Disclaimer: I am reasonably certain I am not in fact the creator of Bleach.

Chapter Nine

~Ai's Point Of View~\

It was late when Ai finally got home, it had taken longer than she'd origanally thought to buy Toushiro's clothes. The unexpected side-trip to the park didn't do much to keep the sun in place.

'We're most likely not having a hot meal tonight.' thought Ai, trying to find her key and not wake her grandson at the same time. Even if Toushiro was small, it still was pretty hard.

When she finally found her key and steped outside the house. Ai carefully stepped inside, trying not to wake up Toushiro and Rin, just in case she was asleep.

'That girl has to much on her plate to lose sleep because of an old woman's forgetfulness.' she thought, fumbling with her bags.

Putting Toushiro in his crib, she would have to go find Rin's old mattress from her toddler years soon. She walked into the living room, fully intending to soak the day's aches away in a hot bath and falling into her bed and sleeping till the apocalypes, afterall, she wasn't a young woman anymore.

She walked toward her bedroom and, having forgotten purse in the nursery, turned around.

"Were are the groceries?" asked Rin, stepping out of her bedroom.

"Oh! Rin don't do that! You almost gave me a heart attack!" Ai said putting a hand to chest dramitcally.

"Were are the groceries?" Rin repeated, not amused with her mother's antics.

"What groceries?" AI replied, confused.

Rin narrowed her eyes at her mother. "You know the ones we need for this week. The ones I asked you to get this morning because I was going to be working late and wouldn't be able to get to the market in time? Those groceries!"

Rin was almost shouting now and that shocked Ai, her daughter had always been a pretty laid back person and hardly ever raised her voice preffering instead to talk things out. When had she changed so much?

"I...I don't remember you asking me for groceries, Rin are you sure you didn't forget to tell me?" Ai said rather hesitently, not wanting to cause an explosion in her obviously stressed daughter.

"Well I did. I even gave you a list it was on the kitchen counter." Rin said. She was visibaly calming down.

A tense moment of silence followed Rins response.

"I'm sorry Rin, I swear I'll get them tomorrow but I forgot today, I won't forget next time." Ai said at last breaking the thick air.

"You said that this morning." Rin muttered before clearing her throat and saying, "Never mind I'll do it, that way I know it'll get done. So can you please give me the grocery money?"

"G...grocery money?" Ai said weakly. A sinking feeling in her gut told her she had somehow screwd up, again.

"The grocery money I gave you this morning." Rin said impatiently, what was going on with her mother. She was never one to forget this many things.

"Oh...oh sweet heart I'm so sorry, I might of accidently spent it on some new clothes for Toushiro. " Ai said.

"You spent it on Toushiro." Rin said, horribly, horribly calm.

"Yes, you see, I had let him paint some pictures and he got it all over his clothes, and since they were oil based paints his clothes were ruined. So I found some money and decided to get him some new ones, his old ones were getting small anyway." Ai was babbling now, explaining to her daughter that suddenly looked so tired and small, that Ai was reminded of the little girl she had once been.

"You spent our food money on clothes?" Rin said quietly, defeatedly. She was just so tired. Tired of having to get up so early to go to a job she had never needed before and coming home to a quiet child she didn't want and a quieter mom who she did want but failed to comfort her.

"I'm sorry sweetie... I... I don't know what's getting in to me these days." Ai said, she felt horrible for putting that look on her daughters face so much like her fathers that she sometimes couldn't look at her without tearing up.

"Just, just forget it, I'll figure something out tomorrow. It's late and we're both tired, let's go to bed." Rin said, turning around and walking to her room.

"Alright." Ai replied. For some reason she felt like a child being dismissed by the parent, and that unsettled her.

~Toushiro's Point Of View~

Toushiro gripped the bars of his crib, his large eyes staring at the closed door of his room. Slightly muffled voices penetrated the otherwise silent night. The slightly raised voices of Mom and Granny had woke him up and now he couldn't sleep.

'Wonder what their talking 'bout?' Toishiro wondered drowsily. It was way past his bedtime.

Toushiro heard his granny say something about paint, and he wondered breifly what she had done with his picture, his train of thought was interupted by a huge yawn overtaking him and the sudden shock of silence.

Peace at last gripped the household and Toushiro fell asleep to dreama about flying.

AN: I am so sorry for the long wait, but I moved to a new house, again and am now in the process of moving (again) to the same damn house I'd just moved out of. Alot of crap has happened since the last update that has interferred with this chapter's progression. Including no internet for 3 months. I also had the brilliant idea of writting this story in three different places (as in the first couple chapters are in one notebook, this one was in a different one and a couple are on my computer. So obviously the notebook I loose is the one with the new chapter in it and I couldn't find it for a month. On a different note thanks for all your wonderful reviews and favs and alerts even though you must hate me for being so lazy as to wait almost a year to update the story. I can't promise when the next chapter will be up because I have a huge math test coming up that I SHOULD be studing for right now. Anyway thanks for reading and reviewing, and sorry for the shortness after such a long wait, but I cringed at the original version that was longer but crappier and I hated it so your stuck with a shorter chapter that I don't want to burn.