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rainsometimesIt took forever, but now I've finished the third chapter of the GinTakaZura fic and as usual I'm posting here on Dreamwidth as well as on AO3.
Unfortunately I've realized the fic needed more than three chapters to complete the story - it will take two more chapters before I'm finished. (If I'd realized this sooner I might also have completed this third chapter sooner, but that's easy to say now...)
Constructive criticism and other feedback is very welcome!
Many thanks to Sparda for doing the beta for this chapter! Any remaining errors are my responsibility alone.
Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to keep going. ♥
Fic title: There's No Together, There's No Apart, There's Only Impossible Longing
Chapter: 3/5 (plus prologue)
Chapter title: It's Not Love Triangle, It's Shôka Sonjuku
Word Count: 4916
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. This chapter contains post-manga scenes and is 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 2
This patch of the woods is old forest, the sun streaking down through gaps in the leaves, with scattered glimpses of high blue sky in the otherwise compact obscurity. Yet people live not far from here, and there are plenty of traces of civilization. He doesn't remember walking down this particular path before, but it might have happened, years ago. When he came to the school last year, to bring Oboro’s ashes there, he took another route entirely.
This time the ruins of the school are not his main goal. Perhaps the new trail he has been picking up, the clues about the movement of the Naraku and the rumours among the Seibôists, could even have been pursued down a different route in the area, even if the dragon’s vein runs so close to the school. But Takasugi doesn’t even consider that as an option. It’s simply obvious he should go there again.
Today the state of his body hasn’t bothered him much, and he’s been making good time. He’s hardly even sensed any of Zura’s hired eyes gazing at him from afar, from the shadows. Zenzô Hattori of the Oniwabanshu must be taking a break right now -- he’s the ninja that’s the hardest to shake.
Looking down at a clearing from a hill in the forest, he can smell the scent of late-summer flowers in the air, tangy and placid, yet with an undertone of suffused desperation, as if they are all too aware of autumn coming. It doesn’t make any difference to him. He prefers the smell of burning wood to those flowers, but he also prefers the smell of living pine.
There have been a couple of coded messages from Zura, brief but not without interest. Among all the people spying on him, only that same Zenzô Hattori has been trusted with those, and with the even briefer notes Takasugi replies with. His replies didn’t have much in them, just a few hints about the enemy, nothing about the state of his body, and very veiled hints about Shōyō-sensei.
The other day, though, they had an actual telephone call, in a small village that still kept a payphone. It had rung just as Takasugi was passing by. How ridiculous.
The busy, prickly voice at the other end of the telephone line had started by asking about their classmate Yusuke from back in the day, which was obviously a trick question meant to minnow imposters out since he was actually called Yôsuke. Except that Zura had gotten it into his head that it was Yusuke and stubbornly insisted on it, wasting time.
But after that he’d said, briskly enough, “It’s getting hotter here. We could use some cooling breeze from the countryside. Will you be coming soon?”
So he was worried about the growing strength of the enemy.
“I’m sure it’s nothing you can’t handle,” said Takasugi. “I’m not really someone people rely on to cool anything down, you know.” He paused, then said, “What about the ice you usually have over there, is it not around?”
“I believe it will return soon enough, perhaps when you do,” Zura replied. By now his voice had shed some of the arrogant tones belonging to his prime ministerial persona and sounded like just plain Zura again, more worried than annoyed. Well, of course. Gintoki, the “ice” in question, apparently hadn’t been in Edo for a while.
“Oh? Then this cool breeze might just scatter that lousy sugared ice,” said Takasugi, “so it won’t return at all.”
Zura tsked, sounding twelve years younger. “I have an exit plan for this job,” he said abruptly. “Maybe you can help me out with that.” He paused, seeming to draw breath. Takasugi said nothing.
“Just take care,” Zura finished, and hung up.
That was two days ago. It comes back to Takasugi, now, as he makes his way down the wooded hillside, cutting free of the thicket with his sword, not bothering to detour. Coming there from the seat of power, in the midst of propaganda and counterpropaganda, under a fake name and constantly spreading misdirections… and even so, Zura’s voice had still sounded startlingly real. More real in fact than any human sound that Takasugi had heard in a long time. Even sounds of wind and birdsong and thunderstorms feel less real to him now than they used to, but Zura sounds the same as always.
Ages ago, he vaguely recalls now, he’d thought of Zura as the unreal one. But the world has changed and he himself is not much more than a ghost these days, just barely more present and anchored in the world than his big brother disciple living underneath his skin.
And he knows that when he next sees Zura, there will be a fight. Almost certainly that’s what the ‘exit plan’ remark alluded to -- but he suspects it would happen in any case, planned or not. It seems Zura has finally grown into that kind of sword-blank honesty, certainly different from what there is between Gintoki and Takasugi -- a flash of lightning more than raging fire -- but ready to strike all the same, instead of standing back aloofly. Takasugi supposes he can only approve.
As a haggard kind of fate would have it, he did stumble on that very bag of sugary ice before long, right by the ruins of the school. Takasugi didn’t linger for a sentimental reunion; he simply attacked Gintoki as a way of greeting and told him this matter should be left to the ghosts. Best for him to go back and play house again in Edo.
But that was before the Naraku came swarming, not sharing that view of the permhead’s irrelevance at all, hunting him down right as Matako and Takechi approached him. Takasugi had stayed hidden until then, but at that point he realized what Gintoki must have been carrying. After a moment of dizziness, of reverberation, he had jumped into the fight, his tainted blood surging.
He’d tried and failed to steal the heart for himself. The ship he’d arranged passage with earlier had turned up at the right time, helping him aboard. Gintoki managed to climb aboard too.
After that, they talked.
And then, after they had both told their stories, after both had learned what the other had been doing these past two years, Takasugi asked Gintoki to team up with him. To go with him and save Sensei. Gintoki didn’t say he definitely would, but he looked back and didn’t say no, didn’t point out that Takasugi had changed his tune. It was an unspoken ‘yes’ - for now, at least. It would do.
Now it’s two days later, and the boat is making good time. The two of them are having dinner in Takasugi’s cabin, sniping at each other, scuffling a bit, but Takasugi manages to finish his food without anything stolen or spilled that he actually wanted to eat, which he smugly claims as a victory.
Slowly, they both fall quiet. Instead of digging up some dumb insult, Gintoki is gazing at him silently, face expressionless, but with too much going on behind those eyes. Suddenly Takasugi feels annoyingly aware of where Gintoki touched his wrist and the back of his hand a few minutes ago while trying to steal a rice ball.
He glares down at those invisible spots on his skin. If it didn’t sound so lame, he might have called it a tingle: the sensation is spreading, now, down his arm and up to his fingertips. He decides that it’s just because he doesn’t feel like waiting to see how strong this sensation is that he leans in close and grabs Gintoki by the shoulder. If he’s going to do this, he’s not just going to be swept along uselessly. His kiss has teeth in it.
It's been thirteen years since that one time back during the war. Gintoki's moves are slower, now, no longer in such a hurry, at least to start with; Takasugi grudgingly turns down his own impatience a fraction, clutching his fingers in Gintoki's damn ridiculous hair and scratching his back to step up the pace a little but also takes a deep breath to control his rhythm and meet Gintoki halfway. Gintoki makes a bit of a face, then pulls Takasugi into his lap, his hands roaming under his kimono, up and down his back; Takasugi hisses in surprised arousal as Gintoki bites his earlobe. Let him have this for now; in a few minutes I'll flip him, Takasugi decides, not even reflecting on the fact that he's now making impromptu plans for their fucking as if it was a fight (nor does he reflect if Gintoki will prove to be as unpredictable as when he's fighting).
He adjusts his seating and makes his counter-move, satisfaction growing as Gintoki growls wordlessly in response to being flipped, squirming very nicely underneath him. Don't hold back. The pace is picking up.
An unknown amount of time later, there is a shift in the air, a change in the tempo that’s more than just needing a breather. One of them slows down again, and the other follows; but this time, Takasugi couldn’t say who does what.
The earlier frenzy ceases, his fingers smooth out from being claws, instead they seem to turn into antennae that pick up the tremor and texture of every piece of skin and hair. The moves and sounds and distinct seconds in this here and now all split up and drift apart, the pieces floating away from them into the sea of night.
It occurs to him that the two of them aren’t enough to bring those pieces together -- not these two good-for-nothings always tied together at each side of a scale, a constantly oscillating seesaw. They would need Zura here for something like that. He could keep it all together.
He lets the thought go (besides, this isn’t meant to be about pieces brought together smoothly, just tumbling fiercely one last time) at the sound of another moan from Gintoki, managing a smug smirk despite his own flushed and sweaty face and messy hair. Gintoki swears and grabs his shoulders roughly, pulling him down once more.
Hours later, in the middle of the night, he wakes up with nausea and coughs up blood once more. It doesn’t matter.
Climbing up a building, the strong wind pulling at his kimono and messing up his hair, Katsura pauses for a few moments and adjusts his grip. The smell of the sea follows the wind, and so does a feeling of greater opportunities and something one might call freedom.
He never disliked his well-tailored Western clothes that he’s just dumped into a canal, marred by fake blood and tied to a brick. But he doesn’t think he’ll miss them, either, or the manic energy they inhabited along with his prime ministerial persona.
Or maybe he will miss it, a little bit, if he gets to survive the upcoming battle and is able to look back and reflect. There’s no denying that it has been exciting to be the country’s first prime minister, in some ways quite fulfilling even. He threw himself into his task wholeheartedly even if his name was fake and his attitude deliberately off-putting. Soyo will no doubt reverse some of his deliberately unpopular decisions, pleasing many, but he trusts she will leave the important deeper structural reforms untouched. Or he will have to rebel again. He’s spent his politician days outwitting assassins, building alliances, wheedling for loans from Amanto powers (and from some foreign Earth nations less badly hit by the past 22 years), pushing through egalitarian laws, building the basis of a new school system, putting together a constitution, and keeping tabs on the return of the Tendôshu and the subsequent rise of the Seibô cult.
The work is not done, it’s not the kind of work that can truly be done for good. But he finally feels like he’s done enough that he would be able to look Shôyô-sensei in the eye now, if he came back.
And so now he’s free to just go and be Kotarô Katsura again.
He continues his climb, his pace a little slower now, taking care not to be seen by the Seibôists who are also ascending this building and are clearly targeting Gintoki and Takasugi on the neighbour roof. Judging by the stances of the latter two, they might get too busy charging each other to take much notice. Katsura suspects Takasugi still hasn’t let Gintoki in on the whole plot, leaving him to draw the worst conclusions about the Space Terminal blowing up and the presumed death of Zuramp.
Having reached the roof, he sighs to himself and smiles a little. There’s still so much grief and pain, and the shock of seeing Takasugi’s pale, wan face from earlier today still hasn’t left him entirely. “But now we’re here,” he whispers to himself. “We can risk it all, together.” And he can’t help but think, as he readies himself to leap into action -- he intends to grab Sensei’s heart for himself, at least for a moment or two -- that somehow things will turn out all right in the end. All the doubts are gone from his heart.
We can do this.
Spread your wings, and fly. He wasn’t going to let them leave him out anymore.
But in the end, it still comes down to the other two, bearing the whole weight of what has shaped them, of what they face; it's they who have to rescue, defeat, purify, sacrifice, kill, and, for one of them, die. Katsura is left to be support, to hold everything together as well as he can. He is spared the pain of those last dreadful seconds. He's not allowed the chance to say goodbye.
He is overwhelmed, not yet by cold loss, but a kind of enormous, unbearable tenderness. But he holds his ground, and endures.
They’d come to the end of it all once more, and not all had been lost to grief and darkness, not this time. But too much had still been torn away from his hands that was precious.
What did you do? Well, Gintoki had done this before, and it was harder the last time. He knew, deep in his bones: you picked the pieces of yourself up and let the stream of life carry you onwards. You went on holding those shards of memory close, jagged edges and all.
You didn’t forget a single word, a single second. You kept it all inside your chest, took a deep breath, and held still. While life kept happening around you.
There were times when he felt like he wanted to talk to Zura, that maybe he ought to do that. To say how different it felt to believe someone deeply lost when he was still alive, and to have that someone truly be irretrievably gone, but not before they had been more close than ever. Those two directions of pain and weight.
Several times he felt like saying such things even if it was obvious, until at last he had dreamed about that kind of discussion so often he would start to forget he'd never actually told this to Zura. But then again he was sure Zura already knew all of that.
What neither of them would touch upon, both silently agreeing not to raise the issue, was that perhaps irretrievably gone wasn't entirely true after all.
Should they hope? Would it be a sin to hope? Gintoki didn’t know.
He stayed away, mostly, from the town where Matako and the boy lived. He never visited their house during all that time, or even talked to the boy, except for once.
Finding out how to go on wasn’t easy. It felt like there were a lot of false starts. And maybe it was due to all that Altana or the weird, unfocused feeling of the manga ending or something else, but a sense of irreality hung over Katsura for a long while afterwards.
He put on a mask to play vigilante for a while, the fake ghost of the fake prime minister. It seemed to annoy Gintoki, but he never asked Katsura why he was doing it, or even asked him to stop. Katsura thought it was obvious that even a kinder, gentler Shinsengumi (now with ex-Jôi colleagues among other parts in the city police) would still encounter plenty of resentment and hostility. Oba-Z the vigilante was an outlet for those sentiments, acting in favour of legitimate grievances on the one hand and preventing more destructive acts on the other. Soyo had him come in as a secret government consultant a couple of times a month. Apart from that, he floundered, sometimes helping out at Hokuto Shinken, sometimes taking on various part-time jobs in Kabuki like in the old days. Some days he would aimlessly stroll through the city for hours on his own, thoughts spinning but not finding firm footing.
Then, from his old net of connections and new ones, reports started to come in, of a mid-sized town far from Edo which had a lot of tolerance for people with checkered pasts who now wanted a life in quiet. Her real name didn’t figure in the reports. A woman who was still wanted by the law, still considered too high-profile to be put on the amnesty lists, would need fake names and fake identity papers both for herself and the child, but Katsura had learned about them. She had taken in a housekeeper, a local woman with a past in the Jôi herself. Apparently Takechi sent her money, and she took on a few part-time jobs in the town as well. And the child grew.
Whatever the child was, it was clear he wasn’t ordinary. On his very first visit there, Katsura could see it for himself, just like the reports had said. He was just barely a year old, said Matako (who looked not entirely comfortable with Katsura’s presence, her edges still honed sharp; yet she seemed more full, more self-contained, somehow, than he could remember). But the child looked at least two. Closer to three, really -- he was talking in full sentences, running around and climbing on things.
In the coming years, the boy kept aging between two or three times faster than normal. At three years old, he seemed more like 8. This kind of thing could have led to big problems, but the neighbourhood was a surprisingly good one, accepting Matako’s explanation that the child had an illness that made you age faster. The local priests didn’t care about it, either. And while it proved harder to make permanent friends that way -- what did even “friends his own age” mean for this boy? -- apparently it wasn’t impossible.
At least so Katsura gathered when he came on his twice-yearly visits and talked to Matako for a while. They were polite and reserved with each other. He said little to the boy himself, who was mostly outside or stayed in his room reading or playing video games. Apart from his speedy growth, he seemed a healthy enough child; and Katsura was afraid to inadvertently influence him, one way or another.
If it was a reincarnation, if the likeness was no coincidence, then he must be intended to live peacefully now. And that probably meant people like Katsura and Gintoki shouldn’t have too much to do with him. They should maintain their distance, and keep the ache to themselves.
Katsura opened the window and looked down. Gintoki, clinging to the wall, looked up at him with a pained look. He had a pocket-knife between his teeth and now mumbled something incomprehensible.
“Give it up, Gintoki, you’re not Loronoa Zoro,” said Katsura, opening the window wide and bending down to give Gintoki a hand.
“Your window is really inconveniently placed,” he muttered once he was inside, putting the knife back into its sheath. “It’s so inconsiderate of you. You owe me at least two parfaits for that.”
Katsura’s landlady was certainly a lady of great curiosity, but it was still unexpected to see this role reversal. Did Gintoki dislike gossip this much? Was he still afraid word would get back to Shinpachi and Kagura? Katsura was privately sure that ship had sailed long ago, but perhaps it gave Gintoki a youthful thrill to pretend their trysts were still secret.
“I’m glad you’re finally giving into your romantic instincts,” he said. “You can follow that up by paying for my meal the next time we go out.”
Gintoki made a face. “I’m getting strawberry milk.” He left for the kitchen.
“We’re all out,” said Katsura, following him to make himself tea. Gintoki didn’t live here and Elizabeth had moved out, but it felt right to use “we” anyway.
“What a lousy host,” Gintoki replied, taking out a pudding from the fridge instead. “You’re swimming in dirty politician money these days, you should keep your fridge well-stocked for guests.”
“No, I’m not, will you stop with that?” Katsura sighed. He did have a tiny bit more margin in his budgets these days, but so did Gintoki, he was fairly sure. Despite all odds the Odd Jobs Ginchan had started to get more regular work and better paid for it, chiefly due (in Katsura’s opinion) to the increased confidence and finesse of the younger partners.
There was still pudding in Gintoki’s mouth as he grabbed a hold of Katsura’s shoulders, leaned over and gave him a long hard kiss. There were rings under his eyes. He’d had another sleepless night, no doubt. His grip was trembling slightly.
“You look tired,” he had the gall to say after breaking off the kiss, taking Katsura’s offered tissue and wiping his mouth and fingers.
“You’re the one who looks tired, you unselfaware fool,” replied Katsura. He sat back and smoothed his kimono.
“Ah, but I have a good excuse and you don’t,” said Gintoki, yawning and rubbing his eyes.
Katsura narrowed his eyes. “If that is yet another complaint that ‘oh, I’m the main character and my manga ended, a secondary character couldn’t possibly understand’... It’s been three years, Gintoki!”
“Oi oi oi! That doesn’t sound like me at all, don’t try to be cute. I haven’t bitched about the ending half as much as some people.”
“What is it, then? Did Leader bring home another pet beetle and had to sit with it as it grew sick and you kept her company?”
“She’s nineteen by now, you know! ...And the last time she did that it wasn’t a beetle, it was a runaway baby crocodile.”
“And that was last month. She will probably keep doing such things all her life,” said Katsura, smiling with satisfaction. He sipped his tea and went on, “Then what? Did Otose-dono have some unpleasant customers and you decided to stay up and make sure they wouldn't come back and start trouble?”
Gintoki clicked his tongue scornfully. ”Like there's anyone who'd try that these days. Nah, it was the new video game I got last week, I was on a roll and cleared so many stages, didn’t get to bed till the small hours.”
Katsura doubted that was altogether true. ”Oh, of course,” he said blandly. ”By the way, did you hear that Elizabeth is going to space for a family reunion? They've tried to plan one for over a year now but something's always come up for one of them, but it finally seems to happen this time.”
He put the empty tea cup down and reached to draw one hand through Gintoki's thick hair; Gintoki closed his eyes for a second, hissing quietly. He grabbed Katsura's other hand and held it between his own hands.
”If you weren't so stupidly sturdy I'd worry about you sometimes, Zura” he said, his voice sounding slightly hoarse. ”I'm fine, I always land on my feet, I've got my own business to fall back on no matter what. But you're a washed-out terrorist with nothing but fluff between the ears who can't keep a job for longer than a month...”
”Nonsense,” said Katsura. ”I told you last time. It's not Zura, it's Great Teacher Katsura For Two Schools In Edo, Filling In On Tuesdays And Fridays. Instead of video games, it's lesson planning and coursework grading that takes up my evenings these days!” Or, well, it would be eventually, probably. So far he'd been winging it for all his lessons and the regular teachers hadn't delegated any grading to him.
Gintoki let go of his hand and picked his nose again. ”You mean they haven't fired you yet?” he drawled. “They've got to be insane. Who in their right mind would entrust impressionable young minds to you?”
”You should come in and help teach them kendo some time,” said Katsura, ignoring this. He was about to add a platitude about how tiring yourself out with honest work in the day led to sleeping better at night, but stopped himself. Gintoki had a faraway look in his eyes again and Katsura had the feeling that trying to distract him right now could end up silencing something important.
“You know, you never told me how that went down, back then,” the man finally said, in a quieter voice.
“Eh?” Katsura raised an eyebrow.
“With the two of you, back in the war. You and Shortstuff… you did it, right? At least once or twice?”
Katsura blinked, not expecting that. He flushed. “What… What kind of… Why would I have told you about that? It’s not like… You never asked!”
Gintoki shrugged.
“What about the two of you?” Katsura countered. “Didn’t you do the deed? At least once? He rather hinted as much.”
Gintoki scoffed. “He would.” But he sighed, putting his arms behind his head and looking up towards the ceiling. “There ain’t much to tell… it was when we went out to a downed enemy airship, just the two of us. Bloody hot day. He started it.”
Katsura twinned a strand of hair around a finger. “I don’t have much to tell either. It was night, and we were in the command tent. We’d been looking at maps and reading through reports. It was late, and we were both sleepy, but I thought I should hang on for a little longer. Then I noticed that he looked cold, Takasugi. So I started to look for a blanket or something to put across his shoulders, but he told me to leave it be. And he gave me this look…” he trailed off, wanting to describe it right. He would never have brought this up on his own, but now that the question had been put, it should get a good answer.
“He looked as if he had just remembered something he ought to be doing… Only there was something entirely new in his eyes, too.” It hadn’t been like how Gintoki would look when he was in the mood, either… Or how Takasugi would look at Katsura in years to come, in those private moments. There had been no underlying sardonic gleam or deeper hatred, of self or of him, back in the war. Hidden fire, yes, that had been there already. “He moved closer and said we’d done enough for tonight, we could get warmer another way… he kissed me on the neck first.”
“Man, he sounds so much smoother with you than with me,” complained Gintoki, picking his nose and shifting his legs.
Katsura frowned at him, but continued. “Come to think of it, I remember now, it was a little odd on my part… At first I was afraid someone might walk in and see us. It would be embarrassing to get caught. But I didn’t ask him to stop, that didn’t even occur to me. I only suggested that we’d go to one of the utility sheds instead.”
“Hey, that’s just unfair. I used to have to convince you so many times before you could let yourself relax and have some fun for a few minutes.” Gintoki poked him in the chest accusingly.
Katsura swatted Gintoki’s finger away and huffed. “We were in the midst of war, Gintoki. Besides, sometimes I took the initiative.” Sometimes Gintoki had been the one who wasn’t in the mood, either, rebuffing an offered hug after a bad defeat. But still… In a sense, they had been able to take each other’s embraces for granted. Back in those days, and then much later again, after Benizakura.
But he doubted Gintoki could fully understand. Those two had always been so intense towards one another, laser-focused, mirror images; brothers in soul and spirit entwined by the red string of fate. Perhaps it had been pathetic of Katsura to react the way he did. But he hadn’t been used to being that much in focus for Takasugi’s gaze, to feel that fiery look on him and nobody else. The weight of it, as if being with Katsura right then could matter that much… No, he simply couldn’t have let that moment slip away.
He couldn’t say that, of course. Not now. It was a childish sentiment, and there was too much emptiness inside them both.
Continues in Chapter 4
Unfortunately I've realized the fic needed more than three chapters to complete the story - it will take two more chapters before I'm finished. (If I'd realized this sooner I might also have completed this third chapter sooner, but that's easy to say now...)
Constructive criticism and other feedback is very welcome!
Many thanks to Sparda for doing the beta for this chapter! Any remaining errors are my responsibility alone.
Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to keep going. ♥
Fic title: There's No Together, There's No Apart, There's Only Impossible Longing
Chapter: 3/5 (plus prologue)
Chapter title: It's Not Love Triangle, It's Shôka Sonjuku
Word Count: 4916
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. This chapter contains post-manga scenes and is 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 2
This patch of the woods is old forest, the sun streaking down through gaps in the leaves, with scattered glimpses of high blue sky in the otherwise compact obscurity. Yet people live not far from here, and there are plenty of traces of civilization. He doesn't remember walking down this particular path before, but it might have happened, years ago. When he came to the school last year, to bring Oboro’s ashes there, he took another route entirely.
This time the ruins of the school are not his main goal. Perhaps the new trail he has been picking up, the clues about the movement of the Naraku and the rumours among the Seibôists, could even have been pursued down a different route in the area, even if the dragon’s vein runs so close to the school. But Takasugi doesn’t even consider that as an option. It’s simply obvious he should go there again.
Today the state of his body hasn’t bothered him much, and he’s been making good time. He’s hardly even sensed any of Zura’s hired eyes gazing at him from afar, from the shadows. Zenzô Hattori of the Oniwabanshu must be taking a break right now -- he’s the ninja that’s the hardest to shake.
Looking down at a clearing from a hill in the forest, he can smell the scent of late-summer flowers in the air, tangy and placid, yet with an undertone of suffused desperation, as if they are all too aware of autumn coming. It doesn’t make any difference to him. He prefers the smell of burning wood to those flowers, but he also prefers the smell of living pine.
There have been a couple of coded messages from Zura, brief but not without interest. Among all the people spying on him, only that same Zenzô Hattori has been trusted with those, and with the even briefer notes Takasugi replies with. His replies didn’t have much in them, just a few hints about the enemy, nothing about the state of his body, and very veiled hints about Shōyō-sensei.
The other day, though, they had an actual telephone call, in a small village that still kept a payphone. It had rung just as Takasugi was passing by. How ridiculous.
The busy, prickly voice at the other end of the telephone line had started by asking about their classmate Yusuke from back in the day, which was obviously a trick question meant to minnow imposters out since he was actually called Yôsuke. Except that Zura had gotten it into his head that it was Yusuke and stubbornly insisted on it, wasting time.
But after that he’d said, briskly enough, “It’s getting hotter here. We could use some cooling breeze from the countryside. Will you be coming soon?”
So he was worried about the growing strength of the enemy.
“I’m sure it’s nothing you can’t handle,” said Takasugi. “I’m not really someone people rely on to cool anything down, you know.” He paused, then said, “What about the ice you usually have over there, is it not around?”
“I believe it will return soon enough, perhaps when you do,” Zura replied. By now his voice had shed some of the arrogant tones belonging to his prime ministerial persona and sounded like just plain Zura again, more worried than annoyed. Well, of course. Gintoki, the “ice” in question, apparently hadn’t been in Edo for a while.
“Oh? Then this cool breeze might just scatter that lousy sugared ice,” said Takasugi, “so it won’t return at all.”
Zura tsked, sounding twelve years younger. “I have an exit plan for this job,” he said abruptly. “Maybe you can help me out with that.” He paused, seeming to draw breath. Takasugi said nothing.
“Just take care,” Zura finished, and hung up.
That was two days ago. It comes back to Takasugi, now, as he makes his way down the wooded hillside, cutting free of the thicket with his sword, not bothering to detour. Coming there from the seat of power, in the midst of propaganda and counterpropaganda, under a fake name and constantly spreading misdirections… and even so, Zura’s voice had still sounded startlingly real. More real in fact than any human sound that Takasugi had heard in a long time. Even sounds of wind and birdsong and thunderstorms feel less real to him now than they used to, but Zura sounds the same as always.
Ages ago, he vaguely recalls now, he’d thought of Zura as the unreal one. But the world has changed and he himself is not much more than a ghost these days, just barely more present and anchored in the world than his big brother disciple living underneath his skin.
And he knows that when he next sees Zura, there will be a fight. Almost certainly that’s what the ‘exit plan’ remark alluded to -- but he suspects it would happen in any case, planned or not. It seems Zura has finally grown into that kind of sword-blank honesty, certainly different from what there is between Gintoki and Takasugi -- a flash of lightning more than raging fire -- but ready to strike all the same, instead of standing back aloofly. Takasugi supposes he can only approve.
As a haggard kind of fate would have it, he did stumble on that very bag of sugary ice before long, right by the ruins of the school. Takasugi didn’t linger for a sentimental reunion; he simply attacked Gintoki as a way of greeting and told him this matter should be left to the ghosts. Best for him to go back and play house again in Edo.
But that was before the Naraku came swarming, not sharing that view of the permhead’s irrelevance at all, hunting him down right as Matako and Takechi approached him. Takasugi had stayed hidden until then, but at that point he realized what Gintoki must have been carrying. After a moment of dizziness, of reverberation, he had jumped into the fight, his tainted blood surging.
He’d tried and failed to steal the heart for himself. The ship he’d arranged passage with earlier had turned up at the right time, helping him aboard. Gintoki managed to climb aboard too.
After that, they talked.
And then, after they had both told their stories, after both had learned what the other had been doing these past two years, Takasugi asked Gintoki to team up with him. To go with him and save Sensei. Gintoki didn’t say he definitely would, but he looked back and didn’t say no, didn’t point out that Takasugi had changed his tune. It was an unspoken ‘yes’ - for now, at least. It would do.
Now it’s two days later, and the boat is making good time. The two of them are having dinner in Takasugi’s cabin, sniping at each other, scuffling a bit, but Takasugi manages to finish his food without anything stolen or spilled that he actually wanted to eat, which he smugly claims as a victory.
Slowly, they both fall quiet. Instead of digging up some dumb insult, Gintoki is gazing at him silently, face expressionless, but with too much going on behind those eyes. Suddenly Takasugi feels annoyingly aware of where Gintoki touched his wrist and the back of his hand a few minutes ago while trying to steal a rice ball.
He glares down at those invisible spots on his skin. If it didn’t sound so lame, he might have called it a tingle: the sensation is spreading, now, down his arm and up to his fingertips. He decides that it’s just because he doesn’t feel like waiting to see how strong this sensation is that he leans in close and grabs Gintoki by the shoulder. If he’s going to do this, he’s not just going to be swept along uselessly. His kiss has teeth in it.
It's been thirteen years since that one time back during the war. Gintoki's moves are slower, now, no longer in such a hurry, at least to start with; Takasugi grudgingly turns down his own impatience a fraction, clutching his fingers in Gintoki's damn ridiculous hair and scratching his back to step up the pace a little but also takes a deep breath to control his rhythm and meet Gintoki halfway. Gintoki makes a bit of a face, then pulls Takasugi into his lap, his hands roaming under his kimono, up and down his back; Takasugi hisses in surprised arousal as Gintoki bites his earlobe. Let him have this for now; in a few minutes I'll flip him, Takasugi decides, not even reflecting on the fact that he's now making impromptu plans for their fucking as if it was a fight (nor does he reflect if Gintoki will prove to be as unpredictable as when he's fighting).
He adjusts his seating and makes his counter-move, satisfaction growing as Gintoki growls wordlessly in response to being flipped, squirming very nicely underneath him. Don't hold back. The pace is picking up.
An unknown amount of time later, there is a shift in the air, a change in the tempo that’s more than just needing a breather. One of them slows down again, and the other follows; but this time, Takasugi couldn’t say who does what.
The earlier frenzy ceases, his fingers smooth out from being claws, instead they seem to turn into antennae that pick up the tremor and texture of every piece of skin and hair. The moves and sounds and distinct seconds in this here and now all split up and drift apart, the pieces floating away from them into the sea of night.
It occurs to him that the two of them aren’t enough to bring those pieces together -- not these two good-for-nothings always tied together at each side of a scale, a constantly oscillating seesaw. They would need Zura here for something like that. He could keep it all together.
He lets the thought go (besides, this isn’t meant to be about pieces brought together smoothly, just tumbling fiercely one last time) at the sound of another moan from Gintoki, managing a smug smirk despite his own flushed and sweaty face and messy hair. Gintoki swears and grabs his shoulders roughly, pulling him down once more.
Hours later, in the middle of the night, he wakes up with nausea and coughs up blood once more. It doesn’t matter.
Climbing up a building, the strong wind pulling at his kimono and messing up his hair, Katsura pauses for a few moments and adjusts his grip. The smell of the sea follows the wind, and so does a feeling of greater opportunities and something one might call freedom.
He never disliked his well-tailored Western clothes that he’s just dumped into a canal, marred by fake blood and tied to a brick. But he doesn’t think he’ll miss them, either, or the manic energy they inhabited along with his prime ministerial persona.
Or maybe he will miss it, a little bit, if he gets to survive the upcoming battle and is able to look back and reflect. There’s no denying that it has been exciting to be the country’s first prime minister, in some ways quite fulfilling even. He threw himself into his task wholeheartedly even if his name was fake and his attitude deliberately off-putting. Soyo will no doubt reverse some of his deliberately unpopular decisions, pleasing many, but he trusts she will leave the important deeper structural reforms untouched. Or he will have to rebel again. He’s spent his politician days outwitting assassins, building alliances, wheedling for loans from Amanto powers (and from some foreign Earth nations less badly hit by the past 22 years), pushing through egalitarian laws, building the basis of a new school system, putting together a constitution, and keeping tabs on the return of the Tendôshu and the subsequent rise of the Seibô cult.
The work is not done, it’s not the kind of work that can truly be done for good. But he finally feels like he’s done enough that he would be able to look Shôyô-sensei in the eye now, if he came back.
And so now he’s free to just go and be Kotarô Katsura again.
He continues his climb, his pace a little slower now, taking care not to be seen by the Seibôists who are also ascending this building and are clearly targeting Gintoki and Takasugi on the neighbour roof. Judging by the stances of the latter two, they might get too busy charging each other to take much notice. Katsura suspects Takasugi still hasn’t let Gintoki in on the whole plot, leaving him to draw the worst conclusions about the Space Terminal blowing up and the presumed death of Zuramp.
Having reached the roof, he sighs to himself and smiles a little. There’s still so much grief and pain, and the shock of seeing Takasugi’s pale, wan face from earlier today still hasn’t left him entirely. “But now we’re here,” he whispers to himself. “We can risk it all, together.” And he can’t help but think, as he readies himself to leap into action -- he intends to grab Sensei’s heart for himself, at least for a moment or two -- that somehow things will turn out all right in the end. All the doubts are gone from his heart.
We can do this.
Spread your wings, and fly. He wasn’t going to let them leave him out anymore.
But in the end, it still comes down to the other two, bearing the whole weight of what has shaped them, of what they face; it's they who have to rescue, defeat, purify, sacrifice, kill, and, for one of them, die. Katsura is left to be support, to hold everything together as well as he can. He is spared the pain of those last dreadful seconds. He's not allowed the chance to say goodbye.
He is overwhelmed, not yet by cold loss, but a kind of enormous, unbearable tenderness. But he holds his ground, and endures.
They’d come to the end of it all once more, and not all had been lost to grief and darkness, not this time. But too much had still been torn away from his hands that was precious.
What did you do? Well, Gintoki had done this before, and it was harder the last time. He knew, deep in his bones: you picked the pieces of yourself up and let the stream of life carry you onwards. You went on holding those shards of memory close, jagged edges and all.
You didn’t forget a single word, a single second. You kept it all inside your chest, took a deep breath, and held still. While life kept happening around you.
There were times when he felt like he wanted to talk to Zura, that maybe he ought to do that. To say how different it felt to believe someone deeply lost when he was still alive, and to have that someone truly be irretrievably gone, but not before they had been more close than ever. Those two directions of pain and weight.
Several times he felt like saying such things even if it was obvious, until at last he had dreamed about that kind of discussion so often he would start to forget he'd never actually told this to Zura. But then again he was sure Zura already knew all of that.
What neither of them would touch upon, both silently agreeing not to raise the issue, was that perhaps irretrievably gone wasn't entirely true after all.
Should they hope? Would it be a sin to hope? Gintoki didn’t know.
He stayed away, mostly, from the town where Matako and the boy lived. He never visited their house during all that time, or even talked to the boy, except for once.
Finding out how to go on wasn’t easy. It felt like there were a lot of false starts. And maybe it was due to all that Altana or the weird, unfocused feeling of the manga ending or something else, but a sense of irreality hung over Katsura for a long while afterwards.
He put on a mask to play vigilante for a while, the fake ghost of the fake prime minister. It seemed to annoy Gintoki, but he never asked Katsura why he was doing it, or even asked him to stop. Katsura thought it was obvious that even a kinder, gentler Shinsengumi (now with ex-Jôi colleagues among other parts in the city police) would still encounter plenty of resentment and hostility. Oba-Z the vigilante was an outlet for those sentiments, acting in favour of legitimate grievances on the one hand and preventing more destructive acts on the other. Soyo had him come in as a secret government consultant a couple of times a month. Apart from that, he floundered, sometimes helping out at Hokuto Shinken, sometimes taking on various part-time jobs in Kabuki like in the old days. Some days he would aimlessly stroll through the city for hours on his own, thoughts spinning but not finding firm footing.
Then, from his old net of connections and new ones, reports started to come in, of a mid-sized town far from Edo which had a lot of tolerance for people with checkered pasts who now wanted a life in quiet. Her real name didn’t figure in the reports. A woman who was still wanted by the law, still considered too high-profile to be put on the amnesty lists, would need fake names and fake identity papers both for herself and the child, but Katsura had learned about them. She had taken in a housekeeper, a local woman with a past in the Jôi herself. Apparently Takechi sent her money, and she took on a few part-time jobs in the town as well. And the child grew.
Whatever the child was, it was clear he wasn’t ordinary. On his very first visit there, Katsura could see it for himself, just like the reports had said. He was just barely a year old, said Matako (who looked not entirely comfortable with Katsura’s presence, her edges still honed sharp; yet she seemed more full, more self-contained, somehow, than he could remember). But the child looked at least two. Closer to three, really -- he was talking in full sentences, running around and climbing on things.
In the coming years, the boy kept aging between two or three times faster than normal. At three years old, he seemed more like 8. This kind of thing could have led to big problems, but the neighbourhood was a surprisingly good one, accepting Matako’s explanation that the child had an illness that made you age faster. The local priests didn’t care about it, either. And while it proved harder to make permanent friends that way -- what did even “friends his own age” mean for this boy? -- apparently it wasn’t impossible.
At least so Katsura gathered when he came on his twice-yearly visits and talked to Matako for a while. They were polite and reserved with each other. He said little to the boy himself, who was mostly outside or stayed in his room reading or playing video games. Apart from his speedy growth, he seemed a healthy enough child; and Katsura was afraid to inadvertently influence him, one way or another.
If it was a reincarnation, if the likeness was no coincidence, then he must be intended to live peacefully now. And that probably meant people like Katsura and Gintoki shouldn’t have too much to do with him. They should maintain their distance, and keep the ache to themselves.
Katsura opened the window and looked down. Gintoki, clinging to the wall, looked up at him with a pained look. He had a pocket-knife between his teeth and now mumbled something incomprehensible.
“Give it up, Gintoki, you’re not Loronoa Zoro,” said Katsura, opening the window wide and bending down to give Gintoki a hand.
“Your window is really inconveniently placed,” he muttered once he was inside, putting the knife back into its sheath. “It’s so inconsiderate of you. You owe me at least two parfaits for that.”
Katsura’s landlady was certainly a lady of great curiosity, but it was still unexpected to see this role reversal. Did Gintoki dislike gossip this much? Was he still afraid word would get back to Shinpachi and Kagura? Katsura was privately sure that ship had sailed long ago, but perhaps it gave Gintoki a youthful thrill to pretend their trysts were still secret.
“I’m glad you’re finally giving into your romantic instincts,” he said. “You can follow that up by paying for my meal the next time we go out.”
Gintoki made a face. “I’m getting strawberry milk.” He left for the kitchen.
“We’re all out,” said Katsura, following him to make himself tea. Gintoki didn’t live here and Elizabeth had moved out, but it felt right to use “we” anyway.
“What a lousy host,” Gintoki replied, taking out a pudding from the fridge instead. “You’re swimming in dirty politician money these days, you should keep your fridge well-stocked for guests.”
“No, I’m not, will you stop with that?” Katsura sighed. He did have a tiny bit more margin in his budgets these days, but so did Gintoki, he was fairly sure. Despite all odds the Odd Jobs Ginchan had started to get more regular work and better paid for it, chiefly due (in Katsura’s opinion) to the increased confidence and finesse of the younger partners.
There was still pudding in Gintoki’s mouth as he grabbed a hold of Katsura’s shoulders, leaned over and gave him a long hard kiss. There were rings under his eyes. He’d had another sleepless night, no doubt. His grip was trembling slightly.
“You look tired,” he had the gall to say after breaking off the kiss, taking Katsura’s offered tissue and wiping his mouth and fingers.
“You’re the one who looks tired, you unselfaware fool,” replied Katsura. He sat back and smoothed his kimono.
“Ah, but I have a good excuse and you don’t,” said Gintoki, yawning and rubbing his eyes.
Katsura narrowed his eyes. “If that is yet another complaint that ‘oh, I’m the main character and my manga ended, a secondary character couldn’t possibly understand’... It’s been three years, Gintoki!”
“Oi oi oi! That doesn’t sound like me at all, don’t try to be cute. I haven’t bitched about the ending half as much as some people.”
“What is it, then? Did Leader bring home another pet beetle and had to sit with it as it grew sick and you kept her company?”
“She’s nineteen by now, you know! ...And the last time she did that it wasn’t a beetle, it was a runaway baby crocodile.”
“And that was last month. She will probably keep doing such things all her life,” said Katsura, smiling with satisfaction. He sipped his tea and went on, “Then what? Did Otose-dono have some unpleasant customers and you decided to stay up and make sure they wouldn't come back and start trouble?”
Gintoki clicked his tongue scornfully. ”Like there's anyone who'd try that these days. Nah, it was the new video game I got last week, I was on a roll and cleared so many stages, didn’t get to bed till the small hours.”
Katsura doubted that was altogether true. ”Oh, of course,” he said blandly. ”By the way, did you hear that Elizabeth is going to space for a family reunion? They've tried to plan one for over a year now but something's always come up for one of them, but it finally seems to happen this time.”
He put the empty tea cup down and reached to draw one hand through Gintoki's thick hair; Gintoki closed his eyes for a second, hissing quietly. He grabbed Katsura's other hand and held it between his own hands.
”If you weren't so stupidly sturdy I'd worry about you sometimes, Zura” he said, his voice sounding slightly hoarse. ”I'm fine, I always land on my feet, I've got my own business to fall back on no matter what. But you're a washed-out terrorist with nothing but fluff between the ears who can't keep a job for longer than a month...”
”Nonsense,” said Katsura. ”I told you last time. It's not Zura, it's Great Teacher Katsura For Two Schools In Edo, Filling In On Tuesdays And Fridays. Instead of video games, it's lesson planning and coursework grading that takes up my evenings these days!” Or, well, it would be eventually, probably. So far he'd been winging it for all his lessons and the regular teachers hadn't delegated any grading to him.
Gintoki let go of his hand and picked his nose again. ”You mean they haven't fired you yet?” he drawled. “They've got to be insane. Who in their right mind would entrust impressionable young minds to you?”
”You should come in and help teach them kendo some time,” said Katsura, ignoring this. He was about to add a platitude about how tiring yourself out with honest work in the day led to sleeping better at night, but stopped himself. Gintoki had a faraway look in his eyes again and Katsura had the feeling that trying to distract him right now could end up silencing something important.
“You know, you never told me how that went down, back then,” the man finally said, in a quieter voice.
“Eh?” Katsura raised an eyebrow.
“With the two of you, back in the war. You and Shortstuff… you did it, right? At least once or twice?”
Katsura blinked, not expecting that. He flushed. “What… What kind of… Why would I have told you about that? It’s not like… You never asked!”
Gintoki shrugged.
“What about the two of you?” Katsura countered. “Didn’t you do the deed? At least once? He rather hinted as much.”
Gintoki scoffed. “He would.” But he sighed, putting his arms behind his head and looking up towards the ceiling. “There ain’t much to tell… it was when we went out to a downed enemy airship, just the two of us. Bloody hot day. He started it.”
Katsura twinned a strand of hair around a finger. “I don’t have much to tell either. It was night, and we were in the command tent. We’d been looking at maps and reading through reports. It was late, and we were both sleepy, but I thought I should hang on for a little longer. Then I noticed that he looked cold, Takasugi. So I started to look for a blanket or something to put across his shoulders, but he told me to leave it be. And he gave me this look…” he trailed off, wanting to describe it right. He would never have brought this up on his own, but now that the question had been put, it should get a good answer.
“He looked as if he had just remembered something he ought to be doing… Only there was something entirely new in his eyes, too.” It hadn’t been like how Gintoki would look when he was in the mood, either… Or how Takasugi would look at Katsura in years to come, in those private moments. There had been no underlying sardonic gleam or deeper hatred, of self or of him, back in the war. Hidden fire, yes, that had been there already. “He moved closer and said we’d done enough for tonight, we could get warmer another way… he kissed me on the neck first.”
“Man, he sounds so much smoother with you than with me,” complained Gintoki, picking his nose and shifting his legs.
Katsura frowned at him, but continued. “Come to think of it, I remember now, it was a little odd on my part… At first I was afraid someone might walk in and see us. It would be embarrassing to get caught. But I didn’t ask him to stop, that didn’t even occur to me. I only suggested that we’d go to one of the utility sheds instead.”
“Hey, that’s just unfair. I used to have to convince you so many times before you could let yourself relax and have some fun for a few minutes.” Gintoki poked him in the chest accusingly.
Katsura swatted Gintoki’s finger away and huffed. “We were in the midst of war, Gintoki. Besides, sometimes I took the initiative.” Sometimes Gintoki had been the one who wasn’t in the mood, either, rebuffing an offered hug after a bad defeat. But still… In a sense, they had been able to take each other’s embraces for granted. Back in those days, and then much later again, after Benizakura.
But he doubted Gintoki could fully understand. Those two had always been so intense towards one another, laser-focused, mirror images; brothers in soul and spirit entwined by the red string of fate. Perhaps it had been pathetic of Katsura to react the way he did. But he hadn’t been used to being that much in focus for Takasugi’s gaze, to feel that fiery look on him and nobody else. The weight of it, as if being with Katsura right then could matter that much… No, he simply couldn’t have let that moment slip away.
He couldn’t say that, of course. Not now. It was a childish sentiment, and there was too much emptiness inside them both.
Continues in Chapter 4