Sakata Gintoki was dead.
There was blood staining his kimono, and Shinpachi thinks for a brief moment what an utter bitch it will be to get that kimono white again if it isn't washed in time. And then, of course, it sinks in that Gin-san, Sakata Gintoki, the Shiroyasha of legend, was, in fact, as dead as a door nail.
Of course he cries.
Gin-chan's head is tilted to the side, his position almost sleeplike and peaceful, but for the blood and bitterness and regret that stained everything. Kagura frowns at the plastic bag of groceries that had been thrown to the side, and thinks that it is a waste.
Kagura cries with Shinpachi, two broken figures shaking silently.
Katsura frowns at the blood and the carnage, and it takes more than a moment for that empty head of his to precess that for once, it was Gintoki who was the one that fell victim so someone's sword, and not the other way around. Zura was used to Gintoki being covered in blood. Zura knew a bloodstained Gintoki better that he knew himself, but if it was this Gintoki, then Zura didn't want him, because no matter how bloody the Shiroyasha was, no matter if it had been the blood of his enemy or his own blood that he had been drenched in, Gintoki had never before let it drown him like this.
Katsura does not quite know what to do, so he says a silent prayer, and brushes Gintoki's eyelids shut. Then, he turns and leaves, holding himself in that same noble, dignified way, but much too stiffly to be elegant.
Hijikata sees Gintoki lying in a pool of him own blood, and quite simply screams.
He proceeds to kill Takasugi slowly and painfully after that, never mind the fact that he was only kicking a man who was down.
After Hijikata walks away from the mass of blood and small pieces of gore that used to be Takasugi, he ignores the horrified and somewhat sickened gazes of the others, and picks up his yorozuya, and walks away, quite broken.
But Takasugi Shinsuke, until his dying breath, was laughing truimphantly, and even when his head rolls on the ground, quite severed, he is still smiling from a victory that was quite mad.
And he laughs at all of them in the depths of hell, because in the end, Gintoki was his