Work Text:
Everything
is falling. I say your name as softly as I can.
ROBERTO SOSA
I.
Kabuki-cho hums with the promise of one’s eventual destruction but even so, Okita Sougo takes his time to walk along its hollowed-out streets.
The humidity in the late-afternoon air sticks heavy on his skin, almost a weight of its own. Uneasiness settles against the back of his neck as the shadows grow long and dark as he passes through abandoned stores and buildings. Eyes peer at him from all sides, he knows. Wondering. Measuring. Looking at the two swords he has strapped to his waist, the bright red of his clothing like he’s begging to be mauled. The temptation to play as deer caught in the headlights tugs at him, but when he sees seven of their hulking figures huddle into their collusive little talks from the corner of his eye, he turns and disappears into a narrow street. He holds back a grim smile when they try to follow him and run into a dead-end instead.
It would have been too easy. He isn’t here for that kind of petty fight, anyway.
It’s the first time he’s stepped foot into Edo in three years, and the change had been as drastic as he hoped (with a hopeless kind of hope) it wouldn’t be. In the countryside, it is easier to forget about the shattered-glass ruins of skyscrapers, the wind that howls through deserted alleyways, and the proud lawlessness that had settled into place when the plague broke out and the Shinsengumi was forced to go into hiding. In the countryside, there is still the hint of a life that could be, but not quite, enough.
If there is one thing Sougo takes pride of in being, it is that he’s not an idiot. He knows how to follow orders without question, without batting an eye. Which is why when he finds himself straying from where he should be heading and starts walking down a familiar dust road, he convinces himself that this is all part of the plan. That this isn’t just a misplaced sense of nostalgia nudging him to slip between the worn-down gates only for him to walk straight into a bloodbath.
Of all the people he’d expected to find here, it certainly wasn’t her.
He hasn’t seen what’s left of the Yorozuya in years and here she is, clad in blood-stained white, surrounded by heaps of dead bodies and furious ones that haven’t yet realized they were about to be.
She weaves in and out of the cluster of thugs with a newfound brutal grace, occasionally dealing out a kick to the head or a casual swing of her umbrella to the throat. A short medley of almost comedic screams, the sound of bones snapping, and the battle is over in a blink of an eye – if it could even be called that, Sougo thinks with a snort. He comes out from the shadowed tree he’d been leaning against, though truthfully, he’d stopped making an effort to hide himself when he saw it was her.
She rests the edge of her umbrella on her shoulder with a thud audible enough to break a few bones.
Without facing him, she says, haughty and irreverent as he remembers her: “If you don’t want to join these idiots right here, I suggest you leave now.”
He tilts back his kasa. “And what, miss the show? Of course not.”
Kagura is still for a moment, before turning around with an eyebrow raised. Her eyes linger on his hair with something like a cross between disgust and horrid fascination. “Why are you cosplaying as a samurai?”
He stares at her. “I am a samurai.”
She ignores that. “What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you’d come back only when you’ve found Gori-san again.”
“Change of plans,” he says, the expression on his face flat enough not to invite any more questioning.
“They’ve been using it as a base for their human trafficking ring since you’ve left,” she says by way of explanation. Casual. Like she’s just reporting a theft to the local police. “This is the second time I’ve had to kick their asses.”
He doesn’t reply. He looks at the slaughter around her, at all the filthy blood spilled on Shinsengumi grounds. It’s been three years, and he’s still surprised sometimes, at how much the mere fact of it stings. They’ve been keeping tabs as best they could, but with the plague hitting more than half of the Shinsengumi squads left, there was nothing they could do. Sougo looks at her bloodied hands, still curled into fists.
Nothing they could protect.
“But,” she says, watching him, “I suppose you already knew that even before coming here.” She brings her thumb and index finger to her mouth and lets out a loud whistle. A moment later, Sadaharu emerges from behind the building, tongue lolling enthusiastically, the ground shaking under over-sized paws.
He raises a brow at the mess she’s made. “Not going to clean this up?”
She pats Sadaharu’s fur. “I’m going after the leader. You mop the floor while you’re here.”
“China,” he finds himself saying, “you sure you want to handle this alone?”
It’s an offer, he knows, and judging by the way her eyes slant to him ever so slightly, she knows it as well.
“Yes,” Kagura says without hesitation, climbing onto Sadaharu. “It’s been that way for a while now, Battousai. Isn't that why you are here too?”
Sougo flinches.
She looks at the engawa of their home (a long time ago, he reminds himself, not now, not anymore, not without him) stained with dried blood, the wooden slits cracked beyond repair.
Her expression softens in the hazy light. Sougo blinks at the sight of it.
“…I hope you find him soon,” she murmurs as she maneuvers Sadaharu past him and out of the gates, her words gone swift as the fickle summer breeze.
He finds that he does not have the courage, nor the heart, to tell her the same.
II.
Sougo knows grief. He knows it the way he knows why Hijikata had paused mid-sentence once, when he’d seen a woman wave goodbye to her lover as they parted for the day, and he’d looked away to plug a cigarette in his mouth, as if he'd seen nothing at all. He’s seen it in the way danna would rest his palm on top of his bokuto's hilt, fingers curling around it whenever the two other members of his Yorozuya would come charging for him, shouting his name. As if they, too, could be taken from him by his own hands.
Now he sees it in the edges of her white cheongsam, dyed in his currents of blue; the other half of her hairpiece missing. It lingers in the blank slate of her eyes, in the self-imposed removal of her bizarre verbal ticks. It’s in the black of the younger Shimura’s clothing, a bokuto that is an echo of someone else’s. The way they argue as if they have nothing to lose, her hands moving in desperate, angry gestures. His mouth moving only to offer her terse replies meant to shut her out.
You know all these things just from looking at them? He thinks his sister would say. She would have placed a warm hand on his cheek and smiled brighter than anything he has ever learned to fear. But Sou-chan, isn’t that quite sad, as well? Looking at a person and seeing only the ghosts they carry?
Sougo watches from a dusty alcove high above as she is left alone in the empty street, the night surrounding her from every corner. Her hand is hesitantly raised in front of her.
(He also knows that grief doesn't always mean the breaking of a person. Sometimes, it hollows you out instead, stains the memories you have and the ones you allow yourself to make, and before you know it – grief makes itself home.)
For a moment, Sougo thinks she might call out to Shimura's retreating figure, but her mouth does not move, does not make a sound, does not scream nor fight nor taunt. What happens is:
She lowers her hand, and walks away.
Grief makes itself home. You might as well make yourself comfortable.
III.
The third time, almost a year passes before it happens again.
Snow blurs the evening landscape into something almost pure, dulls the edges of the decrepit town until it resembles only a blank canvas. Sougo hasn’t had more than an hour of sleep in days, and the cold slips too easily even under the layers he wears. The list of names he keeps in his pocket is starting to get folded almost beyond recognition. Seeking them out was the easy part. The part where they started to tattle on the same old story, the same name of an impossible island falling from startled mouths when his blade is pointed down their throats – it’s the part where it takes everything in him not to just row a boat to Kokujo Island himself and slash his way through.
“Ah, give me a break!” Smoke billows from her mouth when she speaks. “Are you my personal Aozaru now, following me everywhere I go while you wear stupid masks?”
It’s the dead of winter and here she is, glowing with slick red on her face, fists, and the linings of her cheongsam. Why he couldn’t ever manage to cross her path without there at least any evidence of violence, he does not bother to ask. The sight of it almost feels like a homecoming, somehow – last rites for a world neither of them has the heart to bury.
“The only monkey I see here is you,” he says, noting the dark circles under her eyes, then the body lying motionless under the sole of her boot. “Is that who I think it’s supposed to be?"
The street lamp overhead flickers, hazy yellow light washing over them both.
“Someone who might be able to help find your gorilla? Maybe.”
His eyes flash up to hers, caught. “Why are you doing this?"
What he does not ask is: Do you know where he is? Can you bring him home?
Kagura looks at him like he asked them, anyway, and makes a show of wiping her hands on her already bloodstained clothes.
“I can’t bring him back,” she says, quiet as the snow falling around them, “but maybe you can.”
Her eyes start to remind him of a certain man’s haunted ones more and more, and he is surprised by how much he dislikes it.
“I hate to break it to you, China, but he’s not exactly somewhere near.”
She reaches for something behind her, and reveals a thick scroll of paper with the markings of an elaborate red stamp on it. “He’s not on Kokujo anymore.”
The sudden bloom of hope in his chest is almost unbearable. “I’m guessing you have a plan?”
Kagura straightens up, and hands him the snow-dotted scroll.
“You know,” Sougo mutters after taking a look at the map, “this will probably end up killing me.”
“I’m counting on it,” Kagura says sweetly, like she’s already planning the what, where, and when of his burial rites. She gives him a familiar narrow-eyed smirk that has his hands twitching to throw her right into the frozen river beside them.
Before he can give her a retort, or send her to her own hasty burial first, she adds, in a tone that does not broker negotiation:
“…but I’m coming with you.”
They barely make it out of the dungeons alive.
He’s limping, Kagura bleeds from her side, and everything has gone to absolute shit.
“You owe me a lifetime supply of sukonbu for screwing this up, asshole!” She screams over the relentless round of gunfire.
“It was a trap, bird-brain!” He shouts back, treading the fine line between hopping and running so he doesn’t end up crushing his broken foot in the process of their untimely escape.
He drags her to his side just as a cannon ball hits where she had been a heartbeat earlier.
“Now we’re even,” he tells her smoothly. Or as smoothly as he can manage with her weight resting against him, his fractured foot creaking under the duress. She’s too close for comfort and why the hell is she so damn heavy? “Besides, they don’t really make those disgusting snacks of yours anymore.”
When she doesn’t answer, he turns to his side and sees her mouth twisted in a grimace, a trembling hand still pressed against the side of her waist. The bleeding hasn’t stopped all this time, and the severity of it is clear on her face.
“Oi, are you–”
Another barrage of bullets has them rolling on the snow, staining the expanse of it with their blood.
Sougo’s ears ring with the blast, a distant part of his mind noting the numbing cold of the snow under him. With a groan, he turns his head to see Kagura lying on the snow beside him as well, the heel of her palm resting against her forehead. Almost the entirety of her stomach is red now. Still, she curses at the idiots who had the guts to try blowing them up, all shrill vulgarity that would make even danna whack her in the head for saying.
They can make it out of here. Then he’s going to strangle her with his bare hands for dragging him into this mess.
Steel flashes. A shadow jumps from the darkness within the trees, sword clasped in a gloved hand aimed at him. Sougo reaches for his blade but it’s too far, too–
The next thing he knows, she’s rolled on top of him, her arms on either side of his head anchoring him in place. A sword sprouts from her left shoulder. Barely an inch more, and it would have pierced his heart.
Her blood drips onto his clothes, red on white, red on red.
“Now we’re even, Samurai Jack,” she rasps, her breath rushing hot against his face.
“Sure,” he says, and twists his sword deeper into the shadow’s chest.
He feels the blade sink into clothes, digs it past skin and sinew. It bursts through the back with a quiet finality. Sougo lets go of the hilt. A pained gurgle erupts from the shadow’s mouth before staggering over to fall face down on the snow. Kagura doesn’t move, her breaths quick and shallow. He feels her gasp when she reaches behind her to pull the sword out, her fingers too blood-slick and shaking too hard to be able to take it out completely.
“I c-can’t–”
He angles himself to the right. Gingerly, he wraps his fingers around the flat of it, and wrenches it free in one swift pull.
Kagura slumps against him, shuddering, fingers clawing into snow.
Heavy, he thinks, as more of her blood spills onto him. She is too heavy like this.
“China,” he says. His hand lingers on her back, feather-light. Patient.
“…Give me a second,” she groans, and manages to raise herself up. She stumbles as she gets to her feet, head thrown back and teeth clenched.
Kagura stretches a hand towards him. She’s going to collapse from blood loss, her skin pale as the snow and here she is, too stupid and too kind and of course Sougo takes her hand to right himself up, the familiar needle-prick pain of his foot a welcome sensation compared to the warmth in her fingers.
Once she’s made sure he won't topple, she lets go. Steadying her back against a tree, he watches as she rips off the edges of her clothes, rolls the jagged lengths of them around her fist. She binds the ocean-lined strips of it around the slash on her waist, winding it tight over the stab wound on her shoulder with a mechanical precision that makes him wonder how long she’s been doing this alone.
He looks at the front of her cheongsam. It’s the very image of someone who had a bucket of tabasco sauce thrown at her chest. “If you really wanted to die that bad, you should’ve just told me. I’d have stabbed you. Gladly.”
“He…wasn’t there,” Kagura says with a voice as distant as Kokujo Island is, as Kondo Isao is, and looks away. She bows her head, and even in the snow-lit dark Sougo can see her shoulders tremble. “You risked your life for nothing. I shouldn’t have–”
“You’ve done enough, China.”
Sougo tugs at his scarf, and with a gentleness that makes her go silent, wraps it tight around her neck.
She will heal at a rate faster than his body would even know what to do with, but for now, he takes her by the wrist, and places her arm around his shoulder. He anchors her to him even as her steps falter, and when he looks back, the path they pave is stark-red even in the cloying darkness of winter.
“You’ve done more than enough,” he repeats, and leads them out of the wilderness.
IV.
It is when five years have passed since Sakata Gintoki disappeared and got himself killed – or, at least, that is what happened, according to Hijikata-san – that Sougo decides he’s had enough.
The afternoon rain covers the gravestones with a sickly sheen. The arrangement of flowers and offerings of dango have long been drenched, the bundle of incense long put out by the downpour.
He finds her standing in front of his grave, hunched over and shaking, umbrella held like she’s prepared for a fight, her other hand curled into a fist. Whatever it is she’s saying, her face all scrunched up like a constipated gorilla that’s about to either erupt in rage or tears, it’s swallowed up by the rain and thunder. But that doesn’t matter now because he can’t keep running into her like this.
He lets his kasa drop to the ground, and draws his sword.
“Oi, China,” he shouts as he rushes towards her – “watch out!”
Her umbrella connects against steel with a deafening boom. One swing of her arm sends him flying across the tombstones until his back hits solid concrete wall. The impact sends his teeth chattering, and he hears the all-too-familiar crack of bones.
But then she’s rushing towards him, fist raised, and he instinctively pushes himself out from the concrete and slashes at her ankles. A sharp hiss slips from her mouth when his blade meets skin, but he only manages to cut her short and shallow. It gives her time to retreat before lunging at him again, this time with her umbrella raised high. She aims for his wrists, lands blow after blow against his shoulder, strikes the crook of his elbow with her umbrella – she’s trying to disarm him as best she can, and if this had been any other time, his feelings would have been quite hurt.
Sougo lets the edge of his sword bear the brunt force of her umbrella. His arms shudder under the sheer weight of it, an anchor dragging him down and down. He edges closer, and seeing the expression on her face, almost wishes that he never did.
Her mouth is twisted into a snarl, wild and unfettered, eyes tear-stained and swollen even with the rain running down her cheeks, but he knows it’s not him that she’s seeing, not really, not at all.
“Where are you looking,” he gasps, “when the one you’re fighting is right in front of you?”
Kagura blinks. He watches as her eyes fix on him again with a focus that sends a dizzying rush through him even as the rain soaks his clothes and weighs him down – it’s a thrill that only the promise of a devastating battle can bring.
Whether it is devastating for him or for the umbrella-wielding dumbass in front of him, he tries hard not to think too much on.
There’s no finesse in their fight this time, no mocking overtones or her usual shit-eating grin shadowing each hit that she lands on him. She fights like a beast hunted, haunted, all her brute strength trying to make up for a lack of any grand strategy. He’s never fought her like this before: the contained ruthlessness of her inheritance visible with every move, tinged with a desperation he recognizes far too well. Her fist finds his throat. His sword finds the skin of her thigh. He steps back. She strikes him with a low kick to the shin. He steps back again. His blade misses, grazes only her cheek, and she punches back harder, and again, again, again.
It’s not long until her attacks gain an erratic rhythm Sougo races to undo. She’s not dodging anymore – his sword pierces her arm, bursts through skin with a stillness that is discordant to the cruelty of the act. She simply twists it out of her arm, and uses the hilt to strike him square in the chest. He watches as she snaps the blade in half with her bare hand.
He can sense that she’s near her breaking point – the rhythm is wrong, wrong – and okay, maybe he’s getting in way over his head, but he knows – with a certainty that’s helped keep him alive all this time – that if he relaxes even for a moment, it would be a gravestone with his name on it that is put next to danna’s in no time at all.
It’s also going to bruise him like hell.
Before he knows it, he finds himself backed into a corner again, crouched low, left with no choice but to rely on the resilience of his other sword as she closes in on him.
He looks up.
He sees the violent wilderness trapped in her eyes that makes him think of glass shattering, and thinks, this isn’t her, this is fear.
“Kagura—”
Her fist hits the wall behind him.
Sougo freezes. The concrete gives a slight rumble, then caves in, the surface nothing but a mere paper weight against the strength of her hand.
For a while, there’s nothing but the sound of the rain and her labored breathing. She’s bowed over him, fist still embedded in the wall, and close enough to touch that it would only take the smallest of effort to wipe away the smear of blood across her cheek with a brush of his hand. Instead, he keeps his gaze on the torrents running down her hair, soaking the white of her clothes into a mess of red and muddied gray.
“You know what today is,” she finally whispers, the words like shards being pulled from her mouth, “and yet you…”
“I know.” He lets the tip of his blade rest a hairsbreadth away from her throat. “Feel better, China?”
He cannot give her what she deserves. No promise of spring for this world nor any space for her to grieve in. There is only the offering of this: his blade, his blood, and a violence that could almost look like tenderness in the right light. Or, perhaps, the wrong one. If he can give her this – a place where she could howl as loud as the wounded beast in her aches for her to – then it is enough.
This much, he knows he owes her – though he will never dare say that to her face for as long as he still breathes.
Slowly, as if trying to wake herself from a dream, she raises her head. “Are you trying to… comfort me?”
Sougo curves his mouth into a smirk, even as the motion pulls at the myriad of bruises on his face. “What are you talking about? You don't know how ugly you are when you cry.”
She pulls back. Before he can react, she deals a punishing kick right in his stomach. It sends him sprawling on the ground, coughing up blood and spit.
His sword arm is definitely broken, his body a field of bruises and welts about to bloom. The onslaught of a concussion is starting to make itself known, and the taste of blood and rainwater mixes salty and bitter in his mouth. He can’t feel his right leg aside from the minor twinges of mind-numbing pain when he tries even the slightest of movement, and yes, you asked for it, Sougo. You know what you got yourself into when you took out your damn sword.
Kagura simply looks down at him, umbrella-tip pointed at his head even now. Her red-rimmed eyes are still unreadable, but no longer filled with the desperate, aimless grief reflected in them earlier. Ah, he thinks. The grey sky blurs above him, turns her hair into a shapeless blob of orange. Fine.
Perhaps it’s the unceasing drumbeat of the rain, or it’s because despite everything, she is his rival first. He can take this one little loss. That’s how it works. How they work. They fight, bleed, break some bones, spit out the occasional detached tooth, and if he’s lucky, or if the world is ending – he gives her as good as he gets.
It’s never really been about winning.
It’s always been about him making sure his losses even out.
“He’s coming back,” she says, low and urgent, like she’s trying to convince him of this. Like she is trying to convince herself, too. “I know he is. He’d never leave us like this.”
He doesn’t say anything. He knows he’s not supposed to.
“You must be the stupidest samurai alive,” she adds, but the insult is dulled. It’s most likely the concussion, but he thinks he can almost hear a hint of gratitude in her voice.
“Probably,” he murmurs, and passes out.
Sougo wakes up to the sight of a familiar cracked ceiling.
He blinks once, twice, lets his eyes adjust to the darkness of the room.
"So," a familiar cracked voice begins, "let me get this straight. Instead of reporting back immediately like I ordered you to, you went missing for a month instead and almost got yourself killed in the process? What the hell have you been doing?"
Sougo has to give it to the bastard. He doesn't waste any time, even if he only caught immediately, missing, and killed from everything he just said. His head throbs with a pain that feels like his head is being split open.
"W-where is she?" His throat feels rough as sandpaper, which makes him wonder how long he's been out.
Hijikata merely looks at him, an eyebrow raised. He lights up a cigarette. "She's probably back in Edo by now."
Sougo stays still.
"You've been out for two weeks," Hijikata says, and watches his face as the words sink in.
Sougo didn’t expect to wake up at all, so he looks back at Hijikata instead, and wishes he could projectile vomit right on the shitty, bordering-on-worried expression he’s wearing. Maybe if he tries hard enough, he could–
“…and there’s something she asked me to tell you right after you woke up.”
Sougo turns his head. He doesn’t want to think of her face again when he last saw her: mad with loss, bleary-eyed with exhaustion, and most of all – alone.
“’Try not to die, you stupid piece of shit.’”
There’s no sound in the room save for the staccato beep of the machines beside his bed.
He rasps, voice barely above a whisper–“is that all?”
Hijikata rubs the side of his temple as if to ward off a coming headache, and sighs. “She also said she’s going to pay for your medical expenses.”
Sougo bursts out laughing so hard, almost all thirty-seven of his stitches come undone.
V.
When Sadaharu comes by, her shadow is nowhere to be found. He sees a piece of paper tied to a red ribbon around his neck instead, and Sougo almost rips it apart the moment Sadaharu tilts his head in wordless offering.
They're going to execute him in three days along with Zura and Gengai, by the riverbank.
Hurry.
It takes three days to reach Edo from where they’ve been holding out for the past five years.
“Sadaharu,” he says, eyes still fixed on the impatient scrawl of her writing, “wait there for a moment, okay?”
Sadaharu merely tilts his head to the side, and sits back on his hind legs. Sougo rushes through the front doors, her note gripped tight between his fingers.
“Sougo, don’t do anything stupid and wait for—”
“Just make sure you get there in time,” Sougo says, glancing over his shoulder.
He rushes over to the giant dog parked in front of the gates, basking in the morning sun. His fur bristles against the wind, stark-white against a backdrop of forest green. Sadaharu perks up at the sound of his voice, beady eyes fixing on him with mild curiosity.
Gently, Sougo places his palm against Sadaharu’s forehead. “Can you take me back to Edo with you?”
Sadaharu lets out a soft bark.
“Sougo.” Hijikata’s voice is firm, this time.
He clambers onto Sadaharu’s back, sinks his fingers into endless warm fur to serve as a handhold.
“I won’t let them take him,” Sougo says, and meets the oni’s eyes.
Hijikata looks at him for a moment, considering. Whatever their differences were, there had always been a middle ground where they could compromise. For as long they have to. For as long as it takes.
“Make sure you get there in time,” Hijikata simply says, and stands back.
The thought of Kondo returning home, his heart always wide open as the sea, always bearing a space for every single one of them, is enough for them both to know that he will. He has to.
Sougo leans forward. “Let’s go.”
Sadaharu howls, and runs.
VI.
The days after Kondo returns pass by quickly. The familiar boom of his warm voice is a welcome distraction to them all, and the memories of their shared history has given them enough normalcy and sense of routine that it makes Sougo nearly take the time to pour a bottle of laxatives into Hijikata’s breakfast.
There is more news, but then again, it is all the same. More white-haired corpses are found, and Earth turns more and more into a graveyard with each passing day. They can only tally the number of victims until it becomes just another fact of life at some point. Which is why after he brings fruits to Otae-san in the hospital, her skin and hair turning a ghostly pale that reminds him of someone else, Sougo goes for a walk, and finds himself standing at the edge of the park, the grass in front of him dry and lonely.
He finds her at the usual spot he used to lounge on. Once upon a time, it had been shadowed by the trees. Now it’s laid bare to the sun, drenched in all its unholy light. The big ball of white fur is sprawled on the ground beside her, tail wagging this way and that. She’s listlessly watching the last bright rays of the sun slip between the cracked pavements, and doesn’t look up as he approaches, though Sadaharu tilts his head towards him, and greets him with a noncommittal bark.
She’s wearing her red cheongsam again, he notices. Her hair is held up by black and gold, as if she’d never taken the hairpieces off before. Their surfaces glint in the light, black flecked with gold.
He hands her a box wrapped in simple parchment.
“Here.”
Kagura stares at it with distaste. “I’d rather not explode today, sadist.”
He sits on the other end of the bench. “I could just throw this into the river, but…” He unwraps it, and dangles the red package right in front of her. “They did stop manufacturing these years ago.”
She snatches it in an instant. “You really did find…” There’s an unguarded wonder in her eyes as she regards it, and Sougo looks away.
Staying out of Edo for far too long has turned him a bit too soft, he supposes, but it’s dusk and the light paints the empty park over with an obscenely warm glow. For a while, it’s silent save for the enthusiastic munching of the monster next to him and the breeze that drifts through dead trees. Exhaustion weighs heavy on his shoulders, settles in the muscles of his wrists, in the hollows of his eyelids.
It’s been a long five years, so he lets his eyes rest – just for a bit, he promises himself.
There’s a rustle beside him. He pretends not to notice, and keeps his eyes shut.
“You should get some rest, Kenshin.” Her tone is admonishing, but it is without venom, for once. “You look like you’d drop dead with one hit, yes?”
He wrenches an eye open at her slip. She’s standing in front of him, her back turned to the setting sun.
“Go fix that horrible accent first, sukonbu addict.”
She scoffs, and picks her umbrella up. With a deft twist of her wrist, she has the barrel tip of it lightly resting on top of his nose. She taps it once. “Find yourself a hole you can crawl into and just die, yes? Like hell I’d do anything you tell me to.”
He waves it away with a finger, but not before faintly registering the scent of gunpowder. He does not want to think of how recent it is, but he does, anyway, with a resignation that should alarm him more than it actually did.
“China,” he says just as she is about to leave, and stops short.
She glances sideways at him, her profile in shadow.
“The danna…” He trails off, finds himself lacking the right words to say. The right way to say them.
“If you’re trying to make me say goodbye, don’t waste your breath.” She looks up at the purple sky, its color a darkened bruise.
“You can’t wait forever,” he tells her softly, and is surprised at how easy the sentiment slips out of his mouth of his own volition. Grief makes itself home. He wonders if she’ll get used to it sooner than he ever would.
“I'm not going to do that,” she says.
Kagura turns around and meets his gaze, her eyes bright as a summer sky. Resolute with a faith that even the white plague won’t be able to wash out. Somehow, it’s more blinding than the sinking sun that lights the edges of her body. “I’m not going to wait forever because Gin-chan will return before that. Then Shinpachi will come home too, and… we’ll be together again, like we always were, yes?” A hint of a smile plays at the corner of her mouth even as the tremble in her voice betrays her.
“And you’ll be a hopeless idiot, like you always were.” If there’s one thing Sougo is, it’s that he’s an idiot, surely he must be for listening to her talk about home and come back. He thinks of Kondo’s laughter, of crackers and how they burn like nothing else on the tongue but his sister is smiling, smiling, and I’m proud to have a brother like you--
“And you’ll be a useless tax-eater,” she shoots back, an age-old challenge in her eyes, “like you always were.”
He’s up in an instant, his sword halfway from being unsheathed as she charges at him, a grin playing wide on her mouth.
After, he tells her:
“Try not to die.”
She looks past the blade pointed squarely between her eyes, and meets his mocking smile with one of her own.
"I won't," she promises.
She tilts her head to the side and reaches out towards his grip on the hilt. She curls her fingers around his, gentle. Warm. She is still too warm. He does not pull away.
"We still have a score to settle, idiot samurai."
Long after she has left and the lamp-lit darkness of the park echoes with the coming cold, he finds the package of sukonbu on the seat beside him, a single piece sticking out of the plastic tray.
He looks up at the ruined shadow of what was once the central terminal. He thinks of lights flashing, bright and blinding as festival fireworks whenever a ship would come around, now so long ago. No ships come anymore, save for ones with banners of blacks and reds that can only mean pirates, come to scavenge what is left, and even then, there’s really not much left to take.
Grief makes itself home, but home has always been where the hurt is.
Kondo is back. They live, even if the Shinsengumi now is only a shadow of its former self. Hijikata still breathes, despite his best efforts, but that’s a drawback Sougo can live with on most days. Sometimes, he wonders what his sister would have thought of on their decision to stay, despite it all. He thinks she would have insisted on staying, as well. As they all have done. On this graveyard of a planet filled with ghosts of every kind.
Sougo already has his fair share of ghosts. He has them like he has a sword on him, an edge and a comfort both. China, he knows, will never be one of them. She’ll never let herself be one of them. Stubborn and fighting until the very end, and he does not hide his smile at that thought, the shape of it genuine on his mouth.
The world is ending, and the sukonbu tastes bittersweet on his tongue. Maybe this, too, will have to be enough.
Sougo breathes in the night air, and makes his way back home.