Gintama: Toll (3/?)
Feb. 14th, 2011 09:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
what_we_dreamTitle: Toll (3/?)
Series: Gintama
Pairing: Gin/Zura
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Semi-graphic war descriptions
Beta:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
frauleinfrog, who continues to make some kind of sense of this madness
Summary: The Yorozuya get sent on an exorcism. Unsurprisingly, things do not go smoothly.
Chapter 1: It's Always a Mistake to Turn Around
Chapter 2: Promises Aren't Something You Write Down
Gintoki pulls a sleeve across his face, wiping the stinging sweat from his eyes. His lungs are burning and his limbs are heavy, but that’s the past again. He hasn’t been fighting long or hard enough to be this tired.
“Zura, I’m getting bored of cleaning up after your goddamn messes.” He forces himself to stand straight, and sweeps aside a head blow.
Zura, or rather the thing that’s wearing Zura like a puppet, doesn’t seem to be tired at all. He breathes silently, without coughing or sniffing in the cold air, and makes no noise even when parrying bone-shaking blows. The longer they fight, the more Gintoki begins to feel the stress; it is like constant strikes to the back of his neck, something he can’t parry forever. Zura should be breathing heavily by now. The fact that he isn’t means he’s not getting enough air, is effectively suffocating.
“You can’t have him, Shiroyasha. He is as guilty as you, and when you have paid your dues he will follow. I will spill his blood until these dusty floors shine with it.”
“You can shut up now,” says Gintoki, blandly, hands holding the bokutou tightening to a crushing grip. “You’ve had your turn, it’s time for the real people to talk.” He steps under a blow, sending it flying a little higher with a sharp deflection.
“Oi, Zura, did you hear that? I just complimented you. Let’s see some gratitude here, you gloomy bastard.” He tries to trap his opponent in the corner, and nearly gets a knee to the gut. He turns his dodge into a grab, catching hold of Zura’s shoulder and spinning him around; the heavy cloth of his kimono is damp with the foggy air.
“Zura, if you don’t start making some kind of effort here you bastard, I’m going to come over there and beat the crap out of you.”
“He can’t hear you, Shiroyasha. He is here with me, on the battlefield.”
“The fuck is new?” Gintoki locks his jaw, skin crawling. Zura was an excellent fighter, but he was a crap soldier for the simple reason that he cared too damn much. They all dealt with the war in different ways: Gintoki buried himself, Sakamoto ran away, Takasugi took a match to the world. Only Zura refused to accept it was over. Refused to accept that hundreds of his comrades were massacred, while he lived on in an Edo controlled by Amanto. The weight of that denial has warped him more than a little.
And now he’s trapped back inside it, like a man locked in a cage with a shark. The only question is whether he drowns or is torn to pieces.
Gintoki drives forward hard, his blow caught on the katana, and continues pushing. “Zura,” he grits, staring at the darkness in front of him, “I’m losing my patience here. Want me to cut off your stupid hair, you goddamn slacker?”
“Can you hear him screaming for you, Shiroyasha? Will you ignore him, too?”
It’s too familiar. Gintoki knows where he is, and he knows what he’s fighting. But his fears from ten years ago are vivid as new blood, cut into every turn of his mind. And this is striking all of them, scraping a knife over raw nerves.
Below his damp skin, under his fingernails, between each heaving rib he can feel the Shiroyasha pooling. Slipping over him like armour, and separating the world neatly into black and white.
But nothing here is black and white, and that will only get one of them killed. Time is getting short.
Gintoki crushes his instincts momentarily. He dodges a strike and shifts into the space it is trying to manoeuvre him towards – he doesn’t know why, but there is never a trap waiting there – and twists his blade up under the tsuba of Zura’s sword. One clean wrench pulls it from his opponent’s hands and sends it flying across the room.
“I will drown him in his own blood. Or do you think you can stop me, Shiroyasha?”
“Want to see it in slow motion?” Gintoki sweeps Zura’s feet out from under him with a kick and dives forward, a forearm across the rebel’s chest driving him down. Gintoki lands on his knees and elbows, straddling Zura’s waist and pinning him down. Gintoki slams Zura’s right arm to the ground with his left, and finds his wrist cold and clammy – corpselike.
A knee tries to rise to drive him off; Gintoki shifts his weight and traps it. “Don’t make me play Prince Charming you bastard, or I’ll make you wear a dress for the rest of your natural life.” He bends low, refusing to be dislodged.
“He is already mine,” whispers the son of a bitch, breath cold in Gintoki’s face.
“Zura, wake the fuck up!” He strikes the Jyoui rebel across the face and then, grasping at straws, “The lines are breaking, get your ass the hell back here! ZURA!” He slams Zura’s shoulders into the floorboards.
From beneath him rises a low choking sound. It turns into a moan, and increases into a wordless yell. Zura bucks like a horse, fighting desperately against Gintoki’s grip and screaming with his head thrown back. Gintoki stops bothering to pin him with knees and elbows and simply drops to lie on top of him, flattening Zura beneath his greater weight.
Mouth against Zura’s ear, he says in a low voice, “Zura, we need you. Wake up.”
Somewhere above, the rafters creak, wind flowing through the ancient house. It sounds almost like a groan. Zura stops screaming and goes abruptly limp, dropping down heavily onto the floor.
Gintoki blinks without otherwise moving, waiting in the dark silence. And then, so quiet he can hardly make out the syllables,
“Gin-toki.”
It’s enough to make him pause. Only three samurai in the war ever called him by his given name, and none of them are dead. The frigid, inhuman ki is disappearing quick as sand spread by the wind. Slowly, so very slowly, Zura’s flickers back to life like a flame taking gradual hold of damp wood.
“Zura?” Gintoki releases Zura’s wrists, and then eases to his elbows and knees. Zura coughs and turns onto his side, Gintoki hopping awkwardly to the side to get off him.
“Did I fall in?” asks Zura, sounding very confused and also a bit drunk. He’s slurring his words, and from the low rustling of fabric may be shivering. The room is warming up, the stink of blood fading as quick as it appeared. Sensation is coming back to Gintoki’s skin with a prickly tingling feeling.
Gintoki stands, picking up his bokutou from where it fell.“In what, idiot? You were possessed, possessed. By an evil spirit.”
Zura coughs again, but doesn’t make to get up. “This place must be full of them.” He sounds resigned, as well as very tired. Gintoki pauses, raising his eyebrows slowly.
“The mansion? Why?”
In the poor light, Gintoki can nevertheless see Zura turn slowly to look at him. It’s still several seconds before he answers. “Mansion? It’s just a hut.” He shivers audibly now, floor creaking. “And there must be hundreds of corpses outside.”
***
“What’re you talking about, old man?” Kagura’s eyebrows furrow as she contemplates the ghost currently inhabiting Shinpachi.
Sitting cross-legged with his back bent like a fishhook and peering short-sightedly through Shinpachi’s gasses, the old ghost sighs.
“Have you ever done something your parents forbid you to do, girl? Something you knew you absolutely shouldn’t, but you did anyway?”
Kagura gives him an unimpressed look. “Of course. One time I beat the crap out of Shizo for being a cry-baby, and one time I stayed up all night watching Mafia vs Alien and then afterwards beat the crap out of Shizo for looking like Alien. And one time I spilt ice cream on my dress, and beat the crap out of Shizo for – I forget why, but he probably deserved it.”
“Yes, well. When you do things that are wrong, you feel guilty, right?” The ghost, seeing Kagura’s puzzled look, quickly amends its statement. “You worry, right? And why do you worry? Not because you’re afraid your parents will be angry, but because you know you did something wrong.”
Kagura frowns. “Are you kidding? I knew Pappy would spank the hell out of me. What kind of sissy feels guilty for beating the crap out of Shizo?”
“MOST PEOPLE,” explodes the ghost, “feel guilty for their mistakes. That guilt is much stronger than fear that someone will reprimand them.”
“Only because they’ve never been spanked by Pappy,” says Kagura.
“WHAT I’M SAYING IS, your friends don’t need my son to break them. All they need is their own guilt.”
“Gin-chan doesn’t know what guilt is. Last week he watched Lady’s Four without me, and didn’t even tape it.”
“Can you imagine what it’s like to see someone die because you couldn’t save them, girl? Because you made a mistake, or were late, or simply couldn’t do anything?”
Kagura’s eyes harden. She leans forward, tone clipped. “What’s your point, old man?”
“Now imagine seeing hundreds die because you couldn’t save them. Do you really think they feel no guilt?”
***
For a minute, Gintoki says nothing. Then he relaxes and crosses over to Zura’s side on nearly-steady legs. His own shivering at least seems to have faded with the cold. “The hell’re you talking about, moron? We’re in the middle of Nihonbashi. Nothing but ugly-ass department stores and stuck up restaurants for miles.”
He walks over to the hall, and rips open the now-crooked fusuma doors. Walks through the next room, and opens the doors looking out onto the garden. Outside, the sun is shining, butterflies are flitting through the garden, and the shishi-odoshi is thunking regularly. Gintoki opens another set of doors for good measure, and then returns.
If Zura didn’t look like Okiku before, he certainly does now. His skin is an unhealthy grey colour, moist with sweat, while his long hair lies in a seaweed-like mess around his head. Lying on his side, partially curled in on himself, he looks like nothing so much as a man wracked by fever. But his eyes are clear, and his breathing slow and regular. He stares past Gintoki at the green garden in puzzlement.
“Aa,” he says eventually, as Gintoki squats down beside him and rests his bokutou on his knees. “I was staying here, with Elizabeth. But… we were fighting the Amanto. On the beaches of Hakodate. The air stank of salt. And blood. Always blood,” he says more quietly, closing his eyes.
“Oi, Zura, did that ghost melt your brain? That was ten years ago.” Gintoki presses a hand against Zura’s forehead purely for show, and finds his skin shockingly cold. But it’s the fact that Zura doesn’t protest the name that sends shivers down his spine.
“They brought out the gunships. I remember the waves, the way they split the water beneath them like a knife through dry rice. There was – panic, shouting. The beams sounded like summer cicadas,” he adds thoughtfully.
“Yes, yes. I was there too, Zura. We don’t need a history lesson.”
Zura takes no notice. Just keeps blathering on, twisting the knife deeper. “There was screaming – so much, all over. Until I couldn’t remember what quiet was like. It’s like swallowing glass, like sand in my throat.”
Gintoki looks down at him sharply. “Zura, stop it.” He takes Zura’s shoulder in a rough grasp, shakes him. “Zura, we’re in Edo. Snap out of it, dammit.”
“Someone’s carrying me to the shack – fishing nets for bedding, floats for pillows,” continues Zura blandly, as if recounting what he had for lunch. Apparently unaware he’s switched tenses. Apparently unaware he’s lying here on a rotting wooden floor in the middle of an Edo made of steel and glass. “They’re carrying me because I can’t walk; my legs – my legs – gone –”
For just an instant, Zura’s eyes flash wide in pain and terror.
Gintoki, sensing this is about to go very bad very fast, lets go of his shoulder and punches him hard across the jaw.
“Fuck,” he mutters, shaking his hand.
Zura, breathing hard all of the sudden, blinks several times. He raises an uncertain hand to run across his jaw. And then he looks up at Gintoki, eyes narrowing.
“What happened, Gintoki?” he demands, and there is real fear there.
“I told you, you were possessed. Haunted. Taken over. By some bastard from the war.” Gintoki softens slightly. “You weren’t injured at Hakodate, Zura.”
There’s a pause, and then Zura nods. Closes his eyes, and rolls onto his back on the hard floor. He raises an arm to cover his eyes. “It’s not Zura,” he says eventually, tired voice partially muffled by his sleeve. “It’s Katsura.”
Gintoki feels a twisting tension he wasn’t quite aware of melt away from his shoulders, and slumps into a more relaxed posture.
“You’re such a slacker, Zura. Leaving poor Gin-san here to deal with this all on his own. Apologies won’t be enough, you know. You had better start saving your undercover earnings; you’re going to be buying my weekly parfait for the next year. Don’t think I’ll go easy on you; all the toppings and the wafer. Aa, and my milk, too.”
“Your habits are disgusting. It’s no wonder you have such a terrible personality; it is surely a judgement.” He’s still speaking slowly, but he’s managing to drawl out the usual drivel. Gintoki kicks him in the side, mostly on principle. If he doesn’t kick him as hard as he might otherwise, well, it’s hard to kick someone while squatting.
“Zura, why do you have to be such a wet blanket? You sound like an old woman. Are you just going to lie there all day, you useless granny?”
“Not granny; Katsura. I’ll get up when I’m ready,” he adds, more reluctantly, lowering his arm. He stares at the ceiling, face hard. He has shadows under his eyes, Gintoki can see now, and his eyelids are heavy.
“Oi. Now’s no time to be taking a nap. If you fall asleep here, Gin-san isn’t going to carry you home. You’ll get your soul stolen and have to live here, until the house is eaten away by wormwood and you end up haunting an antique store.”
“Why haven’t you already sold your brain to medical research? You would make a fortune.”
***
“So what do we do, then?” asks Kagura, sharply. “How do we beat up your stupid son?”
I HAVE SOME TIME BOMBS, volunteers Elizabeth.
“Great! Let’s use those!”
“No, no, that won’t work.”
THEY HAVE EXCELLENT WORKMANSHIP.
“NO! Weapons won’t harm him, only your friends.”
THEY HAVE A VARIETY OF SETTINGS AND COME IN PINK, YELLOW AND BLUE.
“WE ARE NOT USING BOMBS,” shrieks the ghost.
“Old man, is that still you? You’re starting to sound a lot like Shinpachi.”
“Look, the best thing you can do is to get your friends, and leave. My son can’t leave the house. If you go, you’ll be safe.”
“Our job is to get rid of him! We can’t just leave him here! How do we defeat him?”
“You can’t.”
Kagura’s arm snaps out and grabs the front of Shinpachi’s gi. She brings him in close, glaring. “You said you wanted to stop him, old man. You said that right now, he’s trying to kill Gin-chan. So tell us how to defeat him.”
The ghost stares back at her with level eyes. “I told you, you can’t. The only way for him to leave is by choice, either if he achieves his revenge or forgives your friends. And imagined wrongs can never be forgiven. So go find your friends, and leave. Now.”
“Old man?”
Shinpachi stands abruptly, turns to face the door. Kagura sees nothing there, but the shadows on the roof flicker and flare while the sunlight remains constant.
“You can’t have them, Kenji. This is enough. Stop now.”
The door slams open and then shut again. No one is there.
“There is no point to this; what’s past is past. Let them go, Kenji. It isn’t their fault.”
All along the wall leading into the garden, the doors rattle as if in a windstorm. Shinpachi tilts his head.
“Then at least let these ones go. They were just children then. They have nothing to do with this.”
Around the room, the walls begin to shake. Dust falls from the ceiling like dirty snow, and the tatami mats tremble against each other.
“No, Kenji. I couldn’t protect you before, but I can now. I won’t let you blacken your soul by destroying them.” As one, all the doors in the room slam shut. They rattle in their frames, but don’t open again. After a minute, they fall silent. Kagura opens her mouth, and feels a chill run down her spine. She turns around slowly.
Across the room, the light shoji door facing out onto the bright garden begins to darken. It slowly turns to grey, and then to black. The shadow on it pulses, edges growing and shrinking. As the seconds tick by, it pulls in from the edges towards the centre. Gradually, a shape forms. A man with a sword in each hand, coming nearer. The room begins to darken. And Kagura, tilting her head, almost thinks that she can hear footsteps.
“You can’t have them. Especially this girl. She’s far too cute – when she grows up, she’ll be a full-blown knock-out!”
Kagura smacks him upside the head.
The shadow on the shoji door raises one of its swords to strike. From behind, Elizabeth throws a bomb. It explodes with a burst of noise and flames, filling the room with dust and smoke.
The walls rattle again, stronger this time. Kagura makes for the door.
“I’ve gotta warn Gin-chan. Come on, Ellie.” She puts her hand in the handle, and pulls. Nothing happens. She frowns, and pulls harder, turning to use her weight against it. It doesn’t budge.
“Sorry, little girl,” says the ghost, sitting down. “But I’m afraid until this is over, I can’t let you leave here.”
Kagura turns. “What do you mean, over?”
“I told you. Either Kenji will forgive them, or he will have his revenge. And since he will never forgive them, they will never leave here again. I’m sorry, little girl.”
“Sorry,” says Kagura, turning back to launch a round-house kick at the door, “is a word that doesn’t mean anything!”
***
Gintoki is reaching down to shake Zura into a greater state of wakefulness, when he’s distracted by what sounds like an explosion from the other end of the house.
He stares out towards it for a minute, and then turns to look at Zura. “You didn’t leave that stupid duck any explosives, did you?”
“Elizabeth has impeccable judgement,” replies Zura. Then, after a beat, “And also perhaps a few time bombs.”
“Prioritise your statements, dammit!” He stands, slipping his bokutou into his obi, and then walks across the room to retrieve Zura’s katana. “Well, I suppose now I’m going to have to clean up after its mess,” he mutters, as he bends to pick it up. “Be ready for a shit-load of invoices, Zura, I just got a new pad.”
On the other side of the room, Zura makes a low noise in his throat.
“That’s right, you should be worried. Maybe you should have considered that before getting possessed.” He turns to return Zura’s sword, and freezes. Zura is glaring at him.
Or, more accurately, at whatever is behind him.
Gintoki swivels, bringing up the katana in a swift strike.
It slices straight through the shadow. And then there is nothing but darkness.
And, in the distance, the sound of the ocean.
Series: Gintama
Pairing: Gin/Zura
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Semi-graphic war descriptions
Beta:
frauleinfrog, who continues to make some kind of sense of this madnessSummary: The Yorozuya get sent on an exorcism. Unsurprisingly, things do not go smoothly.
Chapter 1: It's Always a Mistake to Turn Around
Chapter 2: Promises Aren't Something You Write Down
Gintoki pulls a sleeve across his face, wiping the stinging sweat from his eyes. His lungs are burning and his limbs are heavy, but that’s the past again. He hasn’t been fighting long or hard enough to be this tired.
“Zura, I’m getting bored of cleaning up after your goddamn messes.” He forces himself to stand straight, and sweeps aside a head blow.
Zura, or rather the thing that’s wearing Zura like a puppet, doesn’t seem to be tired at all. He breathes silently, without coughing or sniffing in the cold air, and makes no noise even when parrying bone-shaking blows. The longer they fight, the more Gintoki begins to feel the stress; it is like constant strikes to the back of his neck, something he can’t parry forever. Zura should be breathing heavily by now. The fact that he isn’t means he’s not getting enough air, is effectively suffocating.
“You can’t have him, Shiroyasha. He is as guilty as you, and when you have paid your dues he will follow. I will spill his blood until these dusty floors shine with it.”
“You can shut up now,” says Gintoki, blandly, hands holding the bokutou tightening to a crushing grip. “You’ve had your turn, it’s time for the real people to talk.” He steps under a blow, sending it flying a little higher with a sharp deflection.
“Oi, Zura, did you hear that? I just complimented you. Let’s see some gratitude here, you gloomy bastard.” He tries to trap his opponent in the corner, and nearly gets a knee to the gut. He turns his dodge into a grab, catching hold of Zura’s shoulder and spinning him around; the heavy cloth of his kimono is damp with the foggy air.
“Zura, if you don’t start making some kind of effort here you bastard, I’m going to come over there and beat the crap out of you.”
“He can’t hear you, Shiroyasha. He is here with me, on the battlefield.”
“The fuck is new?” Gintoki locks his jaw, skin crawling. Zura was an excellent fighter, but he was a crap soldier for the simple reason that he cared too damn much. They all dealt with the war in different ways: Gintoki buried himself, Sakamoto ran away, Takasugi took a match to the world. Only Zura refused to accept it was over. Refused to accept that hundreds of his comrades were massacred, while he lived on in an Edo controlled by Amanto. The weight of that denial has warped him more than a little.
And now he’s trapped back inside it, like a man locked in a cage with a shark. The only question is whether he drowns or is torn to pieces.
Gintoki drives forward hard, his blow caught on the katana, and continues pushing. “Zura,” he grits, staring at the darkness in front of him, “I’m losing my patience here. Want me to cut off your stupid hair, you goddamn slacker?”
“Can you hear him screaming for you, Shiroyasha? Will you ignore him, too?”
It’s too familiar. Gintoki knows where he is, and he knows what he’s fighting. But his fears from ten years ago are vivid as new blood, cut into every turn of his mind. And this is striking all of them, scraping a knife over raw nerves.
Below his damp skin, under his fingernails, between each heaving rib he can feel the Shiroyasha pooling. Slipping over him like armour, and separating the world neatly into black and white.
But nothing here is black and white, and that will only get one of them killed. Time is getting short.
Gintoki crushes his instincts momentarily. He dodges a strike and shifts into the space it is trying to manoeuvre him towards – he doesn’t know why, but there is never a trap waiting there – and twists his blade up under the tsuba of Zura’s sword. One clean wrench pulls it from his opponent’s hands and sends it flying across the room.
“I will drown him in his own blood. Or do you think you can stop me, Shiroyasha?”
“Want to see it in slow motion?” Gintoki sweeps Zura’s feet out from under him with a kick and dives forward, a forearm across the rebel’s chest driving him down. Gintoki lands on his knees and elbows, straddling Zura’s waist and pinning him down. Gintoki slams Zura’s right arm to the ground with his left, and finds his wrist cold and clammy – corpselike.
A knee tries to rise to drive him off; Gintoki shifts his weight and traps it. “Don’t make me play Prince Charming you bastard, or I’ll make you wear a dress for the rest of your natural life.” He bends low, refusing to be dislodged.
“He is already mine,” whispers the son of a bitch, breath cold in Gintoki’s face.
“Zura, wake the fuck up!” He strikes the Jyoui rebel across the face and then, grasping at straws, “The lines are breaking, get your ass the hell back here! ZURA!” He slams Zura’s shoulders into the floorboards.
From beneath him rises a low choking sound. It turns into a moan, and increases into a wordless yell. Zura bucks like a horse, fighting desperately against Gintoki’s grip and screaming with his head thrown back. Gintoki stops bothering to pin him with knees and elbows and simply drops to lie on top of him, flattening Zura beneath his greater weight.
Mouth against Zura’s ear, he says in a low voice, “Zura, we need you. Wake up.”
Somewhere above, the rafters creak, wind flowing through the ancient house. It sounds almost like a groan. Zura stops screaming and goes abruptly limp, dropping down heavily onto the floor.
Gintoki blinks without otherwise moving, waiting in the dark silence. And then, so quiet he can hardly make out the syllables,
“Gin-toki.”
It’s enough to make him pause. Only three samurai in the war ever called him by his given name, and none of them are dead. The frigid, inhuman ki is disappearing quick as sand spread by the wind. Slowly, so very slowly, Zura’s flickers back to life like a flame taking gradual hold of damp wood.
“Zura?” Gintoki releases Zura’s wrists, and then eases to his elbows and knees. Zura coughs and turns onto his side, Gintoki hopping awkwardly to the side to get off him.
“Did I fall in?” asks Zura, sounding very confused and also a bit drunk. He’s slurring his words, and from the low rustling of fabric may be shivering. The room is warming up, the stink of blood fading as quick as it appeared. Sensation is coming back to Gintoki’s skin with a prickly tingling feeling.
Gintoki stands, picking up his bokutou from where it fell.“In what, idiot? You were possessed, possessed. By an evil spirit.”
Zura coughs again, but doesn’t make to get up. “This place must be full of them.” He sounds resigned, as well as very tired. Gintoki pauses, raising his eyebrows slowly.
“The mansion? Why?”
In the poor light, Gintoki can nevertheless see Zura turn slowly to look at him. It’s still several seconds before he answers. “Mansion? It’s just a hut.” He shivers audibly now, floor creaking. “And there must be hundreds of corpses outside.”
“What’re you talking about, old man?” Kagura’s eyebrows furrow as she contemplates the ghost currently inhabiting Shinpachi.
Sitting cross-legged with his back bent like a fishhook and peering short-sightedly through Shinpachi’s gasses, the old ghost sighs.
“Have you ever done something your parents forbid you to do, girl? Something you knew you absolutely shouldn’t, but you did anyway?”
Kagura gives him an unimpressed look. “Of course. One time I beat the crap out of Shizo for being a cry-baby, and one time I stayed up all night watching Mafia vs Alien and then afterwards beat the crap out of Shizo for looking like Alien. And one time I spilt ice cream on my dress, and beat the crap out of Shizo for – I forget why, but he probably deserved it.”
“Yes, well. When you do things that are wrong, you feel guilty, right?” The ghost, seeing Kagura’s puzzled look, quickly amends its statement. “You worry, right? And why do you worry? Not because you’re afraid your parents will be angry, but because you know you did something wrong.”
Kagura frowns. “Are you kidding? I knew Pappy would spank the hell out of me. What kind of sissy feels guilty for beating the crap out of Shizo?”
“MOST PEOPLE,” explodes the ghost, “feel guilty for their mistakes. That guilt is much stronger than fear that someone will reprimand them.”
“Only because they’ve never been spanked by Pappy,” says Kagura.
“WHAT I’M SAYING IS, your friends don’t need my son to break them. All they need is their own guilt.”
“Gin-chan doesn’t know what guilt is. Last week he watched Lady’s Four without me, and didn’t even tape it.”
“Can you imagine what it’s like to see someone die because you couldn’t save them, girl? Because you made a mistake, or were late, or simply couldn’t do anything?”
Kagura’s eyes harden. She leans forward, tone clipped. “What’s your point, old man?”
“Now imagine seeing hundreds die because you couldn’t save them. Do you really think they feel no guilt?”
For a minute, Gintoki says nothing. Then he relaxes and crosses over to Zura’s side on nearly-steady legs. His own shivering at least seems to have faded with the cold. “The hell’re you talking about, moron? We’re in the middle of Nihonbashi. Nothing but ugly-ass department stores and stuck up restaurants for miles.”
He walks over to the hall, and rips open the now-crooked fusuma doors. Walks through the next room, and opens the doors looking out onto the garden. Outside, the sun is shining, butterflies are flitting through the garden, and the shishi-odoshi is thunking regularly. Gintoki opens another set of doors for good measure, and then returns.
If Zura didn’t look like Okiku before, he certainly does now. His skin is an unhealthy grey colour, moist with sweat, while his long hair lies in a seaweed-like mess around his head. Lying on his side, partially curled in on himself, he looks like nothing so much as a man wracked by fever. But his eyes are clear, and his breathing slow and regular. He stares past Gintoki at the green garden in puzzlement.
“Aa,” he says eventually, as Gintoki squats down beside him and rests his bokutou on his knees. “I was staying here, with Elizabeth. But… we were fighting the Amanto. On the beaches of Hakodate. The air stank of salt. And blood. Always blood,” he says more quietly, closing his eyes.
“Oi, Zura, did that ghost melt your brain? That was ten years ago.” Gintoki presses a hand against Zura’s forehead purely for show, and finds his skin shockingly cold. But it’s the fact that Zura doesn’t protest the name that sends shivers down his spine.
“They brought out the gunships. I remember the waves, the way they split the water beneath them like a knife through dry rice. There was – panic, shouting. The beams sounded like summer cicadas,” he adds thoughtfully.
“Yes, yes. I was there too, Zura. We don’t need a history lesson.”
Zura takes no notice. Just keeps blathering on, twisting the knife deeper. “There was screaming – so much, all over. Until I couldn’t remember what quiet was like. It’s like swallowing glass, like sand in my throat.”
Gintoki looks down at him sharply. “Zura, stop it.” He takes Zura’s shoulder in a rough grasp, shakes him. “Zura, we’re in Edo. Snap out of it, dammit.”
“Someone’s carrying me to the shack – fishing nets for bedding, floats for pillows,” continues Zura blandly, as if recounting what he had for lunch. Apparently unaware he’s switched tenses. Apparently unaware he’s lying here on a rotting wooden floor in the middle of an Edo made of steel and glass. “They’re carrying me because I can’t walk; my legs – my legs – gone –”
For just an instant, Zura’s eyes flash wide in pain and terror.
Gintoki, sensing this is about to go very bad very fast, lets go of his shoulder and punches him hard across the jaw.
“Fuck,” he mutters, shaking his hand.
Zura, breathing hard all of the sudden, blinks several times. He raises an uncertain hand to run across his jaw. And then he looks up at Gintoki, eyes narrowing.
“What happened, Gintoki?” he demands, and there is real fear there.
“I told you, you were possessed. Haunted. Taken over. By some bastard from the war.” Gintoki softens slightly. “You weren’t injured at Hakodate, Zura.”
There’s a pause, and then Zura nods. Closes his eyes, and rolls onto his back on the hard floor. He raises an arm to cover his eyes. “It’s not Zura,” he says eventually, tired voice partially muffled by his sleeve. “It’s Katsura.”
Gintoki feels a twisting tension he wasn’t quite aware of melt away from his shoulders, and slumps into a more relaxed posture.
“You’re such a slacker, Zura. Leaving poor Gin-san here to deal with this all on his own. Apologies won’t be enough, you know. You had better start saving your undercover earnings; you’re going to be buying my weekly parfait for the next year. Don’t think I’ll go easy on you; all the toppings and the wafer. Aa, and my milk, too.”
“Your habits are disgusting. It’s no wonder you have such a terrible personality; it is surely a judgement.” He’s still speaking slowly, but he’s managing to drawl out the usual drivel. Gintoki kicks him in the side, mostly on principle. If he doesn’t kick him as hard as he might otherwise, well, it’s hard to kick someone while squatting.
“Zura, why do you have to be such a wet blanket? You sound like an old woman. Are you just going to lie there all day, you useless granny?”
“Not granny; Katsura. I’ll get up when I’m ready,” he adds, more reluctantly, lowering his arm. He stares at the ceiling, face hard. He has shadows under his eyes, Gintoki can see now, and his eyelids are heavy.
“Oi. Now’s no time to be taking a nap. If you fall asleep here, Gin-san isn’t going to carry you home. You’ll get your soul stolen and have to live here, until the house is eaten away by wormwood and you end up haunting an antique store.”
“Why haven’t you already sold your brain to medical research? You would make a fortune.”
“So what do we do, then?” asks Kagura, sharply. “How do we beat up your stupid son?”
I HAVE SOME TIME BOMBS, volunteers Elizabeth.
“Great! Let’s use those!”
“No, no, that won’t work.”
THEY HAVE EXCELLENT WORKMANSHIP.
“NO! Weapons won’t harm him, only your friends.”
THEY HAVE A VARIETY OF SETTINGS AND COME IN PINK, YELLOW AND BLUE.
“WE ARE NOT USING BOMBS,” shrieks the ghost.
“Old man, is that still you? You’re starting to sound a lot like Shinpachi.”
“Look, the best thing you can do is to get your friends, and leave. My son can’t leave the house. If you go, you’ll be safe.”
“Our job is to get rid of him! We can’t just leave him here! How do we defeat him?”
“You can’t.”
Kagura’s arm snaps out and grabs the front of Shinpachi’s gi. She brings him in close, glaring. “You said you wanted to stop him, old man. You said that right now, he’s trying to kill Gin-chan. So tell us how to defeat him.”
The ghost stares back at her with level eyes. “I told you, you can’t. The only way for him to leave is by choice, either if he achieves his revenge or forgives your friends. And imagined wrongs can never be forgiven. So go find your friends, and leave. Now.”
“Old man?”
Shinpachi stands abruptly, turns to face the door. Kagura sees nothing there, but the shadows on the roof flicker and flare while the sunlight remains constant.
“You can’t have them, Kenji. This is enough. Stop now.”
The door slams open and then shut again. No one is there.
“There is no point to this; what’s past is past. Let them go, Kenji. It isn’t their fault.”
All along the wall leading into the garden, the doors rattle as if in a windstorm. Shinpachi tilts his head.
“Then at least let these ones go. They were just children then. They have nothing to do with this.”
Around the room, the walls begin to shake. Dust falls from the ceiling like dirty snow, and the tatami mats tremble against each other.
“No, Kenji. I couldn’t protect you before, but I can now. I won’t let you blacken your soul by destroying them.” As one, all the doors in the room slam shut. They rattle in their frames, but don’t open again. After a minute, they fall silent. Kagura opens her mouth, and feels a chill run down her spine. She turns around slowly.
Across the room, the light shoji door facing out onto the bright garden begins to darken. It slowly turns to grey, and then to black. The shadow on it pulses, edges growing and shrinking. As the seconds tick by, it pulls in from the edges towards the centre. Gradually, a shape forms. A man with a sword in each hand, coming nearer. The room begins to darken. And Kagura, tilting her head, almost thinks that she can hear footsteps.
“You can’t have them. Especially this girl. She’s far too cute – when she grows up, she’ll be a full-blown knock-out!”
Kagura smacks him upside the head.
The shadow on the shoji door raises one of its swords to strike. From behind, Elizabeth throws a bomb. It explodes with a burst of noise and flames, filling the room with dust and smoke.
The walls rattle again, stronger this time. Kagura makes for the door.
“I’ve gotta warn Gin-chan. Come on, Ellie.” She puts her hand in the handle, and pulls. Nothing happens. She frowns, and pulls harder, turning to use her weight against it. It doesn’t budge.
“Sorry, little girl,” says the ghost, sitting down. “But I’m afraid until this is over, I can’t let you leave here.”
Kagura turns. “What do you mean, over?”
“I told you. Either Kenji will forgive them, or he will have his revenge. And since he will never forgive them, they will never leave here again. I’m sorry, little girl.”
“Sorry,” says Kagura, turning back to launch a round-house kick at the door, “is a word that doesn’t mean anything!”
Gintoki is reaching down to shake Zura into a greater state of wakefulness, when he’s distracted by what sounds like an explosion from the other end of the house.
He stares out towards it for a minute, and then turns to look at Zura. “You didn’t leave that stupid duck any explosives, did you?”
“Elizabeth has impeccable judgement,” replies Zura. Then, after a beat, “And also perhaps a few time bombs.”
“Prioritise your statements, dammit!” He stands, slipping his bokutou into his obi, and then walks across the room to retrieve Zura’s katana. “Well, I suppose now I’m going to have to clean up after its mess,” he mutters, as he bends to pick it up. “Be ready for a shit-load of invoices, Zura, I just got a new pad.”
On the other side of the room, Zura makes a low noise in his throat.
“That’s right, you should be worried. Maybe you should have considered that before getting possessed.” He turns to return Zura’s sword, and freezes. Zura is glaring at him.
Or, more accurately, at whatever is behind him.
Gintoki swivels, bringing up the katana in a swift strike.
It slices straight through the shadow. And then there is nothing but darkness.
And, in the distance, the sound of the ocean.
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:07 am (UTC)Bwaaah! Love the way you're mixing the humor with the angst...ahh, Gintoki and Katsura are both damaged, even if they mostly hide it. Fascinating ways to make them confront their demons...so what new hell are they caught in now? And will their banter get them through it? If anyone could convince a ghost to forgive and/or forget, it would be Gin-san - if properly motivated - but it's not going to be easy...
Also liked this:
Only three samurai in the war ever called him by his given name, and none of them are dead.
Oh, Gintoki. There's something so lonely about Shiroyasha in the war, because that's so not who Gintoki should be...
Teeny nitpick - Kagura calls him Gin-chan, never Gin-san...don't know if Kagura ever uses -san, actually! :P
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Date: 2011-02-17 03:15 am (UTC)I really wish we had more war-era cannon. But I guess this way we get a lot of interesting portrayals in fic, though.
EPICFAIL strikes back. Thanks!
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Date: 2011-02-15 01:24 pm (UTC)I love having the two of them fight. I've always wondered how that would go. But the fact that they're fighting at at the same time Gintoki has to protect Zura from whatever has possessed him? Fricking awesome.
And the way he tries to make him wake up. Love, love and love.
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Date: 2011-02-17 03:16 am (UTC)I do wonder, especially what it would be like if both of them were really trying. TIME FOR SOMEONE TO WRITE A MIND CONTROL FIC
wait isn't that what this is?Thanks!
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Date: 2011-02-16 10:43 pm (UTC)again the talk about the war was very gloomy > < .. no wonder the 4 survivors ended up all broken in their own way !
I have a feeling that we'll have some of Sakamoto & Takasugi in the next chapter !! I remember you saying once that u don't write much about Takasugi because u have no idea how was he in the war and after LOL !! so we will forgive u if he wasn't in the next chapter but please don't forget Tatsuma -_-
don't make us wait long Okay ?? ^^
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Date: 2011-02-17 03:21 am (UTC)I am pretty much your one-stop-shop for gloominess. Zura probably feels very much at home. :D
The next chapter probably won't be out until sometime next week at the earliest.
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Date: 2011-02-18 04:38 pm (UTC)Everytime I see an update for this fic it makes life so much more awesome! thankyou!
no subject
Date: 2011-02-19 04:36 am (UTC):D We aim to please.