A/N: another oneshot for occupying my writer's block and, well, just for the hell of it.

This is set after Mitsuba's death. It's just a small moment in time where something could've happened. The rest is for you guys to interpret.

Critiques are greatly appreciated

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN GINTAMA IT BELONGS TO SORACHI HIDEAKI

Enjoy~

Titanium

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Because he is a hitokiri, he isn't supposed to think. In the heat of battle, where people like him get high off of the smell of rotting corpses and the war cries of their own demons, thinking isn't an option. Do or Die. It was either the latter or the former, and Okita Sougo still has much to do before he so much glances at the latter. That's why he shuts down once the white walls overcome him and swallow him up in the smell of disinfectants, syringes, and pale white hands that touch his cheek before they fall, fall, fall—

Because he is a hitokiri, he lies. He is built in with raw talents for killing and lying and just being who he is because life doesn't pick favorites—not like he bothered. He is too busy outrunning himself in the swirling movements of blazing fires that have already died and the only thing he is going off of right now is the raw feeling to break, destroy, and combust.

Because he is a hitokiri, he is not allowed to feel emotions. When steel hits soft flesh and the remnants of the red start making his sight blur, it will not be tolerated because Sou-chan has to be strong enough to not rely or depend or miss. But that fails, because he is consumed in the feelings of overwhelming titanium that is shattering, combusting, and breaking open until his is nothing but bare and exposed and angry at everything and all.

Why.

Before he knows it, Okita Sougo is standing in front of a mass of limbs and bruised-faced thugs. He looks down, feeling the blood on his sword dripping with crimson hues that are mixing and staining and doing everything that blood isn't supposed to do.

In a flash, as he flecks the blood clean off his sword and returns it to his sheathe, there is still the rawness of titanium and the sickening feeling that he is about to fall over and get crushed by some unimaginable force unless he runs away or pushes the sword dangerously close to the line of harakiri. Because after all, as much as Okita Sougo likes to play the typical Bishounen-like side character; as stupid as it sounds, he feels like the world has lost its gravity and its spinning, spinning, spinning—and he can't find a moment in between any nook or cranny to fucking breathe.

"Sou-chan."

The hospital walls are all burned into his mind as he rekindles his fire and blazes through life again with rage and anger and the raw feeling of titanium being the only thing pumping adrenaline into him. Damp trails of perspiration line his bloody forehead as he doesn't give himself time to fucking breathe, because that is when the world really hits him and gives him the tragedy he expects to hear; so instead, he runs and runs and runs and turns into the hitokiri that Okita Sougo, Sou-chan, the tenth captain of the Shinsengumi was meant to be all this time. He lets loose; exploding, combusting, raging through with the fires of hell at his beck and call and the devils on his shoulders whispering and snickering because God doesn't give a damn this time around.

If he did, God would've saved his sister.

But in the end, he knows he is just pinning the blame on someone else and that doesn't make the feeling of titanium go away one bit.

"You are. . .my little brother that I am proud of—"

And before he knows it, time smacks him in the face again and gives him back his sight as his sword is now dirty and defiled with the stench of death and the blood of even more people that will not be missed. Because their titanium is filled with highs, drinks, the cries of little girls, rapes, obsessions, and blood, blood, blood, and he is just doing the world one more favor before they ask even more from him.

But in the end it all comes down to nothing. In the end, when he will go home and mourn like a child in his cold, cold bed, he will just digress into the child that he already was, and no one is there to comfort him this time. In the end, killing, distractions, and the salty taste of the liquid flowing out of his eyes are proof that he is pissed and angry and just downright cursing at the Gods because their timing for dealing with things are just plain-out shitty and foul.

But Okita Sougo knows foul, and that's the poisonous feeling of arsenic when he was sitting in a white hospital room filled with spicy senbei crackers and a cold hand stroking his right, no, left cheek. He can almost visualize the room in exact detail, but once he gets to the beeping respirator and a ghostly cold hand, his mind breaks down and Okita Sougo isn't there anymore.

Because hitokiris aren't supposed to think. Because he is drowning in bloody water that is too far deep for him to resurface onto, and even then, there won't be an Okita Mitsuba to welcome him back.

Because Once Upon a Time, he was clueless, curious; filled with thoughts only about warm hands stroking his hair and a thorny boy obstructing his rightful place—but now the doors are broken and he can't see through the locks connecting to the room that was reserved for Sou-chan. He doesn't belong there. A new room's been made exclusively for him, and it doesn't smell like grass or mayonnaise or sukonbu or spicy senbei rice crackers anymore. They're all gone now and the only thing that seems to make him have that deranged smile on his face is the rivers of blood, blood, blood—and there's no other place fitting for a hitokiri to be in than this—

"Hey."

The skies clear overhead and he feels like his eyesight is coming back to him. The sword in his hand is clutched tightly in between his aching knuckles, and when he recognizes the voice that calls out to him, for a moment, he wonders why she is here because the alleyways aren't a fitting place for China girls in red dresses.

Those places are his.

And just like that, he doesn't come to think much about it, because he knows why she's here; impulsive, stupid little girl. Always butting her head in with that glasses and Danna. . .

"Wanna go to the park?" China girl asks with her high-pitched voice and emanating innocence; brazenly, loudly, as if the world belongs to her. She radiates and resonates and relishes the life and sticky sukonbu, and in the end she is just a little girl who's already known and seen far too much.

But she is not him.

Something in him stirs, then rustles, then he is on his way nodding his head and having a 'yes' form on his bloody lips.

He complies numbly when she leads, because yatos are the strongest. But that his not what surprises him. What surprises him is the fact that when he is expecting a full-blown battle meant to whip his ass straight, he is being beckoned—albeit impatiently—to sit on their bench. . .

Something flares in his stomach. The titanium rages on along with so many other things that don't need labels or names. They're always there.

But something catches him off-guard. It's not the fact that the China girl is tapping her foot in impatience as he slowly takes his place next to her, it's the fact that her eyes are guarded and loomed over so that he will not have to see through her like he has done so many times ago. . .

But, he supposes he is the one who can't see anything at all right now.

Their legs brush together, deliberately done on one part, unwilling on another; but nevertheless, it is a needed touch, and they don't say anything for a long while.

Then, "You look like shit."

A tired snort, "Same goes for you."

A sneer, "Baka, a lady doesn't look like that, uh-huh," she points at his disheveled appearance and that's when she notices the dry tear tracts that line his dust-covered cheeks. "Sadist, you cry?"

He shrugs, although it's painful to do even the most simplest gestures when the titanium is eating away at him; skin and bones and throat and all, "It's not every day a family member dies," it is said without mercy, and he doesn't even realize that he is so, so exhausted that he was able to say that about his own sister.

But Kagura is not one to hesitate, and it doesn't even take her one second to sear his skin off with her own high-pitched voice that decides to take it a tone lower today, "The feeling sucks."

He can't bring himself to stop biting the inside of his mouth. He tastes blood, "Yeah."

"You sound tired as hell, Sadist. Where's the titanium?" Again, always with the titanium. Her titanium was always there—because she was—is always strong.

"Waiting for you to beat it out of me."

"I won't."

He pauses, then stares at her, then turns his head to the greying skies and swallows, "My sister died from tuberculosis."

Now it's her turn to pause, only, she doesn't stare at the sky; she stares straight into his soul, where the bloody hitokiri is chained in and the Sou-chan he used to be is now laying on the ground in a heap of blood and withering titanium, "My mami died," is the only words she utters.

He knows it's rude, but curiosity gets the better of his rusting self-restraint, "From what?"

She shrugs halfheartedly, mind somewhere that must be so nostalgic she has to rub her eyes in order for him to not see something wet dripping down her face, "Dunno, mami was always really weak, and it was a few years after I was born she started to faint—and after papi and baka-aniki decided to duke it out against each other—mami died."

He doesn't say anything for a while, and when he does, it is not filled with titanium or exhaustion or rage or anger. It is filled with a mix of something genuine; something that holds secrets and little, tiny bottles with a little something that have been shared and released and relieved. That is what he has been blindingly searching for, he realizes, and the titanium is drained, just a little bit from his body so that he can relax and let the warmness of her legs and the foreign feelings cascading down his eyes drown him as he feels something wet dripping onto his hand again, and it's not his. "It really sucks."

The China girl, made out of sugar and spice and everything nice—total bullshit. They are ruined, broken, half-assed glued pieces of china that only have thin sheets of titanium protecting them and every other right to rage and combust and cry. . .but they only choose to do the latter at the moment because both feel like they don't want to ruin this moment, and that's what hitokiris and monsters—that's what Okita Sougo and Kagura choose to do.

Because they are broken pieces of china, glued together by flimsy sheets of titanium.

And then it's a show for all; the glistening tears and the bitter smiles are all the proof that is needed for the sun to win against the clouds and pin them in the spotlight filled with little bottles of regrets and a bit of tears and warm body heat. And because silence is the only thing giving them some damn space, he decides to let the titanium simmer and sizzle until he is ready to wipe away the tears and burn the memory of a beeping respirator and a cold, cold body into his mind for good.

"We look like shit." She doesn't mean it in that way, but in the other way—the one with the little bottles filled with broken china pieces and regret.

He pauses for a moment, closing his eyes, picturing red eyes the same color as his and they are sparkling when she laughs at him before becoming a wisp and disappearing. . ."I'll miss her."

And before he knows it, their shoulders are against each other as they act as broken pillars, trying to make up and salvage any more broken pieces they can find amongst the residue, but they find none, and that brings a strange bout of contented feelings in its own way.

"I hate it when people die. . ." She mutters, tear-stained cheeks lighting her face and making her all the more Kagura, a little girl who's known and seen too much to know where she is, and Sougo can't help but feel that she is so much stronger than him.

"Yeah."

And there is the silence, where nothing is passed in between until it's the dead of night and no one is awake enough to bother anyone. And that's when a shinsengumi officer turns in for the night to nurse his injuries and a China girl ambles back to the Yorozuya in search for a warm bath and a large dog to cuddle with.

No one is awake at these hours, and if they are, the only evidence they will find are tear-stained cheeks and spilled bottles of titanium.

A/N: OKAY. That was WAY WAY WAYY longer than I anticipated it to be.

Well yea, I was having a pretty good day, then I got depressed. . .because I was watching the episode where Mitsuba died. . .

Anyways, I really hope you guys enjoy this story. Review or leave a pm if I did something terribly wrong or totally screwed up a character (you all must be wanting to flame me right now at the OOCness. . .*runs away*), but critiques are GREATLY APPRECIATED.

Til next story~