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He is standing alone in a field of corpses.
There is dust embedded in every orifice of your body and the cold has settled far too comfortably into your bones. Something is stuck in your throat, and you want to close your eyes, but you fear that those soulless stares will follow you into your head and etch themselves into your skull like the sensation of metal sliding into soft, malleable flesh has already been branded onto your soul. It is deathly silent and far too quiet, so you turn to him, to your closest friend and comrade with the dead fish eyes and confident, lazy smile, and you say, “We should go- they’re bound to send in reinforcements later. It’s dangerous to stay any longer.”
He laughs, and his voice is raw and flaky around the edges like his tattered hakama, rippling unevenly like the surface of a pond when someone’s skipped a rock across it. He blinks once, twice, and his eyes are empty, flashing dull crimson like the pools of blood-red puddling at his feet, half-lidded with a certain kind of delirious detachment that makes your heart break just a little more with every glance.
You swallow the lump in your throat. If this is what victory tastes like, then fuck victory, because all you can taste right now is the bitter tang of iron on your dry, cracked lips. You are not dead, not the one lying twisted on the ground like a broken marionette, but you feel just as dead inside, and you can't help but question whether or not this war is even worth fighting for when the aftermath of every battle is painted bitter black and wintry white and cardinal red like a morbid, surreal painting.
You reach out with shaky fingers, but he flinches away from your touch like a frightened child; to him you are the enigmatic candy man, eternal bearer of bad news, and he has been warned before not to take the words of a liar to heart. It stings a little but you let it slide- god forbid you be the first to lash out in a situation where he has so much more reason to do so for himself.
For a second you think he might walk off right there and then, but instead he turns his face to the side and lets two words fall out of his mouth.
“He’s dead.”
You lower your gaze to the lifeless, crumpled body on the ground.
“Yeah.”
“He’s dead,” he repeats.
You’re at a loss for what to say, but the silence is so heavy you feel like it is crushing you alive, so you force yourself to respond. “He died a good, noble death.”
“A good, noble death?” he asks incredulously, raising an eyebrow in disbelief.
“A good, noble death? Don’t give me bullshit, Zura. This isn’t some half-assed shonen manga, this isn’t some sappy nine o’clock drama- this is reality,” he bites out. “I saw him die. I saw the last glimmer of desperation that flashed through his eyes before the light in them went out like a candle. I saw the way his lips curled up in horror and pain when the sword went clean through his chest. I saw him falter and topple over like a fucking domino, and I couldn’t do anything about it!” At this point he is shouting hoarsely, his ragged voice ringing far too loudly in this muffled sea of silence.
He grabs you by the collar and yanks you towards him, hands balled into fists and knuckles white, and he starts talking, fast. He had a family, Zura, he had a family he had a wife they were going to have kids twokidsthreekidslotsofkidsanicelittlehomeinthecountrysidehe- his face crumples and he sinks to his knees, dragging you down with him- I could’ve saved him could’vesavedhislifebutididn’tdoanythingididn’tsavehimicouldn’tsavehim- he takes a deep, shuddering breath- I killed him, Zura.
You keep your eyes trained on the ground as you whisper with as much conviction as you can muster, “it wasn’t your fault, Gintoki.” His fingers are digging into your skin and something jagged has opened a previously healed wound in your thigh, but you pay it no mind.
At the sound of his own name, his eyes widen, and with a start he relinquishes you from his grip. He sighs, and as he does so you can feel his furnace-hot rage cooling, fading away along with the tension in his body. He rests his forehead against your shoulder and mumbles a soft apology.
The rest of your men left a while ago in relatively high spirits, bumping bruised fists and exchanging boisterous laughter, and you wonder how many of them have noticed the absence of one more lively, laughing individual. Most probably haven't realized a thing, and you suspect those who have will opt to keep their mouths shut, anyway. The prospect of breaking the news to them is a daunting, bleak task, but you know you will have to be the one to do it.
The wind hums soothingly in your ears, gentle as a parent’s loving touch. You are alone; every other living soul has long since vacated this makeshift graveyard- so you place a hand on the small of his back and to your relief he doesn't shake it off, and you turn your eyes up to look at the murky gray clouds drifting overhead, blinking furiously.
It is not raining, but your faces are wet.
When the first droplets hit the ground, you reluctantly give him a nudge and the two of you stand, a pair of hunched, shadowy figures surrounded by nothing but ghosts. Gently, he lifts your first casualty of war and cradles him in his arms, and you head towards the living world.
On April first, the burial of your fallen comrade is showered upon with so much rain that the clouds wither and dry up and disappear, and at the next burial, and the next, and the next, the sky is crystal clear and the air shimmers with mid-afternoon heat from the blazing sun that hangs over your heads.
It stops raining, but by then the smiles have long since faded from your lips.