Prompt Two: House at Night

That's Why

Hitsugaya’s eyes opened wide, and he bolted into a sitting position when the sound of a scream from the house below shook him from his light slumber. He forced himself to get to his feet, waiting for someone inside to consol whoever it was who had experienced such a nightmare. But no lights came on, and Urahara Shoten was now eerily quiet. He frowned. He was only here because Matsumoto had insisted on turning their base of operations into a pig sty, and he didn’t want to have to be the one to clean it … again. He wasn’t exactly the type of person who broke into other people’s houses, but the silence that followed that frightened wail was grating on his nerves. His gut told him it could be something important even as his brain informed him it was nothing more than some brat’s bad dream.

With a sigh, he followed his gut. Maybe it was because he had just woken up, maybe it was because the screaming voice had obviously been that of a young girl’s, or maybe it was simply because he had been spending too much time with Madarame and Ayasegawa. He never knew exactly why he jumped through that window and entered the second story of Urahara’s home, but he did know one thing. He should’ve gone with his brain.

The sight that met him wasn’t too surprising. The little brat with red hair was sprawled out on a futon, his pillow having long ago been chucked at some dream-hollow he had been battling. The television was still on, though the volume was low, and toys were strewn all about the room. Only a few square feet of the room was even close to being clean: a small corner isolated by a fence that looked to be a cross between a baby pen and a sheep pen. It was in that small space that the little girl who had followed Urahara around like a baby chick was sitting.

Her knees were pulled up beneath her chin, arms stretched around her legs in a tight embrace. The blanket from her own futon was draped over her head and around her shoulders, covering most of her small body in a protective layer of cotton. She wasn’t looking at him, instead focusing her sight on her toes as they wiggled methodically. He believed it was safe to assume she was the one who had screamed.

Taking in a deep breath, he stepped forward. He was hesitant to do much of anything, considering the rather traumatized way the girl was acting, but he was intelligent enough to know that if he didn’t do anything, neither would she. And so, no matter how much he did not like the idea, stepped forward again. And again and again, until he was finally standing directly in front of the make-shift pen.

Slowly the little girl raised her head, large, gray-blue eyes focusing on his own teal. She curled into herself a bit more, but she didn’t release that gaze. Hitsugaya wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. Brows furrowing ever so slightly, he crouched down to her height. Her eyes followed him through the motion, but still she said nothing.

It wasn’t long before he realized he would have to be the one to initiate the conversation. Joy. “Er … Are you alright?” he managed, cocking his head to get a better view of the girl’s face hidden beneath her blanket.

She shook her head.

Hitsugaya’s patience was beginning to ware thin. He was not good at this sort of thing. And the fact that she was so adamant about making it even harder for him was not helping. “Did you … have a nightmare?” he hazarded.

This time it was a nod.

“I see…” Well, he tried to be optimistic about all of this, at least she didn’t seem to mind his breaking-and-entering. Nope. Optimism wasn’t working. With a weary sigh, he stood up straight once again. “Well, whatever it was, it’s gone now, okay?”

A head shake.

Hitsugaya frowned at this. And, with the damn-it-all attitude of the truly defeated, he stepped into the pen and plopped down next to her. He refused to look her in the eye again, instead leaning his back against her side. “Tell me about it.”

The little girl stared at his back, eyes wide at the sudden action. She didn’t even really know him; he was just that shinigami that had been fighting the arrancar. She sniffed. “Kisuke-san’s gone,” she finally vocalized.

Ah, Hitsugaya finally understood. That was why no one had come to comfort her. He was sure Urahara would have if he had been there to do so. He was quite the man. Hitsugaya would never understand his near bi-polar personality and erratic tendencies, but he seemed to have a surprising soft spot for certain characters. This girl, he was certain, was one of them. “He’ll be back,” he told her firmly.

“He … He’s always doing so much to fix everything, even when it’s not his fault,” she continued softly. He could barely hear her over his own breathing. “Even when it’s my fault. He always fixes it. But what if…” A light sob restricted her throat, keeping her from finishing.

“You know,” Hitsugaya replied, his voice almost as soft as hers, “I know someone like that too.” Her eyes widened once again at the statement, and she didn’t even bother to replace the blanket over her head when it began to dip. Hitsugaya still refused to look at her, allowing himself a peek at the stars through the window before he went on. “She’s not really the sort of person that society accepts easily, and she’s hard to handle at times, but when something’s wrong, she’ll do everything in her power to find out what it is and how to deal with it. If someone’s upset, she takes it upon herself to change that, and if someone’s in trouble she’ll do whatever she can to make things right. Even if she doesn’t know why that person was in such a situation in the first place. Even during a fight. When she thinks no one is looking, she’ll sweat and she’ll cry and she’ll see everything in the worst possible light, but as soon as she knows someone is watching, she’ll look at them with such a reassuring grin that they’ll have no doubt she’ll win, even if they already know otherwise.”

The little girl was entranced at the shinigami’s words, finding them to match Kisuke so well that she couldn’t believe he was talking about a different person. What he said next, though, was what really riveted her.

“But, you know, people like that, they tend to not notice their own problems as much. They spend so much of their time focusing on fixing other people’s mistakes, that their own are never solved. Those problems just grow and grow until they consume the person. So while they spend their time solving everyone else’s problems, they need a few of those people to return and solve their problems for them. That’s why, no matter what happens, Urahara will return. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

She didn’t really know what he was saying, but she was already feeling better. She had let her blanket droop all the way past her shoulders, looking up at the back of Hitsugaya’s head as he spoke. “Kisuke-san will definitely be back?” she implored, fighting to keep another sob at bay.

“Yeah,” he replied with a bit of an amused chuckle. Finally, he turned around to face her. His lips were curved awkwardly at one end as if to convey an emotion even he couldn’t quite identify, and his brows had unforrowed to a more friendly height. “Because when his problems get to be too much for him to handle, he knows that there’s someone who can fix them, right here in this house.”

Her cheeks flushed a light pink as he reached out and patted her gently on the top of her head, just as Kisuke had done so many times before. So when he stood up to leave once again, she couldn’t help but grab his haori to stop him. He looked down at her oddly, not sure what to do until her cheeks burned an even brighter shade, and she asked, “Can … Can you stay here tonight? U-Until Kisuke-san gets back?”

He sighed. But he supposed anything was better than going back and having a certain Tenth Division fukutaichou try to solve all of his problems again. “Alright,” he huffed. “Just for the night.”

And it was a very amused Urahara Kisuke who stepped into the room early that morning to see his little Ururu happily cuddled up against Hitsugaya Toushirou’s chest.

Sweet Dreams