I'm not sure when I decided that Hitsugaya was an insomniac, but I stand by it.

You can't tell me he isn't.

… I mean, you can. Obviously. He's a spirit.

But I'm sticking with it anyway.

.

Lost in a private nighttime reverie, Toshiro Hitsugaya sat outside his division's barracks with a little bowl of water in his lap; he would build, melt, and rebuild little ice sculptures. There was no rhyme or reason to his creations, and nobody but Hitsugaya could tell what most of them even were. Random shapes, sweeping curves, jagged angles; spears and stars and little wings.

It came as easy as breathing; the dragon's ice. The dragon's cold.

It wasn't enough to call the cold familiar. That wasn't right; it wasn't intimate enough.

The dragon's ice was so deep inside of Hitsugaya that it became Hitsugaya. To feel its chill was to feel his own body, and that was something that Hitsugaya had only ever been able to explain to people like Rukia Kuchiki; other ice users, in other words. Certainly, reapers who used other elements got the gist of it, but it was the ice specifically that mattered to Hitsugaya.

The way it felt like such a natural extension of death itself. The way that softness, that seductive bite, that sleepy numbness, seemed to sweep through him every time he took his sword in his hands. Hitsugaya would never have called himself, or his fellow ice users, the only real soul reapers.

He knew that wasn't true.

But just because it wasn't true didn't mean he couldn't feel it.

Toshiro Hitsugaya always felt closest to death, closest to his calling, when he communed with his power like this: taking water, that great giver of life, and rendering it still. Sharp. Brittle. It was hardly a subtle metaphor, but he liked it all the same.

It was right around when he'd just perfected an angular little daffodil—the sigil of his division—that Matsumoto tracked him down. On most nights, she would have sneaked up beside her captain and startled him, to see if she could make him splash water all over his robes, but something stopped her this time. This time, she simply settled herself beside Hitsugaya and watched for a while.

"You have this fascination," she said eventually, "with not using chairs. Should we find you a low desk for your office, so you can sit on the floor in there?"

Hitsugaya hummed. "I've thought about it," he said, almost dreamily.

Matsumoto rolled her eyes. "Of course you have," she said, shaking her head. "You try so hard to act dignified and distinguished, a member of one of the great houses, but in the end you're still that dirt-streaked brat from Junrinan, aren't you?" She paused. "That's supposed to be a high-class district, you know. The propriety from the court bleeds over, or something equally vapid."

It was Hitsugaya's turn to roll his eyes. "No matter where you live in Rukongai," he said, "high-class just means you own a pair of sandals."

Matsumoto frowned, then shrugged. "Okay, that's fair," she said. "Did you have sandals back then?"

"Yes," Hitsugaya said, as the water from his bowl danced before him in the form of a crystalline hummingbird, "but I only wore them when my grandmother made me." He smiled privately to himself. "She was always very insistent that I wash up, put on my shoes, and brush my hair whenever Hinamori stopped by for a visit." He held up a finger and waggled it; the water in the bowl wiggled in time. Hitsugaya put on an uncanny impersonation of an elderly woman. "You must be a proper gentleman whenever a lady comes to your door, dear."

Matsumoto laughed. "Well," she said, "I guess I can't accuse you of disrespecting all your elders, because you certainly adhere to decorum now, don't you? I bet you only behave yourself these days so that word won't get back to her that you're acting . . . uncouth around me."

"If only she knew," said Hitsugaya, pointedly not refuting his vice-captain's guess, "that any uncouth behavior I've picked up over the years has probably come from you." He wove the water into a squat little woman, who held up a tiny translucent hand and jabbed a finger in Matsumoto's direction. Hitsugaya put on his old lady voice again: "Show some respect for yourself, young lady! Stand up straight!"

"Oh. Yes, ma'am." Matsumoto bowed her head, then squared her shoulders. She smiled as Hitsugaya molded his water into a cat. "You're . . . distressingly good at that, I hope you know. The trick with the water, I mean, not mocking old women."

Hitsugaya smirked. "It's not mockery if it's something she would say, verbatim. You've met my grandmother. You know quite well that she'd say just those words to you, in just that tone. Don't pretend she wouldn't."

"Mockery has nothing to do with accuracy," Matsumoto said sagely, "and everything to do with intent."

"Be that as it may," Hitsugaya insisted, "I am not mocking my grandmother."

"All right, all right." Matsumoto knew when to press, and when to yield. "You aren't about to tell me you came out here this late at night to brush up on . . . whatever it is you call this performance art." She gestured. "What's the matter? Can't sleep?"

"Not remotely," Hitsugaya said.

Matsumoto sighed dramatically and leaned against the wall behind her. "Honestly, you should see someone about that."

"I've seen multiple someones," Hitsugaya muttered. "I've tried meditation, I've tried teas, I've tried salves, I've tried entirely too many trinkets under my pillow. Nothing works."

"You know, just laying down and closing your eyes would help you rest, even if you don't manage to sleep. You should do that, at least."

"Too busy."

Matsumoto sighed, regarding her captain with resigned fondness.

"I'm sure you are," she said.