Disclaimer: Don't own.
A Little Conversation
Kurosaki-san picked up an ornament and turned it over in her hands. "Do you think Karin would like this?"
Toushiro looked up from his clipboard.
It was just a snow-globe with a little plastic doll-girl in a winter coat, smiling and waving.
Toushiro half-shrugged, nodded and went back to his paperwork. Even in Karakura, it just followed him.
Kurosaki-san put the snow-globe back on the shelf and moved on to the next ornament. "Hitsugaya-san?"
He sighed. Clearly, he wasn't going to make a dent in his workload today. "Yes, Kurosaki-san?"
"I know I'm not much compared to the rest of my family, and that's just fine. Otou-san is the loud one, Nii-chan is the famous one, and Karin is the cool one."
A wry expression flashed across his face. "Your point being?"
Suddenly, Kurosaki-san was close, her eyes inches from his. "If you make her feel bad, I'll tell Otou-san. If you ever hurt her, then I'll tell Nii-chan. If you ever make Karin cry…"
Hitsugaya Toushiro was a shinigami captain, the youngest in history. He was a genius at zanjutsu and tactics and a dozen other things, a decorated war hero for all the good it does him. He could have crushed this all-but-helpless girl with the effort it would take to step on a flower, and they both knew it. It would be utterly ridiculous for someone of his caliber to ever be afraid of an ordinary human, even for a second, and Kurosaki-san had only barely enough reiryoku to be able to see him outside of a gigai.
Even so, there was a part of him that wanted very much to be elsewhere. He'd even take Kurosaki's incessant stupidity and thoughtlessness over this, whatever it was, because no one this harmless was allowed to be scary.
She stepped back, smiling. "Okay?"
Then Toushiro considered her family: her father (his old captain), her late mother (a Quincy of all things), her older brother (Kurosaki Ichigo was his own definition) and sister (who he still couldn't understand no matter how much he thought about her). If he's learned anything about dealing with Kurosaki, it's that no one in their family understands the meaning of the word "overprotective".
He nodded.
Toushiro was a fairly intelligent young man. As such, he realized that this conversation was inevitable.
He just hoped that time could erase the memory of that horrible, horrible smile.
Notes: Because everyone else in their family is secretly scary sometimes, so why not? R&R, please.
