Work Text:
“It’ll never be entirely clean, you know.”
He had heard Takasugi coming up from behind some time ago, knew that the other young man had been watching him from the doorframe long before he had bothered to speak. It was quiet where they were, might have seemed even more silent than it actually was because of the season – beyond the guards and the two of them, everyone else had already gone to sleep. That, and there are few of them to go around and make noise those days.
“Your sword,” Takasugi said in that same quiet tone, and Gintoki finally remembered that the other swordsman was there at all. “It’ll never be clean.”
“Huh? Looks pretty clean to me, Shin-chan… maybe you ought to get your eyes checked.”
A soft, rueful laugh. Gintoki turned away, looking down at the oilcloth in his hands and the reflection of his eyes in the flawless surface of his weapon. One moment later, Takasugi joined him at the patio. There was blood and sweat soaking through his coat, the undershirt of his uniform.
“Deserters,” Takasugi offered by way of explanation, as he dug through his pockets for his pipe. He had noticed Gintoki looking, it seemed. “Third group this week. Buried them myself.”
“You could have—”
“No. I couldn’t have. Cleaned things up too far from base.”
Gintoki tossed the oilcloth, sheathed his sword, set it down between them. Takasugi lit up, took the first drag, watched the snowflakes falling. They were not bickering – they were not talking of women, of sake, or Katsura, or Sakamoto, or even of kissing or fucking. That might have meant something before. Those days, though, they were too busy to be awkward.
“Four of them,” Takasugi said. He was talking like Gintoki wasn’t even there. “Oldest one couldn’t have been a day over fourteen.”
“You’re never going to have to bury me.”
One moment of surprise, and Takasugi laughed again. The sound was lighter, somehow, much better than what it had been like moments ago.
“So will you be burying me?”
“We’re dying together or we’re not dying at all. Either way,” Gintoki declared with a liberal stretch, “it’ll piss Zura off, which works for me.”
When he turned to look back, Takasugi was smiling. He had not seen Takasugi smile in months, not since the first day of the war, when everyone had believed they could somehow win.
“Yes. I think you’re right.”
Several years later, Gintoki plops down in front of a tombstone. He’s miles from home on the first day of winter, sitting on the ground in the middle of a ruined lot, hardly dressed for the weather. He blows into his hands, pulls a small, lacquered box out from the folds of his kimono, carefully removes the pipe ensconced within it. Takes a few tries to light up – he doesn’t normally do this.
The tombstone remains in front of him, unmoving, silent.
Gintoki finally manages to get a light. He takes the first drag, stares at the stone. He could think about things, remember, maybe, how it all came down to the moment he’s in, or the night before that, with the weight of a body on his back and the echo of a man’s last words just in his ear. He’s a man of the moment, though. Someone with two eyes forward and both feet firmly in the now. Someone strong enough to bury the past.
He takes another drag; it doesn’t go down as well as the other. The sound of his coughing fills the area.
“You know, Shin-chan,” he says, right after, “I’m never gonna understand why you like this stuff.”
And the tombstone, of course, is as quiet as ever.