When Katsura remembers Shouyou, he remembers his voice – soft and slow, as though he were measuring every word. He remembers his lectures, delivered with a gentle kind of emphasis, giving every date, every name, every word equal weight. He remembers him humming absentmindedly during music lessons, as though he didn't even realize he was doing it.
He also remembers a lack of passion in that voice, too quiet, too reserved, too measured. Too much like his grandmother's, after she buried her children. Too much like his own.
Katsura remembers Shouyou's voice and hears love in it, but his skin crawls at the thought of the emptiness underlying it.
When Takasugi remembers Shouyou, he remembers his hands – purposeful and gentle, guiding his own fingers along the neck of his shamisen, guiding every stroke of his sword, resting on his shoulders as he guided him through sorrow and frustration and pain, so much pain.
Hands on his back, under his arms, holding him up when he lost his footing. A hand extended to him as he lay on the ground in defeat. A hand ruffling his hair with quiet affection. But always such brief contact, as though he were afraid of leaving fingerprints.
Takasugi remembers Shouyou's hands and he feels their absence, and the world seems like such an unfriendly, unfamiliar place.
When Gintoki remembers Shouyou, he remembers his eyes – piercing, always so piercing, seeing right through him. Old eyes, tired and strangely absent, yet somehow present. As though he knew he was in a dream and if he didn't focus, drink it all in, it would all slip away from him.
Eyes that looked at Gintoki with such hollow regret, unable to believe that he could ever be all that his students deserved from him. Eyes that had an emptiness to match the quiet of his voice, the fleeting touches of his hands.
Gintoki remembers Shouyou's eyes and his hands and his voice and he understands, but he refuses to let them be his teacher's final lesson to him. Gintoki listens to the quiet rhythm of Shinpachi and Kagura's breath as they sleep beside him, feels Sadaharu's frame rise and fall beneath his head, and he thinks of Shouyou's atonement, denying himself this peace because he didn't believe that he was everything his children deserved.
But he was all they ever wanted, Gin remembers. And that was all that should have mattered.
Gintoki holds his little patchwork family close and drifts off to the first of many peaceful sleeps to come. And when he remembers Shouyou, he wonders if maybe, had he lived a little longer, he might have one day learned to talk a little louder, hold a little closer, look at himself with a little more love.