Note: Ever since reading a really good Nemu and Kurotsuchi fic, I've wanted to write one too. … I wish I remembered what the fic was called so I could give proper credit…

She lies on the ground, a broken mess.

"Fool! You stupid, stupid, stupid fool!" Mayuri-sama is crying furiously. "Why were you such a foo-" he is cut off by a coughing fit that produces little specks of blood on his lips. He also lies on the ground, broken.

"Mayuri-sama always comes before me," she explains calmly, though she's not sure why she has to. They have been together for centuries and, without needing it to be said, this was what they understood. "Mayuri-sama comes first because I can not fix him if he were ever to break. Mayuri-sama can fix me, so it does not matter if I break."

"FOOL!" he screeches. "I know all that. Are you trying to insult my intelligence?"

"Of course not," she manages to gasp in a monotone. How could he have reached such a conclusion? "Mayuri-sama is the smartest man in the world, even smarter than Uraha-"

"'Even'?" he bellows with ridiculous indignation for someone lying broken on the ground. "I don't recall programming such a phrase into you!"

"Mayuri-sama is the smartest man in the world," she amends complacently. She shouldn't have trusted Urahara when he told her saying that would make Mayuri-sama happy.

"Do you… really believe that?"

She is relieved. "Yes, of cou-"

"Then why did you disobey me?" His tone is cold and furious.

"…"

"Oho, listen to that," he whispers fiercely. "No snappy un-programmed retort, now, eh?"

"… Mayuri-sama misjudged the situation." She is whispering too, knowing she must answer when Mayuri-sama asks her something, but not wanting to be heard. He hears her, of course.

"What's that? You say you believe me the smartest man in the world and then claim I make errors of judgment? What a stupid, contradictory fool you are."

"I apologize, Mayuri-sama," she says insincerely, but it's all a monotone anyways, so who can tell?

"I made no misjudgment!" he snaps, because he can tell. "I analyzed the situation using my most superior intellect and understood that it would be futile for us both to die."

"Fool!" Over and over, he is crying, still, but the other kind. "I didn't want this! Why didn't you listen when I told you to live?"

She tries to speak over the sounds of his labored-breath-sobbing, but her voice is too soft now and she has to wait until the labored-breath-sobbing subsides. "Mayuri-sama is the smartest man in the world. But that does not mean he knows everything. It does not mean he understands the loneliness I know he feels when he decides to die alone. It does not mean he understands the loneliness I feel when I am told to live alone."

They are both silent.

"Fool," he says finally. "How could I not understand this loneliness with you dying all the time in front of me?"

"This loneliness?" she smiles. "This is not loneliness, Father."

The two fools, father and daughter, lay there on the ground. Broken. Together.

Author's Note: Ever since reading Variante I've been kind of obsessed with this father-daughter dying together thing. I highly recommend reading Variante and reviewing this fic P=