitsugaya said sarcastically. Karin pushed him.

"I was four years old. What do you want from me?"

"So basically, you have just as much experience as I do!" Hitsugaya declared triumphantly, than wondered why that was a good thing. "So you can't make fun of me for it!"

"Who said I was making fun of you?" she replied innocently. "You do a good enough job of that yourself." Hitsugaya scowled.

Yeah, so not a whole lot happens in the chapter, but I thought it was a good chance to let Karin and Hitsugaya bond a little bit. You know, show what their relationship is like at this point, since they're not meeting for the first time, but they're also not lovers…yet. I hope you aren't bored yet. The next chapter should be really fun.

Note: "Hoshi" means "star" and Hitsugaya chose it because of Hinamori's wish to have as many children as the stars. Tacky, I know, but it's the kind of thing Hinamori would do, and that's what Hitsugaya is going for.