a/n: This has been waiting in my rough drafts for like, I dunno, over a year.
A lot of people say that the Mitsuba arc destroyed them. I don't relate as well as they do, since I've never suffered from an immediate family death. But I think Mitsuba is one of the strongest girls in the Gintama universe. She is so, so kind. I don't want that sort of person to have an unhappy ending... so of course fanfiction is, and always will be, the final answer.
BTW, this universe that I write about is kind of a choose-your-own purgatory. You're there until something deems you're deserving to go to the *real* heaven, but if you don't want to go to heaven, you can also stay where you are.
Loving someone isn't about logic or reason. My heart stopped and ended with Hijikata Toshirou.
They told me to stay away from that boy - you know, that thorny boy who kept picking fights with all the village delinquents who was rumored to gouge out eyeballs if you weren't careful. But I was sixteen, a dangerous age for any girl to be making her way in a world with no parents but one stubborn kid to take care of.
In retrospect, I could have avoided him altogether if Sougo hadn't found a friend in Kondo-san. Back then we were all connected by that dojo - the one that introduced my little brother to the way of the sword, a discipline that gave fresh life to all of those unwanted lonely boys who had nowhere else to go.
Sougo had the impression that Toushirou never gave a damn about me, which was judiciously untrue.
Beyond the superficial reason that he felt unworthy to provide for me considering he put his life on the line, it was also a matter of social strata.
He was a bastard child. Everyone in the village knew this. For him to take my hand, he couldn't have done it without bring shame into our respectable name, and even I realized this a long time ago. So I had begged him to take me along with him to Edo, but then he'd said no. Heartbroken, I had assumed it was because of the Shinsengumi, but in letters - rarely sent, he would only paint one word - Sorry. There was no return address, but I would have recognized that clumsy handwriting from anywhere.
It's silly that at my age I can't get over a teenage crush. But I like to think that we were both terribly tragic people.
-x-
In heaven, I was granted a small house on the top of a green hill. It reminded me of Bushu, the countryside I had spent most of my life living back when I was alive. I was alone, with no worries. I could breathe freely without fear of my body giving out on me. I had no responsibilities.
At first, this was a source of anxiety. I always needed something to worry about. Back when my time had been limited, I had tried earnestly to be useful in all endeavors. I raised Sougo with overzealousness, spoiling him rotten. I tried to help Kondo's dojo with my limited resources. I studied the classics, hoping that I would be able to aid the samurai brigand with book logic.
I was more comfortable thinking of others; my mother on her deathbed had advised me that the place of a woman was to care and nurture others. I was nine. My brother was but a mere baby. Both of us had barely escaped the cholera epidemic that ravaged the countryside.
When I thought about it, I had been a very foolish girl indeed. Indeed, one might laugh at how sad my life turned out. The love of my life spurned me. I had to raise a brother by myself without the aid of living parents. I almost ended up marrying a man who never came to my deathbed. Tubercolosis wore my body out before I realized I had worked too hard for so little.
And yet I realized none of this while I was living.
Peering from the clouds, I stumbled across a man with glasses and green eyes. He introduced himself and I invited him inside my humble home. I sensed he had much to say.
"So you're Mitsuba-dono," he said. "I thought I saw you somewhere... you're the spitting image of Okita-kun."
I smiled. I missed my brother dearly. "Yes. You've met him?"
He nodded. I didn't press him, as curious as I was. The man seemed to possess a quiet soul.
I served him tea and spicy senbei. If he was perturbed by my choice in snacks, he didn't show it.
"I assume you're well acquainted with Hijikata-kun," he presumed. At the mention of that name, my heart slowed.
"Yes," I said softly. "Had he not been part of the Shinsengumi, we would have been man and wife."
It was easy to make bold claims when one was no longer part of the mortal world. Toushiro would have been struck by my own audacity. But from my reckoning, he still had a long time to live before I would be able to speak to him again.
The man cocked his eyebrow. "Is that so?"
"Yes."
I explained to him that I saw the grief from both Sougo and Toushiro. How it comforted me when I was ascending to a place free from earthly problems.
In fact, he was such a good listener that I decided to tell him my life story. It was objective, of course. I was only dead for a year and I still had attachments to the living.
The man then told his story: he was a foolish man who lost his life before appreciating anything worth of value. He had died honorably at the hands of Toushirou.
It was a while before I realized that he had not given his name.
"Itou," he said. "My name is Itou."
-x-
My beloved was a man of interesting origin. He was an illegitimate child who was raised by his older half-brother, Tamegoro.
It was not hard to find the address of the other Hijikata. He had chosen to live comfortably in a meadow that greatly resembled Bushu as well, and I felt a surge of kinship towards him. Perhaps he would have made a fine brother in law.
He knew before I knocked on the door who I was. He greeted me with a warm, half-crooked smile.
"Toushirou writes all the time about you. Unfortunately, you fell in love with a coward," he informed me. "What was he thinking, leaving a good woman behind?"
I shook my head. "I was in poor health. It was better for me to stay in the countryside."
"My wife is still among the living," he said. "Mitsuba-dono, I think I can sympathize with your situation... it's hard to wait for them."
I smiled blandly. "To be honest, I hope he finds someone else."
"Why would you? Haven't you suffered enough?"
"I... "
"Don't take me for a fool," he said, shaking his pipe at me.
"I never learned how to love," I said softly. "My life had so many regrets."
"Don't cry," the other man said. "I'm sure one thing he looks forward to is seeing you in the afterlife, is it not?"
All I could do in response was to weakly smile.
-x-
Yoshida Shoyou was a kind hearted man.
We were in a lovely classroom with wooden floors and temple scrolls hung on the walls. The children who attended all had tragic backstories - disease, poverty, or hunger had claimed them in the living world. Yet they were full and healthy in the afterlife, happily attending school with an innocence that humbled me. I joined his school for a day, thinking that it was odd how victims of a young death flocked together.
"Ah, Mitsuba-dono, so I see you've met my finest student," he said after a day of teaching.
"Gintoki was very kind. I just wonder if he was ever truly a friend to my brother."
"If your brother had things to protect, then I'm sure Gintoki appreciated him." His brows met together. "I try not to see beyond the clouds anymore. I cannot bear it."
"Why?"
"I started a history of grief," he said, closing his eyes. "I never cared about my life. It was always my pupils. Now that I think about it, I should have been more cold towards them."
He took my hand and I was transported into his memories. There were three pupils who stood out strongly in his mind, students that later changed the world through their own ideologies.
"How remarkable and lovely," I whispered. His feelings towards them were pure love, the same love that I had extended to the Shinsengumi.
"It is nothing," he said dejectedly. "I was doing something that I thought was right."
His eyes held a permanent sadness, as if he had seen all there was to see. He later told me that my eyes were the same.
-x-
Itou came back. I loved his wry attitude and his snarky comments. He reminded me of my brother, albeit more cynical and less youthful. We talked about poets we loved, philosophies we had read with leisure, books that we adored. Heaven allowed you to do things you couldn't have done previously.
He had a knack of saying sharp things on occasion, a flaw that was developed from isolating himself from the people he wanted to be with.
"Does it hurt sometimes, to know that Hijikata-kun picked his work over his love for you?"
I smiled. "No. I loved the Shinsengumi... I've often thought his men were better suited to him than a woman by his side. What could I have done, really..."
Itou sipped his tea. "I personally believe he sacrificed his own happiness for yours, but that didn't work out, now did it?"
Again, I smiled wryly. "We all make bad decisions," I murmured, lightly brushing my fingers against Itou's, reminding him that he was just as flawed as Toushirou.
"What if Hijikata falls in love with another woman?"
"He won't do anything about it," I said.
He coughed and changed the subject. "I see Sougo sometimes," he said. "You think he'll make the same mistake as Hijikata-kun?"
"Well, no, assuming she doesn't suffer from a lung disease..."
Itou offered his arm, and we went outside the house for a walk. The weather was perfect and breezy, the way I had planned for the last few months. Sometimes I wanted it to rain. But today it was bright and fresh.
The clouds were shortly across the meadow. Here, any of the dead could peek down below, and the more adventurous could hop down and haunt the living if they so desired. I personally observed from afar; it was too easy to wallow in sadness and regret if one delved into temptation.
"Do you still have any regrets, Itou-san?"
"Some. I'm still ashamed that my mother had so much power over how I thought of myself."
"You're being too hard on yourself."
"I don't know. I was selfish. I should have realized that if I was the sick brother I wouldn't have wanted him to feel the same way as I did - wanting acknowledgement."
"Sometimes we don't understand anything until it's over."
"You're right, Mitsuba-dono. You always are."
We looked down into the hole. Itou chose this time to be bitter.
"What I really regret is how easy it was for that man to take advantage of me," Itou said. "He played me like a fool, taunting every whim, never quite acknowledging what I did just for his goals of world destruction."
"He must have been very intelligent."
"He could read people like a card," Itou said. "He was sly as a fox, but patient like a Bodhisattva."
-x-
"You know, Mitsuba-dono, you live a really humble life considering you could have anything you want."
"The same could be said for you, Itou-san."
We played a game of shogi, and I was losing terribly. I promised him to recite some of my badly written poetry if he won; unfortunately he was enjoying this too much for my taste, the unpleasant cockroach.
I pushed some of my ultra spicy senbei towards him, knowing he was too polite to refuse. I smiled when he left to go get a glass of water and I took the opportunity to quietly dispose of some of his pieces.
He came back more subdued.
"Mitsuba-dono, you could have lived longer if you stopped eating those spicy crackers."
"Oh, well. Live and learn, right?"
-x-
I'm by myself, sitting - composing poetry, and I look up. I don't know what transgressed at that moment, but I drop everything.
People say soul mates can simply tell when something catastrophic happens to their other half. This is how Hijikata Toushirou dies: one short, succinct stab to the left chest, while the other man - beautiful, pale, smiling - withdraws his sword.
I don't know how I feel about it when I peer down the looking-hole and see everything down below.
That's before I see the look from both Kondo and my little brother, and my heart well and truly broke for the two of them.
My brother doesn't know how to make new friends.
Kondo-san needs someone to keep him in line.
Who else will do the job?
-x-
I cried for days.
I thought I would never see him again. The world that I dwelled in was somewhere for people to wander aimlessly with their regrets, or were waiting for someone else to die and rejoin them again.
Who knew if Hijikata remembered the name of the old, sickly woman whom passed away before he could even talk to her after a decade?
-x-
Itou sits on the balcony and we have tea.
"He's probably in a better place now," he said. He handed me a handkerchief after I started sobbing.
"The hell are ya talkin' about, Itou."
Both of us look up.
-x-
"I'm sorry," is the first thing Hijikata Toushirou says after I tell Itou to go home. "About everything. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brushed you off."
I just can't say anything.
How can you apologize for tearing someone's heart in two and leaving them behind?
I wash the teacups carefully in the sink. I dry them with a hand towel and leave them in a clean cupboard while I think of what I want to say.
It's funny how often you spend time dwelling on the perfect thing to say, in this exact scenario, but when it really happens, nothing comes in your head.
I finally turn around. "You never gave me a fair chance."
He never gave me the decision to decide whether a man who could die by his sword was right for me. He should have known better.
He looked up, though he remained morose. "I was an idiot."
I sighed. "I, too, was very foolish." I had nearly married someone who never came to my death bed.
"I s'pose you don't want to see me."
"That's where you're wrong."
"Mitsuba - "
"Did you love me?" I cut in. I force myself to calm myself down. "Or did you forget about me?"
"To the first: Always."
A slow curl of warmth flickers in my belly. I reach out to the table to make sure that this is all real, that this is not a dream.
"To the second: Never."
I sit next to him. "Then we'll have to start over."
-x-
This is the only slice of heaven I ever really needed - the slip of his hands between mine and the smokey fumes of ash that never trigger coughing fits anymore. There isn't anything more to say. I have never been a thoroughly descriptive woman, and neither is my husband.
The living wasn't good enough for the two of us.
But in death did we find solace.
-x-
the end