After writing "Forever Sounds Nice" and "Some Things Never Change" I decided that I really wanted to explore the relationship between Karin and Tōshirō that I kept hinting at, mainly because since seeing the filler "Hitsugaya, Karin, and Soccer Ball" I've loved the idea of Karin and Tōshirō together.

The album that Karin is listening to in the prologue is "Hold Me Down" from You Me At Six.

To follow this story you don't need to have read either of the other AU Bleach/Final Fantasy linked stories, but like with Tsubasa and xxxHOLiC reading all of them gives you all the different angles of the overlap sections.

Please enjoy xx.

If there was one thing the Kurosaki's as a family had in common; it was their mutual love and appreciation of music, Isshin liked old school rhythm and blues because he thought that not only did it make him sophisticated, but in his mind made him cool. Yuzu loved Enka although none of her family or her boyfriend could understand the attraction and then there was her love of Visual Kei which Karin could understand, but Jinta was confused by it possibly more than her love of Enka confused him. He has asked her once why she hadn't wanted to marry the lead singer of Versailles and Yuzu had said,

"You can't help who you fall in love with," It had seemed to placate Jinta, but Karin still didn't know if that was really a compliment to him or Visual Kei. Ichigo on the other hand had always liked something with a good beat no matter where it came from and Karin? She loved Western rock and pop. So as she slipped her headphones over her ears she wanted to throw herself in to the oblivion of her music to drown out the real world and its real pain.

She pressed play on her old beat up CD player and revelled in the sound; she hated the electronic feel and sound of downloaded files. Unlike her father and brother she didn't have the patience for vinyl so she settled for a medium that was one down from computer files.

The disk spun to life and she realised that it was one of the ones that Ichigo had bought her for her last birthday. She remembered it well as it was one of the only times that he hadn't made a big deal of making fun of her for the music she liked.

She loved this album, she really did and was grateful that her older brother had such good taste, but today this album was not what she wanted not when the track that began playing had a main line of stay with me and that was the last thing she wanted to hear; because it was the thing she had begged Tōshirō with, but even though she hated the idea she didn't change it she just let the music fall over her to eat her from the inside out as the tears that she had held back fell down her face.

For Karin crying was such an odd feeling because it had been so long since she had last cried. She wasn't Yuzu who looked beautiful whatever she cried; Karin knew she looked ugly when she did so she had built up walls so as to never have to cry again. She had cried for months after their mother had died, but seeing how Ichigo tried to be strong for them all made her want to try too and it worked she managed to hold them all back. It didn't matter if a teacher shouted at her or if she fell over Karin had vowed that she would never be weak again and she had kept that promise until she had run in to Tōshirō Hitsugaya.