Archive of Our Own

Toshirou awoke to the sound of an ear-piercing shriek echoing down the hallways.

Before he’d even reached full wakefulness, he was already unhooking his arm from where he tied it so he didn’t float off while sleeping and swimming out into the corridor, grabbing his claw extenders as he went. They jangled in his hand as he pulled them on, the painstakingly shaped and sharpened rock settling comfortably over his fingers.

In the corridor, he paused, taking a quick sit-rep.

No one around, not that he could see. The other Shinsengumi in this end of the barracks were either already dealing with the situation, involved in the situation, or sleeping through it.

All were equally possible, but Toshirou was willing to put money on that last one.

Fine. He’d go and investigate this himself if he had to, but woe betide any of the officers under his charge if they weren’t far behind him.

The scream was still ongoing. If he focused, he could work out that it was just one scream and it was likely coming from one of the courtyards at the front of the palace.

Rather than take the corridor, he flicked his tail and slipped through the opening directly ahead of him that led out into the open water of the main palace. It was something that was usually frowned upon – the corridors were guidance as much as decoration – but this was an emergency.

Besides, as a palace guard, who was going to tell him no? The Shogun had bigger concerns than merfolk taking shortcuts.

Toshirou swam, his well-honed speed quickly taking him up above the palace, where he could have a view over most of the grounds.

As he’d suspected, there was some sort of commotion by the north-eastern courtyard, with a few guards floating nearby but not really doing anything to intervene.

He made his way over, drawing up by a familiar figure off to one side.

“Yamazaki, report.”

Not expecting him, Yamazaki did a full body flinch, fumbling his spear in his hands and almost thwacking him with his tail.

Having been around him long enough by now to predict his quirks, Toshirou lifted his fins out of the way, allowing Yamazaki’s tail to sail safely underneath.

“Vice-Commander!” He saluted, then pulled a face. “Um, well…”

In lieu of answering, he pointed down below them.

Soft coral bulbs lit the courtyard in a gentle pink glow – carefully chosen to contrast it with the north-western courtyard which was lit in turquoise – even at this hour, allowing a clear view of any occupants.

In this case, ‘occupant’ meant…

“Yamazaki,” Toshirou said, leaning forward as if the tiny change in distance would clarify what he was seeing, “what the fuck is that?”

“Honestly, sir, I’m not sure.”

Around the delicately pruned coral sculpture in the centre of the courtyard – carved to look like Soyo-hime’s favourite sea dragon – was the source of the scream. A figure with what looked like a fish head for their top half and, if that wasn’t strange enough, two fleshy arm-like appendages that weren’t really arms at all, flailing back and forth and propelling the figure in an awkward circular motion.

Never once Toshirou had ever seen anything like this before.

And the ongoing shrieking was nagging at him. He could have sworn it sounded familiar…

“Oi!” He yelled, startling the other guards who hadn’t noticed him either. Maybe he would have to do some awareness training with them. “You down there! Do you understand me?”

The figure stopped and apparently tried to look up, but instead their – fish! – head reached an upright position and just kept going, sending them toppling backwards into the sandy ocean floor.

Toshirou sighed. Reluctantly removed his claw extensions from his hands.

“Yamazaki, go find a physician. You two, with me.”

“Yessir!”

As Yamazaki swam back into the palace, his deep blue-green tail quickly blending into the water around him, the other two guards fell into position behind him, both keeping their spears at the ready.

He swam down, quick but cautious, and stopped some distance away. Close enough to have a better view and so he didn’t have to yell, but out of any potential immediate danger.

“Do you understand me?” He enunciated more carefully this time, even as he took in more details of the figure’s appearance.

The fishy part encompassed not just the head but the entire upper body – front half? – with vibrant, almost green, scales on the back side and paler, silvery scales on the belly side, assuming Toshirou was interpreting things correctly. For all he knew they were actually back to front.

The other part, those arms-but-not- arms, blended directly into the fish part much like his own torso did with his tail. They were pale and awkwardly shaped but visibly muscular; the fact that they could shift what must have been the poorly balanced weight of the top half was plenty evidence of that.

Fish head notwithstanding, they were about the same height as Toshirou.

Hearing his voice, they tried to sit up again, those strange limbs spreading out underneath like a crab until they were vaguely balanced.

“Hijikata-kun!” They whined.

Toshirou blinked. Did he know this fish…thing?

“Hijikata-kun!” They repeated, scrambling forward then overbalancing and flopping onto their face. “Help! Help me back!”

As more words came out of their mouth or wherever they were coming from, Toshirou realised why that scream had sounded familiar.

Of all the fucking-

“Yorozuya,” he gritted out, wishing he hadn’t been so hasty in putting away his claw extensions. “What the ever-loving fuck?”

On the ground, Sakata Gintoki – head and namesake of Yorozuya Gin-chan, the most annoying business in town – distinctive silver hair gone in place of being halfway to becoming a horse mackerel, rolled onto his back and did something that was probably an attempt at entreaty.

To Toshirou, it just looked creepy.

“It was a misunderstanding!” He claimed, with an air of someone who’d had this conversation a lot more than once. “But she fucking-“

“Start at the beginning,” Toshirou said flatly. He was losing sleep for this, it better be fucking good.

Eventually, once he’d mentally trimmed down all of the convoluted bullshit – seriously, whatever happened on gambling benders was none of his fucking business – he managed to piece together Gintoki’s version of events.

He’d gone out to their neighbouring colony, presided over by Queen Kada, to go on a gambling binge. He and the guy he’d gone with, Hasekawa or something, had gotten separated at some point during their night and Gintoki, drunk and alone, had ended up inside the Queen’s palace grounds.

(toshirou maintained that this was a major lapse in security and was disappointed on her behalf.)

Apparently not realising where he’d ended up, he’d done his business in one of her prized anemone lawns, and accidentally done it in full view of her guards.

A few conversations and a quick curse later, a couple of guards had carried him all the way to the outskirts of Edo and dumped him there. It had taken him several hours, but he’d somehow managed to make his way into the city and into the palace, the northern courtyards of which were accessible to the public.

They should technically have been closed at night, but they were so visible and separate from the rest of the palace grounds that Kondou insisted it wasn’t an issue.

And that was that.

Obviously Toshirou was still missing a few key details – a curse? – but he had plenty to work with.

By this point, Yamazaki was just returning with the palace physician in tow, a no-nonsense merfolk with an aquamarine tail called Keiko.

“So?” She was rubbing her eyes with the back of one knuckle, her tail moving sluggishly in the water. “What is it?”

“The Yorozuya got into some trouble,” he explained, shooting a dirty look at the guy in question. He was well-known enough – thanks to years of causing havoc – that just the name would have plenty of recognition.

For his part, Yamazaki’s eyes widened as he coughed into his elbow to hide a laugh, but didn’t say anything.

As soon as she actually took in the scene in front of her, with Toshirou floating above a fish-something hybrid, she let out a heavy exasperated sigh.

“Alright.” She paused to yawn widely and smacked her lips when she finished, eyelids drooping. “Bring him to the clinic.”

Some very awkward wrangling later, the four of them had managed to drag Gintoki – who had been an unhelpful deadweight the whole time, the bastard – up to the palace clinic.

All other physicians were still asleep in bed, giving Keiko full rein to use the place as she pleased. She’d instructed them to leave Gintoki on one of the beds and then shooed them out, citing courtesy for her patients.

Sensing that this would take a while, Toshirou dismissed the two guards and took up post outside the room himself.

Somewhere along the line this had become his problem, and he very much wanted it to no longer be his problem. The sooner this got resolved and the Yorozuya could go back to fucking around and finding out – or whatever it was he got paid to do – the better.

Sometime later, Keiko finally came back out of the room, smelling strongly of cleansing salts. Her eyes were much more alert than they had been, and she seemed more like her usual self.

“Vice-Commander,” she greeted bluntly, then jerked her head in the direction of the other end of the corridor.

Not appreciating the order but knowing not to expect different from her, he followed, occasionally glancing back to make sure no fish-headed monstrosities were ambling their way down the corridor towards him.

“Definitely not medical,” she said, with no preamble. “If he says it’s a curse, it’s probably a curse.”

Toshirou absorbed this information. “Are you sure?”

Her expression soured and he quickly backtracked.

“I, uh, well, a curse? I’ve never seen one before.”

Though her lips remained downturned into a frankly impressive frown, her posture relaxed again, tail swishing back and forth like she was deep in thought.

“I haven’t either. Doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m looking at. Human-fish hybrid, with all the worst bits of both.”

Oh, Toshirou realised. That’s what those other limbs were. Legs.

She folded her arms. “Haven’t you heard the rumours? About her?”

About the Queen’s so-called Court of Curiosities? About snake creatures entwined around the columns, about phantom lights that bobbed in the water with no source, about the all-too-frequent unexplained disappearances?

Of course he had. What kind of Shinsengumi Vice-Commander would he be if he hadn’t?

He’d just never thought they could actually be true. Or affect people he knew personally.

“Okay.” He took a deep breath and resisted the urge to spit out a few good expletives. “Is there anything we can do from here?”

“No.” Realising she’d perhaps been a little too curt, she elaborated. “I’m a doctor, not a curse-wielder. Without knowledge of specifically what was done, there’s no way I can reverse it. Besides,” she puffed out her cheeks in disapproval, “these things usually come with a failsafe or two.”

“Failsafe?”

“Say you want someone cursed, what are you going to do? Leave a loophole for it to be fixed?” She was looking at him like he was stupid. “Yeah, right.”

Maybe he was, because he’d never considered this.

“So what-“

“How should I know?” She shrugged. “Go ask Her Royal Bitchness herself.”

Toshirou opened his mouth to reprimand her for disrespect to a royal, then realised it wasn’t his royal so probably didn’t have to.

Besides, if the rumours were true, Keiko probably had the right idea.

“Right.” He rubbed his temples and tried to work out where to go from here. “Thanks, doctor.”

She waved him off. “Just doing my job.” She started to swim back to the clinic, then turned around again, a hint of a smile lightening her expression. “When this is fixed, tell that Yorozuya to try and stay out of trouble for once.”

Sighing, Toshirou watched her swim into the room and bark some sort of order at Gintoki.

If things were that simple, he thought, they wouldn’t be in this mess at all.

“Just to be clear,” Gintoki was saying, “just to make sure I’ve got this one hundred percent fucking clear, the plan is to swim up to Her Royal Haughtiness and just ask her to reverse it?”

Toshirou, sick of hearing this exact complaint for the third time, rounded on him.

“Do you have a better idea?” He hissed. “Or are you gonna piss in some more garden ornaments until she magically changes her mind?”

The two Shinsengumi accompanying them – not the same two from earlier – were professionally ignoring them, despite the fact that they were basically carrying Gintoki between them and had no way of avoiding the conversation.

Initially they’d all tried to swim together, but it had been nothing short of a fucking disaster so they’d had to resort to more desperate measures.

Though Gintoki did seem to be practising using his new limbs, if the stilted back of forth of his legs was anything to go by, he was far from capable of keeping up with three merfolk.

“Do you have a better idea?” Gintoki mocked, putting on a voice and poor imitation of his thicker accent. “Yeah! I do! Don’t go back!”

Toshirou ground his teeth. “She’s the only person who, one, knows what the curse actually fucking is, and two, knows how to get rid of it.” Drawing in a deep breath, he released it again and tried to calm down. “She can’t do anything to us. It’d be an international incident.”

“She’s already done something, you prick!” Though his facial expressions were no more, Toshirou could imagine Gintoki’s wide, angry eyes and the exaggerated gesturing that usually came when he was pissed off. “How much worse can it get?”

“Don’t,” Toshirou warned. Tempting fate was a terrible idea and never ended well.

Muttering angrily under his breath, Gintoki nevertheless settled down and allowed himself to be carried up to the city entrance, an enormous coral gate which must have taken hundreds of hours to harvest and arrange.

When they stopped to explain their situation to the guards – one of whom unapologetically laughed – Toshirou turned to check on him and was surprised to see him floating in the water by himself, perfectly balanced and legs moving in a hypnotic pattern to maintain position. Apparently, he was a fast learner.

As soon as he noticed himself staring, Toshirou snapped back into focus.

It was human legs being weird, that’s all. Why else would he spend so long looking at the Yorozuya of all people?

“Alright,” one of the guards said eventually, shrugging in a your funeral gesture. “We’ll take you to her, but she won’t be happy.”

“That’s fine,” Toshirou said, even as he internally acknowledged that that probably wasn’t fine. “Lead the way.”

He’d never actually been to their neighbouring colony, despite it easily being within swimming distance, so he found himself taking in the sights as they headed to the palace.

Mostly it all came off as gaudy.

Countless shells and fragments of coral decorating the walls of hopelessly ugly soaring buildings, so many lights it came across as wasteful, and every other business seemed to be a gambling outlet or somewhere to cash in your money.

He knew why people came here, but did it have to look so tacky about it?

The palace itself was even worse.

Sculptures everywhere, enormous hand-hewn arches leading into every new area, and minutely detailed carvings lining every wall. Toshirou was briefly interested in the latter until he realised that they were all various carvings of the Queen’s life and deeds. Too self-serving for him, he stopped paying attention.

Gintoki seemed to be fully capable of swimming by himself now – using a combination of leg kicking and upper body wiggling motions – making Toshirou begrudgingly impressed. The two guards stayed nearby just in case, but he could tell that they were paying less attention to him and more to their surroundings, specifically the other merfolk.

They were attracting some eyes, given their unusual procession, but at least they weren’t being followed.

Not trusting the townsfolk one bit, Toshirou stayed alert even as they were ushered into a private reception room.

Somehow it had been furnished with an underwater fountain – something that he vaguely understood was to do with different water densities – which seemed to him to be a massive pain for something that not many people would actually see.

Then again, what did he know? Maybe the Queen got a ton of visitors who all appreciated her unnecessary taste in furnishings.

“Wait here, and she’ll be right through in a moment,” a guard said, then swam out of the room, presumably to go and notify someone of their arrival.

Toshirou turned to Gintoki, who had uncomfortably settled himself on a seat not designed for someone with his current appendages.

“Don’t say anything,” he ordered. “Let me handle this.”

Gintoki grunted but didn’t actively argue. If Toshirou didn’t know better he’d say he was nervous.

Longer than the guard had implied, but about as long as Toshirou had been expecting, the guard returned to the doorway and stood to immaculate attention.

“Her Royal Majesty Queen Kada, of the Peacock Isles, Jewel of the Emerald Sky!” They announced, then bowed at the waist and swam backwards out of view in a way that must have taken a lot of practice to make it not look as awkward.

Jewel of the Emerald Sky? Toshirou considered the title.

It could only be a reference to a story he’d heard as a child – of the moons that shone down on the surface far above, and how each moon tinted the sky a different colour – but surely not. Surely no one would be so bold as to name themselves after one of their holy moons, right?

As soon as the Queen floated into the room, however, his assumption was quickly crushed into tiny pieces.

The scales on her pale turquoise tail were polished to perfection, her long fins delicate and curled slightly at the tips in a way that was impractical but pretty, while the bare parts of her torso were studded with small shards of what looked like sea glass. Her hair flowed in the water behind her, kept loose in a style different from the norm with long hair, though an attendant occasionally moved in to rearrange it and keep it back off her face.

What did catch Toshirou’s eye were the two fins on either side of her head, slightly lighter and paler than the colour of her tail, and pointed ears stretching out behind them. He’d heard that there were slight variations between the colonies, but hadn’t seen anything as obvious as this in their way through the city.

There was a cold elegance to her that immediately put him on edge – something in the glint of her eyes and the coy way she hid her smile behind her seaweed fan – but he still straightened and made a polite gesture with his hands, curling his tail to really seal the deal. Politicking wasn’t usually his deal but he’d been trained; he knew the basic steps.

“Your Highness,” he greeted, eyes firmly on the floor. Hopefully Gintoki had the sense to bow without faceplanting into the sand. “We are grateful to you for granting us this audience.”

“Rise,” she intoned. Her voice was cool, but dismissive. “Don’t get the wrong idea. All I wanted was to see my little pet project come back to me.”

Toshirou raised his head, straightening his tail into a more comfortable position, and tried to come across more neutral than he was feeling. Sounds like this was going to be exactly as difficult as he’d expected.

Really, a diplomat should be doing this. Someone with some actual fucking qualifications and not just an afternoon training session. But, unfortunately, all the diplomats were busy dealing with whatever the fuck was going on with the Amanto Coalition that had rocked up on their doorstep a few moons ago, so he was shit out of luck on this one.

It was just him, Guard A, Guard B, and a fish with legs.

The perfect team.

“Your Highness.” He tried for polite but deferential, though wasn’t sure he succeeded. “I- We came here today to try and resolve this issue. We take grievances against our citizens very seriously, and-“

“Grievances?” She repeated, an eyebrow arched. “It was just a little fun, wasn’t it, Sakata-san?”

Toshirou turned to stare woodenly at where Gintoki was still sitting on the seashell chair.

Why does she know you by name? he wanted to scream, but had to settle for scowling. What the fuck did you do?

“See?” When Gintoki didn’t reply, she smiled, oozing satisfaction. “No issue to be resolved.”

Toshirou tried again. “I understand he…relieved himself on your personal property. On behalf of the Shinsengumi and the good people of Edo, I formally apologise for his slight against your city and your character.”

Was he putting it on too thick? He had no idea.

All he could do was bow and scrape until the curse was reversed and they could all go home again and prevent any international disasters.

“So,” Toshirou bowed his head for emphasis, “we respectfully ask that you return our idiot kin to his former self, on our word that he won’t do something so spectacularly stupid again.”

She did him the courtesy of hiding her laugh behind her fan, though the excited fluttering of her tail fins said more than enough.

“He didn’t tell you the full story, hm? Oh, what a dreadful shame.” She lowered her fan, mouth stretched into a too-wide grin that showed off her many pointed teeth. “It’s out of my hands now, sweetie.”

Beside him in the chair, Toshirou could almost feel Gintoki wilting backwards in an attempt to escape the conversation. Without looking, he flung a hand back and snatched hold of him, only slightly startled when his hand met a different kind of scale than he was used to.

“What do you mean, Your Highness?”

“Exactly what I said.” She flicked her fan closed, sending a small cloud of bubbles into the air. “Did he tell you that this curse has a time limit? Once cast, it will last as long as the wielder intended and not one minute more or less. Understand? Not even I can undo it.” Her mouth split into a grin again. “Hope you like your new head, Sakata-san.”

Toshirou deliberately tightened his grip and was gratified when Gintoki yelped. His fault for not only getting him into this mess but also not giving him the full details! Him staying quiet was a small mercy.

“May I ask how long?”

“Hm.”

It was obvious her interest was waning, but he needed an answer. Time to throw Gintoki further to the sharks, as it were.

“I only ask-“ He bowed his head further, even crossing his arm across his body in an elegant gesture that he’d seen her people preferring in formal contexts. “-to determine how much time we have to arrange appropriate public mockery.”

Gintoki squawked from beside him. Toshirou ignored him.

“Oh!” A light had sparked in her eyes once more. “Well, I can hardly refuse such a generous offer.” She waved a hand. “Until next pale moonrise. That should be, oh, three weeks? An incredibly light sentence, if I do say so myself.”

Three weeks.

Three weeks.

Toshirou barely trusted that bastard to stay out of trouble at the best of times – and with good fucking reason, looking at the mess they were in – never mind when he’d be going stir crazy with his reduced swimming range.

“Or,” the queen said, the elegant fins at the end of her tail fanning back and forth nonchalantly, “I hear bathing in starlight can cure it.”

“What?”

Before Toshirou could stop him, Gintoki was pushing past out of his chair, using his new legs to kick him out of the way, and staring down the queen. Or, well, doing his best attempt with eyes now on either side of his head.

“That’s bullshit!”

Rubbing his hip where he’d been kicked, Toshirou cleared his throat.

“…Your Majesty,” Gintoki added, sullenly.

To Toshirou’s relief, she just tinkled a laugh, hiding her mouth behind her palm.

“How funny!”

“How the fu- flippers am I supposed to do that?” Gintoki’s facial expressions were no longer, his once figurative blank fish eyes now replaced with the real thing, but there was real anguish in his voice. “How am I supposed to eat? Swim? Read the latest issue of LEAP Weekly?”

“Perhaps,” she intoned, her voice imperious, “you should have considered this before sullying my good home.”

“It was an emergency!”

“It was a priceless mosaic you graced with your defecation.” Her eyes narrowed. “Do not test me, ingrate.”

Toshirou wanted to scream.

This is why they were in this mess? Because it hadn’t been a garden but one of her precious, dull mosaics?

Gintoki was a dead fish swimming for making him do this.

“Your Majesty,” he interrupted smoothly, before their international incident became an international disaster. “Though the idiot is saying a lot of bull-“ Ahem. Gintoki was a bad influence on him. “Nonsense, he makes a good point.”

“Thank you!”

“Reaching the surface is a fool’s errand, even for a seasoned swimmer. Our Lord the Shogun has outright banned any attempt.”

In the olden days, merfolk from across the Four Kingdoms had made yearly pilgrimages to the surface to view the stars above and, if they were lucky, catch one of the four moonrises. It had been something of an event, with celebrations and a procession hundreds of folk long, despite the physical effort it took to swim the great distance.

But in the past hundred years or so, folk had returned with reports that the journey had seemed longer than previous attempts, with some even turning back before they made it the whole way.

Then, almost fifty years ago, a group of pilgrims had set off and then missed their expected return date.

Almost a week had passed, with family and friends getting ever more concerned.

When the first bodies had slowly begun to fall from above, the cause of death hadn’t even been determined before the Shogun officially outlawed any attempt to make the pilgrimage to the surface; it was deemed too dangerous.

Some still illegally made the journey but, as far as Toshirou knew, no one had yet succeeded.

“Well then.” She sniffed haughtily. “You will just have to make do, won’t you?”

“I’ll die!” Gintoki shouted.

Feeling slightly guilty, but not much, Toshirou rested a hand on where he thought the shoulder used to be, aiming for solidarity. He didn’t seem to notice him at all.

“And why should that be a concern to me?” The Queen suddenly pointed her fan directly at Gintoki, a faint light beginning to emit from her fingertips that screamed of very bad times. Any humour in her expression had vanished, replaced with cold, hard indifference. “You came to my city, to my home, and embarrassed me. There was no greater crime you could have committed.”

Toshirou was tempted to list off any number of other, far worse, crimes Gintoki could have committed but resisted the urge. He suspected it wouldn’t be helpful.

Honestly, staying here any longer would almost certainly be detrimental to their health.

“I thank Your Highness for your time,” he said, bowing but peeking up through his hair to make sure he also wasn’t about to be turned into a fish-man. “Prosperity and peace,” he finished, using a common Edo phrase spoken in the royal court.

Under his grasp, he could feel Gintoki trembling with what could only be rage. Not that he could blame him.

Queen Kada sniffed but withdrew her fan and flicked it open again, wafting it slowly and making the fins on the side of her head dance in the current it created.

Why she had a fan underwater he wasn’t sure, but he suspected it was for the Aesthetic™.

“If you live,” she said abruptly, “and return to my city, I will not hesitate to add you to my Court.” Her eyes narrowed. “Shinsengumi or not.”

Toshirou kept his head bowed and vowed that he would never come back here even if his life fucking depended on it.

With that last ominous promise, she swam elegantly out of the room, two guards following and another remaining, presumably to make sure that they actually left.

“She’s such a-“

“Yorozuya!” Toshirou hissed, unable to stop himself from digging his claws into him. “Fucking wait!”

The noise Gintoki made at that would have been threatening enough to send shivers down his spine, if not for the fact that his face currently looked like a dinner centrepiece.

Quickly, with an instruction to the two Shinsengumi to keep an eye out for trouble, he dragged Gintoki out behind him, hustling through the city streets until it was socially acceptable and safe to lift off the ground and swim higher and away. Though Gintoki was lagging behind some, he seemed to find balance easier when he was actually moving.

Once they were a fair distance from the city – about halfway back to Edo, to go by the outcropping of gently bioluminescent anemone that served as an unofficial distance marker – Toshirou stopped and sent the two Shinsengumi ahead to report everything that had happened to Kondou.

With them gone, he was free to glare at the Yorozuya.

“Let me guess,” he drawled, “you had no idea that there was an end to the curse.”

Gintoki kicked out at him but didn’t answer. Toshirou sighed, some of his anger ebbing away.

If he was actually stuck in that body until next moonrise, that could very well kill him if they couldn’t find a way to feed him. None of what they produced would be suitable, and with a head and body of that size it was unlikely he could scavenge enough to feed himself.

“Only you could cause an international incident by accident,” he said, after a brief silence. A peace offering, of sorts.

“Look, you uppity bastard-“ Gintoki’s body shifted, there was a notable pause, and he went very quiet. Then, he groaned loudly – sound coming out more like a gargle from his enormous mackerel head – and sunk lower in the water. “I can’t even fucking point at you! How am I supposed to be all intimidating if I’ve got no arms, huh?”

“Were you ever intimidating?” Toshirou muttered. With slight exaggeration and much glee, he folded his arms, knowing that he would never lose the ability to do so.

“Smug prick.” Gintoki kicked at him again but he easily propelled himself out of the way.

“So?” Swimming back into his previous position, arms still folded, he put on his Vice-Commander voice. “What now?”

Gintoki did some weird movement that might have been a shrug but really just bobbed his head.

“Go to the surface.” He said it so nonchalantly that Toshirou didn’t immediately register what it was he’d actually said.

“Wait, wha-“

Before he could even finish the syllable, Gintoki was twisting in the water, kicking his way back towards Edo.

Aghast, Toshirou started after him and easily caught up.

“You can’t just go!” He went to grab Gintoki’s arm before remembering he didn’t have one. “How the fuck are you gonna survive a journey that no one with a tail has made in half a century?”

“What choice have I got!” Gintoki whirled on him, and as his scales shimmered in the soft bioluminescence of the anemone fronds for a second Toshirou could have sworn that he caught a flash of his usual form, hair drifting in the water and eyes a vibrant red.

He blinked hard and the image vanished.

No, not possible. He was just seeing things.

“And when – if? – you get there?” He pressed, refusing to back down. “Let’s assume the Queen was right, and this bathing in starlight bullshit does work. How are you gonna breathe up there? You don’t have lungs!”

Gintoki made a gargling noise that Toshirou could only assume was some form of frustration before he swam off again, making for the enormous spire that rose out of the centre of Edo. Being the tallest land around, it was the easiest place to set off for the surface, as well as being the first place that moonlight touched their underwater city.

“Oi! Answer me, you bastard!”

Before he could do something drastic, like drag him to the Shinsengumi barracks and seal him away until they could come up with some sort of actual fucking plan, some voices yelling in the distance caught his attention.

Squinting ahead, he noticed two figures swimming towards them who, as they got closer, were both familiar; it was the two kids that Gintoki had taken in a few years ago, the ones who had helped him make Yorozuya Gin-chan into the beloved disaster it was known for.

(actually, from what he’d pieced together, it was more like they’d taken him in.)

“Gin-san!” They were calling, waving their arms.

Gintoki drew to a stop, legs working hard to keep himself upright.

Wondering whether constant swimming horizontally would ultimately be better for him, Toshirou tried to subtly station himself behind him, telling himself it was because he didn’t want to explain to two children why he’d let their guardian brain himself on the seabed.

It wasn’t that he cared, obviously.

The girl – Kagura? He was pretty sure her name was Kagura – reached them first, instantly slapping Gintoki across the face what the fuck before putting her hands on her hips, leaning forward like a mother about to scold her child for not eating all of his seaweed.

Gintoki yelled and fell backwards into Toshirou forcing him to pinwheel and turn his head to avoid getting a mouthful of mackerel.

“Kagura,” Shinpachi sighed, arriving in a much more sedate fashion, “what was the one thing I told you not to do?”

“I didn’t punch him!” She exclaimed. “I slapped him!”

Apparently knowing a losing argument when he saw one – or fearing for his own life – Shinpachi dropped the subject and turned his full attention to Gintoki, equal parts disappointed and exasperated. Given how often shit like this seemed to go down around the three of them, it was a miracle the creases in his forehead hadn’t become permanent.

“Gin-san, please come out from behind the nice officer?”

Indeed, using the momentum from Kagura’s law-defying not-punch, Gintoki had managed to swing around behind Toshirou, using those moon-forsaken new legs to wrap around his torso in an attempt to hide.

Now having an enormous fish head, this was working about as well as expected.

“Oi!”

Toshirou tried to wriggle free, but where he’d got escaping Gintoki’s clinging hands down to a fine art over the years , getting away from these new leg things was another thing entirely.

They could wrap around him entirely in ways arms couldn’t, and were surprisingly strong, considering he’d had them for all of one night.

Admirably ignoring the two adults fighting in front of him like children, Shinpachi adjusted his vision-correcting goggles and sighed.

“We were worried,” he said. “Obviously, we shouldn’t have bothered."

“I don’t need your fucking-“ Gintoki stopped short, but not because Toshirou’s hand was shoving at the side of his head. He leaned forward and then back again, as if he was taking in Shinpachi’s full appearance for the first time. “Patsuan. What the fuck are you wearing?”

Shinpachi sighed again, equally long-suffering and resigned. Beside him, Kagura was snickering into the back of her hand.

“Are you being unsupportive of his fashion choices?” Toshirou side-eyed him, not moving his hand, just in case. “If the boy wants to wear a seashell bra-“

“In yellow?” Gintoki sounded impressively scandalised for someone currently without vocal cords. “Like Shinpachi’s colour has ever been piss-yellow?”

“Kagura-chan,” Toshirou faintly heard Shinpachi saying, “I told you to let me take it off.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she sniffed.

“Look.” He resisted the urge to clap like he was trying to get a class to settle down and resorted to giving each of them a (hopefully) stern look. Knowing them he doubted it worked, but it was worth a try. “You two, convince this idiot to not go through with his stupid idea.”

Kagura’s expression brightened. “Stupid idea?”

“Oh no,” Shinpachi said quietly.

Unused to the nuances of their expressions and conversation, Toshirou blustered past the Massive Red Flag and kept going.

“Yeah, really fucking stupid, he wants to swim to the surface, can you believe-“

He was interrupted by Kagura whooping and cheering.

“Uh.” He blinked. “Is that…a good thing?”

In the background, Shinpachi was vigorously shaking his head, but it was too late.

“Obviously!” She rolled her eyes and reached around Toshirou to pluck Gintoki from where he’d been clinging on as easily as if she was lifting up a baby. Where she got her ridiculous strength from he had no idea. “It’s the surface, duh. Why would you not want to go? What are you, a coward?”

As she mimed a snivelling caricature that he assumed was supposed to be him, he told himself to not be offended.

(it didn’t work, but he got points for trying.)

“I think Hijikata-san has a point,” Shinpachi tried to mediate, but Kagura rounded on him, a new target for mockery discovered.

“Wah, wah. I’m Shinpachi and I’m plain and boring-“

“Okay, Kagura-chan, I get your point-“

“-and Gin-chan needs us!” Though she was still doing her ‘you’re a crybaby’ act, Toshirou got the feeling her last words had been more sincere than she’d probably intended.

Shinpachi – who knew her a lot better than he did – looked at her for a long moment, expression uncharacteristically inscrutable.

(“do I not get a say in this?” gintoki protested from where he was still dangling from kagura’s grip. "i’m the main character and i’ve not had any dialogue in over a page! oi, author-san, have you forgotten me? author-san? oi!”)

“It’s a long way.”

“Pah, as if that could stop me!”

“We could die,” he pointed out.

“Ha, bring it on!”

Scrutinising her, he nodded to himself and adjusted his goggles. “Alright.”

Toshirou’s eyes bugged out of his head. “What? You- She-”

He smiled, pleasant but ever so slightly condescending. “If you want to fight her,” he said mildly, “be my guest.”

This was a fair point, and Toshirou suddenly got the feeling that he’d had a glimpse into the everyday power dynamics at Yorozuya Gin-chan; he wasn’t sure he liked this feeling.

Kagura started swimming back in the direction of Edo – probably to the spire, where they’d been heading anyway – with Gintoki kicking over her shoulder. Occasionally he would angle his head upwards, his offset eyes boring into Toshirou’s soul, and he would have to close his eyes and count to ten until the image disappeared.

“I don’t need help!” He was whining. In all fairness, he probably didn’t think he was whining, but Toshirou knew better. “I can do it myself!”

Abruptly, Kagura stopped and unceremoniously dumped him off her shoulder, sending him tumbling to the sediment below.

Though his legs frantically kicked back and forth and then – failing that – in larger circular motions, it was hopeless; he was too top heavy, and was steadily sinking.

Toshirou let him fall for long enough to have a vindictive chuckle about it, then swam down to retrieve him. For lack of anywhere else to really grab he went for the ankle, and got a foot to the face for his troubles.

“Accept the help, you bastard,” he swore through mouthfuls of heel.

Gintoki gargled, kicked him the face again for good measure, then made a point of being as difficult as possible as he was carried back up to Kagura.

Knowing that he could sort of swim and didn’t need ferrying everywhere, Toshirou internally cursed him out for being a pain in the fin.

When Kagura had Gintoki back in her hands again – literally, as she’d taken a cue from Toshirou and had hold of him by the ankle – she looked very innocently to Shinpachi and asked, “how far is it to the surface anyway?”

Shinpachi choked on water. “You agreed and you don’t know?”’

“Well-“ She shoved a pinky up her nose. “-how far can it even be?”

“Two days straight swimming.” At least.

Probably more now, if reports were to be believed.

Slowly, she blinked.

“Two. Days,” Shinpachi tried again, with heavier emphasis this time.

“Okay.”

“Don’t ‘okay’ me!”

“What?” She pulled a face. “Folk did it before, so there must be a way of doing it.”

This…was actually a good point.

As they swam, the spire looming ever larger and the bickering in the background growing ever louder, Toshirou considered the problem and tried to remember everything he’d ever heard about the pilgrimages.

Annoyingly, it took him almost until they’d reached the base of the spire itself – after a quick detour to grab some food for the journey – until the answer occurred to him, sparked by a seashell mosaic depicting an imagining of a pilgrimage for sale in the market.

“Chains,” he said without thinking.

“Ooh,” Gintoki’s voice was leering, even as his expression was as fishy as ever, “the Vice-Commander has some sadistic tendencies. Or masochistic! Really, I don’t judge-“

Toshirou allowed himself some satisfaction when Kagura rammed her fist into Gintoki’s gut, causing the rest of the words to choke and die. How this biologically worked was beyond him, but right now it was working in his favour.

“You were saying, Tosshi?”

…okay, they would have to work on the Tosshi thing.

“Chains,” he repeated, interlocking his two index fingers as a demonstration. “That’s how they got everyone up. There would be two swimmers per chain, taking most of the strain while the rest of the chain rested, then they would swap.”

Shinpachi nodded thoughtfully. “Clever.”

“That’s easy then!” Gintoki blurted out, fully recovered. “Get your Shinsengumi to make one big chain!”

“Can’t spare them,” he said curtly.

Kagura shook her head mournfully. “That’s cold, Tosshi.”

“It’s true!”

“Ice. Cold.”

“Do you want the Shogun to fucking die ‘cause one idiot can’t piss in a straight line?”

She just glared at him, and he sighed.

“We can do it with four of us.” Even as he said this, Toshirou had no idea whether this was true or not.

Logically, he knew that rushing into this was a terrible idea. But on the other hand, knowing what he knew now about the method to get to the surface, Gintoki would need to be at full strength to make this trip. The longer they left it, even if they managed to contrive a steady source of food for him, the worse his condition would get.

If they were going to go, they had to go now.

But…

“I’ll call a couple of Shinsengumi,” he suggested, “and you two can take over their positions at the palace while-“

“Fuck no!”

(“language,” gintoki said automatically, but with no real heat.)

Kagura folded her arms and flapped her tail angrily. “If Gin-chan’s going then so are we!”

Though he was much more polite about it, Shinpachi took a similarly firm stance.

Toshirou hesitated. If he ignored them, they would make a huge stink; if he let them come with him and anything happened to them, Gintoki would probably flay him alive, assuming any of them survived the trip.

Sensing an opening, Kagura struck.

“You need someone to balance out this idiot’s-“ She jerked a thumb at Gintoki, a smug smirk slowly creeping across her face. “-bad swimming. I’m the only one strong enough.”

Toshirou looked to Shinpachi for a sensible response to this, but he just adjusted his goggles and offered a somewhat helpless but unmoving smile.

Well, no support there then.

In the background Gintoki was notably silent, entirely unreadable both because of his careful posture and also because he was a fucking fish.

Why was it always Toshirou who had to make these decisions? Why couldn’t Yamazaki get wrapped up in these things, or Sougo suddenly grow a work ethic?

“Fine,” he gritted out. “But the second you get tired-“

“Yeah, yeah, mum.” She stuck her tongue out at him and spun around to climb the spire, using her hands to not needlessly use up her strength.

Gintoki followed, Shinpachi not far behind for support, and Toshirou brought up the rear.

When they reached the top – a few curious folk below watching because they apparently had nothing better to do with their day – he attempted to make this more of a firm plan than ‘swim until we get there.’

“You two-“ He pointed at Gintoki and Kagura. “-start us off. Kagura goes first, the rest of us follow. Every hour, we swap.” He was making this up off the top of his head; what the actual recommended swapping times were he had no way of knowing.

Shinpachi seemed to take this in, while Kagura was peering over the edge, one hand shielding her eyes from the…murk? Actually he had no idea what she was doing.

“Alright. Link arms.”

They all did, then as one seemed to realise the problem with this.

Said problem was bobbing up and down in the water next to them, looking about as put out as a fish could.

“Right.” Toshirou let out an exasperated sigh. “Rearrange.”

With some swearing and awkwardness, soon they were holding hand to hand to hand to jaw and ready to set off.

Should they have told someone? Probably, but Toshirou had somehow ended up too far in to back out now.

They all clambered down to give Kagura the room to push off the top of the spire when she was ready; it would give them a little extra boost that could make all the difference.

“Oi,” Toshirou said quietly, tugging on Shinpachi’s hand to get his attention.

He looked down questioningly.

“Make sure she leaves.” He swallowed. “When I ask.”

Shinpachi’s jaw tightened, his expression becoming resigned and displeased, but he nodded.

“Are you babies ready?” Kagura yelled, building momentum by swinging herself up and down, the distance increasing each time.

They answered down the line.

“Go, Kagura-chan!”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Muh yaw!” (My jaw!)

She began to cackle, and with a mighty heave launched the four of them into the water, giving her tail a powerful kick that narrowly missed Shinpachi’s head.

Toshirou tried to streamline himself as much as possible but still felt the drag against his skin.

As soon as they started to slow – the momentum only carrying them so far – he felt a push from beneath him as Gintoki began to kick, then a much stronger pull as Kagura also stopped coasting.

It took a little while for them to get into a rhythm.

Kagura’s tail kept coming too close to Shinpachi’s head, who then tensed up and made the line much harder to control. Gintoki tired earlier than expected but refused to let anyone replace him, meaning they ended up going slower than they probably could.

Up and up and up they went, the lights of distant colonies winking out one by one until even ever-bright Edo vanished beneath them, consumed by the murk.

Shinpachi had had the foresight to bring a light source, so at least they could see each other, but if not for the sense of buoyancy lifting him up, Toshirou wasn’t sure that he would have been able to tell up from down; the lack of landmarks was disconcerting.

Two days of swimming. At the end of it, a sight that potentially no one had seen in over fifty years, and, even more unlikely, a cure for Gintoki’s new head.

The fact that this entire trip could be for nothing hadn’t escaped him, of course. But if he considered that, then he would start to spiral and also get pretty pissed off, so every time the idea floated in his mind he firmly shoved back down wherever it had come from and forced himself to think about other things.

What he was most thinking about and realising, however, was that this whole trip was going to be boring as fuck.

Two days of holding on to some teenager’s hand and moron’s fish mouth and staring at absolutely fucking nothing. It wouldn’t even start to become noticeably physically taxing for him until well into the second day, so he couldn’t even (masochistically, oh god had the Yorozuya been right? fuck) begin to look forward to that for a while.

This thought continuously stuck with him.

It lingered during their first – disastrous – changeover, and crept closer during their much smoother second. When Shinpachi suggested that they swap less frequently, to lose less swimming time, the first thing that occurred to him, even before the health of the others, was that he would have fewer breaks in the monotony.

Admirably, though, the Yorozuya trio did manage to make things somewhat interesting.

Kagura seemed to have bottomless energy – even despite the hours of staring at nothing – and would hum off-key children’s songs or ask bizarre, off the wall questions to pass the time.

Every time, Shinpachi would indulge and Gintoki would interject with some pearl of cynical wisdom or be contrary for the sake of contrarianism.

(toshirou was sure that he was being quieter than normal, though.

not that he could prove it.)

As much as he hated to admit it, the three of them were the only thing keeping him sane.

At first he’d felt awkward – like he was intruding on a family dinner – but after some gentle prodding from Shinpachi and some not-so-gentle shoving from Kagura, he was arguing and laughing with the rest of them.

It…felt good. He hadn’t expected that, when he’d set off on this trip.

But he knew it would soon have to come to an end.

He’d been mentally tracking the crimson light of Rei as it passed across the sky, or at least he’d been trying to, and by his count they were coming into the second day now. Even if his admittedly poor estimates were way off, the time and distance was beginning to take a toll on them.

The breaks felt like an actual relief now, rather than a pause, and when they swapped over he could see Kagura and Shinpachi’s gills working overtime as they tried to get as much oxygen out of the water as they could.

Gintoki had definitely noticed – earlier than Toshirou had, he was willing to bet – and it felt like he was trying to pull more of his own weight, so to speak, but no matter his efforts Kagura, their physically strongest member, was starting to flag.

One more switch, Toshirou promised himself, then he’d reassess. After that, it would either be one more switch after that, or it was time to send Kagura and Shinpachi back down.

They needed the energy to get back before they passed out from exhaustion, otherwise he wasn’t sure the speed of them falling would be enough to keep water passing through their gills at the rate they needed.

In their rooms – purposely designed for maximum current flow aimed at where they slept – and not on the verge of physical exhaustion, it didn’t matter as much; here, it made all the difference.

(toshirou didn’t normally think about their biology and mechanics this much.

he’d just had a lot of fucking time to think over the past day and a half.)

He’d read the accounts of the bodies falling after that fateful last pilgrimage fifty years ago.

He didn’t want a repeat, no matter how small.

Knowing that the final stretch would be the hardest – as just two of them, rather than four, and honestly it would be more like one and a half – Toshirou had been trying to conserve his strength as much as possible. Not put in a half-hearted job, he wasn’t that kind of person, but not overdo it too soon either.

Toshirou stirred. The switch time was coming up.

Even though they’d been swimming for as long as they had, there was still no sign of any light; just featureless water spreading out in all directions, only broken by the occasional fish or plant detritus passing by.

After this, he was never taking buildings for granted again. Coral. Rocks. Fucking anything that had texture and shape.

“Hijikata-san?” Came Shinpachi’s concerned voice, and he realised there was a hand in front of his face.

Moons, he was actually losing it.

He made an unintelligent noise that he hoped translated as, “what?”

For an awful second he thought Shinpachi was going to ask if he was alright – a conversation he was absolutely not emotionally equipped for – but he just gestured at where Gintoki and Kagura were waiting.

“It’s time to swap over,” he said, almost apologetically.

Toshirou nodded and got into position.

Propelling from the bottom while Gintoki wasn’t swimming was the easier job, thanks to being able to hold onto his ankle rather than awkwardly stretch to reach a hand, so he and Shinpachi had come up with a rule to alternate taking that position.

Right now, he was at the top, with Kagura gripping his hand. Quite hard, too.

Over the past day or so, he liked to think he’d gotten quite good at reading what the tightness of her grip meant. If he had, then this particular one meant she was tired.

Usually, as Toshirou and Shinpachi’s shift went on, her grip loosened as she relaxed and she didn’t need to hold on as tightly to keep up. It was still like being clamped onto by a mussel or something, way too strong for any normal merfolk, but it was noticeably more comfortable.

This time, it wasn’t relaxing, not even as the shift came to a close.

Well. Time to deliver the bad news.

As they slowed down to get ready to swap over, Toshirou risked a glance down.

Kagura’s jaw was clenched with determination, but there was a sickly pallid quality to her already pale skin, and – further down – Shinpachi was looking even worse.

They weren’t going to like this.

“Oi, you two.”

Wait, that wasn’t Toshirou that had spoken. That was-

“Don’t say it, Gin-chan.” Kagura was resolutely not looking at him, but that meant her enormous blue eyes were pointed directly at Toshirou, who was wholly unprepared for the way they wavered with deep emotion. “I can keep going. We can-“

Shinpachi had stopped swimming completely now, but hadn’t let go of Gintoki’s ankle.

“One more,” he said quietly. Begged, really, but without the energy to sustain it. “I can do one more.”

Moons, Toshirou wished he could see Gintoki’s expression, could know if he was starting to cave to his kids’ demands or if he was holding as firm and inscrutable as always.

“I-“ Toshirou could feel the rightmost tip of his fin flicking in the water, a nervous tic he’d picked up as a crècheling and never quite shaken off. “I agree. Go back, you two.”

Any hope on Kagura’s face that she and Shinpachi were the ones being sided with crumbled with those words, and he wished he wasn’t looking right fucking at it.

How Gintoki ever stood up to her between this and the super strength he had no fucking clue, and he’d only been around her for two days.

“Tosshi,” she whined, “please.”

It took more out of him than he expected to break her gaze and focus past her, down to Shinpachi.

As if sensing the eyes on him, he looked up and his mouth twisted.

“Kagura-chan,” he said, syllables slow and forced with more than just exhaustion. “Hijikata-san can handle it from here.”

She whirled on him, betrayal clear in the way her eyes widened and her gills flared.

Gintoki didn’t say a word.

Instead, he quietly swam up behind her and gave her a little push with his feet, sending her down towards Shinpachi and him back almost into Toshirou’s arms.

She cried out, struggled when Shinpachi took her by the wrist, almost ripped free when Shinpachi threw up their spare light source; on a normal day she would have taken his arm with her, but now she could barely make his arm strain.

He was too weak to hold on, but she was too exhausted to pull away.

All the while, Gintoki stayed silent.

When he nudged his head into Toshirou’s tail – oh, wow, that was something to examine later, if they survived – and began kicking to propel them upwards, it was up to Toshirou to shake himself and follow through with what he’d wanted to happen all along.

(‘wanted’ didn’t always mean ‘happy.’)

Whatever Shinpachi was doing to keep Kagura from following them and over-exerting herself must have been working, because as Toshirou started to swim – the difference in strain from before almost immediately noticeable – the light that showed where they were gradually dimmed and dimmed until it vanished; the distance was too much for their tiny light source to travel.

“Thanks,” Toshirou said, after a while, gruff and not really sure where it had come from.

He was unsurprised when Gintoki didn’t respond, but something about it still stung. A quick glance down proved that yes, he was still kicking – in the literal and metaphorical senses – so there was no real excuse.

It didn’t take long after that for him to start really feeling the strain.

Initially they tried to swap the same way they had as a quartet, but it quickly became obvious that Gintoki didn’t have the power to propel them in any meaningful way, so Toshirou ended up deciding to do the whole rest of the journey himself.

This was, objectively, a terrible plan, and his tail was going to be all kinds of sore tomorrow – assuming they reached tomorrow – but honestly between Gintoki’s pissed off grumblings about how he wished he had his fucking tail and his inability to be patient, Toshirou didn’t see any other way forward.

Gintoki was still mumbling about his tail, but now Toshirou could tune him out to focus on making sure they were still heading up and that he didn’t drop the light source or, more importantly, Gintoki.

In fact, he was so focused on swimming and not letting go of either of those things that it took him a few seconds to realise that Gintoki was trying to get his attention.

It took him a few more to realise that he could actually fucking see around them.

There was the barest red tinge to the water, sourceless but definitely present and completely different to how the light had been before.

“Oh,” he said, stupidly.

Gintoki was muttering something offensive again, too low for him to fully catch, but he did hear something about idiots and their moons, whatever that meant.

They were so fucking close, but Toshirou’s tail wasn’t cooperating the way he needed it to. Every now and then it would spasm randomly, sending jolts of pain all through his scales and up into his torso.

He could see Gintoki trying harder too, pressing his legs together and flicking them in time with his torso, creating a kind of wave that was probably the most efficient way of swimming he had available. With Toshirou holding his ankle it wasn’t perfect, but he was trying.

It was ugly and painful but with every kick he could see more and more, a vague sense of light becoming heavy red beams that cut through the water in shafts unlike anything either of them had ever seen before.

Toshirou couldn’t look up anymore – the strain on his neck on top of everything else was becoming too much – but he heard Gintoki make some sort of noise that could have been surprise or longing and sheer fucking desperation and thought that just this once he could get away with it.

Craning his neck and pretending his back didn’t scream with the effort, he almost forgot it completely in the face of sky.

It was blurry and surreal through the surface of the water – the surface! – but he could see it, dark but also light, in the strangest of ways.

He was almost tempted to stop, to take in the sight more, but he could see Gintoki’s gills flapping open too far for it to be healthy, and forced himself to look away and propel themselves the last short distance.

A sound he’d never heard before jolted him and he realised that Gintoki had broken the surface.

Toshirou froze, realised Gintoki’s legs were kicking in what could only be panic, and yanked him back down, sending a spray of bubbles into the water. He started to sink, any control he had over his movements lost in whatever the fuck had just happened, forcing him to swim under Gintoki and do what could only be described as cradle him.

He bent at the waist, swinging his tail up underneath him and looping an arm around his fishy torso to keep him steady.

“Hold still,” he hissed, “you slippery bastard.”

(later, he could examine the more intimate implications of this position.

later.)

With his one remaining hand and what little tail movement he had, Toshirou forced himself upwards with every last scrap of strength he had left.

Arms straining, tail screaming with pain at the effort of shifting twice the weight it was supposed to, Toshirou gave one final push and broke through the surface of the water.

Keeping Gintoki underwater for now, he couldn’t help but take a huge, first, gulp of air.

Air, moons, the concept was fucking laughable.

Gintoki was calming down but not quite there yet, giving Toshirou the time to actually look around.
It was beautiful; there was no other word for it.

Water stretched out for what must have been miles in all directions, the surface smooth but for the occasional white chop of a wave or a surface-dwelling fish breaking into the air. But, looming in the distance at the very edge of the water, dark craggy shapes jutted up from the horizon, visible more by the absence of light than anything else.

It took a moment for Toshirou to think of the word, having not read any children’s stories in years, but it came.

Mountains.

Huge outcroppings of rock that burst out of the ground because, well, Toshirou didn’t fucking know, but whatever the reason it had to be powerful.

Above, just rising over those distant mountains, the ruddy moon Rei shone steadily, a perfect disc in the night sky. Around and beyond her, tiny pinpricks of light that could only be stars populated the otherwise featureless void, making Toshirou feel like he was gazing upon a carpet of jewels, strewn across the sky.

“Oi, are you done?” Gintoki had spoken, and he did know what he meant, but through the water and air it came out muffled and bubbly.

“Fuck off.” Toshirou readjusted his hands under him and tried not to think about where those hands would be if Gintoki was his usual self. “You gonna support yourself or flail into fucking oblivion again?”

“Fuck off,” Gintoki repeated, doing what was probably meant to be a mocking imitation of Toshirou’s voice, but that just came out as petulant between all the gurgling. Unless he really did sound like that, but Toshirou doubted it. “I’m tired, you dick.”

“Oh, you’re tired-“

“Yeah, I fucking am!” Was he glaring? Toshirou literally couldn’t tell. “I think Her Royal Bitchness was right, this light’s doing something to me.”

Toshirou fell silent, absorbing that information.

Maybe this whole journey hadn’t been for nothing after all.

They bobbed there for a few seconds, Gintoki with his legs stretched out for maximum buoyancy and Toshirou still getting used to the sensation of existing in air.

Swimming hadn’t really become any less difficult, but now that he was just maintaining position rather than trying to get somewhere, it wasn’t as bad.

When Gintoki suddenly pushed against him with a bit more force, he glanced down to find him trying to struggle to get his head above water.

“You could just ask,” he snarked. Then, a thought occurred to him and he pushed Gintoki back under again, ignoring the spluttering he got in response. “You can’t breathe, remember?”

“So?” Gintoki was wiggling out of his grip with irritating ease. “I can die in a novel way!”

“Oi, Yorozuya-“

He was suddenly acquainted with the very new experience of having the air punched – or rather, kicked – out of his lungs as Gintoki twisted in the water and rammed his heel with surprising force into Toshirou’s sternum.

Coughing, he sank into the water again, gratefully sucking water through his gills again. The familiar quiet of underwater now seemed muffled and strange compared to the constant background sound above.

Above him, he heard the tell-tale sound of water splashing as Gintoki broke the surface. His form cast a dark silhouette from below, a red halo curving around his edges.

“Wait!”

Toshirou recovered and raised his hands just in time to catch Gintoki before he slipped below the surface again. Heat burned his palms where they pressed into his scales, but he didn’t allow himself to let go.

His legs were kicking out, toes curling, and low, pained keen was coming from somewhere deep in his torso.

Before Toshirou could consider pulling him back under and going about this some other way, something clasped onto his wrist where it was pressing against Gintoki’s scales.

He froze.

It was cold, circling around his wrist almost completely, with something sharp and claw-like pressing into the skin.

A hand.

It was Gintoki’s fucking hand.

“Don’t.” The words were tight, like Gintoki was in a great deal of pain. “Don’t chicken out now, Shinsengumi bastard.”

“I don’t know what a chicken is!” He yelled back then focused on his wrist again.

The sensation was gone, but there was a weird haze in the water that hurt his eyes to look at for too long, like the crimson in the water was throbbing and becoming more intense with each pulse.

Toshirou scowled, gritted his teeth, tried to do anything but think about the way Gintoki’s whole body arched as he pushed him up further into the air, further into the light.

(don’t die on me.

the thought came suddenly, but he was shocked at how much he meant it.

don’t die on me.)

Letting out one more terrible groan, the light pulsing around him like a heartbeat, Gintoki heaved, arching so violently that he lifted clean out of Toshirou’s hands.

Panicked, Toshirou expertly flicked his tail to push himself through the surface of the water again, bringing it up to cradle Gintoki just as he had earlier, only now he was almost completely limp.

He was about to pull him down again, terrified he’d somehow forced a man to breathe his last, when he realised two things.

One, all sound had stopped. No crashing of wave against wave, no flap of wings from some nocturnal bird passing overhead, no fish breaking the surface, nothing.

It was like the whole world had stilled.

Two, Gintoki was glowing. Or, more precisely, his fish head was, a deep red curling off him like blood in the water.

It was almost too bright to look at, but he forced himself to not look away; he wouldn’t miss this for the world.

Toshirou watched in bewildered amazement as the fish head which Gintoki had been battling with for the past two days seemed to simply melt away, like it had never been there in the first place.

As the moonlight soaked into it, the scales shimmered under the red light then began to glow, tiny plankton-like balls of light rising up and dissipating in the night air.

His back arched again and Toshirou instinctively reached out to steady him. It took him a second to realise he was feeling skin under his fingers again, not scales.

The legs which had sliding off of where he’d tried to balance them on his tail worryingly seized, before merging into one steady – familiar – thump against his scales.

The weird balls of light intensified for a second forcing Toshirou to squeeze his eyes shut and turn his face into his shoulder, before he felt Gintoki’s chest heave underneath his hands. Even without that, he would have heard the gasp of air as he began to breathe again.

He looked again just in time to see the final few droplets of light lift away from Gintoki’s skin, a few clinging to his hair and almost lifting it with them as they spiralled into the sky.

Gintoki himself was lying back in the water, tail dangling limply and head hanging loose as if he was unconscious; without Toshirou holding him, he would have begun to sink. His back was warm against his chest which, upon realising this, almost made Toshirou drop him.

“Oi.” Toshirou shook him slightly. “Oi.”

Gintoki made some weak noise in the back of his throat, but made no attempt to move.

From this angle, looking down on him in his arms, Toshirou was treated to a perfect view of Gintoki’s throat bobbing as he swallowed, head lolling back into Toshirou’s breastbone. Water lapped against his ears, the sensation making his pale lashes flutter against his cheeks in a delicate - pretty - way he’d never associated with the Yorozuya before.

What the fuck had this trip done to him?

“Wake up, prick.” The insult felt habitual, but not really like he meant it. “I know you’re in there.”

When Gintoki groaned again, Toshirou easily recognised it for the pantomime it was.

Toshirou slapped him across the cheek, taking vicious delight in the feeling of his claws scraping against the skin there and Gintoki’s squawk of outrage.

“The fuck was that for?”

“Never,” he said tightly, “ever, make me do that again. Piece of shit.” I don’t want your death on my conscience.

Whether Gintoki saw through him he had no way of knowing and probably never would, but there was something in his eyes – that same sharp spark that was usually too well-hidden under idiocy to be noticeable – that made Toshirou think that maybe, just maybe, Gintoki understood.

It was an awful fucking feeling, being seen through so quickly, but it was also something of a relief. He didn’t have to clumsily jumble words into ill-thought out sentences, not when he could be understood at a glance.

This realisation and whatever lay beyond was cut abruptly short, however, when Gintoki slipped off of where he was precariously perched again, eyes flying wide open and arms wheeling in circles in a desperate attempt for balance.

Toshirou instinctively let go, accidentally sending Gintoki further up out of the water – because he had nothing holding him down – until his hair was tickling Toshirou’s chin and his scales were rough against his hip.

Feeling like he’d hit his quota for ‘acceptable amount of physical contact’ some time the previous day, he unceremoniously shoved Gintoki off him, watching out to see if he was actually going to sink like before but pretty confident he would be alright.

Indeed, Gintoki quickly seemed to realise that he had a tail again that he could actually use. He ducked into the water just to flick his tail, the silver covered with a crimson sheen in the moonlight, and fire off like a shot across the water.

It seemed whatever had given him his usual form back had also restored his energy or something, because he was having no problems with speed or stamina, from what Toshirou could tell. Just watching him was making him want to take a long, long nap.

When Gintoki rushed back up to him – the wave he brought with him cresting almost up to Toshirou’s chin – he burst out of the surface, scattering beads of water across Toshirou’s skin. He brushed his hair out of his eyes, a giddy grin spreading far enough to crease a tiny dimple in his left cheek.

Toshirou couldn’t stop eyes from tracking all of this: the trickle of water that slid down the column of his throat; the way his hands looked caught in his own hair, the knuckles stark against his skin; that fucking dimple.

They had a phrase, moon-drunk, for when someone was happy to the point of obliviousness – as if they’d been blinded by the brightness of the moon, something that merfolk were notoriously unused to in its full glory.

Looking at Gintoki’s dopey smile and eyes a crimson reflection of the infinity of stars stretching out above, Toshirou couldn’t help but wonder if somewhere the true origin of the meaning had got lost, somewhere down the line.

Wait, what the fuck was he thinking?

He’d never noticed these things before. Why was he noticing them now?

Luckily he was snapped out of it by Gintoki raising his hands out of the water, turning them over.

“Look!” He held them up, fingers splayed, and wiggled them. “I’ve got hands!”

“You sure do,” Toshirou said dryly.

Gintoki just laughed, more open than he was used to seeing, and fell back into the water, tail swishing back and forth to keep him afloat.

“Y’know, I’m never taking hands for granted again. Never thought I’d miss hands of all things but here we fucking are-“

While he was talking, Toshirou felt his eyes slipping shut and shook himself. The exhaustion was catching up to him.

On the way down, he could rest on the-

He snapped his eyes open.

Last he’d checked he was up at the surface, now he was…still at the surface. Well, that was anti-climactic.

But why hadn’t he sunk? Had he only been out for a moment, or?

Oh no.

A pair of hands was holding him from underneath – one supporting his spine and the other under his tail – and rocking him gently back and forth, sending a constant current of water over his gills. It was the same thing parents did to their very young children, before they’d properly learned how to do it for themselves, and Toshirou felt embarrassment settle like a heavy stone in his stomach.

Above him, he could hear a low hum, vaguely reminiscent of a clapping game he’d played as a child before he’d come to Edo.

Fuck.

“Ah.”

Gintoki stopped humming, blinking down at him with those red eyes of his. Being still half-asleep, Toshirou’s instant thought was that it was like Rei herself had twinned and set herself in his eye sockets, but this thought was silly so he mentally bashed it to pieces before it could go any further.

“Sleeping beauty wakes,” he remarked. “Nice nap. Good sleep. Are you embarrassed right now? I’m embarrassed.”

Toshirou waved him off and tried to swim free but his tail cramped almost immediately, sending spikes up pain up his spine. He hissed and dug his claws into his own biceps as a distraction.

Tsking softly, one of Gintoki’s hands came up to loosen the grip, absently rubbing a thumb over where he’d broken the skin.

It stunned Toshirou into silence for a moment.

“What were you telling Kagura about overwork?”

He didn’t have a good response to that, but “fuck off,” was always a solid choice, so he tried that.

Going by Gintoki’s unimpressed eyebrow raise, it didn’t work.

“How long was I out?” He asked instead.

“Not long,” he reassured. A quick glance at the position of Rei in the sky proved this to be true. “Didn’t think you’d be asleep long, so I waited.”

“Why?” Toshirou was baffled. Surely it would make the most sense to leave as soon as possible? Especially if one of them had just passed out in the water.

“Mm, funny story that.” Looking away, over towards the mountains, tiny creases formed at the corners of his eyes, though the corners of his mouth barely lifted. “Thought you might want to see it again, s’all.” He jerked his chin, vaguely gesturing to the world around them.

It…was surprisingly considerate of him.

Toshirou had wanted to see it again; when he’d woken he’d been terrified that he hadn’t even realised his last time seeing the surface and the sky had been the last time.

“Oh.” For lack of anywhere else to look and dreading the thought of meeting his eye, Toshirou settled for aiming his next words at the hollow in between Gintoki’s collar bones. “Thanks.”

Silently, he took the opportunity to genuinely soak in everything here that Gintoki had given him the opportunity to.

The unique feeling of air against his skin, the way breathing in two different ways filled his chest, the chill of the water, the sky, the fucking sky. Rei had climbed far above the mountains now, and he closed his eyes to concentrate on the barely there feeling of her light warming his skin.

He wasn’t normally religious – didn’t stick to the rituals as much as Yamazaki or Kondou did – but right now, he sort of got why people did it.

“Have you fucking fallen asleep again?”

Gintoki’s voice was abrasive and the last thing he wanted to hear right now but he snorted anyway.

“No.” A beat. “Bastard.”

“Prick.”

“Says the guy who was a fish-man a few hours ago.”

“Too soon.”

Somehow he found himself laughing again, catching Gintoki’s eye and remembering moon-drunk all over again.

“Hey.”

“Mm?”

As he opened his mouth to speak, something else almost tumbled out. Something like do you wanna get a drink when we’re back?

He swallowed the words down, terrified of what might come with them, and tried again.

“Why doesn’t any of this surprise you?” Toshirou gestured up and around.

“Oh. Well.” Gintoki scratched his nose, looking around the infinite beauty of the surface with the exact same apathetic look someone might give an abandoned lot of land. “I’ve been up here before, so.”

“You’ve fucking what?”Toshirou exploded, making Gintoki clamp his hands around his waist in warning. “When?”

“I dunno, ten years ago? Me and the guys did it for a dare.” He shrugged, then grinned down at him, teasing. “Why, going to arrest me, officer?”

Touhirou hoped his angry flush looked much the same as the whatever-this-was flush that rushed into his cheeks, and shoved him away, ignoring the twinge in his tail as he balanced himself.

“You’re lucky you’re not dead,” he spat instead. “A dare, moons above.”

Grinning lazily, hands now free, Gintoki rolled onto his back. His hair spread in the water, bobbing up and down with the waves and occasionally glinting red in the moonlight.

“Where d’you think Takasugi fucked up his eye?”

Toshirou blinked. That…actually explained a few things.

“On what?” He looked around. “There’s nothing here.”

“It’s a long story.” Gintoki tilted his head back so he could meet his eye, flashing his sharp canines. “Want to hear it on the way back?”

For some reason Toshirou absolutely did not want to examine, his pulse quickened in his throat and he had to break the stare.

“Sure. Whatever.”

He laughed, the sound ringing out into the night air. Toshirou had never really considered the difference before – never had the cause to – but he was finding he quite liked the way everything echoed up here.

“So?” Gintoki swam over, deliberately splashing him and being fucking insufferable about it. “We going?”

Toshirou rolled his eyes, though it was more a pretence for getting one last look at Rei.

When he made to swim down, however, something pulled in his lower back and he swore under his breath.

“I-“

“I can fucking do it,” he snapped, before Gintoki even got a whole syllable out.

His expression went carefully blank, before spreading into something calculated and smug – an eyebrow raised, a curl to his upper lip.

“Go on then.” He leaned closer, grin only widening as Toshirou’s shoulders bunched up under his ears. “Prove it.”

Diving below the surface he quickly disappeared from sight, even his silver tail not enough to cut through the dark water.

Toshirou gritted his teeth and followed, tail complaining with the effort but he ignored it. He would not be shown up, not now.

Really, he should have known it was a bad idea.

Before he’d even made it beyond the reach of Rei’s light, a mistimed flick of his tail sent a spasm through it, catching him dead in the water and forcing a grunt of pain out of him.

Despite being tens of feet below, he still saw Gintoki turn and fold his arms.

“Done being stubborn yet?” He called. “Or would you rather break something?”

His instinctive answer was yes, he’d rather break something than admit he fucked up, he also knew that was pretty stupid. If he did do irreparable damage to his body because of something like pride, he’d be being a nuisance to Kondou, and he hated the idea of that more.

Sighing, he let himself hang in the water, relaxing his tail until it longer felt so stiff and uncomfortable.

“Fine,” he yelled back, “you got me. Happy now, you smug bastard?”

Gintoki shook his head, though if he said anything Toshirou didn’t hear it.

Instead he swam up, a surprisingly elegant smoothness to his movements and stopped in front of him, an I told you so expression on his face.

Toshirou considered punching it off him, but then realised what Kagura would probably do to him if he found out and held himself back.

(also his eyes were pretty and he got distracted, but he’d die before he told anyone that.)

“Come on, idiot.” Gintoki reached out and took him by the wrist, fingers cool against his skin. If he could feel the way his pulse was hammering underneath, he didn’t say anything. “Let’s go home.”

Unsure what to say, he just nodded.

Flashing a boyish grin that brought out the dimple in his cheek, Gintoki turned and began to swim down again, drifting Toshirou beside him so he had full range of his tail.

“That time we came up here,” he began, “was so fucking stupid.”

He then launched into a long, unreasonably complicated tale of how he and his childhood friends had made their way to the surface as teenagers, but honestly Toshirou missed half of it.

He was too distracted by the steady feeling of the hand around his wrist.

Admittedly, he could be quite dense about this kind of thing, but he had a pretty good idea of what this was. When it had happened he had no fucking clue, but he was here so he might as well own up to the fact now and save himself the humiliating realisation later.

He liked Sakata Gintoki. Or, to borrow Sougo’s language, he like-liked Gintoki.

Despite the fact that the guy was a fucking disaster, a law-breaker, and sort of had two kids that he would definitely have to win over at some point if this was to go anywhere.

Did he want it to go anywhere?

Now probably wasn’t the time to think about that, considering he was physically exhausted, sleep deprived, and had just seen one of their fucking moons in something other than a mosaic.

Yeah, this was going in the deal with that later pile.

“You good back there? You asleep again?”

Toshirou blinked, the world coming into focus again, and realise Gintoki was looking back at him over his shoulder.

He rolled his eyes. “Do I look asleep to you?”

“How should I know?” He shrugged in a way that briefly pulled Toshirou closer. “Some folk sleep with their eyes open you know. What, are you judging?”

“What are you even on about?”

When he felt his lips try to pull up into a smile, he didn’t stop them.

Gintoki smiled back, cheeks bunching up in a way that was annoyingly cute.

“Alright. Anyway-“

As he carried on with his story, Toshirou relaxed, closed his eyes, and let Gintoki carry him home.