xviii.
Karin takes the bandages off in the morning and inspects her hand, feeling cold and clinical and tries to close her hand into a fist. In the sunlight, her knuckles look pink. She ignores the twinge of pain that runs through her. It's nothing she can't handle.
Once, Ichi-nii had found a baby bird with a broken wing, and he'd fussed and fretted and looked after it until it recovered. She'd never seen her brother smile as happily as he did the day that bird flew again. Images like that, Karin couldn't forget even if she wanted to.
Hitsugaya had reminded her of Ichi-nii in that moment, his hands surprisingly gentle, and she'd pulled away, disconcerted.
"Karin, you're staring."
She flushes, instinctively denying it. "Am not."
He doesn't say anything across the table, choosing to smirk at her instead.
"I'm not!"Bristling, heat flares and spreads rapidly over her cheeks. Karin's breath catches, not intending to say it quite so loudly or indignantly.
She can feel Kiyone staring at the back of her head.
Taking a breath and releasing it slowly, Karin says, "About yesterday—"
"How's your hand?"
"Fine." Karin answers quickly, after a beat. The fabric stretches against her knuckles, and Karin doesn't tell him that Kiyone retied the bandages into a neat bow specifically so he didn't notice her clumsy attempt at a one-handed knot, doesn't tell him that Kiyone didn't ask any questions, but looked at her strangely, like she'd ask later.
"You don't have to—" Karin breaks off awkwardly, fidgeting with the material now while her the words stutter in her throat, and she swallows down the rest of the sentence. "It'll heal soon enough." Karin finishes, mumbling, heat prickling over the bridge of her nose.
It must the reminder of Ichi-nii and the baby bird that unsettles her. There's no resemblance between Hitsugaya and her brother, as far as Karin can tell. It's just the similarity of the situations. That must be it.
"Good." Hitsugaya nods, and suddenly Karin's not sure if that's the only reason why disconcertion coils in her stomach, sharp and citric as the orange she'd swallowed earlier. "I'm glad to hear it."
Her tongue feels numb as she spits out her reply, hardly hearing herself as she becomes swept up in a hazy confusion and Hitsugaya remains oblivious. "You don't have to go all this length."
Pity—disappointment—something Karin doesn't understand flickers over his face, gone before she can properly catalogue it, and Hitsugaya looks at her, teal eyes determined. "I want to." He shrugs, as if he's not admitting a weakness to her. "You matter to me."
The cutlery rattles before Karin realizes that she's out of her chair, both hands swaying at her side. She swallows again, tastes the orange on her tongue again, the bite of blood in her mouth, and she's doing everything to not to ask why and to say that she shouldn't. She couldn't, even if she tried, too flustered by his admission. What he almost says. You're important to me. "Then—thanks."
She doesn't understand. Taking a step back, her thoughts are still blank, muddling into an incoherent mess, and Karin can't stay in the garden with him any longer, and briskly leaves without saying another word.
The corridors seem endless, as if it's her first time walking in the manor all over again. Karin wanders, wandering aimlessly within the constraints of the manor, where the walls are closing in on her. She walks and she walks, and she's grateful that it's so big and empty, that the manor is a place that leaves her in solitude.
Karin stops eventually, finding a window she can climb and rest, and tries to let her thoughts settle while she takes in the endless blue. She finds air slowly, steadily, tension seeping her shoulders while she watches birds remain perched on trees, and longs to see them take flight. She imagines them circling in the air, and the image loosens the knot in her chest. The breeze is refreshingly cool.
For a long time, Karin stares out into the great unknown, thinking about nothing at all, her mind turned quiet and comfortable enough to settle her: to be alone by herself and be at peace. She'd hated it at first, no different to before, feeling removed from everyone else as she was left to her own indulgences, always isolated from the rest.
And yet, she'd found tranquillity in her seclusion here. Her worries drain away, slowly but surely.
A gasp pulls her out of her reverie. Karin turns, catching only the sound of scuttling footsteps and the sight of a door slamming shut.
She blinks. Nobody's there.
But then. It's not hard to guess who it is.
A mouse, Karin thinks to herself, climbing off the window onto the floor, and treads lightly as possible out of the corridor, her bare feet grazing the carpet as she moves elsewhere.
"What are you doing here?"
The last place Karin expects to find Hitsugaya is at the library.
"I don't lock myself in my study." He says, reclining comfortably on the sofa, turning another page of the book in his hands before he looks up at her, expressionless. "Not if I can help it."
"I know," Karin says, a string of words babbling out of her mouth. It's the reason they went out on strolls so much, whenever either of them were feeling a little stir-crazy. "That's not why I asked—it's not—" Face flushed, it's impossible to change the cadence of panic in her voice to something more like her practised monotone. She huffs, expelling air from her lungs. "You know that's not what I meant."
She can't meet his eyes, preferring to concentrate on the bookshelf behind him, the level closest to his shoulders. Books with spines that are golden and elaborate and decorative. Books she hasn't read. Yet.
"I do," He says, carefully watching her and trying to make sense of her awkwardly sounding words that Karin can't quite express articulately enough.
A low ache forms in her hands, knuckles tensing tighter as the material stretches and chafes in one hand, and crescent shape marks dig into the palm of her other. Karin ignores it.
She draws herself to her full height, spine ramrod straight, and the pose is enough for her to summon the courage and meet his eyes once more. "About yesterday—" Karin says, and her jaw locks shut, before she tries again, mouth dry. "I didn't know."
It hurts to admit this aloud. It hurts telling him this.
The words choke in her throat. Karin tries to swallow air, pushing past the shame flooding her cheeks, and realizing how ignorant and sheltered she has been. She may not be a prisoner or a princess any longer, but she still knows nothing and she is still living in a cage. The only difference is that she's returned to a gilded cage.
"I didn't notice back then, when I was a princess. I should have done, but I didn't. Children were seen, not heard, and nobody said anything about the role a noble had. At least, not to me. They attended balls, that I was all I knew," Karin confesses, feeling more uneasy as the seconds pass. She understands why Yoruichi and Kisuke never talked about it, preferring to entertain them with parlour tricks, or showing off Kisuke's newly made clothes and see how well they fit. How beautifully they shone.
Karin fidgets, as the silence stretches on. "So I… I didn't mean to offend."
It's only half-true, but still. There is part of her that was sorry, to see him in that state, and have him tend to her afterwards, when he was presumably fuming.
Karin isn't good at apologizes. The words are easy to say, it's being sincere about them that's the problem.
Hitsugaya closes his book, sets it down beside him. Karin, with baited breath, tries to anticipate what he'll do next.
"I had a feeling that might be the case," Toushirou says, and Karin stays where she is, feet fixed to the floor, wondering where his anger is, it must be there, about to resurge like blood from a picked scab.
"Sorry." Gruffly, she says, feeling mechanical.
"No, it's… I probably shouldn't have assumed that you knew either. I've always been aware of it, so to imagine a princess to not be… never crossed my mind." He grimaces, just shy of saying the word ignorant. "I shouldn't have lost my temper."
She shrugs. "You were being honest." Given time, she thinks, she'll appreciate it. Prefer it, in fact, to every time he bottles up to a comment that Karin might have said to spur a reaction. "And. Maybe I wanted to see how far I could push."
"Meaning what exactly?"
"I don't know. I wanted to… test the limits of this, I guess." She sighs, expelling all the air from her lungs as she tries to explain. She's on unsteady ground, trying to navigate herself in unchartered territory. There's a right choice and wrong choice and she doesn't know which one is which. It feels like everything she's doing is a mistake, or something along those lines. "See what it would take for you to snap."
"I see."
"So." She says, feeling lost about where to go next. Before, when she was kept under lock and chain, she had a purpose: to survive, to plot out her next escape. Now that she's attained that freedom… what is she supposed to do? "I guess, I've been going out of my mind for a while."
He snorts. "That's an understatement."
"Yeah, well. It is what it is," Karin mutters, more resentful than she'd like. She's not the only restless one in this place, she wagers. "How do you cope?"
"By having things to do." Hitsugaya answers simply, and of course, that's the whole point. Karin has nothing to do. She's just… here. Existing. "Usually, though, I don't stay here too long, anyway. I come and go, wherever business takes me, or whatever my job entails."
Karin nods, recalling this part of the conversation, "Which is why you're leaving."
"Right." Picking the book up again, he relaxes, relieved that they aren't arguing. "There's a ball, in a few days. I was going to ask if you wanted to come with me?"
Her hands flex, restless, and the motion attracts his attention, teal eyes flicking temporarily to them, before they flick up and he tries to smile reassuringly, like he's sensed her unease.
"It's just a thought. You don't have to go if you don't want to."
She doesn't really listen to him, the sound of his voice a strange lull in the background while she focuses absentmindedly on the dull throb of her bandaged hand. Her lips are pressed thin while she considers it.
"It might be healed by then," Karin says, deliberating.
A ball. She'd wanted to go to them once. To wear a crown upon her head and dance with strangers with a smile, Karin remembers wanting that, yearning for the nights when she wasn't too tired to sleep instead. She'd wanted to dance with Yuzu and Kisuke and Uryuu. Ichi-nii had promised that he'd dance with her when she was old enough to go. She only had to wait two more years.
Unease fills up inside of her. If she went now, would it be like stepping into clothes that she'd cast off and no longer fit? She is no princess, not anymore, and to go to a ball seems like a mockery. Uneasiness turns to dread, and—she can't.
"No, probably not," Karin says, knots growing in her belly. "I don't want to go."
His brows furrow, and Hitsugaya is slow to respond. "Alright."
"… you're not mad?"
"Why would I be?" He frowns, expression quizzical.
She shrugs, keeping her mouth shut. There's a craft to conversations, and Karin was never one at playing a game as subtle as that. Princess or not, she's always been blunt and oblivious to anything but the direct route. At least, that's what she wants to believe. She's never had much patience for the finesse of double meanings and reading between the lines.
"Next time, then?" He asks, sounding hopeful, leaving Karin mildly puzzled before he continues. "It could be fun."
"Fun." Karin echoes dryly, and voices one of her scepticisms. "And what if someone recognizes me?"
"I doubt it. It's been five years. People move on. If someone mentions Princess Shiba Karin, they'll think of a thirteen year old girl, tragically killed in a fire, along with the rest of her family."
"So how did you recognize me?" Karin points out a flaw in his statement, still dubious. "You said we'd only met once before."
It's different when it was Urahara.
Hitsugaya Toushirou was a stranger to her. No matter how she tries, she cannot remember that moment in the gardens with the sun and the wind and the roses.
Where did that leave her?
"Instinct, I guess," Hitsugaya frowns, a crease appearing between his brows. He looks at her meaningfully, teal eyes intense and Karin stares back, unflinchingly. "I had a feeling it was you, and I couldn't shake it. But I doubt Okikiba recognized you. Did he?"
"No." Not once had a flicker of recognition appeared whenever Okikiba and one of his interested buyers appeared. She'd long since given up on a notion like that. But then Hitsugaya had, and that had renewed both hope and fear. "He didn't."
There was a moment, Karin recalls, when the doors of the carriage had closed and the horses started to move that Hitsugaya had looked at her, taking her in. She'd let him, staring defiantly back, not knowing what to expect and refused to be one to break the silence.
"He would have sold you higher if he had," Hitsugaya mulls. "I wasn't certain if you were genuinely her. After all, it's been twelve years since I'd last seen you, but on the off chance it really was you, I knew I couldn't leave you there."
Karin's cheeks flare. She swallows as she asks her next question, carefully. "What would you have done if you were wrong? And I wasn't who you thought I was?"
He shrugs. "I don't know. Employed them, I guess. Kiyone wouldn't mind extra help."
Karin pauses, then nods. She believes him.
"How did you know it was me?" Karin asks, trying to find the answer in the cupid bow of his mouth, for any tell-tale sign cast by the shadow of his eyelashes. Thinking back, a memory snags, and she grabs hold of it. Her eyes widen. "The story? Was that a test?"
Was it a lie?
"No." Annoyed, he frowns at her, and Karin refuses to look away, eager to find any details that might slip past her if she doesn't pay attention. He looks stung. "We did meet when we children. I wasn't lying when I said that we played in a garden filled with roses."
"Oh." Karin blinks. "Then how did you know for certain who I am—was?"
He hesitates. "There was just something about you. The determination that I saw in you that day… I'd seen it before. I knew, then, without a doubt, it was you."
She bites the inside of her cheek. Wonders why that memory he had of her was so important. What does she mean to him?
"You're not doing a good job of convincing me to go." Karin says instead, cautious, callous.
"You worry too much, Karin. Like I said, they've moved on. The monarchy is no more. Nobody is expecting you to be alive. Much less…" He trails off, like he's about to say something he shouldn't.
"What?"
"You." Hitsugaya says, which Karin is probably meant to take as an offence. "You look different, you act different. The word princess won't even come to mind, which is exactly what you want anyway. So I doubt they'd jump to the same conclusion as I had. You said before that children were seen, not heard. And, well, you've changed since then. You can sway people's doubts by acting even more un-princess-like, convincing them otherwise that you just have one of those faces. Although, there is another way."
"Really." Karin says, mouth sour. "What is it?"
"A masquerade." Hitsugaya smirks, devilish in a way that Karin has never noticed before. His face is so bright that she can hardly stand to look at him.
She blinks, not expecting that. "A masquerade."
"Yeah. That way people won't know your identity unless you decide otherwise." He says, sounding smug. "What do you think?"
"Why?" Karin asks, trying to keep her expression neutral while her mind races. "Why would you do that?"
"I want to help you. As best I can," Hitsugaya says, leaning forward. "It's that simple, Karin."
"So, you're not after a dance?" Quickly, Karin says, mind stuttering to say something before the silence suffocates her, and she widens the distance between them.
"I never said that." Hitsugaya remarks, wry; he grins at her, pleasantly surprised by her response. "Is that what you want?"
Karin flushes at the insinuation.
"No!" Pausing awkwardly, she averts her gaze. Anywhere but him will be enough. "It's… something I need to think about."
"I understand." He says, picking up his book again, leafing through the pages. He sounds idle when he speaks again, like he's submerged in the story already, content to find company in finely inked pages. "Take all the time you need."
Dancing. Karin thinks, when she steps out of the library, door shutting gently behind her. A masquerade. She doesn't know which one fills her most with dread.