Sad People Meet and Become Happy Families
Summary: In which everyone acknowledges Gintoki Sakata is an excellent father. Oneshot.
Gintoki Sakata knows what it is like to live on one's lonesome. The struggle of caring for only you. He knows it more than the country he fought for (though it was never the country he was fighting for. It still isn't what he fights for). He knows feelings of isolation, and overwhelming fear that his end is just around the corner. Gin knows what it is like to have your end mean nothing. To have loneliness bottled up until it is unleashed in a sword. For that sword to be nothing but a means of survival. Sometimes, the only means for a friend. The sword will always listen. The sword, too, knows what it is like to have no one. The sword is always there for that who it is closest with. It will stay until it shatters and can no longer stay for the party.
He was never a samurai until he met the only father in his life. Gin has never had a family. Until the day Shouyou-sensei took him off the battlefield. He meets his brothers, who are so different to Gintoki, yet so alike. He throws away his only friend, his only family, for one that is much bigger. Wherein the classroom he sleeps in, becomes his home and heart.
He knows what it is like to have home and heart torn from tight grasps. Gintoki knows the crushing horror that everything disappears. He cannot protect anything. A useless little boy. That isn't what Shouyou-sensei would want for Gin. He knows this. He picks up an old family member, this time for something more. This time to be just like Shouyou-sensei told him. This time, it is not to survive. This time it is not for the silver-haired boy, whose heart is breaking and forming again, to live for a reason he does not know. This time it is for his home and heart, and all the positives in life he has come to know.
Gintoki Sakata will fight. Gintoki Sakata will survive.
Gintoki Sakata has found reason for his existence.
This time it is for his soul.
Otose observes the two children eating rice across the room, a happy glint in her eyes. Gin sips on his strawberry milk as he looks over his shoulder towards the children.
They are loud. They are chaotic. They argue and nag.
"You've become quite a father," Otose says lowly, taking a puff from her pipe.
He thinks on it. Gin is not shocked, but he has never stopped to think about it. He would not say it is wrong.
Their relationship has always been complex. Odd, might be a better word.
Kagura knows what having no one is like. She knows what it is like to see the only person who has ever cared, disappear into the void. Kagura knows of people and brothers and fathers who do not stay to protect and care. The only family Kagura knows is Gin-chan and Shinpachi and Sadaharu. She knows Papi, as much as Papi knows her.
He doesn't know her. Kagura thinks he has recognised this.
Kagura lived most of her life on the planet that always rains, and never lets even the children sleep. Kagura kills because she must. She, much like Gin, must survive. She survives against her heart that tells her to not. She survives against her blood that tells her to continue, and to fall deeper into the cycle. She escapes on her own, removing her blood and heart and brain and letting only her soul free. To Earth.
There she meets a man who saves her from the rut she is in. She has left the raining planet, only to still fight and kill because she is a Yato and she will never change. Until she meets Gin. He is lazy, half a MADAO, and never pays the rent. He is a protector. He tells her it will be OK. He calls her Kagura, not Yato. He is kind because he knows. Kagura keeps her feelings close to her soul, but Gin's eyes stare right through it.
He sees himself. When Kagura stares back at the dead-eyed man, she sees through all apathy and straight to all that he holds close to his soul too. She sees herself.
Kagura sees her father.
Shinpachi Shimura knows what it is like to have no one. Shinpachi has never told anyone that. Not even to himself. He watched his father die, and watched his sister fall into a hole of disappear. Otae tries to climb out, her nails bloodied and dirtied. Shinpachi cries and tries to pull her out. She gets out on her own and he is never able to help. She gets a job and sets her motivations. She will restore father's dojo.
Shinpachi is scared to ask for help. He never calls out to Otae from the bottom of his hole. He will figure it out on his own. He will get a job. He will help his sister, so his sister doesn't need to help him. He will let his sister to what she wants. He will make sure she never notices. She will be happy because he will let her be.
But it is difficult. Idols on the street stop the noose around his neck from tightening. It is still hard. It is so, so hard. Shinpachi is tired. That is, until the man in silver takes the rope off and brings him far, far away from the hole. The man gives him others who were once in the same hole to call family. The man never asks for anything in return for what he has done. For the life he has saved. For the soul he has let free.
Gintoki Sakata does not realise he becomes Shinpachi's father.
At some point, Gintoki Sakata realises he has long since dropped the title of Shiroyasha. At some point, and he doesn't quite realise it, Gintoki Sakata becomes 'dad'. He becomes 'ojisan'. He becomes 'otousan'.
When Otose mentions it for the first time, moving gears in his head like fixing clockwork. He ponders.
They live at his house (Shinpachi moved in recently, his sister starting renovations on the dojo). He cares for them, constantly. He always makes sure there is enough money to feed them, especially Kagura and Sadaharu. He might not pay the rent in time, but he always buys kagura clothes when her old clothes tear from the fight she always gets in, and Shinpachi new glasses if they break in a fight. He makes sure they get some sort of allowance, even if it is not the pay they want for working at a rundown odd jobs business. When they wake up in the middle of the night, and cannot rest their childish eyes from the horrors they witness, he lets them crawl into his sheets. He hugs them, to reassure the children that they are OK.
They will always be OK. He will make sure of it.
Gin responds with a hum. Of agreement, Otose thinks. His smile reaches his burgandy eyes and spills over into the atmosphere, that shows through his love for the children that fight over the soy sauce in front of him.
Kagura waves over to him, a bottle of soy sauce gripped tightly. "Gin-chan! Tell him it's mine!"
"You've had three bottles of soy sauce already! What is Gin-san going to do about it!" Shinpachi pauses. Quietly he adds, "Please Gin-san. I have done so much for this household."
Kagura pours the soy sauce into her bowl of overfilled rice and kicks Shinpachi with a free leg. She knocks him back and exclaims, "Stop nagging, 'Pachi!"
Shinpachi slouches, uttering under his breath, "Kagura-san…."
They are loud. They are chaotic. They argue and nag.
They are his family.
Gin gets up with a sigh. "Oy, oy." He scratches the back of naturally wavy hair. "I'm not paying for that Baasan."
She points her pipe at him. "You haven't even payed the rent." She smiles at him. At the sorry excuse for a guardian angel and tenant. "Take your kids and leave before I make you pay."
Gin tells them he is buying ice-cream.
Kagura jumps onto his back. Shinpachi runs up, grabbing hold of his arm. Sadaharu rubs his head under Gin's hand on the opposite side.
"Thanks, Baasan."
was i always going to eventually write a gintama fanfic that revolved around sappy feelings of family love and gintoki essentially being the best dad? yes. yes i was. it prob wont be the last.
thanks 2 all yall who read this