The new government has imposed a sword ban, and honestly, Gintoki shouldn't care. It's just a weapon, and the war's over, anyhow.
But every time an Amanto walks by him, every time one of the foreign creatures gives him the evil eye, every time he spies a person or creature eyeing him with more than the usual amount of interest, his fingers itch and he reaches for the hilt of a sword that is not there, searching fingers grasping nothing but air. He hates it, his senses over-sharp and fine-tuned, every nerve on edge, and every single day he walks through crowds and mingles with these monsters that have killed his friends, that could kill him if he does not find a sword.
He sleeps badly at night, flinching awake because there's a person moving around, too close, danger, or because a Amanto walks by downstairs and his sword is not by his side. Senses honed on a battlefield are too sharp for the tranquil of peace, and Gintoki sometimes wishes he could just bash his head against the wall until he's too concussed to worry.
Otose comments on the bags under his eyes, but Gintoki shrugs it off - mutters something about a hangover and snoring that must have come from a certain old lady…
A certain old lady that apparently has a fantastic right hook, he learns moments later, and shuts up after that.
-x-
It's a week later when the memories hit, blood and torn flesh and the terrible, sickening smell of rot and iron creeping up his nostrils and down his throat - lasers are being fired, beams of brilliant, blinding white light flashing at the edges of his vision, pulling at the corners of his eyes like he's about to fall unconscious. Screaming in the background - yells of anger and anguish and terrible fear, and all Gintoki can do is try to hold his ground against the tidal wave of Amanto, hoping that the one dying is not his friend. His heart is pounding hard, breaths shallow and rapid, and he is back on the battlefield with an Amanto in front of him; he can smell the unique odor of something not quite human, not quite anything that belongs on this planet, a musky mix of sweat and animal scent. He can smell the blood and taste metal at the back of his dry throat, and there's grit between his teeth where sand managed to get in. Blood-soaked strands of hair slap his forehead - everything is real and here and present and he can't make it stop; even though he's not on the battlefield anymore he can't bring himself to believe that he's safe.
Never safe, no such thing as safe - are you stupid?
He lashes out with his left fist and feels it connect with something hard, knuckles slamming painfully against wood. Wood, not fur, not muscle or armor or any sort of covering, nothing that he'd fought during the war. The pain forces him back to his senses, and he hears Otose yelling from downstairs - "Are you alright?"
His fist is hurting and his body is shaking and Gintoki thinks he's going mad.
"Fine!" He yells back, and slumps against the wall, drawing his knees to his chest as Otose yells at him to be careful and to stop destroying her apartment.
His body is trembling, Gintoki realizes, but he doesn't have to energy to try and make it stop. He shuts his eyes instead, dragging one shaking hand through his tangled mop of hair.
"Shit," he mutters, and his voice is shaking too. "Shit."
-x-
It is bad for him to go near Amanto without a weapon, Gintoki knows that now. In general, it is bad for him to go near any armed creature at all, even - especially, a little voice nags - if the creature is human.
Humans were the ones that forced him into a corner. It was when he was fighting the humans that something in him broke. It was humans that demanded he make that choice.
Humans may be weak, but they were the ones that won the Amanto the war, and now armed humans - specifically those in robes and holding staffs - trigger the memories of blood and fighting and killing so many people.
Mostly they trigger the memory of taking one specific life, and that is worse than all the other memories combined. That memory is the one that sends him to his knees, gasping and shaking and desperate with loss - not a good position to be in, so Gintoki acts wisely and steers clear of monks for the rest of the week.
(In a few years he'll see Zura disguised as a monk and he'll go home, smile a smile that's trying its damnedest to break, and down bottle after bottle of sake, laughing so hard he almost cries.)
-x-
Amato register as the enemy, unless they are puny or helpless, in which case they register as annoying on a go-away-or-I-will-kick-your-ass level. Encounters with certain humans are significantly worse, and he barely manages to get a grip by digging his nails into his palms so hard that they bleed, keeping himself together until he can get away. Gintoki has never been one to run away, and this is when he decides that it is absolutely necessary to cope with this shit. The best idea he can come up with is the one he gets ten seconds after the decision, reckless and as typically him as anything gets.
The game plan goes somewhere along the lines of "Go out and find as many triggers as you can and keep your cool". Stupid and reckless and what the heck, it'll probably work, so Gintoki sets out to do just that.
He reads a little about triggers beforehand, because he is reckless, not stupid. Nothing very useful, really, but he figures that at least he's tried - he thinks that the book was saying that he's got to stay grounded and try to focus on other things, but he's never been a very good reader and admittedly, he quit after two pages. It's the same either way, because this is his mind and his body, dammit, and he refuses to be incapacitated by something as pathetic as this.
He walks a good mile away before he finds a suitable spot - can't have Otose finding out that the guy she's been so kindly harboring is going insane. Then he just stands by the side of the street and watches the crowd passing by, a tidal wave of people pouring around him and pressing close in the tight space.
Can't breathe too close must fight - the smell of Amato is too close, and Gintoki fights the rising panic, fisting his hands by his side and focusing on the pain of his nails digging into his flesh, trying to ground himself against the onslaught of memories. Shit, he thinks - he's bitten off more than he chew this time; an Amato just like this gutted his friends, left their guts and insides spilled in a bloody mess of dark red tissue on the ground, crimson seeping into the dirt-
Gintoki gasps, the sound choked and tight, digging his fingers deeper - hurts, but that's so much better than being lost to the battlefield again. The relief that he's back in control is sweet and fresh, and dies in moments when light flashes off a mirror and…
And with a flash of light just like that he'd lost so many friends back then, all of them so completely destroyed that there had been nothing to bury - there'd been nothing but ashes on the ground after each beam, grey dust almost indistinguishable from the brown dirt on the ground. They hadn't even been able to dig a grave -
He can't breathe. Gintoki jerks instinctively, back slamming against the wall, and he brings up an arm to protect his neck, other hand flying out fast as a cobra...
But he catches himself and yanks his arm down to his side just in time - attacking someone now will defeat his purpose, and Gintoki is many things, but perhaps his most dominant trait is his dogged determination. He will get over things. He will, Gintoki thinks fiercely, because this is pathetic, and he has to learn to survive without a sword.
By the end of the day his nerves are frayed so thin that he can barely walk straight and his palms are bloody - smeared with crimson, with tears like little crescent moons - but he has made it and Gintoki smiles fiercely, twisting his lips in defiance.
This will not keep him down. He's proved that, today.
-x-
Days later and he's tired, worn down and chipped away, because even though the flashbacks are getting under control - something he suspects is more due to time than any effort of his own, and he grits his teeth hard so he doesn't scream with frustrated anger - this is exhausting. He's no longer going out of his way to avoid Amato, but something more deep-seated than bad memories is nestled in his mind. His very instincts are against the creatures, and for all that he was able to relax when he had a sword he's not armed now. He can cope with people and Amato, armed or not, but he's always on edge around them, anxious, aggravated, irritable, fingers twitching with the desperate need for his sword.
Get over it, he tells himself, gritting his teeth.
Sakata Gintoki is many things, but he's determined that one of them will not be a coward.
-x-
He hides it pretty well, Gintoki thinks, keeping to the edges of building whenever he must leave the bar, taut muscles well-hidden by his oversized gi.
He does not lash out, he does not flinch, he does not act on the bloodlust that wells up whenever an Amato goes near to Otose, an enemy still far too close to a person he's sworn to protect. Whether this has anything to do with the fact that the Amato always end up fleeing when they feel the bloodlust swelling from him is another thing altogether, but Gintoki isn't picky, and, hopefully, neither is Otose.
-x-
He lies awake at night and shudders, a long, slow shiver running from his shoulders down his back, when he thinks about what the war has turned him into. Once an Amato would have been annoying, intimidating, maybe, and rare, but nothing much in his daily life. He'd never held anything against them, not till the war, and even then he'd not really hated them until he'd watched one too many claws rip open his friends.
That must have been what did it, or maybe it was just the days of fighting these exact creatures, because now he can't even be in the same room as an Amato without his heart pounding and nerves on edge, hand twitching because he needs a sword, right now. Now he takes every movement of every Amato - every person, even - as a threat, guard rising with a simple wave of a hand.
Shuts his eyes -what have I become?
He hates thinking of it, so he doesn't.
-x-
The jig's up, Gintoki thinks, dead-fish eyes staring blankly at Otose and the freaked out waiter in front of him. He hadn't meant to, really, but the waiter had tripped, sending a butter knife flying towards him, and Gintoki had been so wound tight that he'd snapped the moment he saw it. In the war there'd been daggers and poison darts and arrows flying towards him more often than not, and he'd deflected them with a sword; but now theres no sword and his hands grabbed nothing - danger, must fight, must protect, live.
Panic.
A blur of movement, colors blurring around him as he moved with ease borne of frequent repetition - a second later and he had knocked the knife flying, his hand clamped in a vise around the waiter's neck, squeezing tighter than a noose.
Mind blank, body numb and heart pounding fast, Gintoki didn't release his grip until he heard Otose's indignant "What are you doing, boy?"
Then he'd sprung back like a startled cat, eyes wide and body taut, and now Otose is giving him a look somewhere between worry and annoyance, while the man is looking at him in very plain fear.
Blinks, realizing that the waiter is not the only person shaking. His hands are trembling madly, worse even than that time he'd camped out all night in the snow with no gloves on.
"Sorry," he mutters, lowering his head to stare blankly at the floor. Puts his trembling hands in the sleeves of his gi and tries to stabilize his gasping breaths, frayed nerves worn thin and broken after weeks of barely hanging on. "Sorry."
-x-
They walk back in long, tense silence, and Gintoki is braced for pain, ready to be chided or accused or thrown out, waiting for the inevitable verdict to fall. Yet Otose remains silent, does not open her mouth to voice the questions that she must surely have, and Gintoki does not feel the familiar tension that comes from another's anger towards him. It is not often that he cannot read a person's anger and he shifts uneasily in his gi, digging his nails into his palms whenever someone walks by so that he does not flinch. He feels like a child again, young and in deep shit because he's disobeyed Shoyou sensei and been caught, trailing silent and sullen in Otose's footsteps, waiting for punishment to fall.
Gintoki could beat her in the fight, but he does not want to, and that makes all the difference, doesn't it? He wants to be happy, to be normal, to get on with life again, but he can't, and there's a growing desperation clawing at his insides because he thinks that he may never find peace again.
Look at you, a voice inside taunts. Can't even eat in a restaurant without freaking out. Can't even sleep without a sword. Are you a baby missing his pacifier?
He digs his nails deeper, feeling a familiar crunch as they break skin and dig deeper still, the sting of pain taking his mind off the rising panic. Blows out a soft breath, feeling like he's drowning but refusing to make a sound.
If he drowns, the least he can do is do it silently.
-x-
Otose startles him in the bar, by pushing him into a stool and setting a glass of alcohol before him with an audible click. She just sighs when Gintoki glances up, meeting his startled eyes with a cool stare.
"It's on the house," she says, "since you missed out on your parfait earlier."
It's the first time since they've left the restaurant that she's brought this up, and Gintoki flinches sharply, back twitching backwards in a motion that would have jarred the entire seat had the barstool had a backrest. Otose watches him with calm eyes, and Gintoki ducks his head.
"Sorry," he mutters again, and Otose shakes her head.
"How many war veterans do you think I've seen, boy?" Gintoki shrugs, and Otose nods, a faint smile crossing her face. "I don't know either. You've been fighting on the warfront for God knows how long - bound to get a little twitchy after being thrown back into normal life." Otose phrases it so lightly that Gintoki almost laughs - twitchy is such an understatement. He stares at the counter, bleak and tired and lost. Weeks of work, all useless, because he still can't cope when he's not ready for the trigger. Got to work harder, do better, but he's so tired-
A hand touches his hair, gentle fingers carding through his tangled perm, and he jerks slightly, startled.
"You're strong," Otose says softly, pulling her hand back. "Most people wouldn't have been able to hide it this long." Is he strong? Gintoki doesn't feel strong - he feels like he's drowning, struggling desperately, but there's not one straw to grab at left.
He bows his head, chest heaving in fast, desperate gasps and hands fisting on the counter in front of him, whole body shaking violently.
Help.
"I can't," he gasps out, trembling like mad and not knowing why. "I can't- this… Why can't I just-" Why can't he get back to normal - why can't he do as sensei would have wanted, and let go of the past? Why can't he stop dreaming of blood and death?
What will it take, to put the pieces back together when the most important bits have been lost?
"Relax," Otose says, but he can't - he's so pathetic, he thinks angrily, can't even move on like he did as a kid. He's drowning, and he can't breathe, and he needs help but there's no straws to even grasp at - when he reaches for his sword, needing the reassurance of it's weight at his side, his hand closes on air and he panics, digging his nails deep into his palms with a soft gasp.
Then the hand is back in his hair, pushing tangled strands back from his face, and another hand is pushing his chin up, forcing his eyes to meet Otose's.
"Breathe," she commands, but Gintoki doesn't remember how. How did he ever breathe before this? All he can think of now is blood and death and fury and loss, sucking in gasping breaths that draw in no oxygen at all.
Why can't I be better? I should be better. I should have saved him. I couldn't do anything and now sensei is dead and everyone is dead or gone and why can't I even do as he would have wanted when I survived? Why did I survive when everyone else died - why am I so selfish, why can't I move on and live like he'd have wanted me to?
"I'm sorry," he gasps, seeing blood and torn flesh and dead eyes and nothing at all, unable to see Otose through the haze of old memories. He's shaking, he realizes - weakness, but nothing to do about that because if he could have stopped this, he would have done it ages ago, before Otose ever caught on.
Gintoki shuts his eyes, gritting his teeth hard enough that he thinks that they're going to crack, and wills himself to stop. Stop thinking, stop shaking, stop breathing so that he can hear something other than his ragged breaths and the screams of the battlefield. He goes rigid, taut as a bowstring in his effort to remain still, but his hands tremble on the counter. Otose's voice filters through the screams - "There's nothing to apologize for; calm down. Just breathe," - and he tries to grasp at that, because he is drowning and she is throwing him a rope, and Gintoki will be damned if he just lets it float away. Her voice is stern but kind, steely exterior hiding a too-soft heart, and it is so much better than hearing the samurais' tortured screams, his friends' last breaths, or the anguish in Takasugi's voice as he begged Gintoki to not kill sensei.
He takes a juddering breath, shoulders jerking as if he's been crying, and he gasps in a breath that actually brings in air.
"You're wrong," he mutters, finally able to speak. "I have so much to apologize for."
-x-
The war was fine until his friends started dying. It was bad, then, until the government turned against them and sent humans to fight them among the crowd of Amato - that was when it turned terrible, having to point his sword at other people and gut them, then turn and continue as if nothing was wrong, as if he'd taken the life of a monster rather than a human. It was bad during that period, so bad that Gintoki had thought that he'd never survive, that his soul and mind would die if his body didn't. It was bad until Katsura and Takasugi had been captured, until Gintoki had gone after them on a frantic hunt, only to be given the worst possible choice: His comrades or his sensei.
It had been bad before, but it dissolved into a nightmare then, a nightmare that lasted as they lost the war and split apart, three people so tightly woven that they'd become one whole splintering into innumerable bits.
The war had started mattering to Gintoki after sensei had been captured, had been bad when his friends started dying, and was unbearable when the shogunate sent humans to combat them - but it hadn't been a true nightmare until he made that choice.
-x-
Otose lets him drink on the house, now, and Gintoki, with no war to fight, learns the relief of forgetting all his troubles, and of being dizzy with gloriously high joy. It is unreasonable and unreal, but he is happy when he's high, happy in a way that he hasn't been since before the war. For the first time he is able to forget the loss of his friends, his brothers, and his teacher, and live happily - sometimes he indulges, imagining that sensei would be happy, because finally his student is being strong and moving on. In those shining moments, Gintoki revels in the idea that Shoyou-sensei would be proud, that his teacher would look down and smile, that maybe he's managing to get on with life after all.
But then he wakes up in the morning with a splitting headache and alcohol on his breath and nothing whatsoever to substantiate the previous night's joy. He throws up in the toilet and hates himself for becoming so pathetic, and knows that he's not moving on at all. Gintoki is still stuck in the past, in horror and sickening loss, separated from the world by a thin veil that he has made himself - a curtain of crimson haze, the blood from his kills clotting to become a rotting wall that never allows him to touch the world now.
Sometimes Otose looks at him with eyes somewhere between worried and pitying, and Gintoki yawns to try and hide how much he hates that, too.
-x-
On a night where he drinks far too much for his own good, he crosses his arms on the counter and lies his head in them, and murmurs something about how he needs a sword, how everything would be so much better if he had something to fight with, just so that he didn't always have to be on edge. The only way for him of win without a sword is to strike first and strike hard, and to do that he has to be alert twenty-four seven - Gintoki hates that, hates being on edge and always defensive, but he doesn't know how to stop. It's better than panic attacks, and it's easier to handle triggers when he's ready for them, but if only he had a sword… If he'd had a sword he'd never have to panic, because the knowledge that he'll be able to adequately defend himself would be enough.
He blurts it all out in a muttered slur, knowing that he'll forget it the next day and that Otose will probably just pass it off as a drunken melancholy, and goes back to chugging down beer; he does not see the thoughtful, sad look she casts him, or the way she reaches out a hand, just to let it fall again.
-x-
A week later and Gintoki realises that he must have said a whole lot more to Otose when he was drunk than he ever knew, even if he somehow remembers telling her that he needed a sword. Because somehow she found out that it's his birthday today, and there's a parcel at his door - a neatly wrapped rectangle, tied with a piece of rope and a tiny card attached.
Happy Birthday, it reads, your rent is due today.
Gintoki smiles, letting out a little huff of air that's half laugh and half sigh, and picks up the parcel, unwrapping it to reveal a cardboard box lined with tissue, and sitting in the middle of the tissue…
Sitting in the middle of the tissue is a bokuto.
He stares for a long moment, lost and blinking and holy shit, how did he never think of this? Then he smiles, cheeks feeling stretched and odd because he's not smiled like this for ages.
Gintoki reaches out, pulling the wood sword from its resting place almost reverently, and then he nearly laughs because it is so light and fragile, and its tip is the farthest thing from sharp possible.
It's a good start, he thinks.
-x-
It is a good start.
-x-
Eh... I dunno what to say. This is pretty old and I just came across it and figured what the heck. Also, Gintoki's coping methods are not what I'd recommend to people; I figure Gintoki would use them only because he doesn't think. I couldn't find anything about what his methods would do to people, but I expect making them better is not one of them.
If you'd drop a comment, I'd be really happy! And I need to know if this sucks, so... Please?