Author's Note: Ikumatsu doesn't get enough screentime. Some liberties are taken with canon; for example, in the beginning of this story, Ikumatsu and Gintoki have never met, and Katsura dies in his latest battle with Shoukaku. Other than that, the story of how Katsura and Ikumatsu met is pretty much the same. Sorry for any OOCness you may find.
The Longest Book in the World
The news of his death arrived in much the same way as he had, with enough force and incongruity to stagger her perpetually stoic demeanor. It chased the air from her lungs, also like he had once done, but especially so in the time he had been staying with her.
It didn't help that the news came, in no uncertain terms, from a silver-haired man who identified himself as one of his ex-comrades—well, not "ex" anymore, she supposed. Insofar as the samurai were concerned, a comrade would remain a comrade, even in death.
She wasn't sure if the sentiment applied to her as well.
He died in battle, the silver samurai said, once she had composed herself enough to mumble a one-word offer of ramen. He died fighting for the Earth, like the idiot he always was.
Not a word was uttered on her end as she watched the man talk through his mouthfuls of food. It was strange to see him eat daintily, as he gave her the impression of someone who would inhale the meal set in front of him, but she didn't ask, and he didn't offer.
He talked, and she listened, and tried to tell herself that it wasn't true.
"I heard you were his woman," the silver samurai said, his now-empty bowl staring into her now-empty eyes. "Did he come see you before he left?"
She nodded numbly, finding an ironic sense of humor in the fact that her last memory of him was something so mundane as him stopping by for a bowl of soba. Literally nothing about him was mundane, yet the image of him as he left, casting an inscrutable smile over his shoulder, would have made him appear so to anyone else.
Well, now that she knew what had happened afterwards, and what that inscrutable smile had actually meant, she supposed she would remember it quite differently from now on.
"Never thought I'd see the day," the silver samurai said. "Zura, with a woman? He must've been holding you hostage or something."
She decided then that she liked this man.
The funeral was a small affair, low-key so as to not draw any public attention, but she hated it all the same. It reminded her enough of things she would rather forget to make her wish to leave entirely.
What was she even supposed to do here? It wasn't as though she were his wife (widow), so she couldn't exactly go up there and read aloud a eulogy that she hadn't even prepared. All the people here were his comrades, his old friends, and she didn't belong to either category.
She didn't belong here, and neither did he.
"Ikumatsu-san?"
Turning around, she spotted the silver samurai, boxed in on both sides by a cast of characters she could only have imagined standing next to the longhaired idiot.
"Sakata-san," she acknowledged, bowing her head. "It's good to see you again. I trust you're doing well?"
He shrugged. "Who cares about me? Why don't you come sit with us? I think Tatsuma's going to speak soon, so it'd be good to get as far from hearing range as possible."
She couldn't help but smile at that despite not knowing who he was insulting, and she decided then that she would stay.
After the funeral, Ikumatsu found that she was hanging around with his old friends more and more, and even his relatively new ones. The Yorozuya, the silver samurai called himself and the two kids that hung out with him; freelancers who would do anything for a job, including, it seemed, keeping the company of a two-time widow—not that she could afford to pay them, even if they had bothered to ask.
"Being able to eat your ramen is more than enough," he had said. "Besides, you don't need to pay people to be around you. We like idiots like you, who are too nice for their own good."
She had wondered what he meant by that—up until the moment she realized he had skipped out on the bill.
One night she woke up drenched in sweat, her stomach churning, and had been dangerously close to vomiting all over her futon before she managed to make it to the bathroom.
Sitting there, cold tile against feverishly hot skin, the ceiling had looked so far away, stretching endlessly away from her like the life she had always imagined herself having.
Ikumatsu knew she wore tragedy well; she'd already been through one husband, and even though she hadn't been married to him, the lack of official papers didn't lessen the pain she felt from having him ripped away so suddenly. Even though she knew he had been putting himself in peril to protect the Earth, to protect her, it didn't make it any easier.
And, as another surge of nausea coiled in her stomach, she came to the realization that it was going to get much, much harder.
"You're pregnant?"
She nodded.
Gintoki rubbed the back of his neck, releasing a heavy sigh as he leaned against the doorframe. In the dead of night, she hadn't known where else to go; all she knew was that she didn't want to be alone, and alone was all she would be back at the restaurant.
"I apologize for intruding," she quietly offered, inexplicably embarrassed by her actions. "If you're busy, I can go back home." She backed away from the door, about to do exactly that, while chastising herself for obviously overstaying her welcome.
"What are you talking about?" the silver samurai asked. "Get in here. You need a place to stay for the night, don't you? We can't have a pregnant woman walking around town by herself. You can have my futon."
She cast him a sideways glance, the deadpan expression on his face nearly as infuriating as a certain man's overly dramatic ones. "I wouldn't want to impose."
"Impose on who? Listen, lady, I've got a violent Amanto girl living in my closet. I don't know what that word means."
"You're not…annoyed?"
"What I am is tired. So come on in. We'll help you out starting tomorrow, but right now sleep comes first."
She couldn't have agreed with him more.
In the end, the silver samurai held himself to his word—as he did everyone else he could have possibly suckered into it. There was no shortage of him offering his two employees as help for her restaurant, and any compensation she offered them was repeatedly rejected. Surprisingly, the two were quite good at the jobs she gave them (even if they fought with each other half the time), and before she knew what had happened her base of regular customers had grown substantially. It got to the point where even she couldn't always keep up with the number of orders she was receiving—and, of course, Gintoki responded by sending more people to help her.
Though she never said it out loud, Ikumatsu thought he bribed and blackmailed people to help her just as often as not. There was no other explanation for why a Shinsengumi captain would have arrived to help her in the kitchen—though that time he and the redheaded girl had nearly destroyed the restaurant along with half the customers when they fought over an extra egg roll, so she preferred not to think about it. It still gave her anxiety.
It was on one of those busy days when it finally happened—more specifically, while she was chopping vegetables. Minor annoyance at having dropped a bean sprout turned to shock at the sight of clear fluid on the floor around her ankles, and from there, things quickly got out of hand.
Kagura was the first to notice her discomfort, and once realization passed over the younger girl's face everyone in the vicinity was made aware of what was transpiring. First the Yorozuya member with the glasses burst in, and then the Shinsengumi brat, followed a few minutes later by the arrival of Gintoki and the two women who helped run the snack house below the silver samurai's establishment.
She could have died of humiliation.
One panicked glance after another passed over her as she sat, crouched on a wooden crate in the back of the restaurant, sweat beading on her brow and falling onto the floor in a way symbolic of her waning patience.
"What do we do?! What do we do?!" Gintoki spluttered, tugging fistfuls of silver hair between clenched hands. She wanted to tell him to stop or he'd go bald, but he probably wouldn't listen, much less hear her through the sound of him grinding his own teeth into a fine paste. "Do we have to deliver it?!"
"Calm down, Gin-chan! All we have to do is tie her up and spread her legs, right? The baby should come out on its own."
Ikumatsu silently begged them to not let Kagura anywhere near her.
"Are you guys idiots? Everyone knows you have to get towels and hot water!"
"Catherine-sama is right."
"Why don't we just let her deliver it, then? She looks capable."
"You guys are all idiots! Can't you see you're making her uncomfortable?!"
"Probably not as much as your screaming is, Pattsuan—"
"HOW?!"
Finally, she had had enough.
"Can one of you please just take me to the hospital?!"
"Oi! You awake yet?"
Her eyes stung when she opened them, harsh fluorescent causing her nerves to scream in protest, but she still nodded at the shadowy blob peering through the crack in the doorway.
And then she remembered.
She sat bolt upright, only to slink back down when a wave of painful exhaustion rammed into her.
"Don't move too much," she was reminded, none too kindly, as Gintoki made his way toward her bedside. The bundle in his arms twitched slightly, and she stared, too awed to move, much less speak.
"You…" She didn't know what was supposed to come next, but she found it didn't matter.
"Don't take this the wrong way," the silver samurai said sheepishly. "I never doubted you or anything, but looking at this little guy…I'm surprised how much he looks like him. Same face and everything. Man, that hair's gonna be a mess when he's older."
Her chest felt too tight. She wondered if that was a side effect of the drugs they'd given her, since there also appeared to be a strange halo around the small bundle's silhouette—but it disappeared as soon as it passed into her arms, and she was left instead with an aching sensation behind her eyes.
Ikumatsu wasn't sure when life had started to have meaning again, but it must have been a very gradual change, since she had apparently never realized it. The newborn looked as much like him as Gintoki had said—in fact, she thought he had undersold it. And that hair! A few hours old, and already it was thick enough to run her fingers through.
It must run in the family…or at least, it does now.
She dabbed her eyes on the blanket, loosening the baby's swaddle to get a better look.
"…Um, Gintoki?"
"Ah?"
"This 'little guy'…you did realize she was a girl, right?"
The little girl ran up the street, her long hair blown into a giant mess by the wind. It was thick and soft, silky to the touch, yet it never did as she told it—nothing like her mother's, she thought with a jutted lip.
She wondered why, though she never asked, and ran back to the restaurant when her name was called from inside.
"I'm here!" she exclaimed, enthusiasm waxed to its fullest potential as she saw one of her favorite customers talking to her mother at the counter. "Gin-san!"
He returned her hug with characteristic vigor, the palms of his hands just barely reaching her shoulders. Despite the height difference, though, she always felt huge when she was talking to him. He said it was something about being equal in spirit, but she had no idea what that meant.
"Don't knock him over, Zurako," her mother said good-naturedly as she went about fixing Gin's order. "He's getting old, you know."
"Oi, woman! I'm barely past thirty!"
After dragging the hapless man over to one of the corner booths, Zurako set about the monumental task of untangling her hair from its pathetically tangled state.
"How've you been, kiddo?" he asked. "Just by looking at your hair, as troublesome as ever."
"That's easy for you to say, when all you've got to your name is that scruffy old perm."
"The audacity! The disrespect! I should flay you for your insolence!"
"Only if you can finally pay your tab," the blonde woman yelled before disappearing back into the kitchen.
With little progress being made on the hair front, Zurako released a heavy sigh before laying her head down on the table. "It just never does what I tell it. Ne, Gin-san, how come I got stuck with this mess while Mom gets to wear hers in a ponytail?"
"Hmmm…pass."
"This isn't a quiz show!"
Gin shrugged, a fond look washing over his face. "Ah…well, you know, your old man was real vain about his hair. Always wore it long and down, just like yours. I think he might have loved it more than your old woman."
Giggling at the mental image presented, she nearly overlooked the most important part of the explanation. "My old man?" she asked, wide-eyed at the prospect. "Mom never talks much about him, but she says that he was a brilliant samurai who fought to save Edo and died in battle. If that's true, then I guess I've got my work cut out for me." A peculiar sadness washed over her, not for a person she'd lost, but for a man she would never have the opportunity to meet or judge for herself. "Wait—you knew him?"
Gin picked his nose and flicked the booger onto the ground. "Ah. Yeah, actually, before your mom did. We grew up in the same dojo."
"Really?! How come you never told me?! What was his name? Was he really handsome? What was he like? Who was he?"
"Who was he? Hmmm…" He seemed to dwell on it for a while; Zurako was nearly trembling with impatience and excitement. "I guess if I had to say…a terrorist."
It was then that her mother called over to them to say that the food was ready, and Gin had ruffled her already-messy hair and walked off with a smirk before she could respond to his odd answer. A terrorist? Her father? While she didn't know precisely what the word meant, she had never associated it with anything good. She wasn't worried, however; she would catch Gin later, and make him explain, even if she had to pull the answers from his cold, lifeless body. Even if she had to wait.
She waited a long time.
I was depressed when I wrote this. Thanks for reading! Please do leave a review, if you've got the time. I was trying something new out here and want to know if it came across well.
-Vicious Ventriloquist