Everyone strives for that fairytale ending, for that singular happiness that never fades. But not all stories end, happily or not. Sometimes the 'happy' ending is only an illusion and at the end, you will find yourself searching for more, for that one moment that will bring your story to it's closure. You search for happiness, not realizing the future has no end and that fragments of warm joy lie in the small moments of your path.

For the Princess of our story, her happiness lie not in the end of her story, but all the pieces of her life drawn together, linked by a thin, red string.

Our Princess, whom was likened to the Moon for her pale skin and vast navy pools like an eternal night sky drawn into her round, expressive orbs.

("Princess? Who's a princess?" A voice interrupts with a snort and is rewarded by a fist to the underside of the jaw and a firm, icy glare.)

The Princess lived in a harsh world where she had to fight for everything, for her right to live, for the smidgens of food she had to steal. Nothing was handed to her and she learned quickly that the world ignored what it didn't want to see, what it refused to believe would taint it's perfect existence. That included lost, lonely beggars like her, struggling to survive with only her will and smoking embers of a spark yet to ignite lingering inside her soul.

She was young but strong, learning the ways of life, and as all stories go, she was lifted from her cold despair by the hand of a Prince.

But not all Princes come in armor and white horses and not all Princes end up marrying the Princess.

This Prince offered her his slim hand, a chance away from Hell and elevation to become worthy of the title Princess, worthy of her story.

("Prince? Yeah, right. He's no sooner a Prince than I am.")

Staring at that pale hand, the world narrowed down to a point and the embers sparked, unlit but glowing. She could take his hand and be free of the relentless grip of starvation, the struggle to stand on her own two feet, she could become better and be more. As all Princesses do, she wanted more of her dead life, wanted to know who she really was beneath the torn, dirty rags and the uncertainty of the unknown. If she took this offered chance, maybe she could find herself and know who she really was. For this Princess didn't want riches or fame, status or power. No, what she wanted was only to know how she truly was on the inside, to rise and be strong enough to proudly declare she had reached the end of her story.

Fate, however, always has other plans.

("What's Fate? Can I eat it?" A small voice asked curiously, head tilted to the side and small orbs round in wonder.

The storyteller laughed gently and shook her head, navy orbs sparkling. "You can't eat it. Fate is the future, determined and absolute."

A small nose wrinkled. "If I can't eat it and I can't fight it, then I don't care."

A deep snicker and another punch thrown, this time to a shoulder. "Fighting and eating aren't all there is in life. Life is made up of more than that. It's more than how strong you are."

An annoyed, clipped sigh brings their attention to a bored flicker of fiery orbs lit by a dim, flickering light making the hues of their gaze seem to come alive and dance. "Can we continue with the story now?"

Coughing into a fist, the storyteller takes a deep breath and the next page of the story is turned.)

Our Princess had a choice to make and she knew it before even decided.

Placing her small, rough-skinned hand into the silky, pale palm of the Prince, his long cool fingers gently grasped hers and he pulled her out of the pit of despair and into the light. But the light is not always kind, it is not always warm.

The light holds the darkest shadows.

("But….Its light. It doesn't have shadows, Mom."

"Everything has a shadow. You can't see the darkness in the light until it's too late."

Two pairs of wide eyes blink at her and then, from the smaller, round-faced boy comes the quiet, sombre whisper, "Too late for what?"

Her smile is soft and sad. "To escape.")

But she knows none of this yet and, accepting her chance of freedom, she is pulled from the bottom, from dark, dank streets and scavenging for food, to a sprawling mansion where she is bowed to, called Ojou-sama, and where food is brought on large silver trays to her room. Her room, a space all hers, and too large for her to fill with the nothing she owns. This huge mansion, and the Prince who saved her, become her new life, the next chapter of her story in the pages of her book, but it never becomes home. Home is not so empty, lacking warmth and light, home is not cold and home is more than walls, than fancy clothes and good food…..It's more than wishes and dreams and more than ice and shadows.

Except she accepted her Fate and now must live it.

So she does. She strives to live up to the Ice Prince's expectations – no matter how much he stood in the bright, warm sunlight, no matter how much she attempted to hug him, as useless as he deemed it, he was never warm, always cold to the touch – and she fights to find her inner limits, to surpass them and be what the Ice Prince, her adopted older brother, is teaching her to become.

And it is here she learns that there is more to her small, narrow world than she had ever imagined. Every story has monsters, has a mad, crazed villain, and the words of her story run rampant with evil. Living like a street urchin is the least of her concerns, for a greater evil exists, one that threatens the Princess' dreams. The vast future is being unwound and invaded but back in the days of her youth, she was ignorant, untouched by Fate's tears. She had no idea what waited her and that is the both the strength and weakness of the future. There was no way to avoid it and so, without any knowledge or fear, the Princess powered on, darkness' claws reaching for her.

She had powers. She didn't have to be weak any more. For once, she could be strong. Magic came naturally to her; sword wielding did not. Where others struggled to call the bright, flowing magic to the palms of their hands, all she had to do was breathe and it was called to her, flickering in her hands and encompassed with the power inside of her. The Ice Prince was pleased by her progress, spending the days teaching her until her hands burned and her head pounded, the magical force draining her. She received her first sword from him, a long white blade like freshly fallen snow with a fluttering ribbon on the end.

It took much longer to wield the sword, to channel her very soul into it, and she hadn't succeeded, her brother's disappointed stares cutting her deeper than the cold steel clutched in her hands.

When the sword was in her hands – everyone had a Soul Sword, as they were called, most just never knew how to wield them or had the power to control them – he brought her to a room she had never entered, sliding the shoji open slow and quiet as if he was afraid to disturb what lie within. But all that remained was a thick coat of dust on the wooden floor and a small, dark shrine in the very back of the large room. It was almost a waste, this room, with it's expansive space and perfect view of the garden, a large blooming cherry blossom tree right outside on the small surrounding porch. He led her into the dust covered room, steps marking the floor with his presence, and she followed, obedient.

He waited for her at the shrine and when she sidled up next to him, round eyes large, he lifted elegant fingers and gripped the small round knobs. For the first time, he hesitated, battling a hidden enemy in the shadows of his dark gaze. Something gave, a door thrust open and a demon slain, and, slowly, he pulled the mirrored shrine doors wide open.

The hand closest to his flowing white robes lifted, her fingers digging harshly into the silk and her breath catching in her throat.

She stared at the face that was hers but not her own and her sparking embers fizzled out by an icy wind. A fast snow fell in her heart, smothering the fire before it could burst into flame, her heart frozen in a wasteland of snow and ice.

Fate looked down at the Princess with sorrowful, begotten eyes as the Ice Prince – cold not by his choosing but by the loss of his own spark, snuffed out by Death's clawed fingers and the chains clamped around his wrists, locked by the Council that ordered his, and hers, loyalty – told her a tale of death, of love lost but a promise kept and not forgotten.

He told her her story, of the words pages back, and she listened, quiet, a cold, harsh blizzard drowning out her emotions in a layer of thick ice even the hottest fire could never burn. It was the day she became the Ice Princess and lost her heart dark viper lingering in the depths of light. Icy poison chilled her veins with each word that left her brother's thin frown. He never smiled and now she knew why. He had loved the sister she had never known she had but he had failed to protect her, failed to be the Prince when all he could do was hold her hand as she withered away like the cherry blossoms falling from the tree, shrivelling on the ground into wrinkly, dead clumps.

It was the promise that had kept him alive. Search for my sister, bring her home. Find her. He promised and he had found her, reaching out to a starving, skinny wretch on the street. It wasn't because of her, though, it was because of a promise to another that he had reached out to her. If there had never been a promise, if her older sister had passed, would he have ever come for her at all? Or she would have been left in that place, on the verge of life and death, until her story ended?

Hand falling limply from his sleeve, he left her there at the shrine, turned and walked away, white robes billowing out behind him. He never looked back and she never looked away from the framed image of her own soul. The last tears she would cry for years to come built at the corners of her eyes, reflected in the glass picture frame of a softly smiling woman with her eyes, a gentle, friendly smile, and silk robes hanging off her small, thin frame.

They looked like twins but were nothing alike.

The woman frozen in the photo, lingering even after death in her kind eyes, was gentle, soft and womanly, but the one reflected in the shiny glass was short and rough, fierce and stubborn. And she wondered, then, if that was why the Ice Prince refused to touch her. She was nothing like the dead woman, she was nothing like a Princess.

When she turned, tears nothing but cold wet tracks on her cheeks, she left her heart on the open shrine, at the base of a dead smile and empty eyes.

(Narrow eyes looked down at the kids in his lap, from one head to the next, both of them holding tight and wide, teary eyes focused on the storyteller. "Uh, why don't we tell them a happier story? Cause this is gettin' morbid."

A small head snaps up to look at him, wide-eyed, fingers digging into his arm. "We have to know what happens next!" He snaps back to the storyteller, leaning forward and shifting in his father's lap. "Please?"

The taller, quieter girl nods quickly, leaning her back into her father's steady chest, shifting her shoulders until she's comfortable. He tightens his hold on them both and they relax into his warmth. "Does she get her heart back?"

The storyteller, a woman, flicks her gaze up to meet the man's gaze and then looks back at her enraptured audience, lips twitching. "You can't skip chapters. You'll have to wait and see."

The boy blinks and then points with a short, chubby finger to his sister. "She does. She always skips to the best parts first."

Pink dusts the girl's cheeks as she crosses her arms and purses her lips. "Tattle tale."

The storyteller chuckles. "Wouldn't it be great if we could just skip to the best parts? But it doesn't work that way when your living the story. You have to live each word, each page, never knowing what waits for you on the next.")

And that's what she did.

Mechanically, the Ice Princess, her heart sealed and encased in walls of cold blue, lives on, growing in power and into the Slayers where her brother sits as one of the 13 Leaders. It is here her emptiness is filled with one single purpose, her power used for only one thing: the job of a Slayer is to destroy monsters. They're everywhere, lying in wait to devour souls and destroy anything in their path. Fire buried deep beneath the cold weight of truth in her chest, she trains and grows, an Ice Slayer and moulded to the Council's wishes. Heavy steel chains encase her wrists, tying her to the Council. But it doesn't take long before, as it always does, something breaches her icy walls.

You can hide away your heart but you cannot block out the light.

A thin, single shaft of light pierces her walls, thawing the cold organ in her chest. It's not the soft, spiky dark hair or the bright silver-grey orbs but the wide, friendly grin and warm hand that melt the layers and calm the fierce blizzard.

And Fate closes tired, weary eyes of a future tangled in shadows and twisted with grief. The blizzard may have stopped but the snow remains.

("Hmph. She's out."

The storyteller pauses and both sets of eyes look down at their daughter, her wild, messy locks of hair sticking up in all directions. Her soft cheek rests on her father's arm, slow even breaths making her chest rise and fall.

The youngest looks over at his sleeping sister and then turns back to the storyteller, shifting on his father's lap. "Doesn't snow melt, Mommy?"

Her smile is riddled with sadness and her dark orbs glisten in the dim light. "Yes. But snow can only melt away in the light of the Sun."

"Don't worry. The Sun is the best part of this stupid story."

Sighing, she reaches over to her right and lifts up her arm, bringing it down moments later on top of ruffled spiky hair like his daughter's with a wham. Their son looks up and giggles, small white feathers raining down from the large gash in the pillow from his skull making contact with soft cotton.

The little boy, eager and with a mind that can't sit still, kicks his little feet and glances between his parents until he has their attention, little feathers sinking into his hair like softly fallen snow. "Is the Sun really the best part?"

Little orbs glow up at her and her irritation slips into a soft contentment, light amusement tracing the edges of her eyes. "Do you remember the name of the Princess?"

Her son's eyes roll upwards, his small tongue flicking out onto his upper lip as he tries to remember. When he does, his eyes sparkle and he nods his head up and down ecstatically. "Her name is Moon!"

His mother, pleased, nods gently. "And what of the Sun and the Moon?"

This time, he doesn't take any time to reply, soft voice alight with confidence and uncontained joy only a child can inhibit. "They're both in the same sky!"

Long, rough fingers slip into her own and she lifts her gaze to meet her husband's, smiles reflecting the same sky. "The coldness of the Moon is always chased by the Sun. Because they are in the same sky, it's inevitable they would meet.")

The light climbs her cold walls, thicker than steel and withstanding even the hottest flames, and the shelter of her heart cracks from a single, tiny thread of bright light. He comes to her with a toothy grin and bright grey orbs in a long, sharp face. He's lanky and doesn't look like he could hold a sword. The Ice Princess and the Light don't get along right away, bantering turning into teasing turning into the first friendship, the first crack in the mighty ice wall of her heart. The first but not the last.

Later she finds out he's married and though only friends, she cannot help but feel a prick of jealousy. Kind and jovial, always smiling always laughing, he lifts her out of her icy prison, out of the depths of the freezing void, and into his Light.

There, she learns to live.

She basks in the Light but all things touched by it's warmth only grow colder when night falls. And, inevitably, night will always come.

Our Princess of Ice and Snow is forced to extinguish the Light or watch it be devoured by the Monsters, watch in horror as that beautiful, kind Light is taken over by darkness and death. It was kill or be killed and, unable to decide, the Light made the choice for her. With her sword raised, shaking and afraid, the monstrous Light falls onto the blade, damning her and saving her at the same time. In her arms, the Light dims until, with a quiet flicker, it fades completely.

This time when the frozen walls are erected, a dark night descends within her soul. A harsh, biting blizzard keeps anything from getting too close to her fragile, broken heart and the walls are a steady defence, thicker and colder than before.

A full, hanging moon watches, silent and solemn, waiting for the storm to pass so it can shed it's light on a heart locked away.

("I don't think this story is appropriate for kids."

"You're not appropriate for children and you're allowed near them."

He sends her a quick glare and slight frown but she only blinks innocently at him, not noticing the way their son looks between them with a knowing smile and quiet giggle. "They're my kids."

"No one said you had to be mature to have kids."

"Fuck you."

"Language!"

Assaulted by the same torn pillow, he growls from beneath the fluffy rain of white feathers, matching his wife's glare with his own.

Leaving the destroyed weapon on her husband's head, she looks down at their son, his large, round eyes holding way too much wisdom for a 5 year old. And her heart aches because there is nothing she – or they – can do to prevent it.

Slipping her fingers along his brow, she brushes back his tangled hair from his forehead and smiles. "Don't worry. It gets better from here."

Her son's eyes widen even further and he leans into her touch. "Really?"

"Mhmm."

"Because of the Sun?"

Leaning back onto her bent calves, her hand falls back to her husband's and this time when she meets his eyes, her gaze is soft. "Because of the Sun.")

Thick and full in the vast, stretched sky, a bright moon glows out of the darkness. She waits because it's just another mission, just another Monster's mask to cut away. Except that tonight is inevitably different than the others. Was it Fate that the Sun and Moon were to meet but never touch? Or was it something darker, something malicious that chewed and tore at that fragile string of red twining them together, ripping it from their hearts and leaving their future a shredded unknown?

Or had it always been meant to end in disaster?

Heavy reiatsu pulled her, called to her, demanded her attention and the cold heart she'd frozen behind thick, icy walls and a raging blizzard, sparked.

She had a choice to make: follow her heart or follow the orders she had been given, obey the code of the Council and the Slayers? It shouldn't have been a choice at all, there wasn't really a decision; her heart clenched tightly and she for the first time, from a time long ago when she was just a Princess in a fairytale, she leaped and the inner blizzard faltered.

Suspended above her post, the sleepy town below was just like the others. Dark, empty windows longing for the light, looking like blank eye sockets out over a desolate, quiet town. Each home was silent, lacking the frenzied movement of life and beating hearts. And then she was falling. Falling through a fathomless sky that always seemed endless, in her world and in this one; falling through life and death, the opposites of existence she hadn't understood before; falling through every decision of her life that had led to this point. She fell and stumbled right into her Fate, through the single wall separating the Moon from the Sun.

One foot forward and their eyes met. Indigo skies into blazing amber suns and the rest of the world, life and death, and even Fate, paused for the moment the Moon met the Sun.

She opened her mouth after taking a deep breath, engrossed in her recollection, but a deep, amused chuckle halted her next words. Mouth snapping shut, she glanced up from her waving, gesturing hands to meet those same amber suns, softened by decades and wrinkled at the corners from years of happiness, erasing the frown lines across his forehead. He nodded at the two small bodies in his arms and her heart melted, her small hands falling into her lap as a heartfelt smile dusts her lips.

There they were, their future, wrapped in the arms of her Sun and sleeping soundly, little smiles dancing on their lips as they dreamed.

Ichika was a lot like her father. She was born the oldest often looking after Kazui, her little brother, and picking on him all in the same breath. She was quiet but blunt and with a stubborn will that often sent Soul Society into pulling out what was left of their hair. Adventurous, she dragged her brother with her into events that made her eye twitch. Oh the trouble those two could cause and Ichika, always young, fiesty Ichika, always somehow ended up in the middle of it all. It didn't matter what it was, it was Ichika. Whenever something went wrong or anyone came running to the 13th Division, Rukia sighed, expecting to hear her daughter's name pass someone's lips.

And, usually, she was prepared.

Right now, though, she was nothing but a girl. Face relaxed and gentle in the throes of sleep, her chest rose and fell deeply from her parted, softly smiling mouth. Her eyelids twitched from her dreams, her fingers curled into her father's hakama-shita and Captain's haori. She looked so small, unlike her fiery personality made her seem bigger, curled up in his lap, one set of fingers grasping his kimono and the other holding to the sleeve of her brother's yukata. Probably the thing that melted her heart into a pile of gooey mush was the way little Kazui was holding to his sister, little fingers holding to the sleeve of her yukata, both of them clutching at each other protectively.

Where Ichika was stubborn and stubborn, open with her opinions but mature beyond her little years, Kazui was the opposite. Bright and cheerful, their youngest son was also very shy. Often, he would cling to his sister's hand when something new happened and avoid speaking to new people until he got to know them. Where Ichika started trouble, Kazui tried to avoid it, tried to be the voice of reason to a bull.

Ichika's burning reiatsu was like a bright, flickering flame and Kazui's was often in the shadow of her fire. He was the wind, stoking his sister's flame but also warmed by it. They were necessary to each other and no matter how much they teased each other, she knew, without a second thought, they were never safer than when they were together.

Speaking of together…..

"Are they still staying with Nii-sama tomorrow?"

Her husband looked up, face gentle and wide goofy grin fading at the mention of her brother. She rolled her eyes and tried to bite her tongue. Even after all these years, after the glint of silver on their ring fingers and long after orange headed Ichika and night haired Kazui, those two still couldn't stand each other long enough without one or other wanting to fight.

"Do they have to?"

She glared, crossing her arms over her dark yukata and growling at her husband. "Yes. He wants to see them. It's you he doesn't want to see. When are you two going to drop this feud?"

"When he stops acting like a baby!"

"Shh! You'll wake them!" They both glanced down, waited to see the rise and fall of their children's even breaths, and then met the other's glare head-on. "He's not the one acting like a spoiled brat, Ichigo!"

He snorted. "Oh, of course not. Cause he's fucking Byakuya Kuchiki and him slicing me to pieces with his pink petals of flowery doom is perfectly okay with my wife."

"I am because you running from pink petals and screaming like a little girl is always hilarious."

His glare darkened at her grin and wide violet orbs. "I do not scream like a girl you little midget."

Kuchiki, Rukia opened her mouth again, jaw dropping to retort with purple fire blazing in her sky-drowned pools, but paused, blinking. Looking down, she placed a hand on her swollen belly and winced.

Mumbling, she rubbed the firm flesh with a gentle hand, her fingers caressing the warm skin and the shifting baby in her belly. "Your child is taking your side already."

"Rukia."

Her heart jumped in her chest like it had been electrocuted even though her name was nothing more than a soft hum. Glancing up, hand on her swollen belly and over the baby within, her throat tightens at the warm, bright look in Ichigo's golden orbs. Sunlight and honey lighten his eyes and her breath catches, her fingers twitching over the thumping heartbeat of her baby.

He opens one white Captain haori sleeved arm and the gentleness of his gaze beckons her forward. Rising up on her knees, she steps towards his open arm. She settles next to him, tips of her short dark hair tickling her jaw as she tilts her head into his warm chest, his lean arm draping over the back of her shoulders and her neck. His hand rubs at her upper arm and a rush of tiredness washes over her, pale skies falling over sleepy violets.

A small kiss hits the top of her head and she hums. "Love you, dork."

He chuckles, the sound vibrating in his chest and warming her insides, the baby in her belly giving her an appreciative but unwelcomed kick. "Love you more, midget."

A content silence lulled over the family and as sleep draped itself, light and gentle, over Rukia, she mumbled, "Do you think the moon and sun are happy in the sky, never touching and always chasing?"

She let out a grumble when her world shifted, Ichigo lying backwards with the kids lying on his chest and her curled into his side. A moment later and a small whoosh of breath, the room fell into darkness.

It didn't take as long before she felt warm breath on her forehead, a broad palm at the back of her neck tilting her head up. Through her hazy, half-lidded and sleepy pools, she saw the Sun looking back at her, strong and bright and just before she fell into a dream of the moon chasing the sun across a star spangled sky, Ichigo pressed a soft, warm kiss to the skin of her forehead and mumbled, "I think that as long as the moon loves the sun, he will always come for her, no matter how long it takes, no matter what stands in his way. He's happy, Rukia. The sun only shines because he shares the sky with her, his moon, and that's enough for him."

She closed her eyes, grasping at the hakama-shita under his white haori and buried her nose in the strong musky scent of the sun.

"It's enough for her too."

The story remained unfinished but complete in the hearts of the family that lie on the futon, smiles on their faces. High above them and their small house, the moon and the sun finally touch as an eclipse casts it's light over Soul Society. The future was – and would always remain – unknown but the story would end the same, as all stories do. You know what that is because no matter how fleeting or how small, stories can only end one way.

Life and the future may not have an end but they share one thing in common with the end of fairytales: that one, single moment of happiness the sun chases the moon for.

And when he catches her, he will never let her go.