Note_I think Gintoki and Otose's platonic (MASSIVE EMPHASIS ON THE PLATONIC) relationship is criminally underrated. This two-chaptered narrative will humbly try and right that wrong. Sort of.
i. Gintoki, the Drowning Man
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For the past three months, it's been the same thing over and over again. Different iterations—hot irons, bullwhips, bludgeons, water—but the crux of it always stays the same: pain.
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"Have you had enough yet, Shiroyasha?" A man screams in his ear, and before Gintoki can tell him about the giant booger hanging from his nose, they shove his head underwater. It's filled with ice, and the cold hits him like a slap to the face. After a while, they yank him out sputtering and coughing. Gintoki has to hand it to them, they're experts—pros! Timing it so that just as he thinks he's starting to catch his breath, he's shoved under again, reprieve dangling right at his fingertips. Good job fellas, because it's actually fucking torture.
This is repeated many times over, so that by the twelfth time, everything's spinning, and through the thick haze of pain, he can't tell when to hold his breath or when to breathe. One moment it's air, and the next, a mass of black bubbles. The water gushes up his nose and down his throat, swamping his lungs and his brain, and all he can do is thrash against the incoming flood, against the slow drowning; not even the white demon can do much against five men, iron chains, and months on a starvation diet.
At the end of it, he can't stand on his own, so they drag him back to his cell with his knees trailing on the ground behind him. They throw him in, the bars slam shut, and he lies on the cement floor waiting to slide back into sleep's abyss. If he's lucky, he won't have any dreams.
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When his executioner appears in front of his cell in the dead of night, a crooked grin cuts across Gintoki's face. They weren't supposed to lop his head off until tomorrow morning; it seems his appointment with death has come earlier than scheduled. He's punch-drunk from hunger and exhaustion, and it must be bad because he's talking to his dead teacher. He thinks, Hey, hey, hey, what's this? I guess the Shiroyasha's getting some VIP treatment, tonight. Aren't I the lucky guy, Sensei? He sits against the wall of his cell, his arms limp on the ground behind him. They're wrapped in bruises and sores, but just like constant smell of piss and the groans of dying men, the pain had faded into the background a long time ago. The end is nigh, and he's actually a little relieved; he still hasn't been able to tell his interrogator about the massive booger in his nose, and it's been driving him insane having to see it every day without being able to point it out.
His executioner, a stout man with the grizzled countenance of a bear, turns to take a seat on the cement floor, leaning back against the prison bars. The man doesn't say a word, and Gintoki can't really bring himself to give a damn. After some intervening silence, during part of which Gintoki wonders if the man was just trying to discreetly pick out a wedgie, the executioner speaks slowly, as if drawing his words up from a dark shaft.
"When people sin and degenerate into demons, the only beings capable of turning them human again are humans; that's why I have no right to cut you." He pauses here as if to consider what he's just said, and then nods in agreement with himself. "A demon has no right to cut a fellow demon."
He rises. Keys jingle, a latch clangs open, and slowly, the bars to the cell groan open.
"You made a promise, didn't you?" he asks.
Gintoki looks blankly at the open door. I did? Long after the executioner leaves, Gintoki remains with his back against the cold walls of his cell, taking in the stench of piss and excrement as he stares listlessly into freedom. Congratulations Sakata Gintoki, you did it, he thinks, trying to scrounge up the necessary enthusiasm for the occasion, but his fingers just scrape against the bottom of his heart and come up empty.
He feels very, very tired.
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The world outside is canvassed in snow, and Gintoki leaves one kind of prison to enter another one locked in winter. White flakes float down from the flat, gray skies and he guesses it must be around January, though it's hard to tell since the days have started running into each other; time grows smudged and blurred when you're behind bars.
He's dressed in his finest prisoner's regalia, but the thin linen is just one big joke against the sub-freezing temperatures, so he crosses his arms to try and hold in the heat and does the only thing he can ever seem to do right: he walks forward.
The cold cuts like a thousand razorblades, and Gintoki imagines the soles of his feet freezing to the ground. He imagines ripping his foot away with the next step, leaving a sheet of skin pasted to the ice behind him. He would leave blood in his wake like a trail of red blossoms blooming in the snow, and the pain would probably be horrific. He wonders if he would bleed out and die, if the blood loss would be massive enough to finally make his heart give out, make that red organ finally throw its hands up in exasperation and cry "Fuck it, this is it, I'm done-fucking done! DONE-ZO!" Lately he's been putting it through quite the grinder, you know, between beheading his teacher with his own hands and losing an entire fucking war for humankind; no one would blame the poor guy for throwing in the towel, right?
His heart, he means. He's talking about his heart.
But the bottom of Gintoki's feet stay attached, his heart keeps chugging away at life, and eventually all his parts goes so numb that he can't even pretend he's going to die an excruciating death. More likely, he'll end up passing out somewhere and slip quietly in the great beyond, and no one will be the wiser, at least, not until spring comes and melts the layer of snow off of his corpse. It's not going to be the flashiest way to go, especially for a guy who's life had played out against the grand, sweeping backdrop of an intergalactic war; against the thunderous roar of armies clashing on the battlefield; against the screams of dying men and aliens as blades spilled their offal onto the muddy ground; against the blaze of so much blood, guts, and glory, dying of hypothermia behind some trashcans would be a little embarrassing, but Gintoki figures his whole life has been one great big embarrassment, so he might as well take it to the grave, ha ha. Melodrama just cramped his style, anyways.
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Gintoki ends up in the graveyards. Shouyou had found him walking amongst the dead, and now he's return; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The prodigal son leaves to take on the world, gets his ass whooped, and comes back like the beaten dog everyone knew he was. You were right all along, Father Death, you old fucker.
He spies a particularly large headstone sticking out over the city of tombs like an unsightly skyscraper. Man, that guy must've been one cocky son-of-a-bitch, Gintoki thinks and decides it's perfect for him too. He had lived a blazing life of blood, guts, and glory after all and there was no way he'd die an embarrassing death behind some trashcans. He was the Shiroyasha, damn it, crank that melodrama up to fucking eleven!
"Hope you don't mind sharing some of this real estate, buddy," Gintoki says and takes a seat in the snow behind the eyesore of tombstone. He leans back against the stone, unable to feel the ice-cold surface against the frozen skin of his back. He folds his hands in his lap and notices that his pinky-toe might be turning black, but that's okay since he's sure he can do without it in the afterlife.
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