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It was loud tonight, he thought, cracking open an eye to peer into the darkness, cut through here and there by thin strips of wavering candlelight. There was an unmistakable sound, the low meaty thud of fist against flesh. An altogether familiar sound, but one that was hard to sleep to, even with all his experience. He pressed his face into the musty pillow, not wanting to risk the guards' annoyance with his wakefulness.
It was still entirely too long until the morning meal. Morning dessert, if he managed to beat down enough of the others. They were too chicken to compete with his one true desire: to become the Sugar King and claim this sorry building's pudding stash.
There was sudden yowl, and a thump, muffled by the solid wooden bars but distinctive. Someone had been knocked down, and knocked /out/, most likely. He tilted his head. Interesting. Shouts, indistiguishable and feral, rose from the opposite cell, and giving up pretense, he angled his head to face his own cell's bars, intensely curious. All he could see was a wild mass of black hair, a rust-colored shirt.
A thick spitting sound, blood it seemed like, dark against the gray stone floor. The lone guard spat back at the prisoner, terrified, and quickly dragged his unconscious comrade out, making sure to set the heavy door back in place before leaving.
A heavy clank, and a slow drag of metal against stone. /Chains?/ He shook himself, awake, more than a little curious now. He'd been in chains too, back when he'd still thought he had something worth getting bloody over.
Now he wasn't so sure.
"Yo," he called, low, across the hallway. Keep it simple, he thought.
"Man, I know you saw all that shit. Enjoy the show?" The man's ankles were chained to each other, he noted. "What you in here for?"
"You start," he said. "Nobody in their right mind goes wild enough to get chained up like that." He tilted his head. The man could still clearly move, hobbled as he might be. What /was/ the point of those restraints?
"Yeah well, forgive me for not giving a damn," the man huffed, his breath sounding strained. He shifted slowly, moving up against the wall, sliding down and taking the weight off his knees. There was little room to stretch, and he folded up against himself, all lean limbs and muscle, in a ragged red overshirt and dark shorts. A gray eye, barely lit by the hallway's candlelight, peered back at him. "I think it's cause 'a this." He stretched out an arm.
His eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see it now, two dark bands around each wrist and ankle. He had been marked for death before. And yet, he sat there, full and alive, if not exactly /well./
"Name's Mugen," he offered.
"Gintoki," he replied, running a hand through white hair. He yawned. "Still though, you got that one guy good."
"He's dead, I guess. They'll get their own tomorrow." There was an easy certainty to his tone. Gintoki recognized the remnants of it, somewhere in his own past.
"You up to die, then?"
"Hell, no." And there was a confidence he was sure he no longer had. "Someone I got to see."
Gintoki remained silent. Mugen grinned, carnivorous. "You want to get out of here?"
"There's not much out there, honestly." Gintoki turned this way and that, cracking his neck.
"Who cares? There never was much out there to begin with." Gintoki yawned, sat up on the thin mattress.
"They do feed you in here, ya know. Pudding's great."
"Yeah well, I ain't gonna get a good fight in here, cause these guards are steamin' shit. And I got to make sure of something. I left, ya know. Got away for years, just out there, sailin', drinkin', fighting, gettin' laid." His language is rough, tempered with a strange bent to the syllables, salted with the sound of wandering.
Gintoki is lulled by it. Too often, these days, he dreams of this land. Dreams of a past he can barely reach back to, dreams of a future he cannot bear to bring forth. He doesn't know why he ended up here. Just knows he didn't want to be out there, he guesses, where the sun cutting through trees, and laughter, and everything, reminds him of too many things he can barely keep tamped down. He wanted to run, but Sakamoto did that instead; he wanted to hate, but Takasugi's long claimed that right; he wanted to mourn, but Katsura's grief digs deeper than his own confusion.
So all he does is remember. And walk, dazed, until he can't remember why it was that he was ever outside these walls in the first place.
Mugen doesn't stop. "I come back, and seems like everything got a bit weirder. Though people are still killin', and the police are still incompetant blowhards, so everything's the same, I guess." He doesn't mention the aliens. The spaceships. The Terminal, just inaugurated, finally completed. He doesn't mention the sword ban, or the samurai.
"Nothing changed for you?" Gintoki's tone is unreadable.
Mugen angles his head in confirmation. "Course not. Come back to Edo and some asshat tries to swipe my sword, so I cut him down. Then the big boys tried to come get me, so I slashed them up too." He yawns. "Told em I was hungry, said I might find a job with Admiral Aho or some shit, some space pirate --- can you believe, man, /space pirate/, dunno how that works --- might have room for me."
"You refused," Gintoki guesses.
"Told ya, I was looking for someone. Edo could be a swamp of shit, for all I bloody care. Aliens, talking pigs and singing dogs, does it matter? The samurai boys tried stomping me down the last time I was in this town. Said his father was the governor, said his relative was the shogun. It doesn't matter.They got in the way. They're gone. I'm around. And I have something to do."
Gintoki slots a glance at him. "What, exactly, do you plan to do?" He may have a competitor for the Sugar King's throne after all.
Mugen barks a laugh, which sounds thick, like there's blood stuck his throat. He hawks, spits across his cell.
"Man, and that bitch used to say I was the dumb one." He cracks his knuckles, swift and vicious.
"Does it matter? I'm gonna keep going, cause I'm here and breathing. And these bastards can't keep me down. You wanna to rot here, make it your grave. Ain't nobody gonna stop you. Ain't nobody gonna /care./ The world ain't gonna miss me, I sure ain't gonna miss it." He cocks his head, silent suddenly, listening.
Gintoki can hear it too. Guard change. Last one till the daybreak.
/Go on,/ he thinks. He wonders if Shouyou was selfish. He wonders if it matters. Shouyou is gone. And he is still alive.
/This is no life/, he thinks. Whatever life is, whatever life ought to be, it is all---despite whatever Takasugi spits at him, in his dark dreams---out there. Beyond the walls. Unpredictable, uncaring. But there, to be had. If only he dares to seek it.
/All that's left is to go on./
He smirks at Mugen. "You sure talk big for someone chained up worse than an S&M cosplayer."
Mugen tilts his head, birdlike, and chuckles---a guttural, earthy sound. "Man, I don't even wanna know what you mean."
He tenses, plants his feet firmly on the ground, and levers himself up, his hands not touching the ground. His face is a swollen, bruised wreck. His grin is demonic, unmistakable, and /alive./
"Ya ready?"
Gintoki pulls himself up slowly, silently. Eight or so minutes, he estimates. Two guards. He has long ago memorized the hallways, idly, when he thought the only way he would leave was as a corpse.
Who knows.
"Go on, then," he says to Mugen. "I'm ready."