Chapter Text
The streets of Edo were in gridlock. Too many cars were out on the road and the heavy snow only made it worse. Matsudaira’s Rolls-Royce inched forward no faster than Toshirou would have been able to jog, even with his present injuries. In almost an hour they had only traveled fifteen kilometers. This was going to take a while.
Pops sat in the back seat next to him, puffing blissful second-hand smoke in Toshirou’s vicinity. The smoky atmosphere grew thicker with each minute they were stalled, so the air around him was now verging on becoming a nicotine sauna. He could hardly see the chauffeur manning the wheel a meter in front of him through the ashy clouds. Not that he was complaining. The second-hand smoke was helping him to clear his head and really get thinking about his options. He was going to have to figure out a plan, and fast.
“I don’t see why you were so shocked to see me, Toshi,” Matsudaira finally said. “You’re smarter than that.”
It was true. If he had been thinking straight from the beginning, he would have known what Matsudaira would assume about this Cherry-Boy mess, and what those assumptions would naturally lead to.
“Yes,” Toshirou agreed.
“It was right there in front of you the whole time. All you had to do was look at the Character tags.”
What?
“What?”
“The Character tags for this story,” pops said, pointing upwards at the tag list. “There’s you, the Yorozuya, some pathetic kid without a last name, and me. With Ensemble Cast placed in the Additional Tags section, why would I be specifically named if I wasn’t going to be playing an important, an utterly eeessential role in the narrative?”
“Who cares about the tags!” Toshirou exclaimed. “Maybe the author just put you there by accident and forgot about it.”
“It wasn’t a mistake,” Matsudaira snapped, curling his lip. “It was foreshadowing.”
“People don’t foreshadow in the tags! That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”
“It wasn’t just the tags,” Matsudaira steamrolled. “It was the winking too. You didn’t catch the winking?”
Pops had been winking at him a bit too much for comfort throughout all this, but how the hell was Toshirou supposed to figure out that was some secret reference to a future plot point? That wasn’t foreshadowing either; it was just awkward!
“Winking, tags, whatever. No one was picking up on any of that, pops,” Toshirou snapped. “There wasn’t a single comment posted to this story asking ‘Oh hey, I noticed Matsudaira has been winking a lot, what’s the secret subtext behind that?’ or ‘Why is Matsudaira one of the only four people specifically tagged in this story when he’s had a lot less screen time than a bunch of other characters who aren’t tagged?’! No one mentioned any of that once!”
“And that’s where you’re wrong,” Matsudaira said, blowing out a large smoke ring. “Kairu_KitsuneO commented on the tag situation on Chapter 8.”
That can’t be right! Snatching pop’s phone, Toshirou opened the story and scanned through the reader feedback to find one single commenter, Kairu_KitsuneO, proving Matsudaira’s goddamn point.
It was convenient for pops – almost too convenient.
“I bet that was you. I bet you’re actually Kairu_KitsuneO,” Toshirou accused, looking at the account’s user info. “Did you secretly make an AO3 profile half a year ago just so you could support your own argument? Why all the Spiderman fanfics? To cover your trail?”
“Every man dreams of swinging through the city on webs of his own making,” Matsudaira growled, then interrupted himself: “I mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides your leg, did your brain get a bullet too?”
He grabbed back his phone and shoved it into his pocket in the most un-suspicious way one can.
This was getting them nowhere.
“Just cool it,” pops continued, coughing as he changed the subject. “Go into the meeting, give the bigwigs all the intel you’ve got so far, and let them take the reins. It’s so easy, even you can’t mess it up, which means I won’t have to shoot you.”
Toshirou had considered it. He had considered going into the meeting and telling the fuckers everything they wanted to know. Right now, it seemed like the only way to preserve his reputation and keep his place in the Shinsengumi, but it also meant betraying the trust of a make-shift, little family that had given him a place at their dinner table – even though they had all taken to booing him as a group when he took the mayonnaise out. He thought once more of the pile of blankets flinching away from his fingers.
On the other hand, he could walk into that meeting and lie his ass off, giving the committee bad intel. While that would protect Gintoki and the rest of them, it seemed like a short-term solution with a quick expiration date. As soon as he was confirmed as a traitor, it wouldn’t only be his head that would roll. Kondo’s would as well.
He could betray the Yorozuya, or he could betray the Shinsengumi...
Or…
Well, China had always told him that mamis took care of things. Maybe it was time he cleaned up this mess.
“There is no intel,” he said.
Matsudaira’s jaw flexed.
“What do you mean, ‘no intel’?” he asked.
Looking right at the Chief of Police, Toshirou replied, “It wasn’t an operation. It never was.”
The temperature in the car immediately rocketed down five degrees. The chauffeur flinched.
“Are you telling me that one of my lead officers for Sho-chan’s top-notch policing force has been compromised for the last year?”
“No,” Toshirou said. “That lead officer has just been dating a dumbass. Then they got married.”
“Why?” Matsudaira demanded.
“The officer asked out the dumbass,” Toshirou said wry, but honest. “He never expected the dumbass to say yes.”
Silence descended on the car.
Suddenly, Matsudaira leaned back, shaking with laughter. His sunglasses fell up into his hair.
“Ah, popular guys have it rough, eh, Toshi?” he managed, choking through his guffaws. “Irresistible, even to the demons!”
Toshirou looked out the window. He watched as the reflection of Matsudaira wiped its eyes and snorted. He watched as the reflection of Matsudaira pointed a revolver at the reflection of his head and clicked off the safety. The car stopped at a red light.
“You aren’t giving me a choice here, you know that,” pops said. “With what my bosses know of your Cherry-Boy, only a body will solve this mess.”
“I know,” Toshirou answered.
At least it would only be his.
He closed his eyes and waited. He wondered if it would be like last time, with the ghosts of his past traveling with him on the way down. He wondered if, after all she had done to help him claw his way back to the world of the living, Mitsuba would be disappointed to see him again so soon.
“Make it quick,” he said.
Seconds ticked by.
The pressure of the gun left his temple. Toshirou opened his eyes and turned to see Matsudaira with a pained expression on his face.
Fuck, what a time for the old man to experience feelings of human decency.
“You have to do it,” Toshirou said. “Get it over with.”
“I know! I know!” Matsudaira snapped, waving his gun to and fro. “You just had to go and make things difficult! Why, of all people, did you have to get Sho-chan involved in cherrying you to your boy? Now I have to make sure it looks like some rebels killed you, because what would it look like if the government that made your marriage happen also ordered your execution? Half the government needs you dead, the other half wants you alive, and I’m going to be stuck in the middle with your goddamn corpse!”
Toshirou hadn’t thought about that.
Well, it should be easy enough to pin his death on some terrorist group or another. That whole day with Miura had shown him just how many lowlifes in this town had a giant grudge to burn against the Shinsengumi Vice-Commander. Just pick a criminal still on the streets who Toshirou ever had a run-in with, and there would be a man with a motive. Pops needed to stop putting this off.
“C’mon, Toshi,” Matsudaira said in a tone approaching a whine. “Just give me some excuse I can send up the chain. Any excuse. It doesn’t have to be good. We can workshop it.”
What kind of excuse would in any way excuse any of this?
The passenger door on Toshirou’s side opened.
“Afternoon,” Gintoki drawled, and slid into the car.
He closed the door, taking the seat on Toshirou’s left just as the light turned green.
The car moved forward.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Toshirou exclaimed.
“I could ask you the same question,” Gintoki shot back. “Everyone was saying you were getting out on Saturday, but here you are gallivanting about in the snow on Thursday. I didn’t think you were the kind of kid who would pretend to be sick just so you could skip school and have fun by yourself. I didn’t raise you that way.”
“You didn’t raise me any way!” Toshirou snapped. “Get out of the car. I’m busy.”
“I parked my scooter back there at the last light. It’s too far away now.”
“Like I care!”
“Just settle down, alright?” Gintoki said, knocking his knee roughly into Toshirou’s. “I’ll leave soon enough. There’s just one thing I need to ask you.”
Had China told him what she’d heard? Was that why he was here? If so, whatever he had planned was nothing Toshirou wanted to experience. Couldn’t the Yorozuya just wait until Toshirou was dead to complain?
“Not now,” he said.
“Yes now,” Gintoki insisted. “It’s now or never!”
“Then never!”
“Let him talk, Toshi,” Matsudaira growled, surprisingly taking the side of the entire goddamn reason for this car ride from hell.
In response, the Yorozuya grinned that smarmy grin he always used when he thought he’d beaten Toshirou at something or another. It was the one where his lips were smiling, but his eyes were saying ‘Fuck you, loser!’ Although, most of the time he actually hadn’t won at anything, and was just being annoyingly delusional. Toshirou was the person who earned the victories around here pretty much 200% of the time. No contest.
He would have won today too if it hadn’t been for pops and the perm teaming up.
“Thanks, sir,” Gintoki said, all cheer. “This will only take a second.”
The Yorozuya taking his shitty second was the last thing Toshirou wanted. He had to get Gintoki to leave before Matsudaira saw fit to involve him in any of this. Whatever he had to say could only make this situation worse.
“So, what do you want me to make for dinner?” Gintoki asked.
Huh?
“That’s what you wanted to ask?”
“Yeah. This is your first day out of the hospital and I wanted to make you something special. In particular, I plan to up the production value a bit if you’re going to be bring that Wagyu beef over, like you really should be. Just because you broke the timing part of that promise, doesn’t mean you should break the rest of it,” Gintoki said. “I’m heading to the store, so I need to know what I need to buy. It’s now or never.”
Why was he using such a grave phrase like ‘now or never’ in reference to grocery shopping!
“Don’t ask me pointless questions. I won’t be coming to dinner tonight,” Toshirou said.
He wouldn’t be coming to dinner any night after this.
“How can you say that?” the Yorozuya exclaimed. “You got out of the hospital early enough so you could be around today, on the anniversary. Don’t you dare say you will be too busy to spend it with me.”
What the hell was he talking about?
“What anniversary?”
The Yorozuya smiled at him wistfully.
“Have I never mentioned? Well, I suppose it’s time I told you. I don’t want there to be any secrets between us and our ultimately honest relationship,” he murmured sweetly. “I don’t think there’s ever been a pair of lovers out there that have managed to be anywhere near as truthful between themselves as we have been to each other. If there is a couple that is claiming they are more honest than us, they are certainly lying, which automatically disqualifies them from the running.”
Toshirou was getting the strongest feeling that China had told this dumbass the news.
“What fucking anniversary?” he repeated.
“It’s the anniversary of his death,” Gintoki said, and a dramatic shadow fell across his face. “The death of Sakata Larry. My cousin.”
SAKATA LARRY?
Toshirou had never heard of a more fake combination of first and last names. Where the fuck was Gintoki going with this?
Reaching into his wallet, the Yorozuya pulled out a pair of ripped photos. He cradled them gently in his hands as he murmured, “I keep pictures of him with me at all times, so I can remember his legacy.”
Passing one over, he said, “Here we are as kids. He’s the one on the right.”
[Image 1 description: Young Katsura and Gintoki are walking down the road. A poorly photoshopped copy of Gintoki with a larger perm is placed over Takasugi.]
“He was always better than me at everything he did, which showed up most clearly in the majesty of his perm,” Gintoki said. “I mean, how could anyone compete with that head of hair? You can see my admiration for Larry in the way I tried to copy his every move. Even in this picture. See?”
Something was copied alright. Toshirou had never seen a poorer edit job in his life. Had the Yorozuya done this in MS Paint?
“We did everything together,” Gintoki continued, sighing fondly. “We were inseparable until the war. That’s when the rivalry started.”
He passed over another picture.
[Image 2 description: Katsura, Gintoki, and Tatsuma are gathered together, dressed for a battle. A poorly photoshopped copy of Gintoki with a larger perm is placed over Takasugi.]
“Larry wanted to go out and fight, but I didn’t want anything to do with that kind of savagery. We would argue about it all the time. I’m a pacifist, you see. Never lifted a sword in my life.”
“You’re carrying a sword in that picture,” Toshirou pointed out.
“That’s my pacifist stick,” Gintoki corrected. “But, in the end, Larry didn’t listen to me. He went to war, and grew a fearsome reputation on the battlefield.”
Toshirou wanted nothing more than to kick Gintoki right out of the moving car, but, unfortunately, Matsudaira was gazing intently at the last picture, giving the Yorozuya’s story his complete and riveted attention.
“Go on,” pops said. “What happened next?”
“He became so well known that his enemies had a name for him. They started to call him Larry the-Oh My God How Big Is That Perm? He’s So Far Away And It’s Already So Big! Fuck Damn, It’s Blocking Out The Sun! My God, Fuck Fuck, What Do We Do?! It’s Too Damn Big!”
Gintoki paused for a breath.
“Or, Larry the Shiroyasha for short.”
“How the hell do you get Shiroyasha from that!” Toshirou exclaimed.
“You can’t tell? It’s simple. You take the E from Perm, the T from It’s, the U from Fuck, the D and A from Damn, the K from Blocking, the M from My, the E from We, the T from Too, and the M from Damn,” he said.
E T U D A K M E T M? What?
“That doesn’t even spell Shiroyasha,” Toshirou snapped.
“Yeah, because you need to apply a 12-shift Caesar Cipher to those letters first. E becomes S, T becomes H, U becomes I, and so on. Jeez, how aren’t you getting this?”
“That’s way too pointlessly complicated for a nickname!”
“Don’t pretend like you know the feelings in the hearts of those who lay at the end of Larry’s sword,” Gintoki cried. “You can’t know their fear, and you can’t understand what that fear caused them to do. I saw it all from the sidelines where I was making fritatas and oden and lasagna for everyone. I had this little portable cooking station I would place on the edges of the battlefield, and I would do my best to cook meals that smelled so incredibly wonderful that it would cause everyone to drop their weapons and come eat together. I’m a pacifist, you see. Never lifted a sword in my life.”
With a considering harrumph, Matsudaira said, “I do see. I had a nephew who wanted to go into archery instead of guns. I would throw gun parties for him all the time, trying to get him to see reason, but he never listened.”
“Oi, why are you talking about your nephew in the past tense, pops?” Toshirou asked cautiously.
“He never listened,” Matsudaira repeated bitterly, ominously.
“Yes, exactly,” Gintoki sighed. “Larry never listened either. He kept going off to fight, no matter what I said or cooked, and kept doing such terrible, violent things. Nowadays, people mistake me for Larry all the time, asking me about this or that, bringing up all the horrible memories. It is so painful to be mistaken as the war criminal that he was!”
Holy shit.
Toshirou suddenly realized what Gintoki was doing by making up this stupid Sakata Larry.
He was killing off the Shiroyasha.
He was doing so badly – terribly badly –, but he was doing it all the same.
What a fucking play.
Toshirou must not have been able to hide the shocked realization from his expression, because Gintoki smiled at him wistfully and cupped his cheek, hamming it up like he was manning five spits at a luau.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all this sooner. It was a story I didn’t want anyone to know – especially you. I didn’t want you to hear how I had failed my cousin,” Gintoki whispered just loud enough so that Matsudaira would be able to overhear, a pristine tear glistening on his eyelashes. “But with the anniversary of his death today, I realized that instead of keeping you from this, I needed you here. With me. Help me face Larry, my darling.”
Toshirou had wanted to punch Gintoki more times than he could count, and had actually punched him most of those times. However, there had never been a moment over all the years he had known him where he wanted to punch this guy more than he did right now.
Who the hell was he calling ‘my darling’?
As Toshirou steamed, Matsudaira cried, “What are you doing, Toshi? Don’t just sit there! Help him face Larry, dammit!”
Toshirou looked to his right to see a waterfall of tears gushing beneath pop’s sunglasses. How was he buying any of this! He’d seen the same pictures Toshirou had seen, right?
Gintoki’s eyes glinted the same way they did when the store attendant failed to check that he was handing them an expired coupon. He sniffed melodramatically.
“Well, I was going to drop by Larry’s grave before going to the store. I know you’re busy working right now, but if you could take just a little break… it would mean a lot to me if you could come.”
“Of course he’ll come,” Matsudaira howled. “Fuck the brass! Tell Jeeves up front the directions and we’ll all go immediately!”
Someone had written Sakata Lard in red permanent marker on a rock on top of a snowy hill.
“I thought you said his name was Larry,” Toshirou said.
“Lard was his real name, but no one actually called him that. We called him Larry,” Gintoki replied before bending to his side and hissing some sharp words Toshirou couldn’t quite make out in the cat woman’s – Catherine’s – direction, while she hissed back loudly enough: “I heard you say Lard, so that’s what you’re going to get!”
There were a good twenty people gathered on the hill staring at the rock with Lard written on it. Some looked like they were trying harder than others to pretend like they were actually mourning some dead guy.
Gintoki’s ninja stalker was dressed all in black, sobbing in front of the ‘grave’.
“I loved you Lard – I mean, Larry! I loved you sooo much,” she was saying. “I knew you were just using me for sex, and that was all I could have asked for. Your mastery of restraint play was unrivaled! I didn’t know anyone could do what you did with a perm until you did it! And it just made everything so much better when I realized that the carpet matched the drapes. I never figured out how you could fit all that perm in your pants every day, but I certainly knew where you’d fit it every ni-”
Shimura Tae drop-kicked the ninja down the hill.
“You’ll all have to excuse Sarutobi-san,” she said, smiling prettily. “She is overcome with grief, and grief can make you do strange things. When I think of how he will never come by my club and leave me another one of his 1500% tips, it’s hard to keep acting like everything’s normal. I loved Larry’s – I mean, Lard’s money.”
She just corrected from the right name to the wrong name! This whole story was falling apart!
Kondo rushed to Shimura’s side, nodding all the while.
“It is such a tragedy that he is gone, which is why I think we should all do our best to respect his last wishes. When he was dying in my arms, he told me that the dream he had always carried with him was for me and Otae-san to shack up. Those were Lard’s – I mean, Lard’s last words to me.”
Kondo-san! You didn’t correct anything!
“Yes,” Shimura said, “those were his last words to you, but it took him a long time to die. You know how it is with arsenic poisoning. After he spoke with you, he talked with me and said that he changed his mind and wanted his nickname to be Lardbucket.”
Why would someone spend their last words on their nickname? As soon as he died, it wouldn’t matter!
“Lardbucket also said that instead of shacking up with you,” Shimura continued, “I should knee you really hard in the balls.”
She did just that.
“Yes,” Yagyuu Kyuubei said, while also kicking Kondo in the balls, “those were Lardbucket’s last words to Tae-chan, but it did really take him an incredibly long time to die. You know how it is when you’re choking on a chicken bone. After he spoke with Tae-chan, he spoke to me, and he told me that he wanted me to spend as much time with Tae-chan as she would enjoy. I should be working toward her smile at every moment.”
All these idiots were just using Sakata Lardbucket as an excuse to write their own fantasies into reality. However, there was one individual who seemed to be taking things seriously.
Yagyuu’s monkey, Jugemu Jugemu Unko Nageki Ototoi no Shin-chan no Pantsu Shinpachi no Jinsei Barumunku Fezarion Aizakku Shunaidaa Sanbu no Ochi no Junjou na Kanjou no Nokotta Sanbun no Ni wa Sakamuke ga Kininaru Kanjou Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru you de Shiranai no wo Boku wa Shitteiru Rusu Surume Medaka Kazunoko Koedame Medaka… Kono Medaka wa Sakki to Chigau Yatsu Dakara Ikeno Medaka no Hou Dakara Raayu Yuuteimiyaoukimukou Pepepepepepepepepepepepe Bichiguso Maru stood solemnly in front of Larry the-Oh My God How Big Is That Perm? He’s So Far Away And It’s Already So Big! Fuck Damn, It’s Blocking Out The Sun! My God, Fuck Fuck, What Do We Do?! It’s Too Damn Big!’s rock, and gently placed a pair of dandelions on top of it. A strong gust of wind came through, blowing the dandelions apart and Jugemu Jugemu Unko Nageki Ototoi no Shin-chan no Pantsu Shinpachi no Jinsei Barumunku Fezarion Aizakku Shunaidaa Sanbu no Ochi no Junjou na Kanjou no Nokotta Sanbun no Ni wa Sakamuke ga Kininaru Kanjou Uragiri wa Boku no Namae –
“Too long!” Gintoki snapped. “This is all taking way too long. I’m honored you like my cousin. That’s great and all, but it almost feels like you liked Lardbucket more than me!”
So even Gintoki was getting on the Lardbucket bandwagon now!
“Well, he kinda was better than you,” a little kid standing next to the Yoshiwara head’s wheelchair spoke up. “He gave me gold bars all the time.”
“How come he had so much money to throw around?” Gintoki grumbled.
“Royalties from the war, surely,” Tsukuyo supplied. “As a self-proclaimed pacifist, there are some sacrifices you have to make for your worldview, and one big one is the big ones you get from war-profiteering.”
What exactly had Lardbucket been doing during that war?!
Toshirou found himself wrapped up in this terrible patch-work quilt of a story in spite of himself, and was almost reluctant to leave when Matsudaira pulled him aside.
“You should have just told me we had the wrong guy, Toshi,” pops said.
“A lot of this is news to me too,” he replied honestly about the rampant dishonesty presently traveling around this hill.
“I’ll tell the higher ups we made a mistake,” Matsudaira continued, “as long as you can tell me for certain that we’ll never hear from the Shiroyasha again.”
How the hell was Toshirou supposed to know that? If Gintoki could kill his war persona on a whim, he could probably bring him back in the same way.
He watched as the permed idiot argued about something or other with Shimura and Sougo. In the middle of it all, his landlady came up and bopped him on the back of the head. Gintoki snapped at her, but his expression was warm. So was hers.
In the end, Toshirou supposed, it came down to trust.
“Sakata Lardbucket’s dead. You’ve seen his grave. There’s no way the Shiroyasha will ever come back,” he confirmed.
“Good enough for me,” pops said, smirking through a cigarette. “Consider it done. Although, I’ll definitely get some experts to doctor up some better photos before presenting them to the committee.”
So Matsudaira had seen through it all. Well, Toshirou had been more surprised when it looked like he hadn’t.
They’d found their excuse.
“Thanks, pops,” he said.
Matsudaira waved his gratitude away with a flip of his hand.
“Since your presence will no longer be required for the meeting, find your own ride back. And, since I didn’t say it then, felicitations on your marriage,” he drawled, and marched down the hill to his car with Jeeves in tow.
Toshirou watched him, or, more particularly, his cigarette move away. It was mere seconds later when he found that he could no longer smell any smoke. Fuck.
Where was the nearest convenience store?
A hand around his wrist stopped him from starting his own descent down the hill. It was China, with glasses standing beside her.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked, colder than the snow. “It’s about time you pay up for wasting everyone’s time. I think 50,000,000 yen will do the job.”
“Kagura-chan,” glasses exclaimed, trying to pull her back. “Don’t.”
“Butt out, Shinpachi,” China snapped, vibrating with fury. “This guy was conning us for a year! He can’t expect to get off scot-free!”
“That’s not for you to decide,” glasses said firmly. “This is Gin-san’s choice.”
At the mention of Gintoki, China’s fingers fell from his wrist. She clenched them into a fist. Toshirou had never seen her so angry – not even when Sougo was at his worst. She looked like she could have killed him if given the chance.
“You’re never to come near Gin-chan, Shinpachi, big sis, anyone I know. You hear me, narc?” she said in a snarl. “The next time I catch you sneaking around, you’re going to be stuck in the hospital for twice as long as you just were!”
Toshirou despised how much it hurt to see China looking at him with hatred in her eyes. His natural, instinctual response was to reach out and put a hand on her head, but she would rip his arm off if he did that now. She would rip him apart if it he did that ever again.
“Fine,” he said.
“As long as we understand each other,” she replied, vicious.
“Understand what?” Gintoki asked, standing next to glasses to complete the Yorozuya trio. “Are we talking about understanding how amazing I am to think up such an incredible plan on such short notice?”
“I still don’t understand why you won’t let me kick the stuffing out of this cop scum,” China growled.
“You’ve got to take pity on him,” Gintoki said with a sneer. “He was ordered to spy on me and he did it so stupidly that now everyone is mad at him. I bet he’s hated all the time he’s had to spend with us, and it’s only my genius plan that got him out of it,” he crowed then threw out his arms in mock celebration. “Congratulations! Your Cherry-Boy torture has ended. You’re welcome to lick my boots in gratitude.”
Gintoki was giving him that same look he always gave whenever there was a bug submerged in one of his parfaits. It had been such a long time since he’d been on the receiving end of that particular expression that the disgust caught Toshirou by surprise.
A smile grew, unbidden, on his lips. He couldn’t help feeling desperately, mind-numbingly fond.
Whatever his motivations for doing so, Gintoki had given up two names for him: Sakata and Shiroyasha. He had shed two layers of his legacy just as easily as one might take off a pair of coats after a day out in the cold. He was the kind of guy who probably would have done that for anyone who had ended up in Toshirou’s situation, but he hadn’t done it for anyone. Gintoki had done it for him.
Toshirou took that warmth and stored it deep within himself, right at the heart of Feelings for Yorozuya Station. He swore to himself that he would hold onto this, making it last for the rest of his life.
“You’re right. We should end it,” he said. “I never wanted any of this to happen.”
Gintoki stepped back, looking strangely flustered.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he accused aggressively. “Stop smiling at me like that. You don’t mean it.”
The Yorozuya was staring at his lips like they were about to grow wings and fly off his mouth. Toshirou’s smile only grew.
“I do mean it. That’s all this ever was, dumbass. I only ever wanted you to know that I love you,” he said the words with all the truth he could find in himself to give. “But since you’re too stupid to get that, this whole mess happened, so, actually, this is really all your fault.”
He chuckled, feeling as refreshed as he had in that bar a year ago, when he had first shown these sentiments the light of air. There were certain words he could no longer speak to people who were no longer around to hear them, but there were also some things he could say to people who were still hanging around. It wasn’t all or nothing; muteness or monologue – reality was somewhere in between that, and Toshirou sure as hell planned to take the chances he was given going forward.
Perhaps that was why he had been so determined to tell the Yorozuya the truth at the beginning of it all, on that cold, February night. It wasn’t that he’d needed the rejection he had expected would follow; rather, he had simply needed to be heard.
And so hearing him now, the Yorozuya stumbled forward, grabbing his shoulder with a surprising amount of urgency
“You mean that. You actually mean that,” Gintoki said, eyes as piercing as the two bullets that had shot Toshirou once, and once more, right through the shin.
After all this time, the Yorozuya was just finally getting it?
Well, better late than never. At long fucking last.
Toshirou pushed his forehead solidly against Gintoki’s, and closed his eyes. In response to this gesture, Gintoki didn’t immediately move away or punch him like Toshirou had half-expected him to. Instead, his lips got closer – so much closer, in fact, that Toshrou could feel his breath stutter in the cold. He took in that noxious combination of sugar, dirt, and booze for the last time.
“Always,” he said, then stepped back and turned.
He opened his eyes again.
Toshirou hobbled away across the snowy hill with his cane, not once looking back. His time with the Yorozuya was done.
He planned to respect China’s wishes, avoiding their rag-tag group as much as they managed to stay out of trouble. It was the one gift he could give to those idiots after all he had put them through. The Cherry-Boy name might have to stick around for a while, considering their nightmare of a prenup, but they could work around that.
Toshirou limped up next to Sougo with as much dignity as his crippled body could manage. To acknowledge his presence, the kid patted him on the chest right where he had been stabbed, poking him with such painful precision that there was no possible way it could have been an accident. Toshirou chewed on his lips to keep from screaming as Sougo smiled, all politeness and good cheer.
“What a shame that Lardbucket’s gone,” he said. “That guy did far more for the Shinsengumi than you ever did, and he literally did nothing for the Shinsengumi.”
Sougo really had been more openly homicidal with him ever since the pillow incident. Toshirou wasn’t sure exactly what it was that Sougo thought he had done, but he knew who it involved.
“Hanging around here has put me in the mood to see a better grave,” he said. “Let’s go visit Mitsuba.”
The moment his sister’s name came out of Toshirou’s mouth, Sougo flinched then softened. His shoulders lowered and the blatant hostility disappeared from his expression, leaving a quiet solemnity in its place.
Crossing his arms, he looked to the side as he replied, “If you’re going, I’m going. I don’t trust you being alone with her.”
Sougo’s sister complex really had only gotten bigger over the years.
“Fine. We’ll take the train,” Toshirou declared. “I know there’s a station a couple blocks away with an express line that would bring us right there.”
“You’re buying the tickets,” Sougo insisted, and Toshirou was in far too good of a mood to argue with him.
He was going to visit Mitsuba, after all.
As they started to walk down the hill, Kondo hobbled gingerly toward them.
“Where are you two going?” he asked in a voice much more high-pitched than his normal tenor.
“This guy begged me to take him to see my sister,” Sougo claimed, sighing like he was taking on the heaviest of burdens.
Despite his general genital pain, Kondo was able to show them both a wide grin.
“What a great plan! I’ll come along,” he said, wrapping one arm around Toshirou’s shoulders and the other around Sougo’s. “It is always a treat to visit Mitsuba-dono.”
The three of them had almost reached the bottom of the hill when they heard Gintoki’s aborted scream. Turning around, Toshirou saw the backs of glasses and China, both of their fists raised upward and steaming from some sort of rough impact. Far above them, Gintoki’s body rose through the air, head flung back and arms limp at his sides. His yukata and jacket seemed to float about him, weightless, for that one moment. The ninja stalker staggered beneath him, inching right then left then right, nostrils flared, preparing to catch him. With all the action going on, the scene was almost artful, in a way.
Toshirou idly wondered what had happened, but, at the end of the day, it really was none of his business. Not anymore.
“Do you want to go check on your husband?” Kondo asked.
“Nah,” Toshirou said.
They were able to snag a group of four seats, two rows facing each other. Kondo took the seat across from Toshirou, while Sougo slid into the seat next to Kondo. Only the seat next to Toshirou remained empty as the train idled at the station.
He gazed out the window, watching the snow fall along the tracks, while taking another rapturous drag of his first Mayoboro in a goddamn month. When he’d spotted the pack on the shelf of the newsstand in front of the station, he had nearly started sobbing with joy. It had been a beautiful moment.
“All aboard! Last call,” an attendant was saying.
They had been right on time to catch the express, and soon they would be speeding out of the city and into the countryside. It had been a long time since Toshirou had traveled these particular rails together with Kondo and Sougo. None of them ever seemed to find the right moment or excuse to take the train back, even for a short day-trip like this.
“I’m glad we’re finally taking the time to visit her together,” Kondo confirmed aloud, strangely, almost as if he had been following Toshirou’s train of thought.
Admittedly, Toshirou’s motivations for suggesting the train ride weren’t something he could easily explain. It wasn’t as simple as saying he wanted to see Mitsuba, because he had been seeing her almost too much lately, in his dreams and in his death. Her ghost had been riding the rails of his subconscious mind so often that she had probably accumulated a good amount of frequent rider miles.
He had come to realize that she hadn’t been the one haunting him as much as he had been keeping her there with his stubborn, desperate determination to say what he had never managed to before. He would throw static, distorted shards of his unspoken words at her shadow and watch them bounce against the seat cushion and over the walls of the train car, dissipating into the dusty, stale air of his dreams. He hadn’t been able to let go of the things he had never done.
Now, he wanted to stand directly on the frozen soil in front of her headstone and tell her that he had learned the words. He had learned how to say them, to give voice to them, and whenever he died for real this time, he would give them to her. He would tell her everything the first moment he could, but not a second before.
“Yeah,” Toshirou finally replied.
In a surprisingly heartwarming gesture, Sougo actively passed over the opportunity to spit on his shoe.
The doors to the train began to slide shut, but, right before slotting together, they emitted a loud beep and slid open again. Something was causing a delay. Toshirou could see a few employees starting to run toward a car near the back of the train, and there were sounds of raised voices and a general ruckus.
He looked at his cane where he had it propped against the window and grumbled. Was he going to get shot again?
“Let’s go and check it out, Sougo,” Kondo said, grabbing onto the hilt of his sword as he stood, giving Toshirou the firm order of: “You stay here.”
He hated being benched.
However, right before Sougo and Kondo could exit the car, the commotion burst into it: a colorful, snowballing Yorozuya trio.
“Kondo-san!” glasses gasped, rumpled and out of breath. “Please pay our fare. We’ll pay you back! This is important!”
What the hell were they doing here?
Like the patsy he was, Kondo nodded, and handed some bills over to the angry employees that had been chasing the idiots through the line of train cars, and who looked only mildly appeased by the financial transaction. China stuck out her tongue at the group before racing down the aisle and barreling right into Toshirou’s lap.
“Mami 4,” she cried, “I’m sorry for not trusting you!”
Well, it looked like he was back on a Mami 4 name basis now.
He was mostly sure the warm feeling spreading through his chest was just internal bleeding.
“Stop causing a scene,” he said.
She held on tighter, mumbling into his jacket. “I thought you had been trying to hurt Gin-chan.”
“I’m trying to hurt him all the time,” he replied easily enough. “He’s annoying like that.”
Kondo, who had made his way back to their group of seats, sat down with a look of dawning comprehension on his face.
“Did you think Toshi was trying to pull a fast one on you? After all that? After all this time?” he asked, eyebrows approaching his hairline. “That was just our boss misunderstanding Toshi’s natural intentions. As a spy, Toshi’s good, but he’s not Cherry-Boy good.”
Hey!
Although, admittedly, Kondo was right. Subterfuge missions weren’t his biggest strength, particularly if they involved months long operations with secret identities. He wasn’t patient enough to avoid slipping up once or twice.
“If pops had really ordered an operation like that, we would have sent someone like Muneno Tanima – or Yamazaki,” Toshirou added, which summoned up the strange mental image of Zaki in a cocktail dress trying to put the moves on the Yorozuya at some dimly lit speakeasy.
A long, manly, manicured finger traced the edge of a glass of scotch, neat. “So tell me, how does a dashing perm like you wind up in a place like this?”
“Oh no, we definitely would have sent you, Toshi,” Kondo countered, seemingly utterly unburdened of imaginary cocktail Zakis. “I’m not an idiot.”
Did that mean Toshirou was an idiot? Because he definitely didn’t see the logic behind that one.
“I mean, sure,” Kondo continued, “you probably wouldn’t have been able to give us natural, Cherry-Boy levels in a honey trap operation, but you would have at least given us Lemon-Boy levels.”
What were Lemon-Boy levels!
“Even at Lemon-Boy levels you would have had the best chances of anyone we could send. We are talking about the Yorozuya, after all,” Kondo added, like that explained anything.
Frankly, Toshirou still was of the mind that they would have had better results with Yamazaki in a cocktail dress.
Not that it mattered! Why the fuck were they talking about any of this!
“Yeah,” Sougo said, sneering. “Just look at how he’s got China wrapped around his little finger. The way her head’s buried in his chest, you can tell she’s trying to suck at the teat and get more milk from mommy. What a stupid little girl.”
Lifting up her head, China gazed calmly in Toshirou’s direction.
“Are we okay?” she asked.
“Why wouldn’t we be?” he asked in return.
Her smile was small, but fond. She patted his cheek.
“Good enough. We’ll talk more later,” she said. “I just realized there’s something I need to take care of, okay?”
Winding up like a spring, she tensed and faced Sougo with a feral grin.
“I’m going to beat you so bad, even your mami’s milk won’t be able to stop your wailing.”
To the horror of the rest of the passengers, China and Sougo started duking it out, no-holds-barred, right in the middle of the aisle. Punches, kicks, expletives, and loose carpeting went flying. A number of people started trying to sneak into one of the adjacent cars. A middle-aged man passed out, slumping down in his seat. The woman sitting next to him began fanning him frantically.
As all this was going on, glasses was dragging Gintoki down the aisle by his jacket collar, calmly avoiding the battling children as he made his way toward Toshirou and Kondo.
Stopping in front of them, he cleared his throat and said, “Excuse me. Gin-san has something to say. Please give his words your full attention.”
Everyone turned to look at Cherry-Boy Gintoki. The tips of his ears were a brilliantly bright red, probably from the cold. He pushed his index fingers together awkwardly as he stared at the floor.
“Right now?” he muttered to glasses. “I have to do it right now?”
“Yes, right now!” glasses snapped, clearly wearing the balls in this conversation. “We didn’t run onto this train just so you could put it off again!”
“But there’s so many people here,” the Yorozuya whined.
Glasses grabbed him by one of Cherry-Boy colored ears and yanked him to eye level.
“Tell me, does this look like the face of someone who cares?” the kid hissed, and the heat of the glare he leveled at his boss could have burnt entire cities to the ground. “You lost the right to choose your moment when you put it off for months and months! You put it off for so long that all this happened!” Glasses waved his hands wildly. “Now someone has to be an actual adult here and make you. Get. It. Done.”
The train car descended into silence, save for a snapped “Eat shit, China!” and the thud of fist on fist.
Finally, Kondo chuckled, looking at the tense situation in front of him, and only appearing all the more cheerful for it.
“It’s times like these that make it easy to see how much your people care for you,” he observed. “You really are a lucky man, Gintoki.”
Glasses perked up, nodding approvingly.
“Yes, precisely! I couldn’t have said it better myself. Gin-san is loved. Aren’t you?” He paused. “AREN’T YOU?”
More silence.
“Yeah,” Gintoki muttered into his shoulder.
“I can’t hear you!” glasses, the drill sergeant, yelled.
“And I can hear you too loudly,” the Yorozuya snapped back, “so we’re even.”
Glasses pushed his glasses higher onto the bridge of his nose. They flashed menacingly.
“Now that I know the score, if you think I am going to let this situation continue for even one more day, you are sorely mistaken,” glasses spoke coldly. “I am tired. It’s been a year. Tell him!”
“And in that year, I’ve told him a thousand times already,” the Yorozuya claimed, doing a lukewarm job of standing his ground against the rampaging eyewear. “It’s his fault for not getting it.”
“IT’S YOUR FAULT FOR BEING A DUMBASS! GET IT DONE.”
Yorozuya stared down the furiously reflective pair of glasses for a moment before muttering, “Fine! Alright, already! You’ll be happy if I say it again, huh?”
Gintoki shuffled forward with such forced casualness that it all cycled right back around to tense and uncomfortable. He slid unceremoniously into the seat next to Toshirou, head turned the other way. His ears, somehow, impossibly, seemed even redder than before. The Yorozuya hunched in on himself and flinched as the train began rolling forward, at long last chugging away from the station.
“What’s wrong with him?” Toshirou asked.
At his words, Gintoki sprang back to life.
He straightened up and growled at glasses, “You see what I’m dealing with? He has no fucking clue!”
Insulted, Toshirou replied, “Why are you acting like I have anything to do with this?”
Why was he being brought into the middle of this stupid argument going on between glasses and the Yorozuya? All his plans to leave them alone wouldn’t work if they wouldn’t leave him alone! How annoying. He took out another cigarette and puffed on it huffily.
Gintoki put his head in his hands.
“This is impossible,” he said. “Patsuan, you do it for me.”
Startled, glasses exclaimed, “You want me to-? No! No way! How would that even work? How could you even ask that?”
“Fine,” Gintoki mumbled, “I’m not picky. Gorilla, you do it.”
“Me?” Kondo asked, naturally, unfortunately responding to the word gorilla. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to do, but I’m happy to help. It has something to do with Toshi, right?”
Kondo patted Toshirou’s knee with a firm hand and smiled over his support. Despite the strange situation, Toshirou couldn’t help smiling back. No matter what happened, Kondo would be there to –
The Yorozuya rudely slapped Kondo’s hand away, saying, “Never mind. You’re all useless. I’ll do it myself.”
If Kondo was right and this had something to do with Toshirou, well…
Then the Yorozuya better just come out and say it. What was wrong with him?
After a heavy swallow, Gintoki caught his eye and said, “So, how’s it going?”
“It was going great until you came along,” he replied without mercy.
“The feeling’s mutual,” the Yorozuya snapped before shaking his head. “No, wait. Dammit! Just stop! Just stop everything for a minute!”
“This train won’t be stopping even once until we’re a quarter of the way to Bushu,” Toshirou drawled.
If the Yorozuya was feeling unsteady, he could go and find a corner to throw up in.
However, Toshirou’s words only seemed to relieve some of the tension from Gintoki’s shoulders.
“Really?” he asked. “Why are you going in that direction?”
“You got on board without even knowing where we were going?”
Glasses had said they had an important reason to be on this train, which is why Kondo had paid their fee. Were they just draining his Commander’s money for no reason? He could get pissed at that right?
“I knew you were on the train,” Gintoki replied. “That was enough.”
His expression reminded Toshirou of how China had looked that night in the hospital, a blanket wrapped around her, as she stood in front of his bed. There was strength, stubbornness, and a quiet sort of vulnerability that was hard to pin down. It was startling to see how naturally alike they had become in some ways.
In China’s case, Toshirou had done his best to be patient and honest. He had wanted to help her settle any unfinished business that might have involved him. He had owed her at least that much.
For Gintoki, he blew a cloud of smoke in his face.
What else was there to do really?
The idiot needed to let everyone get on with their lives.
“Kondo-san,” Toshirou said, as Gintoki coughed his offense next to him, “you wasted your money.”
“I disagree,” Kondo replied with warmth. “The more, the merrier! Mitsuba will love to have such a big group coming to visit her.”
At this, Gintoki’s eyes widened. After a beat, he smiled firmly.
“Mitsuba-san? That’s good,” he said. “That’ll work out great. It just so happens that I have something I want to talk with her about.”
Toshirou certainly hadn’t been expecting that.
“What?” he demanded.
“You need to work on your listening comprehension, because I just said it was something I wanted to talk with her about, not with you,” Gintoki snarked cheerfully. “If you happen to be around when I tell her, you can listen in if you want to though. I don’t mind.”
Nothing that was happening was making any sense. Toshirou didn’t even understand why Gintoki was here in the first place, and now he had things to say to Mitsuba. Frowning, he turned to look out the window.
“Well, Patsuan,” Gintoki said after a moment, “this should satisfy you.”
“Not even close,” came the immediate response. “You’re just finding another excuse to delay again.”
“No, no, this is it, I mean it! I’ll say it all in front of her grave, so get off my back!”
“If you think I trust you not to jump out the window at your first opportunity, you’ve got another thing coming. I’m not taking my eyes off you until you finish this, Gin-san.”
“Well, I’m going to have to go take a shit pretty soon, so you’re going to have to take at least one break!”
“Not a chance. You’re keeping the door open and I’m standing right in front of you while you do your business!”
“I’LL MAKE IT A REALLY SMELLY ONE!”
“I’LL BRING A CLOTHESPIN!”
As Gintoki and glasses continued their pointless argument, Toshirou was quite certain that he still had no idea what the point of any of this was.
And the truth of it was, he was right.
He wouldn’t get it for a little while longer. He wouldn’t start to understand the score until they got to Bushu and the Yorozuya began to kneel in front of that grave, mindless of the piles of snow that crunched under his knees and soaked right through his season finale yukata. Toshirou wouldn’t start to figure it out until Gintoki was ripping open the bag of ultra spicy senbei Toshirou had laid in front of Mitsuba’s headstone, swallowing her offering in exchange for something else.
Toshirou wouldn't have the epiphany until, despite his snotty tears as he chewed through her senbei, Gintoki was addressing Mitsuba with a level of formality and poise Toshirou hadn’t realized the idiot possessed, making her a solemn promise. It would be a promise that weighed far more than what was exchanged under the official eyes of the Shogunate, and one that was much larger than the 82 megabyte prenup file on Toshirou’s phone.
Soberly made and genuinely given, it would be the truest of all Cherry-Boy vows that had so far seen the light of day or the bottom of a sake cup.
And that is when Cherry-Boy Toshirou would start to realize, to fundamentally understand what this year-long game of gay chicken had actually all been about.
But not yet.
He had not realized just yet. For now, he was still on that train, Kondo and glasses in front of him, Sougo and China behind him, and the Yorozuya next to him, all riding those rails together toward their destination.
And this is where this story has to end, because it isn’t a tale about what happens when the realization comes; no, this is the story about all the idiocy that happens before that. To be absolutely clear, this is, at its core, an incredibly stupid story – not a heartwarming one.
So we see Toshirou in one final moment of deliberation. Staring out the window of the train as his standard cig dangles from his lips, he absorbs the evidence piling up around him, digests everything Gintoki has done today and all the days before, and takes a careful moment to think.
All of these actions are adding up to something. There is certainly a reason the Yorozuya is taking the time and significance to bring some words to Mitsuba’s grave, and Toshirou has a feeling he knows what it is. He turns away from the window and toward the Yorozuya, who is still in the middle of a heated argument about a future shit-filled observation session. However, under the weight of his gaze, Gintoki takes a break from spitting at glasses to face him. He seems to realize that Toshirou has him figured out.
Gintoki scratches his hair, giving Toshirou the same expression he wears when he finds an extra strawberry in one of his parfaits.
“So you get it now, huh? My stupid son-of-a-bitch,” he concludes, the red coloring of his ears spreading rapid-fire down his neck.
“Yeah, I think I do,” Toshirou says as the train speeds forward. “You’ve got a thing for Mitsuba, don’t you?”
Fin