This was written for the "Remember me" prompt, sent by the lovely csilla-nocturine on tumblr. It sorta got away from me and evolved into this. Thanks for reading!
.*Antidote*.
The brush left sweeping trails of onyx in its wake as Hijikata's hand danced over the succession of countless pages. Beautiful penmanship wasn't a requirement for a poet, but it was becoming…even if his current work bore no vestige of artistic flow.
…Even if he hadn't composed a single verse in weeks.
Or had it been months?
Petitions were his life now. Calligraphic petitions. Names and places, dates and times, dry facts and hard truths—each penned in style, with grace and polish and beauty. And the reports, too, comprised of elegant characters embroidered across golden paper…
All of this attention to detail, only to be sent to officials with no appreciation for such aesthetic—or guarantee that these documents would even be looked at, let alone perused.
There was purpose in the obsession with embellishment and the extra work it made, however, and that purpose, it was…
The kanji blurred when Hijikata's focus shifted suddenly on that thought. The brush slowed and then lifted so not to blot, and he remained still, staring down at the apparatus he held between his deft fingers.
He blinked and his mouth parted. A dry huff forced out from between his lips.
Purpose? What purpose? There used to be, when his words flowered across pages bound in leather—when he wrote of morning snow in the winter and birdsong in the spring, when there was someone around who cared to treasure what he produced regardless if it was good or not.
But now, it was only names and places, dates and times, dry facts and hard truths…petitions and reports, inscribed and shipped off to disappear in a Bakufu void.
The futility of it all hadn't even entered Hijikata's mind until this point, until a conversation from earlier fractured the delicate floor of glass he'd trodden upon. And now the only thing he could hear was the inescapable echo of Sannan's nonchalant voice, thrumming over and over in his memory.
"Toudo-kun also clings to his humanity, with the insistence to live by daylight." The statement wafted calm and collected from the open shoji, as if it were a comment about trivialities of the weather instead of the tragedy of one man's life—or all of their lives, for that matter. "I can understand where the desire comes from, but how futile it truly is…for we are no longer human."
It'd been too long by now, doing this particular dance, and Hijikata recognized the point Sannan intended despite its vague deliverance.
"It's not our business how he copes." He hadn't turned from his desk when he answered, and kept his tone curt and dismissive: a return in kind to the shot covertly fired in his direction.
A wedge had driven its way deep between himself and Sannan with Kondo's absence, each harboring a different vision of the Shinsengumi's future, and the tension that smoldered behind forced pleasantries only further strained the relationship.
Still, Sannan's rank of Soucho—of General Secretary—hadn't been given without due merit. And when no reply had been offered after the passing of several moments, Hijikata lifted his chin and slowly peered toward the doorway.
What he'd found there was a peculiar directness in Sannan's gaze, a glint in the slight narrow of his eyes. "Perhaps not. Nonetheless, you are aware he is doing it entirely for her." And though his words were specifically referring to Heisuke's affection for Chizuru, Hijikata once again felt the weight of their more personal implications.
Sannan's shoulders rose with a cant of his head. "The real pity is found in what he doesn't realize."
Fighting to avoid clenching his teeth, Hijikata's digits instead curled inward on his hakama. "And that is?"
"That the end will not justify the means. When all is said and done, the effort will only bring her pain. She will suffer just as much, if not more." Fingertips pressed to the frame of his glasses when Sannan turned, but before he resumed his stroll down the porch, he added in an almost indifferent tone, "…All because he cannot accept the reality of what he no longer is."
The steps which carried him off had been so light that he could have been a ghost. And in a way it felt as though Sannan's presence had been, for Hijikata stared long after at an empty space, haunted by his parting words.
No longer human.
They still plagued him now, as he gazed at the fine bristles coated in black and how they clashed with the paleness of his flesh. No longer…
His brow furrowed. Hijikata placed the brush down on the tray with a pointed tap and brought his palm before his face. Squinting, he studied the lines, the rough patches of skin, the callouses on his fingertips from years of brandishing a sword.
No longer…human. Was that true? With drinking the ochimizu, had he forfeited entirely what it meant to be of this world? Had the transformation forever removed his capacity to mesh with others unlike him, stolen his right to appreciate what he'd loved so fondly before the change in his blood?
Clear lines morphed into obscure blotches as Hijikata maintained a vacant stare. His heart still beat and his lungs still drew breath. His fingers ached from paper cuts (even if temporarily) and his stomach growled when he ignored it for too long. He felt the misery of loneliness with Kondo recovering elsewhere from his gunshot wound, felt the crushing weight of responsibility to keep the Shinsengumi afloat among all this Edo noise.
But at the same time, Hijikata also experienced the urges—the sensation of control slipping from his grasp, the imploring and nagging and suffering cries within him to just give in and answer a brute call, to quench a relentless thirst.
He swallowed the pain of these attacks he could never predict…tried to ignore the fact that each augmented in severity when compared with the last, tried to brush off the knowledge they would just keep growing worse and more erratic.
At last, Hijikata's hand lowered. Both palms braced against his thighs as he slowly stood.
For now, he could still pass.
His socked feet traversed the tatami without a sound.
For now, he could keep on as he had been…
He stepped over the threshold and onto the porch, walked to the edge of the wooden planks and gazed up to a sky of shimmering diamonds. The moon was crescent on this winter night, but its light barely permeated the obstructing thickness of a passing cloud. Hijikata's gaze softened.
For now, he was keeping it all together. But how long would it be until he could no longer will away the drives without intervention? How long until he could no longer recognize himself, until he became as mindless as the men Niimi had chained to the wall so many years ago? How long until this repressed nature exposed itself, until it could no longer be subdued?
The offending cloud drifted on, leaving in its wake the moon's full luminosity—a bright, conspicuous sickle carved into darkness. Similar to the stars, and yet different. Blending in with the nightscape and yet actually an eyesore, depending on the point of view.
Hijikata's lashes fell.
Sannan had been right about one thing, at least; it was inevitable that Chizuru would end up hurt. And if that were true, then how long would it be until Hijikata caused Kondo the same kind of pain?
His eyes opened.
…What was he thinking?
He already had, from the very moment the poison in that tiny vial made contact with his lips.
If he no longer wrote poetry, could he still call himself a poet? If he was no longer human, could he still call himself a man? And if his adoration for Kondo was as deep as he thought it was and he still did this to him, could he really say that he…?
A cold breeze intercepted that thought and carried it off in the same way it caught Hijikata's long hair. It was enough already, all of this. The shiver wracked his exhausted frame but his feet remained cemented where they were, as if time might stop if he simply ceased to move.
But his heart continued to beat.
And his blood still carried with it the curse.
And now, Hijikata was sure that somewhere, Kondo was staring up at this same sky—that his commander's thoughts were undoubtedly, undeservedly filled with nothing else but him.
His vision blurred again, but for a different reason this time.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
There were reverberations from the past that night, loud and precise, within Hijikata's quarters.
"I had thought I made myself clear. The ochimizu is not a tool for self-preservation, but a means to step beyond the limitations."
Despite only serving one, two futons had been laid out. …Because there had always been two. And perhaps, it was sentimental to continue that habit, but…
"But Sannan-san!" Heisuke's open hands had been thrust toward him in desperation. "If I can't move around during the day, then how can I—"
Hijikata lay on his side, his eyes half-lidded and fixated toward the shoji with a blank stare. He'd draped a heavy blanket over himself, and beneath that, a black haori.
"The simple answer is that you do not. The simple solution is that you let go."
He dipped his chin, brought the haori to his nose, and inhaled.
"I can't!" Heisuke had anguished, his distress growing. "The whole reason why I took it was—"
The fabric still smelled like him, like Kat-chan.
"Toudo-kun. It is not…a tool…for self…preservation. It is not taken to spare someone else's pain."
Kazama's sword had pointed in Hijikata's direction and in that same moment when his heart had stopped, all he'd been capable of thinking about was Kondo. …Never meeting his eyes again or feeling the warmth of his embrace, never having the chance to say goodbye or establish closure… Hurting him, abandoning him, because Hijikata hadn't been strong enough to see it all through.
"Then…" An exasperated laugh. "Then, you're saying I should have just let myself die. Because now Chizuru…" Heisuke's voice deteriorated. "Now Chizuru, she…"
…Because Hijikata had been on the cusp of defeat by the hands of a demon. An actual demon—something he, after all that time, simply hadn't been able to say he was. And so the cap had fallen to the dirt and the bottle had met his lips.
"Perhaps."
Hijikata closed his eyes and buried his face into Kondo's scent.
Perhaps, indeed.