Chapter Text
It was only natural that Gintoki’s nightmares should take the marvellous opportunity handed to them, and gleefully remix some of their greatest hits with a horrifying montage featuring the worst moments of the past few days. They pulled Gintoki from what should have been healing sleep into a restless riptide that confused fears with memories until he was thrashing under the weight of too much loss and failure to bear.
Pain — blessedly real, terribly annoying — yanked him most of the way to wakefulness, and then he had to continue thrashing because he was clearly being more than just figuratively suffocated. “Gah!” Gintoki flailed, trying to come up for air and ending up having to bat aside enough pillows for an entire high school sports camp sleepover just to sit up.
Which he did, only to find himself transported back in time again. Dappled with leaf-shadow, warm afternoon sunlight spilled over him where he sat staring out over a calm garden, gently stirring crimson leaves filling his vision. The smell of clean tatami and polished wood and rich earth was heady with nostalgia, but when he turned it wasn’t because he was hoping to see anyone long gone standing beside him.
Not when he had those two right there — Shinpachi sitting in a futon strewn with almost as many pillows as Gintoki’s, and Kagura jumping up from her perch on Sadaharu.
“Good morning,” Gintoki yawned, and reached to scratch his head only to freeze when the motion jostled his abused shoulder.
“Gin-san!”
“Gin-chan’s awake! Anego, Gin-chan’s awake now!” Kagura’s joyful cry was loud enough to bring reinforcements — Otae appearing from the doorway, and for some reason Katsura poking up from behind Sadaharu with Elizabeth next to him. They converged on Gintoki in a welter of happy exclamations, recriminations, threats, threatening offers of food, and joyful yapping. It was loud and annoying and not entirely unlike sinking down under a kotatsu, but instead of warding off the cold of winter, this warmth dispelled nightmares and nostalgia alike. And just like a kotatsu, Gintoki wanted to wrap himself in the moment and forget everything outside of it, since he was clean and bandaged and all dressed up in comfy pajamas.
But he couldn’t.
“Oi. Oi! Gin-san here has to pee!” That got their attention, though it didn’t exactly shut anyone up.
“A samurai should always be in control of his body, Gintoki. And that includes the bladder.”
Gintoki glared up at Katsura from the futon. “Oh, I am. Looking at where you’re standing, you’d be the first to know if I weren’t, Zura.”
“It’s Katsura.”
“Why is he even here?” Gintoki asked his hostess, but before Otae could say anything Elizabeth butted in.
[Paw pad junkie]
“Uh…” Gintoki was hoping he’d misread the sign.
“Rowr!” Sadaharu confirmed, tail thumping on the tatami.
Katsura was definitely blushing, but cleared his throat. “No, I was just — I was leaving, I just wanted to see that you had recovered, Gintoki. And I joined forces with Sadaharu-dono when I came to see you with some information after I followed up on your call and found him all… all alone there.”
Kagura beamed. “Sadaharu came to save us! He is such a good tracker, he found us.”
[Katsura-san found you], Elizabeth disagreed. [When we were following his lead!]
Sadaharu growled an objection.
“Yeah, like I said. Sadaharu brought Zura.”
“That’s all very interesting, but—”
“It’s Katsura.”
[Not the dog, Katsura-san!], Elizabeth signed vehemently.
“Everyone!” Otae sang in the voice she used when they were closing up the club and needed all the drunks to go home and leave their tips behind. “Gin-san needs his rest to recover.” Her tone was enough to break up the mascot-character fight before it could get physical, and then she miraculously herded all participants away like she was brushing crumbs off a table.
“Gin-san needs to use the little samurai’s room,” Gintoki muttered when she was gone and wouldn’t hear him correcting her. Then he tried to figure out how to stand up, and winced as what felt like absolutely everything hurt at the motion.
“Gin-chan.” Kagura appeared at his side, and reached out a hand with a smile that warmed his heart. “Don’t pee in Anego’s futon.”
Oh wait no, that was just irritation — why would that brat ever do anything to his heart. Gintoki grudgingly accepted her support, but didn’t complain, not even on the way back when she kept asking if he had washed his hands properly. For all that she was too short to make a good crutch, her solid strength made the bathroom run a lot easier than if he’d tried to prop himself up on pride alone.
When he sank gingerly into the nest of futon and pillows it was with enormous relief. Now he could probably lie — carefully, on several of the pillows Kagura was helping him arrange — flat on his back without moving until the worst of the pain had faded slightly. That sounded like a plan. Not moving. But it wasn’t like he could just burrow into the blankets and fall asleep again — or if he did, with this lump of feelings caught behind his heart he would certainly not escape nightmares.
“Welcome back, Gin-san,” his sickbed neighbor said, and Gintoki finally looked over at Shinpachi. He was sitting propped up by plenty of cushions, snacks and idol magazines strewn around him. “Ah, Ane-ue thought it would be easier to look after us if she didn’t have to run between our rooms,” Shinpachi said and scratched his head apologetically. “Sorry. If you’d rather—”
“It’s fine,” Gintoki interrupted, feeling bad that he was being apologized at, when he was the one who should be apologizing. But how could he even begin, after all he’d done — all he’d failed to do? He stared up at the ceiling, avoiding Shinpachi’s eye. Somewhere in the room, big paws tromped in a circle and then the floor vibrated as Sadaharu flopped down, and Kagura went over to praise him some more. The sun was sinking behind the walls around the Shimura mansion, the growing shadows spreading a slight chill through the room.
Gintoki sighed. He could take that hint, sure. Even if he still didn’t have the right words, at least he could try. “Shinpachi,” he said, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “I’m sorry.”
“Gin-san?” Shinpachi sounded confused, and — and a little tremulous. Gintoki had to look now, searching that expressive face, and sure enough — what he read in Shinpachi's eyes was the opposite of the accusation. But that didn't make sense.
“I mean. What I did—”
“I’m sorry!” Shinpachi blurted.
“What?”
“I’m sorry — if I hadn’t had that chocolate; if we hadn’t been there, then they couldn’t have made you…”
Kagura muttered, “Stupid chocolate.”
Shinpachi inhaled, quick and shaky. “You wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”
Gintoki pushed himself up on an elbow. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Only one who did anything was that bastard Yougai.”
“That’s right!” Kagura agreed with absolute conviction.
“But we…”
“Neither one of you volunteered, and that’s it. If you’d asked to come along with that creep just for fun, we’d need to have words, but really — he got me first; it’s not like any of us had any luck there.”
Shinpachi was blinking rapidly, but his shoulders straightened out of their slump.
“There. And I’m not that hurt,” Gintoki reassured him.
Shinpachi clearly didn’t believe him, and somewhere Kagura snorted.
So that taken care of, Gintoki could have dropped the subject and worked on becoming one with the futon. But instead he sighed. “Shinpachi. It’s… I’m still sorry. When he made me choose...” The memory of that moment stole Gintoki’s breath for a moment, choking it with anger and guilt and the helplessness he’d experienced then; his helplessness to fix it now.
“It’s okay,” Shinpachi said, and there was no glint of glasses hiding any emotions, just earnest comfort. “I know you had to, and I’m glad… I’m glad I could protect everyone. Even just a little, I’m glad it worked.”
Pride and affection gave Gintoki his breath back. “Yeah,” he said. “But you shouldn’t have had to, and I shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t have said it like it didn’t matter.”
“What are you talking about, Gin-san?” Shinpachi blinked at him, and Kagura chorused, “Yeah, Gin-chan. What are you talking about?”
“You know.” Avoiding the whole subject he was talking about was increasing the difficulty level of the conversation a bit. “I made it sound—”
“Oh, that. You mean what you said to fool Yougai?”
It was Gintoki’s turn to blink.
“Shinpachi, I think our Gin-chan thinks he can act, like he’s Oguri Shun or something.”
“I... “ Gintoki sat up enough to be able to see both of them staring at him with amused smiles.
“Also, Gin-san. If it’s all Yougai’s fault, how does any of that matter anyway?”
“Yup, it’s all that asshole’s fault. We decided it had nothing to do with who ate the chocolate!”
That took Gintoki completely aback. What he said about Yougai had sounded good when he was dispensing wisdom to the kids, but he hadn’t expected to have it dispensed back like this. It threw all of his carefully ignored feelings into complete disarray as the guilt and the self-loathing started questioning what they’d showed up for, if everything could be blamed on that clown. Meanwhile his memories of making terrible choices alone for all of them started taking on the shape of something that was a distinct team effort. “You…” He shook his head and tried to hide a grin. “You can’t just copy someone’s encouragement like that, you know.”
“I just did,” Shinpachi said primly. “And it worked.”
“Sometimes even curlyheads say a smart thing or two,” Kagura nodded. “Like how all of this was Yougai’s fault and how we all knew the plan all along and stuff. So you can’t go and ignore that now — you can’t start throwing chocolate-blame!”
Well, they weren’t wrong. Gintoki felt at once strangely light, and very, very heavy. He groaned and sank back into the futon, which was getting more and more inviting. “Okay, well, this time it was nobody’s fault,” Gintoki acknowledged. “Next time, try to save me some sweets.”
“I tried!” Shinpachi laughed.
“You wouldn’t have liked them; they make you really sick,” Kagura informed him.
“You didn’t know that when you ate them all,” Gintoki said.
“Well it worked, didn’t it. You weren’t sick, were you?”
“Just save me some damn sweets, you glutton,” Gintoki muttered, sinking deeper into the futon.
“Even regular ones might make you sick if you eat that many at once,” Shinpachi said.
“Ahaha. You mean how I fooled that nasty dumbass?”
“You didn’t fool him! You barfed all over everyone!” Shinpachi protested.
“Yeah, my plan worked!”
“That wasn’t a plan, it was just barf!”
The noise should have made it hard to sleep, but Gintoki was too tired to object to the bickering, which went on in the background long after he closed his eyes and started drifting off.
***
The next time Gintoki woke it was softly, wrapped in warmth, moonlight shining bright through the screen door. Something big and fluffy and smelling faintly of kibble breath lay piled there, leaf shadows playing in the white fur. And between Gintoki and Sadaharu — taking up half his futon, no wonder he was feeling like the stuffing in a meat bun — Kagura sprawled. She was on her back, one hand clutching Sadaharu's fur, the other wrapped around Gintoki's arm, using it as a pillow. She was making a ridiculous sleeping face that wasn't the slightest bit cute or anything. When she twitched in her sleep she kicked both Gintoki and Sadaharu, who whined faintly and flopped his tail over the offending limb.
Turning his head the other way, Gintoki found that Shinpachi's futon had mysteriously migrated closer to his own. Shinpachi had rolled over on his stomach, bandages glowing white in the faint light where his pajamas was riding up. He had his face pillowed on one arm — the other was flung across Gintoki’s chest.
The third presence in the room stirred when Gintoki huffed at the ridiculous position he found himself in. “They were so tired, I didn’t have the heart to make them move,” Otae murmured.
Gintoki craned his neck to find her kneeling at the head of her brother’s futon. She had a tray next to her, but Gintoki was twice lucky — the food was all covered, and somebody had put a carton of strawberry milk in one corner. He would have grabbed for it, but that would shift everyone over, and he was unwilling to do that. He was sure he had perfectly good reasons, too, like — if the kids woke up they’d be really loud, and things like that.
Otae smiled in the dark, and without saying a word she put the carton in his free hand, straw already in place. Gintoki muttered a hasty thanks and set to draining every last bit of that nectar of the gods. As he drank, Otae’s hand drifted down to smooth some hair from Shinpachi’s face. “Katsura-san left a message for you,” she said.
Gintoki nodded for her to go ahead while he continued slurping his sweet, sweet strawberry milk.
“He said you shouldn’t worry about seeing ‘the fiend’ again. Something about how unwise it was to anger both the Joui and the law.”
Yeah, that sounded about right. After Zura’s lot were done with the Yougai mansion, the neighbours would definitely require some calming police presence, which would hopefully turn up all sorts of shady dealings when they poked around whatever remained of the place and Yougai's businesses. “Nice, Zura,” Gintoki mumbled. He went on to demolish the last of the strawberry milk carton, which was making sad hollow sounds and collapsing around his straw.
“Katsura-san also said there was another message for you.” Otae reached over to grab the milk carton from Gintoki’s desperate attempts to get one last sip from it, and put a card in his hand instead.
Gintoki recognized the thick card stock, the scattering of maple leaves. There were only a handful of beautifully drawn characters on it, standing out in the moonlight.
Thank you, for opening my eyes, and tearing down the walls. It was signed Retsuko.
“Wasn’t me that did most of that,” Gintoki sighed, but he tucked the card under one of the many pillows around.
“Whatever it was, I’m sure you did enough,” Otae said mildly.
“That a threat?”
Otae laughed quietly. “Honestly, Gin-san.”
Gintoki glanced over to Shinpachi’s face, naked in sleep, a small frown between his brows.
“Listen, I’m sorry—”
Otae smacked him lightly on the top of the head. “Don’t.”
Gintoki looked up at her. Otae’s face was in shadow now, harder to read.
“They told me everything. You got them out. Then they got you out. You’re all even now — don't take that away from them, not even with apologies.”
“Even, huh?” Gintoki supposed that was right, though he’d never been one to keep count.
“And apologies don’t suit you,” Otae said decisively. “Now go back to sleep. Unless you want some more food?” She gestured at her covered tray, and Gintoki shut his eyes and snored quickly.
“Nice try,” Otae sniffed. Then after a moment, “Go ahead, go to sleep. I have my naginata right here, and we’re in fortress mode. There’s not even a single stalker to worry about.”
Gintoki wasn’t entirely convinced he didn’t hear a stifled giggle at that, coming from somewhere under the floorboards or a ceiling pane, but he let it slide. Rest was far more enticing than hijinks right now. He relaxed, and let Kagura and Shinpachi pull him with them into a sleep that was deep and warm and dreamless.