Once people so much smarter than Sougo had told him not to look at the sky because the sun could blind him. It's easier to just crawl on the ground, they had added, in the end to catch insects you need to get dirty. And Sougo couldn't deny, in his head the explanations had sounded logically enough to convince him and make him believe.
For the time being.
There was a particular part of evening, arriving shortly between the last reflections of sunset and complete darkness, that for Sougo was tantamount to the greatest moment of the day.
When the sky clock showed his favorite hour, all members of his division could no longer call for him with their tearful voices nor Hijikata complained about Sougo wandering somewhere and then coming up with poor excuses. Questions, questions, only questions - about his orders and decisions and life and behavior, they echoed nastily and irritated him, so as a matter of principle Sougo felt that he must run away from them.
He did.
Maybe if cholesterol finally kills Hijikata, the headquarters will be a little quieter.
That's why Sougo was sneaking out of his bedroom and searching for the night training only together with that border between day and night, where the sun was still shining proudly on the sky, but so low that the rays falling on the horizon looked like scarlet brush strokes.
Years of training, both official and secret, has made the wooden bokutō melt under his touch in a second, adapting freely to the irregularity of his hands like the best liquid form. Or maybe his hands were formed by the shape of a sword? Sougo couldn't tell.
It was with him for so long, forever and ever in him. He had learned how to hold a sword before he had been taught to write, and maybe the second skill would have been a mystery to this day if Kondou hadn't cared enough. But Sougo had his own alphabet engraved in the memory, learned through the years. Each cut must be clear and good because it was like writing and a line drawn badly could change the meaning of a word.
A, B, C - aim for the heart.
D, E, F - observe moves of your enemy.
G, H, I - attacks prevent blocks.
You're doing great, Okita-kun. We can tell that a bright future waits for you, Okita-kun. Very talented, really.
Sougo was practicing with the weapon exactly like people much smarter than him once had taught him (to write with a sword the phrase "do not kill", where "no" has thawed, almost like a blur, and finally disappeared completely).
But it didn't bother him, after all he liked to be the top student in every situation. Only sometimes, before going to bed, he saw the face of his sister on the other side and felt that these hands couldn't touch her anymore. Then a long and sleepless night was waiting for him.
And maybe tonight Sougo's attacks and familiar but unfamiliar dojo would soak in the same stench of doubt, yet Hijikata somehow got through the heavy thoughts and visited him in the training room. In place of unnecessary questions he left for Sougo a message saying that a giant white dog has blocked the road, then an unknown scooter caused the domino-type collision of several trucks.
It will be a nice fine.
Sougo took the handcuffs and involuntarily sighed because these three idiots and all the people they attracted were digging holes in Shinsengumi's perfectly overcast sky, finding the pieces of light and waiting until it disintegrate into thousands fragments small like rain drops.
And that was why sometimes Sougo couldn't help and glanced quickly at the sky, so that no one else could notice. He looked at that one sunray which one day would probably blind him, at the crown of red hair entangling her head like a halo when wind blows lifted her locks up and down, at wild and untamed flames scorching with her every breath.
After a moment the evening sky of pinks and oranges looked almost like fire dancing playfully behind her. On that backcloth she was nothing more than a distant figure, as real as a shadow in a theater of illusion. Sougo forced himself to look away before she could spot his wistful gaze.
The fire inside knew only two paths and Sougo patiently waited for one of them. Kagura would either burn him completely and step on his ashes or purify something in him, like a dance sharing its name with her.
Initially, Kagura was just a faint streak, flitting imperceptibly along with the air somewhere on the edge of his mind. Even later, when she has already become China, an irritating brat with a tongue sour like currants, the image looked more like a blurred charcoal sketch drawn on the margins - enough to remember her face, but still without details.
For the first time Sougo saw her as a whole in Ikedaya and that experience was similar to his first visit in Edo, where among the overwhelming enormity of all buildings Sougo has remembered only a small stall with caramel apples.
Despite so many important details, in ruins and dirt Sougo remarked in amazement how pale was Kagura's skin. Not in that repulsive and detergent-chemical way he remembered from his sister's face. Milky alabaster enveloped Kagura's bones, it was clear and shone with sweat running down her neck in the heat of a summer night.
Sougo noticed also dust particles flying and swirling around them. Ignoring them completely, suddenly Kagura raised her hand and wiped the cheek, leaving a dark smudge on it. With this she broke the harmony, black stains contrasted too sharply with brightness.
"Sometimes, to protect something, you need to get dirty."
He needed years to understand that he wasn't talking about everyone, but specifically, about her, because it's too hard to wash away blood from these white hands of a Yato crybaby.
The memories came back now and mixed with an image of a young man, writhing at Sougo's feet hideously like a larva. The boy looked like a picture drawn on a piece of tracing paper by a small child. The new drawing and the original were showing almost the same thing, but their lines revealed a secret.
Kagura's red hair was hiding some inexplicable warm, her brother's braid at most the fiery conflagration which Sougo once watched from a distance in the accompaniment of screams similar to their battlefield sounds. Her white skin was delicate and pure, drops of blood on his face were like sparks spat by fire, burning off all humanity in him.
Sougo had realized that one cut would never kill a Yato warrior, but maybe after cutting out his hearts even the Harusame Capitan could fall dead? If there was a way to kill the deadliest in the galaxy and in their soul, Sougo was going to find it. All because Kamui humiliated him enough to hate and Sougo was a policeman on duty, and because a certain naive China with bright eyes would never finish off her own brother.
For Sougo another death wouldn't make any difference.
A triumphant smile raised his sword, his body followed the habit trained by teachers once praising the Shinsengumi child prodigy, his mind in the last moment told him to close his eyes and do not look at yet another dying face.
Maybe it's the last time and a break finally awaits him. Then in the hot afternoon he would hide in a side street and start a little beetles fight with China, pretending he's just a child.
The attack was fast, clear and deadly, and if anyone else had done it, the reckless girl who appeared between Sougo and Kamui gracefully like hemp would have died on the spot. First he felt her scent, then hair on his face, then blood. Kagura, trying to save herself from falling, stuck her fingers in his shoulder so hard that his bones were shaking no less than his feet.
"That's my brother," she breathed with difficulty to his ear, "After all, he is still my brother."
The words reached to Sougo few seconds later, breaking through the thicket of thoughts. Blood splashed on his hands and was humming in his ears until he bit his lip hard enough to feel also his own blood. One more second and the soldier mind became clear, recording everything around him. Seeing this, Kagura smiled with swollen lips and collapsed too lightly to die.
Kamui watched them intently from under drooping eyelids. A smile stretched on the Yato lips like slimy gum, at the same moment seriousness flashed in his misty eyes. A strange image that looked more like a combination of two mismatched fragments.
"She is still weak," Kamui stated in nothing more than a whistle, "weak and pathetic. She can never understand people like us."
She couldn't. It was a blessing.
People much more talented than Sougo had taught him that on a battlefield you cannot be guided by emotions and Sougo has always been a top student. But other than that, he has always been a child much more rebellious than Hijikata.
Avoiding the neck, Sougo aimed at the braid winding around Kamui's head like a noose. It fell apart in the pool of blood with a splash when the sword stuck deep in the ground near Kamui's ear.
"And I think, Mr. Criminal, that you are weak. You have been defeated by a miserable Earth man before the very eyes of your crew and now you're groveling under my feet. Shame on you, Mr. Criminal. And your sister's mercy saved your life... It's a big debt for a trash. If I was in your shoes, I think I'd rather die."
Maybe Kamui wasn't able to get up, maybe he let them go, maybe in this damn and absurd life Sougo did not have to understand everything. Among the battle roars he carefully took Kagura, leaving her brother alive and knowing that she, and only she, was better than he could ever be.
The ideal hospital sterility has always made Sougo feel sick. But maybe not always, maybe it all has started the day when his sister had died in the same hospital, but on the floor above his head. Or when he had been fourteen years old and a chubby nurse from the emergency department had sewed his wounds with surgical sutures, then had washed the red stains from his uniform for the first time ever.
Walking through the long and winding corridors brought to his mind only a tightrope hanging between white lamps. No turns, no irregularity, no hesitation. As a soldier, Sougo generally liked all places controlled by strictly established rules, but a drop of spontaneity and change would often predominate in the balance of Shinsengumi. Hospitals, however, absorbed everything like a homogeneous mark. White walls were touching white floors and doctors in white coats were taking care of their patients, people white on their faces or covered with white sheets.
Sougo intentionally had chosen a corridor in which the bulb was flickering gently, moving smoothly from blinding glare to albescent shadow, until it died, plunging the hall in darkness, then starting the whole process once again. On a cold and hard bench he was dozing now, listening to the cacophony not guided by any harmony until the vibrations of lights became one with the clock ticking down the hall and the equipment beeping in the other room.
That's why he hated hospitals. Because by force they sucked him into a blind circle of life, absorbing minds. Besides, he had tried to find help in hospitals but survived.
When this afternoon Gintoki and Shinpachi found him in the corridor, Sougo was sleeping in darkness and pieces of broken glass were scattered around like a little too rough carpet. About two years later, with a cup of sake, Shimura explained to him that Yorozuya boss had a reason to drag Sougo, together with the bench, throughout the corridor. Apparently Kagura asked for a meeting with Okita Sougo, although earlier she had sworn to call that fucking sadist by his named only on her deathbed. Gintoki was somehow stressed and that tension did not leave him until he threw Sougo to her room.
The Shinsengumi Capitan saw her sitting on a hospital bed, pale and almost crumbling before his eyes. Although now small and snotty China was slightly taller than him, when wrapped in the bony pallid bedclothes she was shrinking within herself, feeling the smell of death and drugs consuming her.
For a moment they were all quiet, then Kagura whispered in a voice so rough that her throat must have been filled with paper:
"Can you leave us? Please."
Sougo thought the Yorozuya boss was ready to kill him, or maybe his eyelid just twitched a little. But the next moment Gintoki pushed Shinpachi and slammed the door.
She was avoiding his gaze, he wasn't seeking it. At this moment her closeness seemed so far away that he couldn't even enter the room deeper, still leaning against the door frame and showing, perhaps too bluntly, the distance between them. Kagura turned her head from him so her neck bent at a strange, puppet-like angle.
Involuntarily, Sougo thought that maybe it was China who had broken the neck in the end. But no, she looked much better now, the wounds almost disappeared, although pure white of her skin was now replaced by blue color and dark circles under her empty eyes.
"I guess that I owe you an explanation. Even if you make me sick, you jerk, we're in this swamp together. You see... he..." she whispered first haughtily, to the window and, as he suspected, to no one else, even if in the privacy of four walls her words could reach only his ears.
And she was talking.
She was talking about the planet that always smelt like acid rain, but they loved that fragrance. About fighting for bread rolls at each breakfast. She had been smaller and he's always winning. About walking several kilometers to the nearest town to get some clean water. Once she had hurt her leg, so he had given her a piggyback and carried all the way through. About smearing his face with white plaster. They had been sure it could cover the bruises.
With these harmonious words - why did she have to be so melodious? - Kagura was building the stairs and Sougo, in spite of himself, made a step, then another, until he went through the whole story and found himself standing next to her bed.
"I did it again," she said and the air around them trembled with the weight of words he was not ready to hear. "My papi once tried to fight him, you know? And I run between them. But back then I thought..."
What were you thinking? he was ready to ask with venom leaking from the tongue, evilly as always, because he did not know any other way. But before he could do it, she stopped herself and an ironic smile appeared on her face. When Kagura looked at him, for the first time today, Sougo was almost grateful that earlier she had spared him this view and big watery eyes. Otherwise he wouldn't have stayed here for so long.
"I thought that he can change. What, you're not going to say anything? But you know, Sadist? All this time I believed that he had chosen a different life. When I finally met him I realized just how many people were killed by my stupid brother."
There was only one thing Kagura should never say.
She didn't notice it.
"They died because of me."
He came closer and grabbed too hard and too brutally the pale wrist covered by the lace of dark veins. With her strength Kagura could easily escape from his grasp but Sougo wanted to give her at least an illusion of a sign.
"Do you remember what you once said to me? That we are your police. And what is the police's job? To keep some hands clean, others have to get dirty. If you regret that you are clean, all my work is wasted. And then you are a perfidious liar. I'm going to arrest you for false testimony."
He pretended not to hear Kagura's last words.
"And all the time you thought that I need this protection?"
Sometimes Sougo was cold, indifferent, sometimes angry and crossing the border of a policeman and a man, but most of the time he was tired.
When this weary stiffness and life paralysis were reaching his limits, Sougo usually filled the tub with hot water, just enough to sleep beneath its surface if it's necessary. It was a big waste in hard times, but he was doing it only when the water seemed to be nothing more than a trifle. Because of his elegant sword, in this wild world someone was not going to need water anymore. As well Sougo could seized it all for himself.
He was bathing as he watched the crystal clear water becoming more and more turbid, gradually dyed with what he has brought. He sank; first chin, then water on his tongue, nose, smooth deafness in his ears.
In all this mess Sougo was tortured by the fact that great sacrifice of his hands was never meant to end. As long as there were people, both those worthy of his protection and those without whom the world would be a better place, he had to come back home with red hands and few new flaws. People much wiser than Sougo once had taught him that when you're eighteen and have dreams, you are a child, but when you're eighteen and have a sword in your hand, you become more adult than any old man can be. And then you will never hear from anyone He's still a child. He couldn't know.
It amused him because he couldn't let himself for more than a small snort. He wanted to laugh when he realized that red could drown him and he wouldn't care for it more than he cared for Hijikata's cholesterol. He wanted to laugh because the water smelled like rust and it no longer bothered him.
It was his greatest tragedy.
Maybe this scene could be a beautiful but cliché suicide - drowning in the blood of his victims was like aesthetics of his miserable life and the live-or-kill rule imposed on it. But suddenly he heard a rumble that maybe could play a role of knocking, but only if his door didn't immediately fall out of the hinges.
China, as usual, had to destroy everything.
She appeared before him with pink cheeks and eyes slightly swollen after long sleep, and with red hurricane of hair falling on her face. For a moment she just froze in motion, waking up from oneiric worlds, then looked at the room like it was built from small parts. First Sougo, next the tub with water, in the end her eyes spotted the trickle of nobody's blood dripping on the floor.
Sougo patiently awaited what a normal and innocent person always gave him. Seeing him, from the depths of their well-behaved hearts crawled Disgust and Fear - all because real blood is quite different than what people who were never forced to watch it think. Blood is dark and greasy, like oil.
But although Kagura's eyes widened a little, on the surface Sougo saw only sadness paired with resignation and something she had expected before.
"What do you want?" Sougo said no differently than usual, leaning his head back, "Do you want me to arrest you for peeping and harassment?"
"You talk as if there was something to watch, you small jerk."
Kagura moved too gently as for a body hiding such strength, and with equal delicacy grabbed his wrist like once he had done in the past. Her smile told him It's nothing when she allowed their fingers to splice together in one perfect form. The Yato girl's skin talked to him by every nerve, but even when the smaller hand disappeared in the bigger one, shaped especially for her, Sougo saw only liquid death leaking slowly between her fingernails. It was impossible to miss, on the so-pale skin red blood screamed, kicked and revealed all its intensity.
"Stop it!" Sougo blurted out more rapidly than he intended, "You'll be dirty."
"I won't be. Look."
She glanced at him with childish and so naive superiority which has never left her, even now, and still holding his hand reached for a cleaning cloth lying near her. Kagura touched it like it was an expensive sheet and put on their fingers, performing a magic trick with disappearing. Sougo still wanted to get away, but she increased the grip, almost breaking his bones. Later he was going to kill her, now he felt too weak.
The girl wiped her bloody skin precisely and with an unnatural reverently, when finished, she did the same with his hands. Sougo wanted to do something, say something, disappear somewhere, but finally gave up, admiring every tender gesture.
"You see? Now we both have clean hands. I can wash them as often as you need, ok? So with me you will never get dirty again."
Before he could say anything to scold her, Kagura leaned forward and with love overwhelming the senses and fears slowly kissed each finger, stopping for a moment to admire her work.
"Done! They are clean for sure."
Sometimes Sougo raised his head proudly, saying that he hated a small China woman with strawberry lips, and contrary to what some might think he didn't lie. It just couldn't be understood by someone who has never loved a certain girl more than himself. But those feelings in the definition were closer to loving a perfect mirror which reflected only good things. Sougo was afraid that one day he can stare too hard, choke and then believe in a soft picture of the world closed in her good, good smile.
He couldn't forget about his duty and dirty hands. But she didn't want forgetfulness. She wanted to understand.
One day he was going to tell her, someday when he would be ready. For now they talked much better in silence, so he touched her forehead with his and was sitting in this position until the water got cold.
A/N: The first draft was written long before the Yato family meeting, but now I begin to suspect that Kamui may repent? If that happens then the hospital scene can look a little ooc. Let's just leave it like that and assume that Kagura saved Kamui three times (because she would do it, no matter how many times Kamui hurt her)