Three years after Shouto is born, Rei has another child.
Todoroki Toshiro, who has a head full of his mother's icy white hair and sharp eyes with both of Enji's bright aquamarine irises. A mistrustful gaze that is too smart and too cold on the face of a child as young as him, glaring at both Enji and Rei.
When the gaze becomes just a bit too unsettling, Enji takes him. And Rei shouts, yells, and cries, but there is no denying that a part of her is scared, not for her child but of him. Scared enough that she sees reason in Enji's rationalization and hesitates, lets him take her child away from her.
She will never forgive herself for not pushing hard enough.
Todoroki Toshiro is put in an orphanage.
He doesn't get along with the other kids.
He reads books in a secluded corner of the library, aquamarine eyes poring over tomes that infants his age shouldn't understand.
He, with his icy glare and cold demeanor, is immediately off-putting when compared to the other cheerful children. Prospective parents take uneasy steps away from him.
At the playground, an old woman on a bench takes notice when he accidentally trips, and shows concern for him, and for a moment, the ice in his eyes melts. He slaps away the woman's hand and stands on his own, brushing the dirt off his shorts. "I'm not a child."
She chuckles. "Of course. Then what is your name?"
Toshiro will never use the surname Todoroki ever again. As far as he is concerned, that 'family' has absolutely no relation to him, blood or otherwise. "Toshiro."
When he goes back with the other children, head of white hair standing out across a sea of black, the old woman smiles.
"Toshiro. That's a nice name."
One week later, Toshiro becomes Hitsugaya Toshiro and never looks back.
He never ends up getting along with other children. "They're all immature," he says, plopping into the nearby sofa with a pile of books. "Baa-san, do I really have to go to school?"
He's more whiny than she thought he would be, honestly, though she's glad he's not completely silent like he was a year ago. "Well, why don't you like them? They all seem like nice kids."
"Nice." Toshiro scoffs. "All they ever ask is about quirks. So what if I don't want to show off my quirk? Don't they know unauthorized quirk usage is illegal?"
She puts a hand to her chin in thought. She's long since grown accustomed to Toshiro's unusually mature way of speaking. "Come to think of it, you're almost four, aren't you?" his quirk should be coming soon.
Toshiro nods, returning to his book.
She should sign him up for online classes at some point. He always looks bored.
Sometimes Toshiro looks at nothing, eyes unfocused.
Or they are focused, but simply on something that isn't there.
When she asks, he shakes his head. "It's nothing."
She pretends not to hear when he talks to the fresh flower he has laid next to the street corner where a young girl tragically died in a car crash a few years ago.
She wakes up in the middle of the night, freezing. That's odd. The night was supposed to be warm and humid thanks to the summer heat wave. The AC unit isn't broken, is it?
She leaves her room and immediately, a blast of cold air hits her with full force. She shivers for the first time in forever.
That's not from the AC. The AC wouldn't make an ice-quirk user shiver.
"Toshiro?"
She gently opens his door. The boy is sweating, and some of his white hair is matted to his face. His face is scrunched up in an expression of anguish, and she can see his breath coming out in shaky wisps of cold white clouds. He's kicked his futon half off, but his shakes seem less like shivers and more like shudders.
She almost flinches back when she places a hand on his shoulder, the ice-cold touch startling her.
"Toshiro. Toshiro!"
Aquamarine eyes open abruptly and she has barely enough time to dodge before his body swings up into a sitting position with a shout on his tongue that seems to cut off in favor of a gasp.
"Are you awake now?"
A final shudder shakes Toshiro's body as he takes a gulp of air and nods. "Sorry. I lost control of my ice."
She sighs. "Don't worry." She's worrying. She's worrying a lot, but she's had a child before, and she knows what happens. "We'll go visit a quirk doctor soon." she tries to inject some pep in her too-old voice as she smiles reassuringly. "Congratulations on getting your quirk."
Toshiro blushes the way he does whenever he's embarrassed for being complimented, because the poor boy is so unused to being praised, it seems. "Mm. Thanks," he mumbles. "It's probably late. Baa-san, you should go back to sleep. You probably need it."
The boy is so kind, she thinks as she returns to her futon. She can only hope his night terrors fade with time.
I hear a voice.
It's echoing.
It feels like it's crushing me.
It feels like it's surrounding me.
It feels like lightning is striking the palm of my hand.
"Himura-san! It's been so long," the old quirk doctor greets.
She smiles. "It has indeed. Thank you for agreeing to meet on such short notice, Watanabe-sensei."
The doctor looks at the white-haired waif beside her. "Is that your grandchild?"
"Yes. Hitsugaya Toshiro."
Watanabe raises an eyebrow. "Hitsugaya?"
Toshiro looks away at something in thin air as she chuckles. "I did offer the name Himura when I adopted him, but he chose Hitsugaya himself, and I thought it was sensible."
"Adopted!" Watanabe's eyebrows raise further. "You two share such a close resemblance I thought you were related," he chuckles.
He smiles disarmingly at the child. "That's a nice name, little one."
The aquamarine eyes swerve back to glare at him with such fervor that Watanabe is briefly taken aback. "... then, if both of you would proceed into the room please. I'll be right with you."
When he leaves the room, he swears he hears Himura softly scold the child. "Stop glaring at strangers all the time."
So he wasn't mistaken. That was a glare. A rather chilly one too.
Toshiro walks out of the doctor's office with a new name for the ice that forms subconsciously on his fingertips when he's too deep in thought.
Cryohydrokinesis. The ability to control and create ice and water, as well as a limited control over the temperature of the air, mostly for cooling. He can't heat air past a certain point but he can heat air of lower temperatures up to a tiny bit above the freezing point of water. In other words, he can make and melt his own ice.
No wonder he hates the summer so much.
Baa-san says they'll have amanatto to celebrate his quirk.
Toshiro wonders why he can't feel happy about it.
There's a yearning in his heart for more, a vague sensation that this isn't enough. He wants to know what that dream means. He wants to know what that voice wants.
Baa-san chuckles and ruffles his hair. "You're scowling again, Toshiro."
Call my name.
Remember your home.
My name is...
HYOURINMARU!
Some say that water holds memory of its past shape and form, or of its solutes even ages past its dilution. How well then, does ice, with its tight-locking crystalline structure remember?
How much memory does an ice dragon retain?
Aquamarine eyes open, flashing with the accumulated memories of a past life played behind his eyelids within a fraction of a second, a movie of centuries of sights and smells and feelings and tastes and bitter pain and the binding of a katana— zanpakuto hilt flush against his hand.
Hitsugaya Toshiro. Western Rukongai outcast, Shinou Academy student and graduate, Third Seat of the Tenth Division under Shiba Isshin and Lieutenant Matsumoto Rangiku, Tenth Division Captain Hitsugaya Toshiro.
A sharp pain blooms in the back of his head and he falls limp, back onto his futon, letting his quirk cool the air around him. He rests his forearm over closed eyes, relishing the ice-cold touch against his eyelids.
He's not supposed to be alive. And if he is, then he's not supposed to remember being dead.
The year is 2148. He's physically 5 years old, mentally more years than he can count. Did he die again? Has he reincarnated? Is Soul Society still standing? Has the Tenth Captain been replaced?
Is Matsumoto okay? Is Baa-chan lonely? Is Hinamori still the Fifth Lieutenant?
And what should he do now?
He's served Seireitei. He's done his duty and he's completed it, except it's never really finished is it? As long as his soul, the soul of the Heavenly Guardian, wielder of Hyourinmaru, is still in the cycle of reincarnation, his duty will never be done.
It's only a matter of time before he returns to Soul Society. If he's lucky this time, he won't return to Rukongai as a child, and won't have to deal with the jeers and taunts of people twice his height that eventually meet the pointy end of Hyourinmaru.
But really, what purpose does he have in the Living Realm? Among the living? He, who knows the cycle of death and its guardians, is an anomaly, like Kurosaki Ichigo once was. He should not exist— or his knowledge and memory should not exist, though they are synonymous to his identity.
What do the living do?
They live. They know their impending end and they fulfill their desires in life, because death is an eternity of consistency and unchangingness. Life is meant to be something sacred and beautiful, something greater than mere existence.
For centuries, Toshiro has existed. As a shinigami, semi-immortality has meant that he has always anticipated a second death at some point, but what did he have to achieve before that death? Only his duties to Soul Society and to Hinamori and Baa-chan.
What should he do?
Hyourinmaru, what should I do?
Except even as the dragon's roar echoes in his mind, Hitsugaya's thoughts stir like funnel clouds, roaring louder. Even if he were to try to meditate right now, his other half's voice would not be able to reach him.
To begin with, Hyourinmaru's voice should not have been able to reach him. Only the dead are allowed a zanpakuto, and Toshiro is no longer dead. His reiatsu…
He evidently still has reiatsu if he can still see the dead. A remnant of his powers as a shinigami? His reiryoku reserves are nowhere near as expansive as they once were, though. Of course they aren't. He had built up those reserves with centuries of training.
He's understandably a bit bitter about losing the fruits of his grueling efforts, despite knowing that his powers aren't supposed to follow him in reincarnation. He should at least be grateful that his ice powers have replicated themselves naturally through genetic evolution as his quirk.
Ice. His quirk. He feels like he should remember something. White hair and gray eyes, red hair and aquamarine eyes and flames. It's… unclear. Foggy. He pushes it to the back of his mind.
The more he remembers, the more he sees the differences between Baa-chan and Baa-san.
Both are (were?) kind. Both show him unconditional affection no matter how coldly he treats them. Both respect that he has never been a normal child and never will be a normal child, and don't try to force him into interactions that make him uncomfortable.
Baa-chan was pretty well-respected within their little district of West Rukongai, Junrinan. If they scorned Toshiro, they were usually careful to do it outside of Baa-chan's eyesight and earshot. Baa-chan was short and frail and kind above all, willing to take in Toshiro with all his faults when no one else would. Baa-chan was gentle and trusting, and would have let Toshiro live with her until her inevitable end from Toshiro's unfettered reiatsu if Toshiro himself hadn't gone to Shinou Academy.
Baa-chan was constantly smiling. Baa-san teases him for every time he blushes when she praises how smart he is. Baa-chan gave him money to buy amanatto for them to share. Baa-san chuckles that she's glad Toshiro seems to have old taste buds so she can easily buy amanatto for both of them.
Baa-san is kind but short-tempered. She'll lightly tap him on the head and scold him for glaring at a stranger when that person hasn't done anything to him, Toshiro will scoff, and they'll return to walking together comfortably, her words filling the silence between them. She'll offer a hand when he trips and then let him walk himself until he trips again with his clumsy infantile feet. Toshiro thinks she wants him to reach for her hand himself one day.
The first time he does take Baa-san's hand himself, he just woke up from a…
His steel blade rings with satisfaction as he plunges it into the traitor's back but it's wrong, it's not the blood dribbling down the traitor's chin but Hinamori, sweet Momo impaled on Hyourinmaru, a weak gasp arising from her lips, "Why, Shiro-chan?"
Toshiro woke up not for the first time with sweat matting white hair to his forehead, frost creeping up his arms and ice blocks encrusting his fingertips. Was that scream echoing in his ears from him?
Baa-san rushes over. Her old body is less frail than Baa-chan's, and the sliding door opens none too gently, a look of concern furrowing her eyebrows.
Her ice is small but detailed. As she holds out her palm, a large snowflake materializes in her hand, the crystalline structures stretching into hexagons and spikes and little patterns that Toshiro loses his eyes in. It dances slowly in her palm, up and down, inhale and exhale, and when his heart rate finally slows, she goes to the kitchen and pours him a cup of cold water.
He sips slowly. His hand is still shaking as he reaches out to Baa-san. Her hand, still, cool from use of her quirk, anchors his.
"Thanks, Baa-san," he whispers.
She nods.
Hyourinmaru, what should I do?
He sits cross-legged on a cushion.
Glowing red eyes open slowly, the dragon stirring.
The giant ice dragon exhales, an icy gust blowing through Toshiro's yet underdeveloped mindscape, tousling his hair gently.
"You are alive. Why don't you live?"
But what does that mean?
"Do what you want to do."
Toshiro would be glad to stay by Baa-san's side until Baa-san dies. What he would do after that is…
"I will not have a weak master that knows not what his soul sings for."
I…
"You will know your answer in due time."
The massive ice dragon retreats into the sky.
Toshiro opens his eyes.
Baa-san gives him a present.
She smiles almost too smugly as she hands him the box. By the size and weight, Toshiro already has an idea of what it is.
And fine, he'll allow his eyes to sparkle with childish joy as he pulls out the laptop and powers it on. It's something he's been wanting for a while after all.
"Now that you're six," Baa-san clears her throat, "You must be glad to 'finally be out of that glorified daycare full of children,'" she parrots his mumble from the last day of that school year.
Toshiro doesn't know where this is going. "Y-yeah," he nods.
"So I've taken the liberty to enroll you in self-paced online classes for elementary and middle school. It's—"
She's cut off as Toshiro hugs her tightly, something he's never done before. She smiles. "It's a reputable program and has a certificate of completion that should make you eligible for applying to and taking tests for high schools as soon as you finish it."
"Thank you," Toshiro's words are muffled, his face pressed against her shirt, but so heartfelt that she almost cries. "Thank you."
Toshiro breezes through the elementary school curriculum with the same ease that he did the Shinou Academy curriculum. He could have paced himself, but why would he? If he can get it done and out of the way now, he will. That's the way he's always been.
The middle school curriculum begins to introduce details about the subjects that Toshiro has only ever seen in his extracurricular reading at the Academy when he got bored. Knowing how to do algebra was not required knowledge for fighting Hollows, and neither were ethics of illegal quirk usage or analysis of a book's themes.
His brain soaks up information like a sponge though, and Toshiro is rewarded with Baa-san's look of incredulity when he finishes the entire middle school curriculum in only a year and a half.
"You didn't cheat, did you?" She knows he never would.
Toshiro scoffs. "Cheating is below me."
So at the ripe age of 9 years old, Toshiro has finished all his compulsory schooling.
"So what are you going to do now?" Baa-san looks at him as he picks up another amanatto bean and pops it into his mouth.
He shrugs. He hasn't given much thought to it.
"You know, you could do anything."
"I could."
"Did you enjoy any of your classes?"
He leans his chin on one hand. "Not in particular."
"Hmm." Baa-san is thinking. "Then anything you think you'd be good at?"
He says "paperwork" before he can think about it.
She chuckles.
He's definitely been neglectful of his training. Toshiro bites his lip as he runs from a Hollow that jabs a bony forearm towards him.
Toshiro has grown complacent. His quirk gave him the illusion of power thrumming under his skin like his reiryoku, but it isn't. And it's pretty evident that though his reserves are growing with his age, as the Hollow chases after him for a hearty meal, he's still pitifully weak. His muscles have gone to moot in his three years of online schooling.
He dodges another jab.
There doesn't seem to be a local reaper, and if there is, then they're doing an awful job and should be stationed cleaning Hellmoth cages instead of in the Living Realm where their faults endanger both the living and the dead.
He doesn't have his zanpakuto. He doesn't have a sword but the motions are there; he can feel his limbs itching to fall into the familiar form of a Ryusenka.
A sword. He needs a sword and he needs one fast, and in his palm a hilt of ice takes shape, extending and curving into a familiar blade.
Hyourinmaru! He calls the dragon's name and it roars with satisfaction, free to enjoy piercing cold ice and the wind under its wings once more.
Toshiro swings his ice blade through the Hollow's torso and lands, feet betraying him by stumbling. His body is unused to this strain and he pants, taking large gulps of air like his life depends on it.
He feels a slight satisfaction from the way the Hollow disintegrates into black dust, but he feels more annoyance. Annoyance at himself for his current weakness. And…
"Joy," Hyourinmaru sings in his hand, resonating with him. "You have not felt battle in years, pathetic as that was just now."
Gee, thanks, Toshiro snarks at the spirit.
He swings the ice sword back over his shoulder like he is putting it into a long scabbard and remembers too late that it isn't his actual zanpakuto, merely a replica made of his own ice. He supposes it would be awfully suspicious if a person were holding an ice sword without any context and allows it to shatter into thin particles that drift in the air and melt into nothing.
Hyourinmaru, I think I know what I want.
It has been three years. "About time."
Toshiro takes a deep breath.
They are two sides of the same coin, Hitsugaya Toshiro and Hyourinmaru, and no doubt Hyourinmaru knows already. They have always shared the same desire after all.
A home. A place to call home, where he can be himself. Baa-chan could never have stayed with him forever without harming herself, and Baa-san is startlingly mortal, coughing more than a few times every day now.
The solution back then was becoming a shinigami. It sated a latent desire for battle within Toshiro that he didn't even know he had. It gave him duty, purpose, respect.
What he wants now—
To protect Baa-san from stray Hollows, to fight and feel the wind under wings of ice, to be respected.
There is really only one way to do everything in this society he finds himself in, one way that will license even carrying a weapon in case he has to fight an unseen enemy.
He sighs.
But Pro Heroes are so inefficient. How they get anything done is beyond me and they probably do more property damage than Kenpachi on a bad day.
Hyourinmaru snuffs, as if in agreement. Toshiro takes this as a sign to continue.
Obviously there are issues with a system like Seireitei's, where authority is based on hierarchy and the top is a centralized group that is less powerful than the Shinigami yet holds the most power. He has felt personally slighted by Central 46 on more than one occasion. But it was efficient. Insubordination was punished and duties were carried out on command.
Heroes seem to value their individualism so much that their hierarchy is based not on power but on charisma and fame. While a correlation exists, there are clearly heroes that act more as public figures than as protectors of the people. Their freedom to act on their own without a centralized command means that they have the capacity to further their own interests over that of the people, putting lives in danger.
Hero society is inherently flawed and inefficient, and fosters a very black and white ideology of good and bad and justice versus criminal activity. There.
Hyourinmaru lets out another sound that is awfully reminiscent of a snicker.
You traitor. You're supposed to be the other half of my soul.
"Then surely you know just as I do that none of this is going to stop you from being a hero."
Toshiro sighs. No. It is not. There are no other feasible options for him to achieve his goals and have freedom of movement to eliminate Hollows after all. As much as he dislikes it.
"Baa-san," he says the next day. "I'm going to become a hero."
She smiles sadly at him.
It turns out Baa-san had more influence than Toshiro thought.
Way more. "Baa-san— this—"
"Is a training facility. Get your jaw off the ground, Shiro," she says too smugly. "I have friends in the Hero Commission so they were glad to let me borrow a gym."
Toshiro feels like his eyes are probably bulging out of their sockets as he stares at her. "In the Hero Commission?" he parrots incredulously.
She crouches down, kneeling. He notes with some frustration that when she does this, she is the same height as him. But, this is one of the first times she has looked at him at eye level, and he's hit with an overwhelming feeling of déja vu. Those old dark gray eyes and the white hair that Baa-san pulls back into a tight bun are so achingly familiar, and yet he can't place where he knows them from.
Baa-san has been smiling sadly a lot recently.
"... Baa-san?"
She opens her mouth. Then closes it. "It's nothing." She stands back up. "You want to be a hero? You'll need to pass UA's entrance exams. You have four years to prepare to your heart's content here. Whatever you need, I will give you."
"UA? Top hero school in the nation?"
"Unless you want to go to an inferior school?" Baa-san taunts. "Don't think you can do it?"
Toshiro bristles. Well now he's going to finish training in half the time just to show her.
Himura Rai is close enough to the Hero Commission to know that there's more than one way to become a hero besides going to a hero school. Toshiro has a powerful quirk. An easily advertisable all-purpose ice quirk, with the white hair and icy eyes to match. The Hero Commission would treat him like a golden goose egg.
Is she going to let Toshiro take that method? To have his entire schedule and training regimen controlled by the Hero Commission? Absolutely not.
She already allowed her daughter to do something she would regret. She isn't going to let herself regret again.
Toshiro trains for two years.
"Baa-san, I'll be ready for the UA Entrance exam in half a year," he said.
She nodded. "Show me how you train next time and I'll believe you," she waved him off.
Understandable, honestly. There's surely a limit to how much Baa-san is willing to let Toshiro be independent, and for all that he has centuries of memories and experience, Toshiro is also physically ten years old. After just half a year of training, he does not have the same reiatsu-enhanced fortitude that he gained with centuries of training.
When Baa-san comes to watch him in the gym, he runs through his warm ups.
He lets the ice extend in his hand. The previously-crude figure of Hyourinmaru manifests itself in full detail, the hilt etched with overlapping fabric, the tsuba a four-pointed star at the base of a gleaming ice sword, transparent as glass with a wickedly sharp edge.
He greets Hyounrinmaru with closed eyes as he always does, holding his sword reverently in front of him. And then with practiced ease, he falls into the dance of swordsmanship that is ingrained so deeply into his bones, fierce strokes cutting through the air.
He looks back to Baa-san, and she nods.
UA is… larger than the pictures make it seem. Walls of reflective glass stretch and hover over Toshiro's head as he walks past the gate. The February chill bites at his nose, giving him a reassuring calm and sense of peace even as the other students, all three years older than him, tower over him.
At twelve years old, Toshiro takes the UA entrance exam three years younger than the specified age, thanks mostly to Baa-san pulling some strings.
At twelve years old, Toshiro passes with ease.
He allows himself a smile as the recorded message plays over the device.
Baa-san hugs him. This is one time he doesn't mind warmth, for once.