follow me into the rain

AO3 writer pearthery wrote me a shortfic as a gift! If you don't know pearthery, she's an excellent fic writer with a great sense for characterization and a really nice prose style.

This fic focuses on young Katsura and goes back and forth between his young childhood, older childhood, and the war years. Mostly it feels like gen to me with a mild flavour of Gintoki/Katsura, which it's tagged as. It mixes sadness and thoughtfulness and introspective analysis and humour really well. ♥

still waters

Sample sentence:

After she passed, he kept that safe, soothing calmness tucked safely in the space within his ribcage and people kept telling him, "you're such a good student, Katsura-kun" and "it's a shame your family was so poor, Katsura-kun" and "no offence, but your face makes me angry sometimes" and "Zura, are you a shrine maiden or something? I don't think I've ever seen you upset. Are you scared of getting wrinkles on your face, is that why? I didn't expect you to be so vain, I thought you were a goody-two-shoes sort, huh, but you're actually kind of preppy. Hah, I knew you weren't as nice as everyone thinks you are—" and that final one was really annoying and totally uncalled for, but as always, Kotaro. Was. Calm.