a/n: Canon divergence fic with agedup! Okikagu if that wasn't obvious. Cross-posted at Ao3. Good to recall episode 27 at Rengokukan arena. Be sure to read next chapter's note (which you can expect next week) Sorryfortheangst and happy reading!
Prologue - Gintoki
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The contact of iron piercing through his thin layer of clothing through his skin pained him enough.
It tore ligaments and tendons apart, the muscle that functioned his sword swinging arm. Bastards wouldn't even let him finish.
In the distance, Gintoki caught Kagura's beyond broken watchfulness from where he told her to go. Low to the ground and shimmering on the brink of tears. A strong future matriarch to the yatos, brought down by the sight of a pitiful samurai.
Hilarious.
Gintoki remembered how he got here clearly. From where he stood, surrounded and outnumbered, alone on a dirt, dark arena meant for blood, he could retrace his mistake. But it didn't begin with interrupting a brawl or even telling her to run.
Not at all.
The Tendoshuu, cloaked forces of evil, would argue it all began with his master. Or even the war, when he took arms to fight a losing battle.
But here, strangled by the same cloaks and bells that haunted him in his dreams, Gintoki focused only on Kagura. Where he failed to be a guardian and friend to her when her real one was absent.
It was his regret and mistake to deny her to join Odd Jobs. She belonged to her clan, to focus on caring for her mother, and to keep the brother she complains so much about out of trouble. She had responsibilities. Dreams, maybe, of running the clan herself.
The Tendoshuu barely looked at the other to decide whoever to pull the blade from his shoulder. First, they twisted it deeper into his body of muscle and bone. Hell, take it out already, you pretentious asses! Gintoki bit out his unfiltered, unsaid complaints, knowing damn well it'd only double the pressured spike in his system.
The brief adventures she, Shinpachi, and himself shared as Odd Jobs stayed in that bubble of time he could never get back since he told her to get her head out of the clouds and concentrate on real life.
If his situation wasn't so dire, he'd chuckle. Take your own advice, you shithead.
Despite the odds of survival, despite the good that pulled him to help a dead man and his orphans, despite the findings of that sadist tax robber that landed him in this place, Gintoki looked straight ahead, avoiding the pleading gaze of the Odd Jobs member that never was. Because of goddamn conscience, it always remained Shinpachi, Otae, and himself.
If any silver lining existed in such a hidden-from-the-world place, it'd be the chance that lured him here to investigate the commotion of a thrilling match between the losing Onijishi and Kagura.
Now, he let himself chuckle. Heard the dry, dark humor in his own resounding laughter. Nothing could be more cavalier. Was this what those stuck up samurai called fortitude, or was this a new form of bravery he bullshitted on his way to death's door?
"Listen up. Don't make me a goddamn martyr in your dingy hole, alright? I wanna be able to read JUMP out in the sun before I die; I think that's the way you gotta go."
He'd always been known to be the innocent, flagrant bum of Kabukicho. Might as well go down as exactly that.
A man yanked away the bloody sword from his shoulder and Gintoki listened intently for fleeting feet hitting the ground, moving far from here.