Hey everyone! How are ya? Good, yes? I'm so glad the year is almost over! I might not have to take any finals; there's only one class I'm worried about. ;)
A shout out to Turtle-chan in Blue, whose birthday was nearly a week and a half ago. I'm sorry that I didn't upload a chapter on your birthday, but thanks for being a good sport anyways! C:

DISCLAIMER APPLIES. If I owned Bleach, Tatsuki would be part of the fighting group.

"Hyourinmaru!" Toushirou commanded.

A huge gust of wind blew around him, and the great dragon landed before him. "Yes? What is it you desire to know?" The blue ice dragon's lips curled into a smirk.

Toushirou frowned. "You know exactly what I want Hyourinmaru. I want to know what's happening to Karin and me."

"Why would I know?" Hyourinmaru asked, placing his head on the ground. "Your dreams are not of my creation."

"You know my soul almost better than I do. Hyourinmaru, you surely know something. Karin's had terrible nightmares and that one she just had she woke up screaming." He stepped forward and placed his hand on Hyourinmaru's snout.

"Perhaps the girl takes up too much of your time."

"You didn't say that about Hinamori," Toushirou shot back. "Karin is different."

"Everyone always says that," Hyourinmaru pointed out. "What makes her so different?"

He's avoiding helping me, I just know it. "She has no real battle experience. She's still in grade school! Karin shouldn't have to be cooped up in a hospital room, waiting for adults to attempt to figure out what's wrong with us. Her life will pass by before they find anything." His eyes narrowed. "Now, tell me what you know."

One ruby red eye stared at him. "Hitsugaya, don't you think you're better off without her? I think you would gladly give up your captaincy for her."

"Work isn't going to make anyone happy. You know that," Toushirou replied. "Wouldn't you like it if your master was happy?"

The dragon sighed and closed his eyes. "You are going to face a choice one day. You will have to choose between her and being the Captain-Commander." His voice had a prophetic ring to it.

Toushirou's eyes widened. "I couldn't have both?" he asked, trying to stall his shock. It wasn't exactly working.

"No. If you choose her, Soul Society will fall in ruin. But if you do not choose her, she will in time choose another."

"You can't be serious." Soul Society's fate would not be on his shoulders alone. It simply wasn't possible. That was why they had the Gotei 13 to protect all of Soul Society.

"I'm not toying with you, Hitsugaya. And I'm not the only one who foresees this to happen. You must make a choice. Perhaps not today, or in the next ten years, but the time will come." His warning delivered, the massive ice dragon flew into the sky, and the scenery shifted.

—x—

Carefully, Toushirou opened his eyes. His neck hurt from where that Twelfth Division member had knocked him out. Slowly, he sat up.

"Glad to see you're awake," an unfamiliar voice commented. Toushirou turned to see a Fourth Division member sitting at his bedside. "I'm Hanatarou Yamada," he introduced himself, bowing from his chair. "We're thinking of letting you leave soon."

"You think you've cured us?" Toushirou asked, surprised.

"Well, the members of the Twelfth Division think so. They spent weeks looking at your data. Apparently their Captain found something, and asked for samples. I guess that somehow they've got the dreams you had last week recorded or something, but whatever it was, they figured something out." He stopped for breath.

"Go on," Toushirou urged.

"Well, Captain Unohana worked with them for two days on the both of you in operation, fixing whatever it was that caused you to be ill. At least, they think so."

"So, no more bad dreams?" Toushirou inquired. What Hanatarou was saying sounded vague and unsure to him.

"No more than the average ones," Hanatarou replied. "But they're not quite sure. We've never had a case quite like yours." He seemed to think for a moment. "Well, actually, we had a pair of dreaming souls like you hundreds of years ago, but they never had bad dreams. At least, that's what I heard the Captain saying."

Toushirou was not completely surprised when he heard that. Surely he and Karin weren't the only souls to ever be connected in that way. It wasn't plausible to him. "What do they think caused the dreams?"

"We believe that it was a Hollow that you killed with her nearby, Captain," Unohana replied, surprising them. "Upon its death, it radiated a strong pressure that affected your minds. We've fixed that part. However, there may be multiple causes, so we plan on keeping you both here for another week."

"I see." He knew exactly which Hollow it had been, too. The green and purple Menos that had appeared at the soccer field right after they had finished their match was the one that both he and Karin had fought. "That's good."

"Also, you're free to move about the Fourth Division. Karin, however, is not to leave without you, seeing as she's still alive." The woman smiled and turned to leave. "I'll be back once she wakes up. Yamada, please come with me." Hanataro got up and followed her out.

"Hopefully that's the last of those dreams," Toushirou sighed, looking at Karin. She had been affected by them far worse than he had.

He watched as she came to wakefulness. "Good morning," she mumbled once she saw him, rubbing her eyes.

"Good morning to you," he replied, getting out of bed and walking over to her. "How do you feel?"

"I hurt everywhere," she replied, and shuddered. "It was awful Toushirou, you have no idea."

"Tell me what happened in your nightmare; the one you had before the others rushed in."

"I was you again, but this time you were a lot older. And I was running down halls—I think it was the Fourth Division, because there were empty hospital beds in open rooms." She stopped to gather her thoughts. "I stopped at one room, and in it I saw me."

"You saw yourself?"

"Yeah, but I was older too. You ran over to her bed and tried to keep her quiet, but she couldn't."

"Why was I trying to keep you quiet?"

"You said something like, 'Hollows are everywhere, and if you don't stay quiet, they'll kill you all!' I was confused, but then I saw that the me in the bed was pregnant, so I figured that the other me was in labor." She blushed slightly.

He swallowed, and nodded. "Go on," he pressed.

"Well, a Hollow must have heard her, because the biggest one I've ever seen in my life came crashing in and was obviously creating chaos. You said you'd protect her, though I don't think that she wanted you to try to fight it."

"Why's that?"

"Both of us were injured. She wasn't only bleeding from giving birth, and you had quite a few nasty cuts. I think you got slashed in the side before my dream started." Karin winced, and touched her own side, remembering the pain of the wound.

"Okay, so I attacked it. What happened then?"

"Well, you were fighting it, and I gave birth. Honestly, if I'm that weak when I grow up, I don't want to be a shinigami." Her sarcasm was clear to him, but he wasn't quite sure what she was talking about. Whatever her complaint was, she figured it wasn't relevant to tell him.

"Since I was distracted, did it knock me aside?"

"No, not for a while yet. You returned to fighting it, but then it tripped you up or something, because you flew into a wall and broke it. You yelled 'No!' because you must have realized that you couldn't distract it anymore."

"You didn't watch yourself die, did you?" Karin noticed that he had a horrified tone of voice.

She shook her head. "No, at that point, I switched bodies or something, because I was in the other me's body. I saw a sword lying at the bedside table, so I picked it up and unsheathed it, trying to protect the baby in my arms. Then a wave of pain passed through my stomach, so I realized I was still in labor."

"You were having twins?" he asked, shocked. Having twins in Soul Society was rarer than it was in the realm of the living.

She rolled her eyes. "I was obviously having more than one baby, okay? Time slowed down, and sound faded, because I could clearly see you trying to get up and stop the Hollow from squishing me like a bug, but I couldn't hear you. I saw my arm lift up the sword, and then I think time slowed down even more, because then I heard a voice and I didn't feel squished yet."

"What did this voice sound like?"

"It was a deep, throaty growl. It said 'Do you see why?' and a cold blast of wind blew across my neck. Everything went black, and then I woke up."

"You don't think it was a dream, do you," he said, a look she couldn't identify passing over his face.

"No. I don't think so. I've never had any voices before, or time slowing down like that."

"The voice wasn't one you had heard before?"

"Nope. If I had to say so, I'd say it was an animal. It didn't sound human at all. For all I know, it was my zanpaku-tou speaking to me." That is, if I even have one, she thought.

A startled look passed his face. "A deep, throaty growl? I don't think that it was your zanpaku-tou spirit." He shook his head. "What do you think it means?"

"Well, obviously, don't get pregnant by you."

He snorted. "Besides that?"

"Try not to die."

"That's unavoidable."

"Okay, let me edit that. Try not to die at an age where I can have children." He raised an eyebrow in response. "I don't want to die while having a baby."

"But that's not what killed you," he protested.

"It may very well have been. I think that because I couldn't help you kill that thing, I died. I was stuck in a bed, having babies, unable to assist you. Which reminds me; I was wondering why Matsumoto wasn't there fighting by your side."

"Maybe she… maybe she was dead."

Karin was silent. At last, she continued. "I think that the voice doesn't want me to be with you. At all. Ever. Something will happen, and I'm gonna be part of the equation. The fact that I was pregnant in my dream is important."

Toushirou remembered that Hyourinmaru had told him he would make a choice one day. I chose her, and she ended up dying. Hollows were everywhere, she said. Something happened to Soul Society—a Hollow invasion overwhelmed us. But why would my being Captain-Commander change that fate? Why couldn't I choose to be Captain-Commander and also have Karin? What are the stakes going to be?

The plot thickens! Please also vote in my poll. I like it when people do that. ^^