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rainsometimesFic title: There's No Together, There's No Apart, There's Only Impossible Longing
Chapter: 2/5 (plus prologue)
Chapter title: It Shouldn't Be This Damn Difficult To Put One And One And One Together
Word Count: 4626
Fandom: Gintama
Fic status: in progress
Pairing: Gintoki/Katsura/Takasugi: Gintoki/Katsura, Katsura/Takasugi, Takasugi/Gintoki
Rating: PG-13 (or maybe PG-15)
Spoilers/Setting: Starts before canon, ends after it. Final chapter will contain post-manga scenes and be very spoilery for the manga ending.
Flavour: Angsty, but hopefully with a relatively happy ending (that's the plan at least)
Summary: A story about Gintoki, Katsura and Takasugi told through various scenes and fragments.
Author's Notes and disclaimer in the prologue post
Continued from Chapter 1
The parachute landed as reasonably close to this distant part of the harbour as they could have hoped for. Katsura tugged them to the nearby pier while Gintoki clutched at what he could grab of the parachute, floating along as best as he could. Katsura had felt the pain from his wound flare up ever since they’d escaped from the airship and the battle adrenaline no longer kept it at bay; the shock of the cold water only provided a slight numbness while his movements felt heavy and clumsy. Gintoki had clearly suffered even more recent wounds, fighting the Benizakura. Glancing at him over his shoulder, Katsura was concerned about his pale face and the distant, drowsy look in his eyes.
But they managed to reach the closest pier and even found steps to climb up out of the water, both collapsing on all fours, exhausted and shivering. Katsura felt nothing but relief right then. They’d made it to dry land -- they would be okay soon, it just didn’t make sense otherwise. He was too tired to question the logic of that.
Of course, he did know that they were exposed right here, a sight for people to gawk at and report. They both urgently needed medical care and to be able to rest somewhere safe. They needed to find their people quickly to get help. But still… They were back in the city, they’d left the immediate enemy territory of the airship, now at the bottom of the bay with its load of corpses and crushed dreams, of destruction and reconciliation both. The parachute escape was over and they were back in the familiarly nebulous enemy territory of the city, which Gintoki didn’t even consider as such. The enemy was not the same one, of course.
Katsura managed to raise his head, squinting against the sun. His head was aching, like so much of his body. But he grabbed hold of a bargepole and laboriously hoisted himself up.
"Gintoki? Can you walk?" he asked. "We should get out of the open. Don't want the police to find us." Gintoki might not get arrested, but he'd have to put up with tiresome interrogations when he ought to be resting for at least a week in bed at home.
Gintoki looked at him with bleary eyes. "Few steps, I guess." He took a deep breath but made it up on his own.
"Good," said Katsura, relieved. "I hope your people 'n' mine are coming soon." His words were starting to get blurry, tongue heavier than usual. Gintoki didn't look too good either, face drawn and pale, eyes too far away. They started to drag themselves away, arms across each other's shoulders, walking laboriously like they had just returned from battlefields of old. Just this one step, just this next one, just one more till they’d left the pier and reached the nearest street, just a few more till they were at this sidestreet, just one more step, then just one step more, all the time stumbling and shivering.
The direction was just vaguely towards where the Kabuki district should be, still a long way off. Katsura had no idea where their companions were by now, else he’d have tried to walk in the direction they might come from. But there were a number of different places where Elizabeth and the others could have landed their escape ship.
"Zura..." mumbled Gintoki, his breath hot in Katsura's ear.
"It's Katsura," said Katsura mechanically.
"Nah. 'S Lupin. Hold on..."
"What?" Katsura stopped, wondering if Gintoki was growing delirious. The Lupin reference felt like ages ago now - an hour, at least. "Do you need to rest?" Perhaps those steps over on the other side of this narrow sidestreet could be of use... But Gintoki was grabbing the top of his kimono, pulling him back towards him. He didn't say anything else: he just held him by the shoulders and kissed him on the mouth.
Oh. "Ah. Um. Yes. I suppose..." Katsura stuttered.
Gintoki pulled him close again. Almost reflexively, his brain not seeming to make the decision, Katsura took a firmer grip on Gintoki’s own kimono and met him halfway for a second kiss.
"...I suppose there was just that one more thing to do," he mumbled after they broke it off. Ten years. Right now, it didn’t feel like it at all.
“S’ not something onna list,” muttered Gintoki. He turned his face forward and pulled Katsura towards him again through the grip on his shoulder, this time just mashing their cheeks together.
“You’re silly,” said Katsura breathlessly.
“No, I’m not. That’s always you.” Gintoki’s voice was close and near. They were walking forward again without Katsura being able to say who’d moved first. He didn’t know if any onlookers were gawking at them, he didn’t look around, too tired, too full of everything to care.
His fingers suddenly felt too short, too stubby and awkward; he wanted to reach out and grab the very sunrays, not just clutch Gintoki's shoulder and the fabric of his shirt ineffectively; he wanted to twist the trembling moment and wrap it around them, letting it envelop them till they could think of nothing else. He wanted to stop again right there, just to run his hands through Gintoki's hair over and over, breathing in his smell no matter how much it was overlaid by sweat and blood and exhaustion.
The sounds of the city around them didn't bring him back to sober discretion, they just helped the moment feel even more real. The two of them stumbled forward, aching and shivering, step by step. No kisses now, no caresses: just two old war buddies slowly making their way forward, leaning on one another after having been in one tough scrape. But to Katsura it felt like they were holding hands.
‘What took you so long?’ was something Zura didn’t ask him, as they kept slowly straggling forward, cold and wet from the harbour, cheeks still so very close to each other, Gintoki’s own lips still tasting of Zura’s even though it had only been two kisses. It would perhaps have been the right moment to ask, in those few short minutes before Shinpachi and Kagura and Elizabeth and Tetsuko finally spotted them and brought real help. But they never asked each other that kind of thing.
And if he had done so anyway, Gintoki wouldn’t have known what to answer. ‘I could say the same to you’ ? No -- it was true, but he’d known all along that Zura simply wouldn’t be the first one to reach out. ‘I just wasn’t in the mood for it’ ? No, that was a lie, and of the kind that would stick in his throat. And he certainly couldn’t reply, ‘I didn’t think I could believe in your forgiveness’ . Which was true, all too true, and utterly impossible to say.
Nor could he have said the first thing he was thinking of, in those late-night moments when all the what-if thoughts he pushed away during the day crowded up his mind. ’I couldn’t reclaim you while he still had a hold on you.’
What kind of stupid romance manga bullshit way of thinking was that? Zura was his own person, and that bastard didn’t have any claim on him, just like Gintoki didn’t, either.
But Gintoki hadn’t been around. Had been gone, for ten years. Ducked out of sight, drawn first deep under water, then -- as he was pulled from the brink of death by an executioner, then pulled from starvation by a snack bar granny with a scary face and a heart the size of a city -- slowly being dragged onto the shore, putting pieces of himself back, finding a way to earn money and live. But he’d stayed away from the other two, had assumed they wouldn’t want him around, and not been sure himself he could stand to be around them, either. Until the day when Katsura pulled that embassy bomb stunt and it turned out that while they disagreed on important things they could still talk to each other, could still make a place for each other in their lives again.
Not the case with that bastard, obviously. But that -- Well -- it was only to be expected.
But still -- Takasugi had been around for Zura, when Gintoki wasn’t. The way he was, these days, maybe that hadn’t been a blessing, but -- Gintoki wasn’t there, he couldn’t know. That was the whole point. And for Takasugi too, Zura had been there when Gintoki wasn’t.
So it was all the more important now, as that airship had gone down in flames, as the Kiheitai had left the scene on their new pirate allies’ spaceship, as Zura had looked up again in that sad wistful way while they were parachuting down -- that he wouldn’t be dragged down into cold numbness or blazing destruction, that Gintoki could anchor him to earth, to Edo, and give him what warmth he could offer, that he would remind him that he was Zura as well and not only the general Katsura. So he wouldn’t lose him, too.
And he found he could warm himself in Zura’s open arms, too. To be soothed like that again, to be welcomed -- it was strange, but it was all right. He felt that, finally. Ten years had passed, and Benizakura had happened, and it was all right. For now.
Wounds healed and hair grew out and everyday life went on in its rhythm of both increasing bustle (making new connections, new people to argue with, new people to call his own) and enduring slowness (there were still many quiet days without a single client). There were days of chaotic action -- often ridiculous, sometimes all too serious, and sometimes you weren’t quite aware which was which until it was over -- in between the many days of nothing much happening. It was easy to just lean back and bob along in the comforting chaos. Sometimes he could even be good for something. And the kids were there to help and to hound him.
They were all stuck in Sazae-san time, seasons following one another but nobody growing older. Breathing space. They could pretend things didn’t have to be serious again, that they were safely leading comedy lives now. Zura and him both played their part, as they would zero in on small things that didn’t truly matter but which both of them would argue at length and with apparent great conviction. Low-stakes quarrels, reassuring and comforting. Sometimes you could fool yourself that life could just keep going on like this.
There were times when he wanted Zura to be just a little bit more serious, mostly so Gintoki could be the one telling him to shut up and stop worrying (like he did tell him to stop fussing, stop being so gloomy, stop nagging me, stop being such a wet rag killjoy; like in the old days) -- but he never wanted him to be too serious, not to step out of the pretense and the illusion entirely. In any case, Zura would rarely comply. Instead he would derail even more into lunatic antics and the most convoluted delusions, almost as if he was taunting him. Maybe that didn’t matter too much, because Gintoki could still shut him up with a kiss, and they could still steal longer moments of private time in-between the chaos, despite the fact they were both always broke and had permanent housemates.
Zura’s body didn’t feel fundamentally different under Gintoki’s hands since the war days, despite many new scars; still sinewy, strong, and way too skinny. But he was more sure of himself now, of his likes and dislikes, prudent but less prudish when they were alone, and more adventurous when it came to exploring Gintoki’s body and learning what pleased him now, setting Gintoki’s head spinning, making him intent on repaying the favour. He, like Gintoki, never discussed whether they could keep doing this; neither of them called it a bad idea or a good idea. It simply was.
Saying there was someone they missed in those moments would be like saying they wanted the bleeding edge of a sword. Maybe it wasn’t untrue. But it was still madness.
But that madness was--
No. Don’t say it. Stay here, in this now. Slumped over some greasy bar table, late at night. Stumbling up on tired legs to make breakfast for Kagura and himself. The wind in his hair while driving his moped, Shinpachi holding onto him and diligently upbraiding him for something. The eternal steps with the old bat in the rent ballet. His arms encircling Zura’s waist from behind, letting his lips hover over his reddening cheek. All those thousands of everyday moments.
Stay here.
There is something beating its wings inside his chest, fluttering like a butterfly, struggling to get out. But they are still here. It’s not time.
Don’t say it.
After Benizakura, the pull of everyday Gintama flow, the one that Katsura has resolved to embrace ever since he realized he’s in a manga story and didn’t want to be left behind -- that pull has grown stronger in consequence of an old path (an old bond) being obliterated and erased. He does wish sometimes he was as good at sinking into everyday life as Gintoki is. For Katsura, it’s more of a balancing act. He can’t reach the peaceful civilian shore, that is simply not permitted. But he can cheat and scrounge and focus on smaller objectives, he can postpone and ponder; he can lean just a little bit on the fourth wall to help him escape from captivity. He has no intention to stick around for any execution that would finish off an important secondary character like him.
He has to be strong and he will be strong, but he can let himself relax a little, too. There are so many things he needs to hold, yet at times he feels that he can let go of them for an instant without letting them fall and break. He can seize them again, unhurt and hovering; the magic of Sazae-san time and episodic structure allows for it.
And he can try to shield Gintoki, just a little, to warm him against the terrible cold that he must feel more than anybody else.
It’s a reprieve, a time to breathe and gain strength. And Katsura can indulge in his own way.
Sometimes he sits and watches Gintoki's sleeping face at night, wondering, Do I want to whisk you away somewhere where you could be safe from him?, knowing there probably is no such place. Do I want to use you as a way to stop him, even if that means his death, or even as a way to try to save him? You're the only one who ever could, you know. Save him.
He sighs softly, head slumped. The night is growing lighter and grayer, approaching dawn. As if it even matters what I want. Those two will do what their natures drive them to do anyway. It's foolish to try to stop it.
Let him be a fool many times over, then. And screw their damn natures.
Sakamoto’s voice is nearly drowned out by the noise in the bar. “I know what you’re doing, Zura,” he says, chin resting in hand, pouring more wine into Katsura’s glass.
It’s the night after the Jôi reunion party, which in retrospect feels like it went past way too quickly. Sakamoto has invited them both out for a drink; Gintoki, surprisingly, turned it down, claiming to be tired. Katsura accepted only on the condition that he could choose the place, avoiding Sakamoto’s expensive cabaret hang-outs.
“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura,” he mutters now, glaring at the red wine before slowly raising the glass and sipping from it, mostly to have something to do. He’s not meeting Sakamoto’s gaze, but he feels the warmth of it on his face. They’ve been here for a good while now.
“You’re tryin’ not t'be selfish,” continues Sakamoto. “Tellin’ yourself the important bit is that those other two are all right, ‘cause then you’ll feel happy too, an’ besides you’ll always be able to handle stuff. Right?”
Katsura stiffens, his grip on the wine glass increasing in strength. Sakamoto doesn’t know. Neither Katsura nor Gintoki have told him about how things are with Takasugi now, nothing about Benizakura or any of the rest of it. Katsura isn’t even sure if he prefers for Sakamoto not to know at all, or if he’d rather Sakamoto just raise the issue so Katsura can tell him finally. Simply to get it over with.
Yet he just can’t seem to make himself talk about it without being asked directly. And Sakamoto never asks.
“What are you trying to say?” he says now, his tongue feeling thick.
Sakamoto sighs, though Katsura can still hear a smile in his voice as he replies, “Nothin’ much, ahahaha! I ain’t going to scold ya an’ say you could stand to be more selfish. You’re doin’ the best you can, aren’t ya?”
Katsura exhales, telling himself to relax more, his shoulders easing. It’s all right. It’s just Sakamoto. “That’s… that’s a curious way of looking at it,” he says.
Sakamoto’s hand is warm on his back. “I guess, but it’s true, ain’t it?”
Katsura finally echoes his gesture and rests his chin on his palm, even if he doesn’t slump as much as Sakamoto. “I’m not sure,” he mumbles, not bothering to raise his voice to be heard through all the chatter and music around them. “Selfishness or unselfishness… The main thing is if it works or not, isn’t it?” He sighs again, spreading out his other hand, palm up. “I don’t know how to make it work,” he confesses, in a way he only ever could to this man. “They’re just… It’s hard, Sakamoto. It’s just hard.”
“I know.” Sakamoto lets his hand stay on Katsura’s back. He’s looking straight ahead now, that idealistic visionary look on his face that’s pure Tatsuma. “‘Course it’s gotta be. They’re such numbskulls. You an’ me can be idiots too, but we have nothin’ on those loons. Ahhh… sometimes I wish I could just scoop all of you up on my spaceships an’ spare you from all of this. But then you’d leave Earth all alone and that wouldn’t be good.”
Katsura smiles a little. “I think trouble would just come aboard with us then.”
“Ahahahaha, I’m sure it would!” laughs Sakamoto, then waves at the bartender for a bottle of sake.
Katsura will never admit it, but there is something appealing in the thought, being whisked away from reality for a while. For Gintoki especially he would want that, more than for himself. Even if their reality in truth is all too tangled up with the existence of space travel to start with...
But Sakamoto is their friend and their great hidden hope. And that’s exactly why they mustn’t take his kindness for granted and abuse it too much. Then how could he show up to help at the moment when they need him the most?
“Don’t drink too much, you know you’ll just throw it all up,” he tells Sakamoto, but undermines his message immediately by accepting a cup of sake himself and drinking it up. He doesn’t mind staying here for a while longer.
They hardly ever talk about him during all that time, and when they do, Gintoki’s not the one to bring him up. There’s no use to it. Until the right day, until the right time, words are just going to tumble down aimlessly like bricks of a demolished building. He knows the fight will come one day and so does Zura. He turns his back on that knowledge for a long time, but he never denies it, never throws it away.
He fights for a child to be reunited with his mother, for a friend to be freed from the grasp of her unworthy master and see her own worth; he fights twice for his home, first for the old bat and then for his own identity; he fights for Zura’s friend in space and for a thorny police friend in Edo; he fights the top of the country for the sake of a dying courtesan; he fights the returned old friend of Otae and Shinpachi who’s not who he seems to be; and he fights for a young executioner who keeps stealing his nipple. Each time is like a wave carrying him closer to shore. Or has he been swimming under water and is now pulled to the surface? Each time he feels like his eyes have grown sharper, his bladework tighter, his soul more focused. And it gets harder and harder to just stay here, when the here grows ever smaller and more fragile, even as he can sense Kagura, Shinpachi and himself grow stronger.
Maybe that’s why he raises his voice and calls out for Zura to join him and Hasegawa one night as he passes them by right outside the bar they’re heading for. He expects to be snubbed, but Zura must be in a contrarian “can’t do what Gintoki expects” mood, because he gives them a disapproving look yet sweeps past them to enter the bar haughtily, lecturing them while he makes his thrifty order.
They drink and bicker and talk a lot of nonsense, and some time during the night Hasegawa drifts away somewhere, perhaps after their third bar. Gintoki’s mind grows pretty muddled for a while, but starts to clear up after he’s thrown up over the side of a bridge. A handkerchief is waved in his face, and he takes it, then glances up. In the pale moonlight, Zura’s features look hazy, his eyes a little distant, and his cheeks are rosy. He says something in a low voice that takes Gintoki a moment to parse. Something like ‘I should be the one to fight him’.
“Who’re you talkin’ about?” All Gintoki can think of right then is the owner of the last bar they were at. “Don’ be like that, Zura, I mean we were pretty noisy…” Not that Zura’s ever been much for bar brawls, apart from the regular bickering with Gintoki that he doesn’t need booze to accomplish.
But Zura just sighs, and Gintoki snaps out of that confused trail of thought, a chill seeping through him. He wipes his face on the handkerchief and hands it back as he straightens up, one hand still taking support from the handrail. “You don’t mean that last bar owner,” he says quietly, looking out into the night just like Katsura.
“I don’t.” Zura puts his hands into his sleeves. “Gintoki,” he says, tone slow, serious, voice still held low, “if I fight him, it’s not going to be nice. It will be a hard, brutal thing. It won’t be anything - anything that could be purifying. I won’t be able to save him, I will only do it to stop him.” He pauses, still not moving his head or even his gaze to look at Gintoki. “It won’t be the fight he wants,” he continues, tone even more quiet than before. His face looked melancholy but… certain. All too certain.
“Zura…” Gintoki starts, then stops. He doesn’t know how to even start to put this into words.
“Listen, Gintoki.” Now Zura finally turns his head to look at him, fixing him intently. “It won’t be the fight he wants, no. But I should still be the one to do it. You have too many people who need you. And also… You’re strong, the strongest of us, but against him I’m not sure you could win. But I know I can fight him and win. There is too much at stake.” His hands are grasping the wooden rail tightly; he’s trembling, very slightly. “Not everything can be about what Takasugi wants.”
All this time when we’ve hardly talked about him and now you’re coming out with all of this? Gintoki stands very still. Not that long ago he might have said nothing. But now, after he’s stood with Asaemon on that bridge, and was nearly cut through; after she’s attacked all three of them on the riverbank, slicing without touching them, freeing them instead -- now, the thoughts are gleaming moon-bright, too sharp and present and true to be avoided.
“You’re speaking like you think I’d be storming off towards his high quarters, wherever those are now, and demand to fight him tomorrow,” he says, equally quiet as Zura. “You know as well as me that when I fight him” -- he doesn’t bother saying if -- “it’s going to be because I’ll stand between him and something he wants to destroy.” He pauses a moment, then says, almost as an afterthought, “Besides me.”
“And what do you think you’re talking about, too many relying on me?” he adds in a louder voice. “Then what about you and the damn country, huh? What about bringing in the new dawn of Japan?”
Zura frowns. “Since when do you believe in that?”
He waves that aside. “Doesn’t matter. You believe it. People believe in you.” A deep breath; his voice drops lower again. “I believe in you, too. But I don’t think… I don’t think it will work out like that. True, you’re still important to him. It will hurt him if you die. So you are a main target, because he wants to hurt. But not…” You’re not his alter ego. Not the one he focuses on to make it hurt the most. Not the one who hurt him the deepest before. “Not as much as me,” he finishes, voice hoarse. “I get him, Zura. I know this. He will zoom in on me.”
Zura crosses his arms and gives Gintoki a long look. “Gintoki. We made that declaration together. You’re not supposed to carry it alone.”
Gintoki sighs, slumping. He draws a hand through his hair, wishing he could get back to being drunk. “If I’m wrong… If I’m wrong, or if I fail, I know you will take care of it.”
A flash of intense, tired anger passes over Zura’s beautiful features. Then it passes and he slumps as well. Right then a cloud covers the moon, making it too dark to make out his expression -- the nearest street light is too far.
It can’t be helped. Gintoki rolls his shoulders, swallowing to keep his uneasy stomach steady, hoping he won’t need to throw up a second time. “Need to get home,” he mutters, turning and starting to walk, then realises he faces the wrong side of the bridge and turns again. The moon shines clear once more, and he avoids Zura’s gaze on him as he walks.
It can’t be helped. Gintoki, take care of them for me, will you? It’s a promise. It’s not Zura’s fault that he hadn’t been the one who was told that.
Gintoki doesn’t know if there’s anything that can be done anymore for the three of them, three torn-out pieces of a picture, scattered and wind-swept, brought together and kept apart by so many things, ragged and broken, one and one and one...
But the two of them still walk together for a while, going home in silence in the moonlight.
Continues in Chapter 3
Chapter: 2/5 (plus prologue)
Chapter title: It Shouldn't Be This Damn Difficult To Put One And One And One Together
Word Count: 4626
Fandom: Gintama
Fic status: in progress
Pairing: Gintoki/Katsura/Takasugi: Gintoki/Katsura, Katsura/Takasugi, Takasugi/Gintoki
Rating: PG-13 (or maybe PG-15)
Spoilers/Setting: Starts before canon, ends after it. Final chapter will contain post-manga scenes and be very spoilery for the manga ending.
Flavour: Angsty, but hopefully with a relatively happy ending (that's the plan at least)
Summary: A story about Gintoki, Katsura and Takasugi told through various scenes and fragments.
Author's Notes and disclaimer in the prologue post
Continued from Chapter 1
The parachute landed as reasonably close to this distant part of the harbour as they could have hoped for. Katsura tugged them to the nearby pier while Gintoki clutched at what he could grab of the parachute, floating along as best as he could. Katsura had felt the pain from his wound flare up ever since they’d escaped from the airship and the battle adrenaline no longer kept it at bay; the shock of the cold water only provided a slight numbness while his movements felt heavy and clumsy. Gintoki had clearly suffered even more recent wounds, fighting the Benizakura. Glancing at him over his shoulder, Katsura was concerned about his pale face and the distant, drowsy look in his eyes.
But they managed to reach the closest pier and even found steps to climb up out of the water, both collapsing on all fours, exhausted and shivering. Katsura felt nothing but relief right then. They’d made it to dry land -- they would be okay soon, it just didn’t make sense otherwise. He was too tired to question the logic of that.
Of course, he did know that they were exposed right here, a sight for people to gawk at and report. They both urgently needed medical care and to be able to rest somewhere safe. They needed to find their people quickly to get help. But still… They were back in the city, they’d left the immediate enemy territory of the airship, now at the bottom of the bay with its load of corpses and crushed dreams, of destruction and reconciliation both. The parachute escape was over and they were back in the familiarly nebulous enemy territory of the city, which Gintoki didn’t even consider as such. The enemy was not the same one, of course.
Katsura managed to raise his head, squinting against the sun. His head was aching, like so much of his body. But he grabbed hold of a bargepole and laboriously hoisted himself up.
"Gintoki? Can you walk?" he asked. "We should get out of the open. Don't want the police to find us." Gintoki might not get arrested, but he'd have to put up with tiresome interrogations when he ought to be resting for at least a week in bed at home.
Gintoki looked at him with bleary eyes. "Few steps, I guess." He took a deep breath but made it up on his own.
"Good," said Katsura, relieved. "I hope your people 'n' mine are coming soon." His words were starting to get blurry, tongue heavier than usual. Gintoki didn't look too good either, face drawn and pale, eyes too far away. They started to drag themselves away, arms across each other's shoulders, walking laboriously like they had just returned from battlefields of old. Just this one step, just this next one, just one more till they’d left the pier and reached the nearest street, just a few more till they were at this sidestreet, just one more step, then just one step more, all the time stumbling and shivering.
The direction was just vaguely towards where the Kabuki district should be, still a long way off. Katsura had no idea where their companions were by now, else he’d have tried to walk in the direction they might come from. But there were a number of different places where Elizabeth and the others could have landed their escape ship.
"Zura..." mumbled Gintoki, his breath hot in Katsura's ear.
"It's Katsura," said Katsura mechanically.
"Nah. 'S Lupin. Hold on..."
"What?" Katsura stopped, wondering if Gintoki was growing delirious. The Lupin reference felt like ages ago now - an hour, at least. "Do you need to rest?" Perhaps those steps over on the other side of this narrow sidestreet could be of use... But Gintoki was grabbing the top of his kimono, pulling him back towards him. He didn't say anything else: he just held him by the shoulders and kissed him on the mouth.
Oh. "Ah. Um. Yes. I suppose..." Katsura stuttered.
Gintoki pulled him close again. Almost reflexively, his brain not seeming to make the decision, Katsura took a firmer grip on Gintoki’s own kimono and met him halfway for a second kiss.
"...I suppose there was just that one more thing to do," he mumbled after they broke it off. Ten years. Right now, it didn’t feel like it at all.
“S’ not something onna list,” muttered Gintoki. He turned his face forward and pulled Katsura towards him again through the grip on his shoulder, this time just mashing their cheeks together.
“You’re silly,” said Katsura breathlessly.
“No, I’m not. That’s always you.” Gintoki’s voice was close and near. They were walking forward again without Katsura being able to say who’d moved first. He didn’t know if any onlookers were gawking at them, he didn’t look around, too tired, too full of everything to care.
His fingers suddenly felt too short, too stubby and awkward; he wanted to reach out and grab the very sunrays, not just clutch Gintoki's shoulder and the fabric of his shirt ineffectively; he wanted to twist the trembling moment and wrap it around them, letting it envelop them till they could think of nothing else. He wanted to stop again right there, just to run his hands through Gintoki's hair over and over, breathing in his smell no matter how much it was overlaid by sweat and blood and exhaustion.
The sounds of the city around them didn't bring him back to sober discretion, they just helped the moment feel even more real. The two of them stumbled forward, aching and shivering, step by step. No kisses now, no caresses: just two old war buddies slowly making their way forward, leaning on one another after having been in one tough scrape. But to Katsura it felt like they were holding hands.
‘What took you so long?’ was something Zura didn’t ask him, as they kept slowly straggling forward, cold and wet from the harbour, cheeks still so very close to each other, Gintoki’s own lips still tasting of Zura’s even though it had only been two kisses. It would perhaps have been the right moment to ask, in those few short minutes before Shinpachi and Kagura and Elizabeth and Tetsuko finally spotted them and brought real help. But they never asked each other that kind of thing.
And if he had done so anyway, Gintoki wouldn’t have known what to answer. ‘I could say the same to you’ ? No -- it was true, but he’d known all along that Zura simply wouldn’t be the first one to reach out. ‘I just wasn’t in the mood for it’ ? No, that was a lie, and of the kind that would stick in his throat. And he certainly couldn’t reply, ‘I didn’t think I could believe in your forgiveness’ . Which was true, all too true, and utterly impossible to say.
Nor could he have said the first thing he was thinking of, in those late-night moments when all the what-if thoughts he pushed away during the day crowded up his mind. ’I couldn’t reclaim you while he still had a hold on you.’
What kind of stupid romance manga bullshit way of thinking was that? Zura was his own person, and that bastard didn’t have any claim on him, just like Gintoki didn’t, either.
But Gintoki hadn’t been around. Had been gone, for ten years. Ducked out of sight, drawn first deep under water, then -- as he was pulled from the brink of death by an executioner, then pulled from starvation by a snack bar granny with a scary face and a heart the size of a city -- slowly being dragged onto the shore, putting pieces of himself back, finding a way to earn money and live. But he’d stayed away from the other two, had assumed they wouldn’t want him around, and not been sure himself he could stand to be around them, either. Until the day when Katsura pulled that embassy bomb stunt and it turned out that while they disagreed on important things they could still talk to each other, could still make a place for each other in their lives again.
Not the case with that bastard, obviously. But that -- Well -- it was only to be expected.
But still -- Takasugi had been around for Zura, when Gintoki wasn’t. The way he was, these days, maybe that hadn’t been a blessing, but -- Gintoki wasn’t there, he couldn’t know. That was the whole point. And for Takasugi too, Zura had been there when Gintoki wasn’t.
So it was all the more important now, as that airship had gone down in flames, as the Kiheitai had left the scene on their new pirate allies’ spaceship, as Zura had looked up again in that sad wistful way while they were parachuting down -- that he wouldn’t be dragged down into cold numbness or blazing destruction, that Gintoki could anchor him to earth, to Edo, and give him what warmth he could offer, that he would remind him that he was Zura as well and not only the general Katsura. So he wouldn’t lose him, too.
And he found he could warm himself in Zura’s open arms, too. To be soothed like that again, to be welcomed -- it was strange, but it was all right. He felt that, finally. Ten years had passed, and Benizakura had happened, and it was all right. For now.
Wounds healed and hair grew out and everyday life went on in its rhythm of both increasing bustle (making new connections, new people to argue with, new people to call his own) and enduring slowness (there were still many quiet days without a single client). There were days of chaotic action -- often ridiculous, sometimes all too serious, and sometimes you weren’t quite aware which was which until it was over -- in between the many days of nothing much happening. It was easy to just lean back and bob along in the comforting chaos. Sometimes he could even be good for something. And the kids were there to help and to hound him.
They were all stuck in Sazae-san time, seasons following one another but nobody growing older. Breathing space. They could pretend things didn’t have to be serious again, that they were safely leading comedy lives now. Zura and him both played their part, as they would zero in on small things that didn’t truly matter but which both of them would argue at length and with apparent great conviction. Low-stakes quarrels, reassuring and comforting. Sometimes you could fool yourself that life could just keep going on like this.
There were times when he wanted Zura to be just a little bit more serious, mostly so Gintoki could be the one telling him to shut up and stop worrying (like he did tell him to stop fussing, stop being so gloomy, stop nagging me, stop being such a wet rag killjoy; like in the old days) -- but he never wanted him to be too serious, not to step out of the pretense and the illusion entirely. In any case, Zura would rarely comply. Instead he would derail even more into lunatic antics and the most convoluted delusions, almost as if he was taunting him. Maybe that didn’t matter too much, because Gintoki could still shut him up with a kiss, and they could still steal longer moments of private time in-between the chaos, despite the fact they were both always broke and had permanent housemates.
Zura’s body didn’t feel fundamentally different under Gintoki’s hands since the war days, despite many new scars; still sinewy, strong, and way too skinny. But he was more sure of himself now, of his likes and dislikes, prudent but less prudish when they were alone, and more adventurous when it came to exploring Gintoki’s body and learning what pleased him now, setting Gintoki’s head spinning, making him intent on repaying the favour. He, like Gintoki, never discussed whether they could keep doing this; neither of them called it a bad idea or a good idea. It simply was.
Saying there was someone they missed in those moments would be like saying they wanted the bleeding edge of a sword. Maybe it wasn’t untrue. But it was still madness.
But that madness was--
No. Don’t say it. Stay here, in this now. Slumped over some greasy bar table, late at night. Stumbling up on tired legs to make breakfast for Kagura and himself. The wind in his hair while driving his moped, Shinpachi holding onto him and diligently upbraiding him for something. The eternal steps with the old bat in the rent ballet. His arms encircling Zura’s waist from behind, letting his lips hover over his reddening cheek. All those thousands of everyday moments.
Stay here.
There is something beating its wings inside his chest, fluttering like a butterfly, struggling to get out. But they are still here. It’s not time.
Don’t say it.
After Benizakura, the pull of everyday Gintama flow, the one that Katsura has resolved to embrace ever since he realized he’s in a manga story and didn’t want to be left behind -- that pull has grown stronger in consequence of an old path (an old bond) being obliterated and erased. He does wish sometimes he was as good at sinking into everyday life as Gintoki is. For Katsura, it’s more of a balancing act. He can’t reach the peaceful civilian shore, that is simply not permitted. But he can cheat and scrounge and focus on smaller objectives, he can postpone and ponder; he can lean just a little bit on the fourth wall to help him escape from captivity. He has no intention to stick around for any execution that would finish off an important secondary character like him.
He has to be strong and he will be strong, but he can let himself relax a little, too. There are so many things he needs to hold, yet at times he feels that he can let go of them for an instant without letting them fall and break. He can seize them again, unhurt and hovering; the magic of Sazae-san time and episodic structure allows for it.
And he can try to shield Gintoki, just a little, to warm him against the terrible cold that he must feel more than anybody else.
It’s a reprieve, a time to breathe and gain strength. And Katsura can indulge in his own way.
Sometimes he sits and watches Gintoki's sleeping face at night, wondering, Do I want to whisk you away somewhere where you could be safe from him?, knowing there probably is no such place. Do I want to use you as a way to stop him, even if that means his death, or even as a way to try to save him? You're the only one who ever could, you know. Save him.
He sighs softly, head slumped. The night is growing lighter and grayer, approaching dawn. As if it even matters what I want. Those two will do what their natures drive them to do anyway. It's foolish to try to stop it.
Let him be a fool many times over, then. And screw their damn natures.
Sakamoto’s voice is nearly drowned out by the noise in the bar. “I know what you’re doing, Zura,” he says, chin resting in hand, pouring more wine into Katsura’s glass.
It’s the night after the Jôi reunion party, which in retrospect feels like it went past way too quickly. Sakamoto has invited them both out for a drink; Gintoki, surprisingly, turned it down, claiming to be tired. Katsura accepted only on the condition that he could choose the place, avoiding Sakamoto’s expensive cabaret hang-outs.
“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura,” he mutters now, glaring at the red wine before slowly raising the glass and sipping from it, mostly to have something to do. He’s not meeting Sakamoto’s gaze, but he feels the warmth of it on his face. They’ve been here for a good while now.
“You’re tryin’ not t'be selfish,” continues Sakamoto. “Tellin’ yourself the important bit is that those other two are all right, ‘cause then you’ll feel happy too, an’ besides you’ll always be able to handle stuff. Right?”
Katsura stiffens, his grip on the wine glass increasing in strength. Sakamoto doesn’t know. Neither Katsura nor Gintoki have told him about how things are with Takasugi now, nothing about Benizakura or any of the rest of it. Katsura isn’t even sure if he prefers for Sakamoto not to know at all, or if he’d rather Sakamoto just raise the issue so Katsura can tell him finally. Simply to get it over with.
Yet he just can’t seem to make himself talk about it without being asked directly. And Sakamoto never asks.
“What are you trying to say?” he says now, his tongue feeling thick.
Sakamoto sighs, though Katsura can still hear a smile in his voice as he replies, “Nothin’ much, ahahaha! I ain’t going to scold ya an’ say you could stand to be more selfish. You’re doin’ the best you can, aren’t ya?”
Katsura exhales, telling himself to relax more, his shoulders easing. It’s all right. It’s just Sakamoto. “That’s… that’s a curious way of looking at it,” he says.
Sakamoto’s hand is warm on his back. “I guess, but it’s true, ain’t it?”
Katsura finally echoes his gesture and rests his chin on his palm, even if he doesn’t slump as much as Sakamoto. “I’m not sure,” he mumbles, not bothering to raise his voice to be heard through all the chatter and music around them. “Selfishness or unselfishness… The main thing is if it works or not, isn’t it?” He sighs again, spreading out his other hand, palm up. “I don’t know how to make it work,” he confesses, in a way he only ever could to this man. “They’re just… It’s hard, Sakamoto. It’s just hard.”
“I know.” Sakamoto lets his hand stay on Katsura’s back. He’s looking straight ahead now, that idealistic visionary look on his face that’s pure Tatsuma. “‘Course it’s gotta be. They’re such numbskulls. You an’ me can be idiots too, but we have nothin’ on those loons. Ahhh… sometimes I wish I could just scoop all of you up on my spaceships an’ spare you from all of this. But then you’d leave Earth all alone and that wouldn’t be good.”
Katsura smiles a little. “I think trouble would just come aboard with us then.”
“Ahahahaha, I’m sure it would!” laughs Sakamoto, then waves at the bartender for a bottle of sake.
Katsura will never admit it, but there is something appealing in the thought, being whisked away from reality for a while. For Gintoki especially he would want that, more than for himself. Even if their reality in truth is all too tangled up with the existence of space travel to start with...
But Sakamoto is their friend and their great hidden hope. And that’s exactly why they mustn’t take his kindness for granted and abuse it too much. Then how could he show up to help at the moment when they need him the most?
“Don’t drink too much, you know you’ll just throw it all up,” he tells Sakamoto, but undermines his message immediately by accepting a cup of sake himself and drinking it up. He doesn’t mind staying here for a while longer.
They hardly ever talk about him during all that time, and when they do, Gintoki’s not the one to bring him up. There’s no use to it. Until the right day, until the right time, words are just going to tumble down aimlessly like bricks of a demolished building. He knows the fight will come one day and so does Zura. He turns his back on that knowledge for a long time, but he never denies it, never throws it away.
He fights for a child to be reunited with his mother, for a friend to be freed from the grasp of her unworthy master and see her own worth; he fights twice for his home, first for the old bat and then for his own identity; he fights for Zura’s friend in space and for a thorny police friend in Edo; he fights the top of the country for the sake of a dying courtesan; he fights the returned old friend of Otae and Shinpachi who’s not who he seems to be; and he fights for a young executioner who keeps stealing his nipple. Each time is like a wave carrying him closer to shore. Or has he been swimming under water and is now pulled to the surface? Each time he feels like his eyes have grown sharper, his bladework tighter, his soul more focused. And it gets harder and harder to just stay here, when the here grows ever smaller and more fragile, even as he can sense Kagura, Shinpachi and himself grow stronger.
Maybe that’s why he raises his voice and calls out for Zura to join him and Hasegawa one night as he passes them by right outside the bar they’re heading for. He expects to be snubbed, but Zura must be in a contrarian “can’t do what Gintoki expects” mood, because he gives them a disapproving look yet sweeps past them to enter the bar haughtily, lecturing them while he makes his thrifty order.
They drink and bicker and talk a lot of nonsense, and some time during the night Hasegawa drifts away somewhere, perhaps after their third bar. Gintoki’s mind grows pretty muddled for a while, but starts to clear up after he’s thrown up over the side of a bridge. A handkerchief is waved in his face, and he takes it, then glances up. In the pale moonlight, Zura’s features look hazy, his eyes a little distant, and his cheeks are rosy. He says something in a low voice that takes Gintoki a moment to parse. Something like ‘I should be the one to fight him’.
“Who’re you talkin’ about?” All Gintoki can think of right then is the owner of the last bar they were at. “Don’ be like that, Zura, I mean we were pretty noisy…” Not that Zura’s ever been much for bar brawls, apart from the regular bickering with Gintoki that he doesn’t need booze to accomplish.
But Zura just sighs, and Gintoki snaps out of that confused trail of thought, a chill seeping through him. He wipes his face on the handkerchief and hands it back as he straightens up, one hand still taking support from the handrail. “You don’t mean that last bar owner,” he says quietly, looking out into the night just like Katsura.
“I don’t.” Zura puts his hands into his sleeves. “Gintoki,” he says, tone slow, serious, voice still held low, “if I fight him, it’s not going to be nice. It will be a hard, brutal thing. It won’t be anything - anything that could be purifying. I won’t be able to save him, I will only do it to stop him.” He pauses, still not moving his head or even his gaze to look at Gintoki. “It won’t be the fight he wants,” he continues, tone even more quiet than before. His face looked melancholy but… certain. All too certain.
“Zura…” Gintoki starts, then stops. He doesn’t know how to even start to put this into words.
“Listen, Gintoki.” Now Zura finally turns his head to look at him, fixing him intently. “It won’t be the fight he wants, no. But I should still be the one to do it. You have too many people who need you. And also… You’re strong, the strongest of us, but against him I’m not sure you could win. But I know I can fight him and win. There is too much at stake.” His hands are grasping the wooden rail tightly; he’s trembling, very slightly. “Not everything can be about what Takasugi wants.”
All this time when we’ve hardly talked about him and now you’re coming out with all of this? Gintoki stands very still. Not that long ago he might have said nothing. But now, after he’s stood with Asaemon on that bridge, and was nearly cut through; after she’s attacked all three of them on the riverbank, slicing without touching them, freeing them instead -- now, the thoughts are gleaming moon-bright, too sharp and present and true to be avoided.
“You’re speaking like you think I’d be storming off towards his high quarters, wherever those are now, and demand to fight him tomorrow,” he says, equally quiet as Zura. “You know as well as me that when I fight him” -- he doesn’t bother saying if -- “it’s going to be because I’ll stand between him and something he wants to destroy.” He pauses a moment, then says, almost as an afterthought, “Besides me.”
“And what do you think you’re talking about, too many relying on me?” he adds in a louder voice. “Then what about you and the damn country, huh? What about bringing in the new dawn of Japan?”
Zura frowns. “Since when do you believe in that?”
He waves that aside. “Doesn’t matter. You believe it. People believe in you.” A deep breath; his voice drops lower again. “I believe in you, too. But I don’t think… I don’t think it will work out like that. True, you’re still important to him. It will hurt him if you die. So you are a main target, because he wants to hurt. But not…” You’re not his alter ego. Not the one he focuses on to make it hurt the most. Not the one who hurt him the deepest before. “Not as much as me,” he finishes, voice hoarse. “I get him, Zura. I know this. He will zoom in on me.”
Zura crosses his arms and gives Gintoki a long look. “Gintoki. We made that declaration together. You’re not supposed to carry it alone.”
Gintoki sighs, slumping. He draws a hand through his hair, wishing he could get back to being drunk. “If I’m wrong… If I’m wrong, or if I fail, I know you will take care of it.”
A flash of intense, tired anger passes over Zura’s beautiful features. Then it passes and he slumps as well. Right then a cloud covers the moon, making it too dark to make out his expression -- the nearest street light is too far.
It can’t be helped. Gintoki rolls his shoulders, swallowing to keep his uneasy stomach steady, hoping he won’t need to throw up a second time. “Need to get home,” he mutters, turning and starting to walk, then realises he faces the wrong side of the bridge and turns again. The moon shines clear once more, and he avoids Zura’s gaze on him as he walks.
It can’t be helped. Gintoki, take care of them for me, will you? It’s a promise. It’s not Zura’s fault that he hadn’t been the one who was told that.
Gintoki doesn’t know if there’s anything that can be done anymore for the three of them, three torn-out pieces of a picture, scattered and wind-swept, brought together and kept apart by so many things, ragged and broken, one and one and one...
But the two of them still walk together for a while, going home in silence in the moonlight.
Continues in Chapter 3