Shinpachi remembered a time when his father's dojo was full of noise - the reedy swish of shinai, his father's shuffling footsteps, Hajime's booming laugh. When sunlight had poured through the windows, warming his already flushed cheeks as he practiced his drills, the smell of his father's cooking drifting along the path from the house. Meals back then had been noisy, too, full of his and his sister's bickering and his father's gentle, gravelly chuckle.

It almost didn't seem like the same place these days, without all the noise. The rustle of his broom echoed through the dojo, the sound somehow more suffocating than the silence. A cloud of dust hovered at his feet and muffled his footsteps. Shinpachi grimaced. He always put this chore off longer than he knew he should.

Sometimes he hummed to himself as he worked to break the silence, but he hated the way it echoed in the empty room, how loud he sounded. So today he gritted his teeth and put up with the quiet. He was halfway done, anyway, and even if he wasn't, it would be time to leave for work at the restaurant soon. Tae could hardly blame him for leaving it unfinished to make it to work on time. Then again, his sister rarely blamed him for anything lately. More likely than not, he would come home from work to find that she had already finished the job for him. The thought made his chest feel oddly tight and left an unpleasant weight in his stomach. She always worked too hard.

His mind wandered as he made his way from one end of the dojo to the other, and he toyed with the idea of skipping work today. He often thought about this, calling in sick or maybe even offering no excuse at all and seeing whether or not anyone really noticed his absence. (Of course they would, he always inevitably decided. Who else would they shit on if I wasn't around?) But in the end, he was always punctual, always first to arrive and open up shop. He made the same trek from the house to the restaurant at the same time every morning, carrying out each step almost mechanically. He wasn't sure why he kept on going back, dealing with his manager's cruelty, his customers' shit, and for what? To keep the dojo that neither he nor his sister had the skill or training to run properly, that wouldn't bring in any students regardless now that swords had been banned?

"Does a child need a reason to protect what their father once loved?" Tae had once said softly, her eyes distant and expression clouded. And Shinpachi understood, but at the same time he couldn't understand. What he loved wasn't the dojo, it was the sound of his father's laugh, the warmth of Hajime's hand on his back, the grin on his sister's face as she shouted "Ippon!"

Now there was only the echo of his broom brushing against the floorboards.

Once he finished the job, Shinpachi set his broom in the corner beside his old shinai, untouched for what must have been years. For a moment, he hesitated, his fingers lightly brushing the hilt. A layer of dust and grime greeted his fingertips.

He let out a long breath and shook his head, turning away. As he made his way out the door and down the street to work, he pulled a pair of headphones from his pocket, longing for a little background noise.

The rain pounded against Kagura's window, making up for what it lacked in ferocity with tenacity. It would be time to check for leaks again soon, she thought dimly, searching through the kitchen cabinets for a pot.

Kamui used to dislike the idea of her cooking, Kagura remembered. Too small to reach the stovetop without the help of a chair, too clumsy to be trusted with pots of boiling water or hot pans, she was deemed too young to worry about such things just yet. He was the big kid, he'd decided. He could take care of that stuff on his own. Even if the only dish he knew how to make was rice with furikake.

The kitchen looked as though a tornado had passed through it, with cabinet doors flung open, used dishes sprawled across the counter top, and several chairs distributed seemingly randomly along the kitchen floor. But there was a method to Kagura's madness, or so she liked to think. Really, she just didn't feel like doing the dishes lately, or putting the chairs back at the table after she used them to reach the top cabinets.

Kamui used to scold her about that sort of thing, too. It got to a point where he hardly let her in the kitchen. But now that he was gone, there was nothing stopping her from making as big a mess as she wanted.

"Aha," she smiled, her fingers curling around the handle of the pot she'd been looking for. She tugged it out of the cabinet with a grunt and set it on top of the stove for the moment, until she could clear some room in the sink to start filling it with water.

She had no rice cooker, but her mother had taught her a long time ago how to make perfect rice without it. First things first, wash the rice to get rid of the excess starch.

Kamui's rice never tasted as good as their mom's, Kagura thought, as she poured cold water over her rice, watching it grow milky and opaque. She'd told him as much, once, after she tried to show him how her mother did it only for him to insist that he could do it himself.

"Not like Mami," she'd muttered sullenly.

His back had stiffened, but he didn't reply. He didn't talk much that whole day, come to think of it. The memory made Kagura feel a little sick to her stomach. She often wondered if that was the straw that broke the camel's back for Kamui. Or perhaps it was the crying, the nightmares, the whining for something other than rice and furikake, any number of things.

"I have no use for weaklings," he'd said to her with that strange, vacant smile of his. She wondered, at times, if maybe he wouldn't have left if she'd shared the burden more equally, taken responsibility for more. But the truth was that she knew there was more to it than that, factors beyond her control. Still, his words floated in the back of her mind as she prepared her rice, probably more than she ought to eat. There was enough for at least four people.

The rain began to hurl itself against her window in earnest and she sighed as she heard the beginnings of a leak in the roof. Maybe one day, she would hitch a ride on a ship to a distant planet where it didn't rain so much. Maybe she would find her brother or her father there and show them how much she'd grown, how much stronger she was now. Maybe she'd be able to treat them to a proper meal.

For now, she rummaged through the cabinets for the furikake.

Gin sat with his chin in his hands, watching the phone on his desk dejectedly. No calls had come for days now, which meant no jobs, which meant no money, which meant no booze. He was dying for a drink, something to take the edge off the boredom. He could always try to wheedle something out of Otose downstairs, but she was already probably cutting him too much slack on his late rent as it was. He'd just have to tough it out.

This sort of thing wasn't all that unusual, but even after all these years, Gin still hadn't quite gotten the hang of dealing with the quiet. After spending so much time on the battlefield, crammed into makeshift barracks with 50 other men, he still found it disconcerting to have four silent rooms all to himself. When he'd first moved in, he found he couldn't sleep without the window open and the sounds of the bustling city floating through the apartment. It occurred to him that this was his first time living alone.

Gin's eyes wandered to the window and he watched as the sun set behind the building across the street and the first pinpricks of light began to appear in the sky. His mind meandered down a familiar path as he thought about the men he'd shared meals, beds, stories, hopes with. He wondered how many of them had followed through with their plans for after the war.

"I'm gonna go home and help my daughter open up her flower shop," he remembered one older man telling him over sake. He thought about him and the way he smiled when he spoke of his daughter often, when he passed the flower shop down the street. He had no idea whether or not that old man ever went home to his family.

"What about you, Gintoki-san?" another soldier had asked once, a young boy this time, cheeks flushed from his first taste of alcohol. "What will you do when you go home?"

"Probably the same thing I've always done," Gin had shrugged, but the truth was that he didn't think about his future much back then. He was simply focused on staying alive and keeping his friends alive along with him. Zura and Takasugi believed that one day, they would be able to bring Shouyou home. But in truth, Gin had never shared their optimism. He wondered now what exactly he was planning on doing after the war. He wasn't sure, but he knew that it didn't involve all of this empty space.

He let out a long breath, rubbing his temples tiredly. Maybe tomorrow would bring a client or two to fill up some of the space. Maybe one day, things would be a little noisier around the office.

For now, he opened up the window and let the sounds of the city lull him to sleep.