Gintama: Toll (5/5+e)
Mar. 24th, 2011 07:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
what_we_dreamTitle: Toll (5/5+e) The Heart is for Bleeding
Series: Gintama
Pairing: Gin/Zura
Rating: PG-13
Beta:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
frauleinfrog, thanks to whom you may sometimes know who is addressing whom.
Warnings: Graphic war scenes
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
Chapter 3: Sorry is a Word That Doesn't Mean Anything
Chapter 4: Holding Onto Each Other Doesn't Always Stop You Falling Apart
The world swings into focus with dizzying speed, but Gintoki hardly notices it. The only thing he can see Zura, breathing hard through his locked jaw while standing very still.
“We aren’t finished,” whispers a voice from over his shoulder. Gintoki doesn’t look. “This isn’t the end. Not yet.”
“Yes,” he says, flatly, bracing his shoulders and seeing Zura’s miniscule nod, “It is.” Gintoki withdraws the sword with one arm in a smooth motion, and catches Zura with the other as his knees give out under him. Zura’s expression is one of extreme focus, hands both pressed hard against his side.
“You will follow him, Shiroyasha.”
Gintoki unfolds his obi with a sharp gesture and uses the katana to slice a clean tear in the thin end. He rips the silk into long strips, yukata falling looser around him with only the belt to hold it closed. He kneels in front of Zura and pulls all three layers of the rebel’s clothes over his shoulders and down, bearing his chest. The bleeding is apparent here, the inside of the white under-kimono stained crimson. Gintoki wraps the wound with white hands while Zura holds the bandages tight over it, the two of them working in terse silence to the sound of Zura’s laboured breathing.
Zura’s no idiot. With no way to catch the sword aimed for the centre of his sternum, he redirected it to the least dangerous target possible. The blade has missed his lungs: if not, he would be dying already. If he’s lucky, it’s missed his liver as well: if not, he’ll be dying in an hour.
When he finishes wrapping the wound Gintoki pulls Zura’s heavy layers back up over his shoulders to fight off the shock, then turns around. There’s nothing standing between him and the doors leading out into the garden. But the room is still unnaturally cold, the damp settled heavy and uncomfortable in his clothes.
“Too late for that now.”
Gintoki stiffens and turns again. Zura is looking up at him, face impassive but eyes tight at the corners. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he says very quietly, staring at Gintoki hard as if expecting him to burst out in a sudden show of insanity.
Gintoki drops to one knee beside him instead, resting one arm on the wall and, slipping the other behind Zura’s neck to cradle the back of his skull, kisses him. This will be okay. I will make it okay.
All he can feel is relief that there is no taste of blood.
“Sometimes I wonder if you listen to anything I say,” says Zura, heavily.
Gintoki stands and turns, expression hardening despite his light-hearted tone. “How can you ask, Zura? You know I don’t.”
Zura snorts softly. “It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura.”
“You’d better be here when I get back, you gloomy bastard. Don’t make me spend all this effort for nothing.”
“Then don’t make me wait all day.” Zura shifts and hisses through his teeth. “I’m not like you; I’ve got things to do.”
“Not for much longer.”
The world starts to shift, the room fading out to a wider landscape. Gintoki braces his shoulders, looks around at the forming world, and focuses.
“I’ve had enough of this crap. Let’s go, Murata: I’ll show you what you never saw.”
***
Mostly the other boys make fun of him. For his pale hair, his strange eyes, his dull expression, his sword, and his unrivalled possession of Sensei’s attention. It doesn’t bother Gintoki; nothing in this sleepy little village with its prosperous houses and well-fed children could ever bother him. The people here don’t even carry weapons. But Sensei wants him to make friends, and since Sensei is the one feeding him he has to make at least some effort.
Katsura Kotarou is the only boy in the class who doesn’t make fun of him. As far as Gintoki can tell, he’s somewhere on a scale between moron and teacher’s pet, but there are worse things.
“Oi,” he says afterschool, as Katsura is gathering his books. The rest of the boys have already hurried out to play in the afternoon sun. Katsura looks over with his usual attentive expression.
“Yes?”
“Don’t you think I’m strange?”
Katsura considers for a moment. And then: “Yes.” He nods.
Gintoki stares back. “Oi. Who says that to someone’s face?”
“You should always answer questions truthfully.” He bends to pick up his books. “But insulting people is discourteous, and doing it behind their backs is shameful. Besides, being strange isn’t bad. Sensei is strange, and he is the best person I know.”
Gintoki blinks at the other boy’s sheer simplicity. Most people either lie outright, or complicate the truth so much it’s incomprehensible. Katsura ignores his silence, swinging his belongings onto his back and heading towards the door. “I’m going home now. Are you?”
Gintoki may be a child, but he can recognize an olive branch when it’s offered, even if it’s a measly one.
“Aa, I guess.” He stands and shoulders the katana. And then, as Katsura stares hard at him, sighs and picks up his study book as well.
***
“Your aim is terrible,” he tells Katsura, dodging a shinai blow almost lazily. Outside the school’s dojo, hens cluck in the dusty street and the younger children laugh and scream as they chase each other. “Is it that stupid hair of yours? You should cut it off. What do you need that ridiculous wig for, anyway? Huh, Zura?” Panting, he shortens the name unintentionally.
“My aim may be terrible, but your footwork is appalling,” retorts Katsura – no, Zura – through clenched teeth as he charges in under Gintoki’s block, “And my name is Katsura.”
“C’mon, Zura, it suits you!” He tries a complicated back step and, as Zura said, gets his ankles caught on each other. Zura presses in too fast, and even as Gintoki falls backwards he twists his sword up under Zura’s and wrenches it out of his grip.
Gintoki lands hard on his ass, scowling. Zura stands above him, rubbing his wrist.
“It does not,” says Zura.
***
In the warm summers, they steal peaches and plums from walled gardens and sprint to safety to enjoy their bounty. Zura always needs about two days of taunting to work up to thievery, and inevitably spends the whole approach hissing at the other boys in low tones. But he never once deserts, and as they run across the uneven ground with the juicy fruit held safely in the folds of their loose yukata, he smiles wider than Gintoki has ever seen.
***
When Sensei doesn’t come back from his trip to Edo, they go after him.
It’s Gintoki’s idea, but he knows Takasugi will come without complaint. He’s expecting Zura to take more convincing, and is shocked when the boy agrees immediately.
“Edo is dangerous,” says Zura simply. “The Amanto are everywhere; the Jyouishishi are fighting in the streets.”
Gintoki wants to say that the Jyouishishi are losing in the streets, but he doesn’t. Partially because he knows Zura, the naïve idiot, looks up to them. But more because at this moment Zura lifts a bokutou down from the dojo wall and slips it through the sash of his hakama. That he takes it and not a shinai startles Gintoki even more than his decision to come. Teacher’s pet that he is, Zura has until now followed Sensei’s request for the school children to avoid drawing unnecessary attention by wearing bokutou or swords.
Edo is more than two days’ walk away, but none of them wants to wait any longer than they already have. They catch a ride on the back of a trundling cart carrying barrels of pickled vegetables, three pairs of legs swinging over the dusty road, and let it take them all the way into the teeming city.
There are fewer signs of war in the streets of Edo than they expected; businesses continue to prosper, with busy merchants outside shouting to customers and the roads packed with hurrying people. Here and there, there is fire damage, but there is no widespread destruction. This, they learn as they wander through the winding roads, is because the Jyouishishi pulled out two days ago after a long retreat. Katsura sticks his chin up like he’s trying to balance something on it and stares off into the distance; Takasugi just scowls. Gintoki wonders how long it will be before he’ll be able to raise the idea of dinner.
They know Sensei was called to speak to the Shogunate, but don’t know where or which with official. They gravitate naturally towards the centre of Japan, Nihonbashi.
“I knew we should have looked for a goddamn address before coming,” says Takasugi, glowering at the store fronts they past.
“Read Sensei’s mail?” asks Zura, scandalised. Both Takasugi and Gintoki roll their eyes.
Up ahead, the bridge is teeming as usual. The fish market is nearby; maybe they could get sashimi for dinner, or –
Feeling like he’s in a dream, Gintoki reaches out and wraps his arms tightly around Zura, before the idiot can do something stupid like jump over the side of the embankment. He doesn’t know why it’s his first – his only – reaction. It’s certainly the right one; Zura gives a whining cry and immediately lashes out, trying to get to the side of the river. Beside them, Takasugi makes a choking noise.
Down on the rocky shore beside the riverbed, a row of stakes support severed heads beside a neatly written placard explaining the criminals’ offences. At the end of the row, Shouyou-sensei’s dead eyes stare up at them.
Takasugi is retching now, crouching low on the ground like a dog and cursing between heaves. In his arms, Zura goes still. For some reason, Gintoki can’t seem to let him go.
“Don’t say anything,” he mutters, mouth against Zura’s ear, with some vague idea of Bakufu spies. “Don’t say anything at all.”
“I’ll kill them,” says Zura in a low whisper, ignoring him completely and still staring down into the riverbed. He repeats the words like a mantra. “I’ll kill them. I will kill them all.”
On the ground, Takasugi spits and then gets up shakily.
They all three stand there, frozen, while the life of Edo goes on behind them. Finally, Takasugi turns away. “Come on,” he says, and starts walking back the way they came. Back to the village.
When they get home, Zura replaces the bokutou with a katana. He never puts it down again.
***
They all sit together in the dojo, the fifteen local boys old enough to wield a blade and three who aren’t. Gintoki isn’t worried about them; he’ll beat the crap out of them before they go if he has to, or more simply report them to their mothers.
Katsura and Takasugi stand at the front of the group; Gintoki sits off to the side with his katana resting on his shoulder.
“The Jyouishishi are fighting near Mito,” says Zura, eyes sweeping over the other boys. “They are fighting to protect the people of this country from the invaders the Shogunate has welcomed with open arms. The invaders who named Shouyou-sensei as a rebel leader. The invaders who want to take this land from us. We are going to Mito to join the Jyouishishi and to fight this invasion in any way we can.” Zura is surprisingly eloquent; Gintoki supposes it was all that actual effort he put into school.
“We’ll kick the shit out of those goddamn monsters,” crows Hiratani in the front row, face red with excitement. Hiratani, who regularly loses his grip on his sword when practicing against dummies. Several others murmur excitedly, nodding and grinning. Gintoki looks up, expression flat.
“You don’t know anything about war,” he says, cutting through the chatter.
“And you do?” asks Taniguchi, a boy a few years younger than them. Several of the older boys frown nervously.
“Shut up,” says Zura, blandly, as if dismissing a stupid question.
“Neither do you,” points out Gintoki, looking at him.
“Shut up,” says Zura again, in the same tone.
Gintoki shrugs, and turns to the group of excited boys. “It’s up to you. You’re willing to die for your country. Do you want to? Because if you go to Mito, you will. You think three years of kendo is enough to fight trained soldiers? You think a sword can fight a rifle? You think a boy can fight a grown man? Once or twice, maybe. Through a war with no sign of ending? Never. If you join the Jyouishishi, you’re going to die. That’s a fact.” He stands and walks out into the warm May air.
Several minutes later, the boys come streaming out. Several slink off looking scared, but many more walk away with straight backs and hard faces. Takasugi leaves smiling. Zura comes out last, dousing the lights and closing the doors behind him.
In the moonlight, Zura’s hair gleams raven-blue. Gintoki knows there is no point in hiding; his own practically glows. He leans against a wall and waits instead.
“Oh, there you are,” says Zura as he turns, as if he had been looking. Gintoki pushes away from the wall. “We’re leaving the day after tomorrow.”
“This is suicidal, Zura. You know that.”
“My name is Katsura. And this is the only option honour allows. As samurai, it is our duty to protect this nation.”
“No one’s called you. You have no obligation. You’re a fucking kid.”
“I have the strength and skill; my path is clear. The Shogunate abandoning its country is no excuse for my doing so.”
Gintoki steps abruptly in front of him, and grabs his shoulders. Zura stops and stares him straight in the eye.
“You’re going to die, Zura. You all are. For Japan? What the hell is that? This village? No one wants it. The land? They don’t want that either.”
Zura’s eyes flash. In the moonlight, he leans forward and pushes Gintoki’s hand off his shoulders. Grabs Gintoki’s shoulder instead, and nearly shouts in his face, “Sensei is dead, Gintoki. They stripped him of his property, of his earnings, of his reputation. They murdered him, and then they dragged everything he stood for through the mud! Don’t you care? He was your master, your teacher, your guardian –”
Gintoki strikes out, and punches Zura straight on the jaw. Zura spins and trips to fall heavily on his ass.
“I care,” he says, staring down coldly at Zura. “If I could, I’d kill every last one of the assholes. But I can’t. And neither can you. Sensei wouldn’t want us to throw our lives away for him.”
“Sensei wouldn’t want Japan to fall while we could do something to stop it.” Zura reaches up to rub gingerly at his jaw. “I will not let that happen.”
Zura’s an amazing swordsman for his age. In a more peaceful era, he could be winning tournaments if he wanted to, or starting his own school. But it takes more than skill with a sword to survive on a battlefield. Alone, Zura won’t last a week. And Gintoki can’t face the thought of that.
Sighing, Gintoki rubs at his eyes. After a minute, he reaches down and extends his hand. “Zura, sometimes you’re a real stubborn bastard, you know that?”
Zura takes it, and he pulls him up. “It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura.”
***
In some ways, the nights are worse than the days. There is no fighting to distract the mind from how very close it is to death, no adrenaline to wash away the pain, no clashing of swords and booming guns to hide the screams.
Hiratani dies just after midnight on the day after they join up, holding Zura’s hand and begging for his mother. By morning two more boys from their village have deserted.
Gintoki sits beside Zura through those early nights, before the other boy grows used to the horror. Zura’s expression is always sharp and attentive, and if anyone speaks to him he answers calmly. It earns him respect right from the start, despite his stupid hair and girly face.
Only Gintoki, sitting pressed up against him, can tell that he’s trembling.
***
They are all injured nearly every day, but skill and luck combine to keep them from major injuries. Gintoki breaks his ribs at the end of the Mito Rebellion, and the formal surrender of the main body of troops probably saves his life. Takasugi breaks his leg in Kyoto, and is forced to stay behind while the rest of them march slowly southward to Shimonoseki.
It’s not until the shelling of Shimonoseki that Zura is seriously injured, and the Shiroyasha becomes a legend.
The Amanto, realising the Japanese superiority on land, load small ships with shells and cannons and attack from the sea and sky. The harbour of Shimonoseki is burning by the third day, the rebels’ clothes painted ash black and their snot equally dark when they rub their noses. Some of the Amanto begin to get overconfident, and bring the ships in close enough that they can fire the shells deep into the dockyard.
Gintoki and Zura are hidden behind a wall of sandbags with a number of other men, awaiting the inevitable land charge, when a shell falls right outside their hole. It explodes before any of them have time to throw themselves to the ground, blowing sand and wood high into the sky with a roar that sets Gintoki’s ears ringing.
When the smoke clears, half the men are lying in a bloody mess on the ground.
Zura’s one of them.
For a brief minute, all Gintoki can seem to see is red. Everything but the blood fades out into the background, so that it seems to float on invisible planes and ridges, sharply defined against the still-settling dust. And then colour filters through properly again, and he can see that Zura’s not moving, that he’s half-buried in the pile of other men, that his face and neck and gi are all crimson, that he’s not moving not moving not moving –
For some reason, all he can think of is Shouyou-sensei, staring up at him from on top of that goddamn pike. Staring up at him in accusation: How could you let this happen, Gintoki?
Rage and adrenaline are much more potent than alcohol. The next little while is very blurred, but when Gintoki comes back to himself he’s standing on an Amanto boat bobbing beside the docks. The Amanto are mostly lying on the deck or floating in the sea; none of them are moving. The blood on the deck is ankle-deep.
The men stare at him as he jumps shakily down and walks back towards the city; he leaves red footprints on the dock behind him.
When Gintoki returns to the makeshift foxhole, he finds three bodies on the ground. None of them is Zura. Something seems to be very wrong with his brain, and he can’t seem to piece the puzzle together. Zura was here. Zura should be here. He was here a minute ago. That he isn’t seems impossible, incomprehensible. Gintoki stares blankly at the empty space where he was, while behind them ships continue to fire over the harbour.
“Sakata-kun!” Someone runs over and halts suddenly, staring at his clothes. Gintoki looks up slowly, and the man’s expression shifts into one he can’t read. “Sakata-kun, Katsura-kun has been taken to the infirmary. He’s asking about you.”
“Zura?” asks Gintoki, looking back at the spot where he’s supposed to be. Whoever-it-is grabs him by the arm and leads him; he follows on stumbling feet.
The infirmary is just a sturdy building with men lying in it. There are no beds, or doctors, or supplies. Just the wounded, and a few others who are trying to stop them bleeding to death in the next few minutes.
Gintoki is led to a corner, where Zura is sitting up with a bandage roughly the size and shape of a seagull adhered to the side of his head.
Like smoked glass shattering to let in light, sense floods back into Gintoki’s world. He blinks, and drops his sword. “Zura!”
Zura looks up at him in concerned surprise. “What happened to you – they said you were fine – your clothes –” he doesn’t manage to finish his sentence, because Gintoki drops to his knees next to him and for a reason he can’t fathom, pulls him into a kiss.
Zura makes a surprised noise, and then shuts up abruptly when Gintoki ends the kiss just as suddenly as he started it and leans forward to pull Zura forward into a tight hug.
“Don’t say anything, moron,” he whispers. “It’s hormones. Just hormones.”
Even with the relief pounding through him making him light-headed, Gintoki knows it’s not true.
***
At Fushimi they lie twined together, Zura’s heartbeat so close to his own he can hardly tell which is which.
“Is this still just hormones?” asks Zura, trying to comb order into Gintoki’s hair and failing miserably.
“Of course. What else could it be, with you?”
“Well if that’s the case, I have mending to do.” Zura makes to get up; Gintoki catches his wrist and pulls him back down.
“Stay,” he says, gruffly.
Zura turns to look down at him, his long hair falling over his shoulder to brush against Gintoki’s collarbone. He’s stupidly good looking and that doesn’t help, his skin milky and face delicate. Gintoki reaches up to run rough fingers along Zura’s cheekbone; Zura’s eyes darken a shade.
“Stay,” he says again, softer this time.
Zura sighs, and lies back down. “Who’s the stubborn bastard now?”
***
The fighting gets worse the farther north they move. The Amanto bring in handguns, then machine guns, then lasers. Battles cease to be fights for victory and become fights for survival. Old comrades mostly gone, they make new ones only to lose them too. And then there are no more new men, no more recruits. Gintoki knows it’s only a matter of time now.
Like most of the remaining men, Zura will never give up. Only death will stop him, and as they march north that becomes more and more likely. Each battle they come a little closer to utter exhaustion, a little closer to fatal carelessness. Each battle, the Shiroyasha is quicker to arrive and slower to leave. Gintoki has nothing of himself left but the others now, and he isn’t strong enough to protect them.
“End it now, Zura,” he says, in Aomori. “We can’t win, and the only way we’ll lose is by losing everything. Go out there and tell them to stop. They’ll listen; you know it.”
Zura, sitting across from him in the moonlight, doesn’t look up. “Not Zura; Katsura. You tell them. They’ll listen to you.”
“But you won’t,” says Gintoki, because that is the crux of everything.
“Does that matter?”
There’s a long silence. And then, quietly, “I should have punched you harder that day,” says Gintoki. “I should have knocked you out. I should never have let you do this fucking crazy-ass thing.”
“If my life is the only burden you carry, then –”
“Don’t you fucking dare say it’s lighter than yours, Zura,” interrupts Gintoki, low and furious.
“I was going to say, you should have chosen better,” says Zura, after nearly a minute, but his tone betrays him.
They don’t say anything more about it.
***
All across the fields, stricken men are screaming for help. Up ahead, Sakamoto is helping Takasugi limp off the battlefield, away from the whining of the beam cannons. Partially deaf from the surfeit of sound and numb from the suffocating atmosphere of death all around, Gintoki tries his best to keep his senses and direct the remaining samurai away from danger.
Ahead, Zura is reeling like a drunk, stumbling over the uneven ground with his sword drawn. He stumbles once and very nearly disembowels himself. Heart in his throat, Gintoki runs over and makes him sheath it. Zura turns to stare at him, and he suddenly knows how that man felt on the docks of Shimonoseki. Zura is staring right through him, eyes unfocused. He’s covered in blood but not pale enough to have lost much of his own, and he’s moving fluidly enough to reassure Gintoki that he’s not injured. Just very nearly out of his mind.
“We’re going, Zura,” he says, and wraps his arm around Zura.
“Can’t retreat: no back lines. It’s all over if we retreat.”
“It is all over. We’ve lost. Come on.”
Zura turns to look at him like he’s crazy. “The hell’re you talking about, Gintoki? We can’t –”
Gintoki punches him in the gut, hard. Hard as he should have all that long time ago in their tiny village. Zura makes a choking noise, reaches for Gintoki, and then starts to fall. Gintoki gets a shoulder under him as he goes down, and swings him up onto his back.
Gintoki walks off the battlefield, and although despite the odds he has somehow dragged Zura out alive, he feels only a cold gaping emptiness inside.
***
Kagura picks herself up again to leap at the shoji feet-first, like an arrow from a bow. A few minutes ago, she heard Gin-chan’s cry echoing through the empty house, anguish knife-sharp. She hasn’t stopped since then. Beside her, Elizabeth swings her sign at the door, egg-like eyes narrowed.
Kagura’s in the air when she hears a tiny gasp. It’s too late to turn, and she hits the doors with the full force of her running leap’s momentum. Slams right into the shoji and bursts through it in an explosion of wood and paper. Hitting the ground hard enough to make the walls shake, she comes up running. Elizabeth pads along after her, webbed feet making a noise like butter being patted. Neither is interested in an explanation.
Kagura has no idea where she’s going, but she knows the general direction of the scream. She pounds down the dusty wood floors and hits the entranceway. From there, all she has to do is follow the open doors.
They run through three gloomy rooms filled with stale air before coming up on a pair of broken fusuma, and the heavily damaged room beyond.
Kagura skids to a stop, eyes wide.
Sitting against one wall with his arm wrapped tight around his chest and his skin an ugly grey colour is Zura, shoulders rising and falling visibly with his panting breaths. His hand can’t disguise the blood soaking through the scraps of dark silk tied around his chest. By his side lies a bloody katana, Gin-chan’s bokutou is a few feet further away. Kagura’s eyes track slowly from the rebel to Gin-chan.
He is kneeling in the centre of the room, his back rounded like a cat’s, with one hand pressed flat against the floor for support. His face is in shadows. Kagura takes an uncertain step forwards. “Gin-chan?”
“Don’t,” barks Zura, face strained.
KATSURA-SAN! ARE YOU ALRIGHT? Elizabeth hurries over to him.
“Stay away from Gintoki,” says Zura, giving a marginal nod to Elizabeth.
Gin-chan shudders and makes an odd choking noise in his throat, almost like a rattle-snake.
“Gin-chan?”
Slow as Shinpachi opening their utilities bill, Gin-chan raises his head. He’s sweating hard enough that drips are gathering at his chin to drop onto the floor – it’s probably the only cleaning it’s seen in years. “Welllll, you bassstarrrd?” he growls, voice so harsh and drawn Kagura can only barely make out the words. There is no answer; Kagura can only guess at who he’s talking to.
Like the tide turning, Gin-chan pulls himself around to face Zura. He’s breathing so hard he could be a carnival ride, back rising and falling several inches with each breath. Neither of them says anything, but they don’t look confused either, like a pair of robots communicating by internal radio. Although Zura’s the one with blood all over him, Gin-chan looks in nearly as much pain.
“You understand now, Murata?” hisses Gin-chan. “It wasn’t about you. Wasn’t about Japan. Wasn’t about Sensei.”
Zura closes his eyes, jaw tight and face lined.
“It was never about what we lost. It was about protecting what we had. Except by the time we realised it, that was gone too.”
Gin-chan sits up slowly, and then pushes himself awkwardly to his feet. He walks like a little child, in uncertain, staggering steps, and sits down heavily in front of Zura. “You want to know what that feels like?” He reaches out to ghost his fingers over the wet blood soaking through the bandage around Zura’s torso. Facing away from her as he is, Kagura can’t see Gin-chan’s face. But she still nearly flinches at his raw tone. “It feels a hell of a lot like this.”
Kagura feels frozen, like her clothes are soaked in cement, like someone’s pumped liquid toffee into her blood and it’s hardened into a tooth-shattering state. Behind her someone pads quietly into the room, and slips past her.
Shinpachi. Or rather, the ghost that’s wearing him.
He walks across the room with an old man’s crooked back, and stops behind Gin-chan. Lays a hand on his shoulder, and says quietly, “Enough, Kenji. It’s time to go.”
Shinpachi’s voice is so rarely quiet that Kagura’s almost forgotten how calming it can be. How reassuring. Gin-chan swivels to stare up at Shinpachi with wide eyes.
“Father? No – this is – he’s –”
For an instant, Gin-chan’s face starts to contract, eyes narrowing into a sharper, crueller expression. And Shinpachi strikes him straight across the cheek. “It’s time you learned what you never did from me. Position is not the only thing that matters in that world. In this one, it means nothing at all.” Shinpachi sighs, and moves his reddening hand to rest on top of Gin-chan’s head, as if he were just a little boy. “Your life was far too short, Kenji, and you missed many things. But in some ways, perhaps you are lucky. You never had to suffer through losing them.”
“Father –”
The soft hand turns to a set of knuckles to the skull. “Now come on. We can’t stay here forever, you know. I’m getting tired of waiting for you in this mouldy old house – cute girls almost never come here!” Shinpachi turns to Kagura. “I wish I could see you when you grow up. You’ll be a knock-out for sure!”
“Shut up, you pervert,” says Kagura, more out of force of habit than anything. The old ghost smiles, and bows. Kagura opens her mouth to say something, but he’s already turning away.
“Come on, Kenji. You know what you have to do, don’t you?” He steps back, releasing Gin-chan, who blinks uncertainly. He looks somehow much younger – half-nervous and half-defiant. But then he catches sight of Zura, breathing with the slow deliberateness of a bellows, and blanches.
“I –”
Zura opens his eyes, and Gin-chan flinches. “Murata,” he says calmly, between breaths, “We didn’t forget you. You may rest assured. We never will.”
Gin-chan stiffens, and then bows rigidly. “Katsura-san, I ask for your forgiveness.”
Zura’s expression doesn’t change. “It isn’t mine you need.”
There is a beat of silence. And then, reluctant as Gin-chan giving up pocket money,
“Shiroyasha. I ask your forgiveness.”
There is no answer.
“You know better. Ask him properly,” says Zura.
“S- Sakata Gintoki. I ask – I beg for your forgiveness.”
Another beat of silence. Zura shifts, and winces. “Don’t be a stubborn bastard, Gintoki,” he says thickly.
The ghost lets out a kind of gulping cry, like someone just jammed a heel into his instep.
“Grrranted,” growls Gin-chan’s proper voice. “Now get the fffuck out.”
The sound starts very low, like someone humming under their breath. It grows louder and louder, past the rumble of a car and the roar of a motorcycle, to the shrill screaming whistle of a train. The walls and floor rattle with it, dust pouring down on them like dirty snow. Then there is a bang like cannon fire. And simultaneously, Gin-chan and Shinpachi drop to the ground and lie there, unmoving. Even from several feet away, Kagura can see that they’re both breathing properly now.
There is a long, long silence. Eventually Elizabeth, the only other truly conscious person in the room, turns to Kagura.
ARE WE GOING TO HAVE TO CLEAN THIS UP?
Series: Gintama
Pairing: Gin/Zura
Rating: PG-13
Beta:
frauleinfrog, thanks to whom you may sometimes know who is addressing whom.Warnings: Graphic war scenes
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
Chapter 3: Sorry is a Word That Doesn't Mean Anything
Chapter 4: Holding Onto Each Other Doesn't Always Stop You Falling Apart
The world swings into focus with dizzying speed, but Gintoki hardly notices it. The only thing he can see Zura, breathing hard through his locked jaw while standing very still.
“We aren’t finished,” whispers a voice from over his shoulder. Gintoki doesn’t look. “This isn’t the end. Not yet.”
“Yes,” he says, flatly, bracing his shoulders and seeing Zura’s miniscule nod, “It is.” Gintoki withdraws the sword with one arm in a smooth motion, and catches Zura with the other as his knees give out under him. Zura’s expression is one of extreme focus, hands both pressed hard against his side.
“You will follow him, Shiroyasha.”
Gintoki unfolds his obi with a sharp gesture and uses the katana to slice a clean tear in the thin end. He rips the silk into long strips, yukata falling looser around him with only the belt to hold it closed. He kneels in front of Zura and pulls all three layers of the rebel’s clothes over his shoulders and down, bearing his chest. The bleeding is apparent here, the inside of the white under-kimono stained crimson. Gintoki wraps the wound with white hands while Zura holds the bandages tight over it, the two of them working in terse silence to the sound of Zura’s laboured breathing.
Zura’s no idiot. With no way to catch the sword aimed for the centre of his sternum, he redirected it to the least dangerous target possible. The blade has missed his lungs: if not, he would be dying already. If he’s lucky, it’s missed his liver as well: if not, he’ll be dying in an hour.
When he finishes wrapping the wound Gintoki pulls Zura’s heavy layers back up over his shoulders to fight off the shock, then turns around. There’s nothing standing between him and the doors leading out into the garden. But the room is still unnaturally cold, the damp settled heavy and uncomfortable in his clothes.
“Too late for that now.”
Gintoki stiffens and turns again. Zura is looking up at him, face impassive but eyes tight at the corners. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he says very quietly, staring at Gintoki hard as if expecting him to burst out in a sudden show of insanity.
Gintoki drops to one knee beside him instead, resting one arm on the wall and, slipping the other behind Zura’s neck to cradle the back of his skull, kisses him. This will be okay. I will make it okay.
All he can feel is relief that there is no taste of blood.
“Sometimes I wonder if you listen to anything I say,” says Zura, heavily.
Gintoki stands and turns, expression hardening despite his light-hearted tone. “How can you ask, Zura? You know I don’t.”
Zura snorts softly. “It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura.”
“You’d better be here when I get back, you gloomy bastard. Don’t make me spend all this effort for nothing.”
“Then don’t make me wait all day.” Zura shifts and hisses through his teeth. “I’m not like you; I’ve got things to do.”
“Not for much longer.”
The world starts to shift, the room fading out to a wider landscape. Gintoki braces his shoulders, looks around at the forming world, and focuses.
“I’ve had enough of this crap. Let’s go, Murata: I’ll show you what you never saw.”
***
Mostly the other boys make fun of him. For his pale hair, his strange eyes, his dull expression, his sword, and his unrivalled possession of Sensei’s attention. It doesn’t bother Gintoki; nothing in this sleepy little village with its prosperous houses and well-fed children could ever bother him. The people here don’t even carry weapons. But Sensei wants him to make friends, and since Sensei is the one feeding him he has to make at least some effort.
Katsura Kotarou is the only boy in the class who doesn’t make fun of him. As far as Gintoki can tell, he’s somewhere on a scale between moron and teacher’s pet, but there are worse things.
“Oi,” he says afterschool, as Katsura is gathering his books. The rest of the boys have already hurried out to play in the afternoon sun. Katsura looks over with his usual attentive expression.
“Yes?”
“Don’t you think I’m strange?”
Katsura considers for a moment. And then: “Yes.” He nods.
Gintoki stares back. “Oi. Who says that to someone’s face?”
“You should always answer questions truthfully.” He bends to pick up his books. “But insulting people is discourteous, and doing it behind their backs is shameful. Besides, being strange isn’t bad. Sensei is strange, and he is the best person I know.”
Gintoki blinks at the other boy’s sheer simplicity. Most people either lie outright, or complicate the truth so much it’s incomprehensible. Katsura ignores his silence, swinging his belongings onto his back and heading towards the door. “I’m going home now. Are you?”
Gintoki may be a child, but he can recognize an olive branch when it’s offered, even if it’s a measly one.
“Aa, I guess.” He stands and shoulders the katana. And then, as Katsura stares hard at him, sighs and picks up his study book as well.
***
“Your aim is terrible,” he tells Katsura, dodging a shinai blow almost lazily. Outside the school’s dojo, hens cluck in the dusty street and the younger children laugh and scream as they chase each other. “Is it that stupid hair of yours? You should cut it off. What do you need that ridiculous wig for, anyway? Huh, Zura?” Panting, he shortens the name unintentionally.
“My aim may be terrible, but your footwork is appalling,” retorts Katsura – no, Zura – through clenched teeth as he charges in under Gintoki’s block, “And my name is Katsura.”
“C’mon, Zura, it suits you!” He tries a complicated back step and, as Zura said, gets his ankles caught on each other. Zura presses in too fast, and even as Gintoki falls backwards he twists his sword up under Zura’s and wrenches it out of his grip.
Gintoki lands hard on his ass, scowling. Zura stands above him, rubbing his wrist.
“It does not,” says Zura.
***
In the warm summers, they steal peaches and plums from walled gardens and sprint to safety to enjoy their bounty. Zura always needs about two days of taunting to work up to thievery, and inevitably spends the whole approach hissing at the other boys in low tones. But he never once deserts, and as they run across the uneven ground with the juicy fruit held safely in the folds of their loose yukata, he smiles wider than Gintoki has ever seen.
***
When Sensei doesn’t come back from his trip to Edo, they go after him.
It’s Gintoki’s idea, but he knows Takasugi will come without complaint. He’s expecting Zura to take more convincing, and is shocked when the boy agrees immediately.
“Edo is dangerous,” says Zura simply. “The Amanto are everywhere; the Jyouishishi are fighting in the streets.”
Gintoki wants to say that the Jyouishishi are losing in the streets, but he doesn’t. Partially because he knows Zura, the naïve idiot, looks up to them. But more because at this moment Zura lifts a bokutou down from the dojo wall and slips it through the sash of his hakama. That he takes it and not a shinai startles Gintoki even more than his decision to come. Teacher’s pet that he is, Zura has until now followed Sensei’s request for the school children to avoid drawing unnecessary attention by wearing bokutou or swords.
Edo is more than two days’ walk away, but none of them wants to wait any longer than they already have. They catch a ride on the back of a trundling cart carrying barrels of pickled vegetables, three pairs of legs swinging over the dusty road, and let it take them all the way into the teeming city.
There are fewer signs of war in the streets of Edo than they expected; businesses continue to prosper, with busy merchants outside shouting to customers and the roads packed with hurrying people. Here and there, there is fire damage, but there is no widespread destruction. This, they learn as they wander through the winding roads, is because the Jyouishishi pulled out two days ago after a long retreat. Katsura sticks his chin up like he’s trying to balance something on it and stares off into the distance; Takasugi just scowls. Gintoki wonders how long it will be before he’ll be able to raise the idea of dinner.
They know Sensei was called to speak to the Shogunate, but don’t know where or which with official. They gravitate naturally towards the centre of Japan, Nihonbashi.
“I knew we should have looked for a goddamn address before coming,” says Takasugi, glowering at the store fronts they past.
“Read Sensei’s mail?” asks Zura, scandalised. Both Takasugi and Gintoki roll their eyes.
Up ahead, the bridge is teeming as usual. The fish market is nearby; maybe they could get sashimi for dinner, or –
Feeling like he’s in a dream, Gintoki reaches out and wraps his arms tightly around Zura, before the idiot can do something stupid like jump over the side of the embankment. He doesn’t know why it’s his first – his only – reaction. It’s certainly the right one; Zura gives a whining cry and immediately lashes out, trying to get to the side of the river. Beside them, Takasugi makes a choking noise.
Down on the rocky shore beside the riverbed, a row of stakes support severed heads beside a neatly written placard explaining the criminals’ offences. At the end of the row, Shouyou-sensei’s dead eyes stare up at them.
Takasugi is retching now, crouching low on the ground like a dog and cursing between heaves. In his arms, Zura goes still. For some reason, Gintoki can’t seem to let him go.
“Don’t say anything,” he mutters, mouth against Zura’s ear, with some vague idea of Bakufu spies. “Don’t say anything at all.”
“I’ll kill them,” says Zura in a low whisper, ignoring him completely and still staring down into the riverbed. He repeats the words like a mantra. “I’ll kill them. I will kill them all.”
On the ground, Takasugi spits and then gets up shakily.
They all three stand there, frozen, while the life of Edo goes on behind them. Finally, Takasugi turns away. “Come on,” he says, and starts walking back the way they came. Back to the village.
When they get home, Zura replaces the bokutou with a katana. He never puts it down again.
***
They all sit together in the dojo, the fifteen local boys old enough to wield a blade and three who aren’t. Gintoki isn’t worried about them; he’ll beat the crap out of them before they go if he has to, or more simply report them to their mothers.
Katsura and Takasugi stand at the front of the group; Gintoki sits off to the side with his katana resting on his shoulder.
“The Jyouishishi are fighting near Mito,” says Zura, eyes sweeping over the other boys. “They are fighting to protect the people of this country from the invaders the Shogunate has welcomed with open arms. The invaders who named Shouyou-sensei as a rebel leader. The invaders who want to take this land from us. We are going to Mito to join the Jyouishishi and to fight this invasion in any way we can.” Zura is surprisingly eloquent; Gintoki supposes it was all that actual effort he put into school.
“We’ll kick the shit out of those goddamn monsters,” crows Hiratani in the front row, face red with excitement. Hiratani, who regularly loses his grip on his sword when practicing against dummies. Several others murmur excitedly, nodding and grinning. Gintoki looks up, expression flat.
“You don’t know anything about war,” he says, cutting through the chatter.
“And you do?” asks Taniguchi, a boy a few years younger than them. Several of the older boys frown nervously.
“Shut up,” says Zura, blandly, as if dismissing a stupid question.
“Neither do you,” points out Gintoki, looking at him.
“Shut up,” says Zura again, in the same tone.
Gintoki shrugs, and turns to the group of excited boys. “It’s up to you. You’re willing to die for your country. Do you want to? Because if you go to Mito, you will. You think three years of kendo is enough to fight trained soldiers? You think a sword can fight a rifle? You think a boy can fight a grown man? Once or twice, maybe. Through a war with no sign of ending? Never. If you join the Jyouishishi, you’re going to die. That’s a fact.” He stands and walks out into the warm May air.
Several minutes later, the boys come streaming out. Several slink off looking scared, but many more walk away with straight backs and hard faces. Takasugi leaves smiling. Zura comes out last, dousing the lights and closing the doors behind him.
In the moonlight, Zura’s hair gleams raven-blue. Gintoki knows there is no point in hiding; his own practically glows. He leans against a wall and waits instead.
“Oh, there you are,” says Zura as he turns, as if he had been looking. Gintoki pushes away from the wall. “We’re leaving the day after tomorrow.”
“This is suicidal, Zura. You know that.”
“My name is Katsura. And this is the only option honour allows. As samurai, it is our duty to protect this nation.”
“No one’s called you. You have no obligation. You’re a fucking kid.”
“I have the strength and skill; my path is clear. The Shogunate abandoning its country is no excuse for my doing so.”
Gintoki steps abruptly in front of him, and grabs his shoulders. Zura stops and stares him straight in the eye.
“You’re going to die, Zura. You all are. For Japan? What the hell is that? This village? No one wants it. The land? They don’t want that either.”
Zura’s eyes flash. In the moonlight, he leans forward and pushes Gintoki’s hand off his shoulders. Grabs Gintoki’s shoulder instead, and nearly shouts in his face, “Sensei is dead, Gintoki. They stripped him of his property, of his earnings, of his reputation. They murdered him, and then they dragged everything he stood for through the mud! Don’t you care? He was your master, your teacher, your guardian –”
Gintoki strikes out, and punches Zura straight on the jaw. Zura spins and trips to fall heavily on his ass.
“I care,” he says, staring down coldly at Zura. “If I could, I’d kill every last one of the assholes. But I can’t. And neither can you. Sensei wouldn’t want us to throw our lives away for him.”
“Sensei wouldn’t want Japan to fall while we could do something to stop it.” Zura reaches up to rub gingerly at his jaw. “I will not let that happen.”
Zura’s an amazing swordsman for his age. In a more peaceful era, he could be winning tournaments if he wanted to, or starting his own school. But it takes more than skill with a sword to survive on a battlefield. Alone, Zura won’t last a week. And Gintoki can’t face the thought of that.
Sighing, Gintoki rubs at his eyes. After a minute, he reaches down and extends his hand. “Zura, sometimes you’re a real stubborn bastard, you know that?”
Zura takes it, and he pulls him up. “It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura.”
***
In some ways, the nights are worse than the days. There is no fighting to distract the mind from how very close it is to death, no adrenaline to wash away the pain, no clashing of swords and booming guns to hide the screams.
Hiratani dies just after midnight on the day after they join up, holding Zura’s hand and begging for his mother. By morning two more boys from their village have deserted.
Gintoki sits beside Zura through those early nights, before the other boy grows used to the horror. Zura’s expression is always sharp and attentive, and if anyone speaks to him he answers calmly. It earns him respect right from the start, despite his stupid hair and girly face.
Only Gintoki, sitting pressed up against him, can tell that he’s trembling.
***
They are all injured nearly every day, but skill and luck combine to keep them from major injuries. Gintoki breaks his ribs at the end of the Mito Rebellion, and the formal surrender of the main body of troops probably saves his life. Takasugi breaks his leg in Kyoto, and is forced to stay behind while the rest of them march slowly southward to Shimonoseki.
It’s not until the shelling of Shimonoseki that Zura is seriously injured, and the Shiroyasha becomes a legend.
The Amanto, realising the Japanese superiority on land, load small ships with shells and cannons and attack from the sea and sky. The harbour of Shimonoseki is burning by the third day, the rebels’ clothes painted ash black and their snot equally dark when they rub their noses. Some of the Amanto begin to get overconfident, and bring the ships in close enough that they can fire the shells deep into the dockyard.
Gintoki and Zura are hidden behind a wall of sandbags with a number of other men, awaiting the inevitable land charge, when a shell falls right outside their hole. It explodes before any of them have time to throw themselves to the ground, blowing sand and wood high into the sky with a roar that sets Gintoki’s ears ringing.
When the smoke clears, half the men are lying in a bloody mess on the ground.
Zura’s one of them.
For a brief minute, all Gintoki can seem to see is red. Everything but the blood fades out into the background, so that it seems to float on invisible planes and ridges, sharply defined against the still-settling dust. And then colour filters through properly again, and he can see that Zura’s not moving, that he’s half-buried in the pile of other men, that his face and neck and gi are all crimson, that he’s not moving not moving not moving –
For some reason, all he can think of is Shouyou-sensei, staring up at him from on top of that goddamn pike. Staring up at him in accusation: How could you let this happen, Gintoki?
Rage and adrenaline are much more potent than alcohol. The next little while is very blurred, but when Gintoki comes back to himself he’s standing on an Amanto boat bobbing beside the docks. The Amanto are mostly lying on the deck or floating in the sea; none of them are moving. The blood on the deck is ankle-deep.
The men stare at him as he jumps shakily down and walks back towards the city; he leaves red footprints on the dock behind him.
When Gintoki returns to the makeshift foxhole, he finds three bodies on the ground. None of them is Zura. Something seems to be very wrong with his brain, and he can’t seem to piece the puzzle together. Zura was here. Zura should be here. He was here a minute ago. That he isn’t seems impossible, incomprehensible. Gintoki stares blankly at the empty space where he was, while behind them ships continue to fire over the harbour.
“Sakata-kun!” Someone runs over and halts suddenly, staring at his clothes. Gintoki looks up slowly, and the man’s expression shifts into one he can’t read. “Sakata-kun, Katsura-kun has been taken to the infirmary. He’s asking about you.”
“Zura?” asks Gintoki, looking back at the spot where he’s supposed to be. Whoever-it-is grabs him by the arm and leads him; he follows on stumbling feet.
The infirmary is just a sturdy building with men lying in it. There are no beds, or doctors, or supplies. Just the wounded, and a few others who are trying to stop them bleeding to death in the next few minutes.
Gintoki is led to a corner, where Zura is sitting up with a bandage roughly the size and shape of a seagull adhered to the side of his head.
Like smoked glass shattering to let in light, sense floods back into Gintoki’s world. He blinks, and drops his sword. “Zura!”
Zura looks up at him in concerned surprise. “What happened to you – they said you were fine – your clothes –” he doesn’t manage to finish his sentence, because Gintoki drops to his knees next to him and for a reason he can’t fathom, pulls him into a kiss.
Zura makes a surprised noise, and then shuts up abruptly when Gintoki ends the kiss just as suddenly as he started it and leans forward to pull Zura forward into a tight hug.
“Don’t say anything, moron,” he whispers. “It’s hormones. Just hormones.”
Even with the relief pounding through him making him light-headed, Gintoki knows it’s not true.
***
At Fushimi they lie twined together, Zura’s heartbeat so close to his own he can hardly tell which is which.
“Is this still just hormones?” asks Zura, trying to comb order into Gintoki’s hair and failing miserably.
“Of course. What else could it be, with you?”
“Well if that’s the case, I have mending to do.” Zura makes to get up; Gintoki catches his wrist and pulls him back down.
“Stay,” he says, gruffly.
Zura turns to look down at him, his long hair falling over his shoulder to brush against Gintoki’s collarbone. He’s stupidly good looking and that doesn’t help, his skin milky and face delicate. Gintoki reaches up to run rough fingers along Zura’s cheekbone; Zura’s eyes darken a shade.
“Stay,” he says again, softer this time.
Zura sighs, and lies back down. “Who’s the stubborn bastard now?”
***
The fighting gets worse the farther north they move. The Amanto bring in handguns, then machine guns, then lasers. Battles cease to be fights for victory and become fights for survival. Old comrades mostly gone, they make new ones only to lose them too. And then there are no more new men, no more recruits. Gintoki knows it’s only a matter of time now.
Like most of the remaining men, Zura will never give up. Only death will stop him, and as they march north that becomes more and more likely. Each battle they come a little closer to utter exhaustion, a little closer to fatal carelessness. Each battle, the Shiroyasha is quicker to arrive and slower to leave. Gintoki has nothing of himself left but the others now, and he isn’t strong enough to protect them.
“End it now, Zura,” he says, in Aomori. “We can’t win, and the only way we’ll lose is by losing everything. Go out there and tell them to stop. They’ll listen; you know it.”
Zura, sitting across from him in the moonlight, doesn’t look up. “Not Zura; Katsura. You tell them. They’ll listen to you.”
“But you won’t,” says Gintoki, because that is the crux of everything.
“Does that matter?”
There’s a long silence. And then, quietly, “I should have punched you harder that day,” says Gintoki. “I should have knocked you out. I should never have let you do this fucking crazy-ass thing.”
“If my life is the only burden you carry, then –”
“Don’t you fucking dare say it’s lighter than yours, Zura,” interrupts Gintoki, low and furious.
“I was going to say, you should have chosen better,” says Zura, after nearly a minute, but his tone betrays him.
They don’t say anything more about it.
***
All across the fields, stricken men are screaming for help. Up ahead, Sakamoto is helping Takasugi limp off the battlefield, away from the whining of the beam cannons. Partially deaf from the surfeit of sound and numb from the suffocating atmosphere of death all around, Gintoki tries his best to keep his senses and direct the remaining samurai away from danger.
Ahead, Zura is reeling like a drunk, stumbling over the uneven ground with his sword drawn. He stumbles once and very nearly disembowels himself. Heart in his throat, Gintoki runs over and makes him sheath it. Zura turns to stare at him, and he suddenly knows how that man felt on the docks of Shimonoseki. Zura is staring right through him, eyes unfocused. He’s covered in blood but not pale enough to have lost much of his own, and he’s moving fluidly enough to reassure Gintoki that he’s not injured. Just very nearly out of his mind.
“We’re going, Zura,” he says, and wraps his arm around Zura.
“Can’t retreat: no back lines. It’s all over if we retreat.”
“It is all over. We’ve lost. Come on.”
Zura turns to look at him like he’s crazy. “The hell’re you talking about, Gintoki? We can’t –”
Gintoki punches him in the gut, hard. Hard as he should have all that long time ago in their tiny village. Zura makes a choking noise, reaches for Gintoki, and then starts to fall. Gintoki gets a shoulder under him as he goes down, and swings him up onto his back.
Gintoki walks off the battlefield, and although despite the odds he has somehow dragged Zura out alive, he feels only a cold gaping emptiness inside.
***
Kagura picks herself up again to leap at the shoji feet-first, like an arrow from a bow. A few minutes ago, she heard Gin-chan’s cry echoing through the empty house, anguish knife-sharp. She hasn’t stopped since then. Beside her, Elizabeth swings her sign at the door, egg-like eyes narrowed.
Kagura’s in the air when she hears a tiny gasp. It’s too late to turn, and she hits the doors with the full force of her running leap’s momentum. Slams right into the shoji and bursts through it in an explosion of wood and paper. Hitting the ground hard enough to make the walls shake, she comes up running. Elizabeth pads along after her, webbed feet making a noise like butter being patted. Neither is interested in an explanation.
Kagura has no idea where she’s going, but she knows the general direction of the scream. She pounds down the dusty wood floors and hits the entranceway. From there, all she has to do is follow the open doors.
They run through three gloomy rooms filled with stale air before coming up on a pair of broken fusuma, and the heavily damaged room beyond.
Kagura skids to a stop, eyes wide.
Sitting against one wall with his arm wrapped tight around his chest and his skin an ugly grey colour is Zura, shoulders rising and falling visibly with his panting breaths. His hand can’t disguise the blood soaking through the scraps of dark silk tied around his chest. By his side lies a bloody katana, Gin-chan’s bokutou is a few feet further away. Kagura’s eyes track slowly from the rebel to Gin-chan.
He is kneeling in the centre of the room, his back rounded like a cat’s, with one hand pressed flat against the floor for support. His face is in shadows. Kagura takes an uncertain step forwards. “Gin-chan?”
“Don’t,” barks Zura, face strained.
KATSURA-SAN! ARE YOU ALRIGHT? Elizabeth hurries over to him.
“Stay away from Gintoki,” says Zura, giving a marginal nod to Elizabeth.
Gin-chan shudders and makes an odd choking noise in his throat, almost like a rattle-snake.
“Gin-chan?”
Slow as Shinpachi opening their utilities bill, Gin-chan raises his head. He’s sweating hard enough that drips are gathering at his chin to drop onto the floor – it’s probably the only cleaning it’s seen in years. “Welllll, you bassstarrrd?” he growls, voice so harsh and drawn Kagura can only barely make out the words. There is no answer; Kagura can only guess at who he’s talking to.
Like the tide turning, Gin-chan pulls himself around to face Zura. He’s breathing so hard he could be a carnival ride, back rising and falling several inches with each breath. Neither of them says anything, but they don’t look confused either, like a pair of robots communicating by internal radio. Although Zura’s the one with blood all over him, Gin-chan looks in nearly as much pain.
“You understand now, Murata?” hisses Gin-chan. “It wasn’t about you. Wasn’t about Japan. Wasn’t about Sensei.”
Zura closes his eyes, jaw tight and face lined.
“It was never about what we lost. It was about protecting what we had. Except by the time we realised it, that was gone too.”
Gin-chan sits up slowly, and then pushes himself awkwardly to his feet. He walks like a little child, in uncertain, staggering steps, and sits down heavily in front of Zura. “You want to know what that feels like?” He reaches out to ghost his fingers over the wet blood soaking through the bandage around Zura’s torso. Facing away from her as he is, Kagura can’t see Gin-chan’s face. But she still nearly flinches at his raw tone. “It feels a hell of a lot like this.”
Kagura feels frozen, like her clothes are soaked in cement, like someone’s pumped liquid toffee into her blood and it’s hardened into a tooth-shattering state. Behind her someone pads quietly into the room, and slips past her.
Shinpachi. Or rather, the ghost that’s wearing him.
He walks across the room with an old man’s crooked back, and stops behind Gin-chan. Lays a hand on his shoulder, and says quietly, “Enough, Kenji. It’s time to go.”
Shinpachi’s voice is so rarely quiet that Kagura’s almost forgotten how calming it can be. How reassuring. Gin-chan swivels to stare up at Shinpachi with wide eyes.
“Father? No – this is – he’s –”
For an instant, Gin-chan’s face starts to contract, eyes narrowing into a sharper, crueller expression. And Shinpachi strikes him straight across the cheek. “It’s time you learned what you never did from me. Position is not the only thing that matters in that world. In this one, it means nothing at all.” Shinpachi sighs, and moves his reddening hand to rest on top of Gin-chan’s head, as if he were just a little boy. “Your life was far too short, Kenji, and you missed many things. But in some ways, perhaps you are lucky. You never had to suffer through losing them.”
“Father –”
The soft hand turns to a set of knuckles to the skull. “Now come on. We can’t stay here forever, you know. I’m getting tired of waiting for you in this mouldy old house – cute girls almost never come here!” Shinpachi turns to Kagura. “I wish I could see you when you grow up. You’ll be a knock-out for sure!”
“Shut up, you pervert,” says Kagura, more out of force of habit than anything. The old ghost smiles, and bows. Kagura opens her mouth to say something, but he’s already turning away.
“Come on, Kenji. You know what you have to do, don’t you?” He steps back, releasing Gin-chan, who blinks uncertainly. He looks somehow much younger – half-nervous and half-defiant. But then he catches sight of Zura, breathing with the slow deliberateness of a bellows, and blanches.
“I –”
Zura opens his eyes, and Gin-chan flinches. “Murata,” he says calmly, between breaths, “We didn’t forget you. You may rest assured. We never will.”
Gin-chan stiffens, and then bows rigidly. “Katsura-san, I ask for your forgiveness.”
Zura’s expression doesn’t change. “It isn’t mine you need.”
There is a beat of silence. And then, reluctant as Gin-chan giving up pocket money,
“Shiroyasha. I ask your forgiveness.”
There is no answer.
“You know better. Ask him properly,” says Zura.
“S- Sakata Gintoki. I ask – I beg for your forgiveness.”
Another beat of silence. Zura shifts, and winces. “Don’t be a stubborn bastard, Gintoki,” he says thickly.
The ghost lets out a kind of gulping cry, like someone just jammed a heel into his instep.
“Grrranted,” growls Gin-chan’s proper voice. “Now get the fffuck out.”
The sound starts very low, like someone humming under their breath. It grows louder and louder, past the rumble of a car and the roar of a motorcycle, to the shrill screaming whistle of a train. The walls and floor rattle with it, dust pouring down on them like dirty snow. Then there is a bang like cannon fire. And simultaneously, Gin-chan and Shinpachi drop to the ground and lie there, unmoving. Even from several feet away, Kagura can see that they’re both breathing properly now.
There is a long, long silence. Eventually Elizabeth, the only other truly conscious person in the room, turns to Kagura.
ARE WE GOING TO HAVE TO CLEAN THIS UP?
