A/N: (ch. 528 OkiKagu: if Kagura was too late to stop Okita and shit got real wwww) I promise I'll publish the next chapters to my other fanfics, I just kinda wrote this in my free time aaah, I'm sorry! (also I meant ch. 528 not 580, thank you senseiwaa and jerkygirl)


The first thing that Kagura noticed was Sadaharu whimpering. And Sadaharu never whimpers.

Edo was a mess. Everyone knew that. But the one that was screwed up the most after Sadasada-sama's death was the Shinsengumi. Especially one, sadistic brat.

Yato blood licking its lips hungrily within, Kagura dashed through the streets, everything a blur except the overpowering scent, leading her straight to the culprit. She skidded before a back alley, Sadaharu loping to a stop behind her.

Kagura noticed six things. One. The sight of blood. Two. The sound of blood. Three. The slick of blood. Four. The smell of blood. Five. The taste of blood.

Six. The blood. On him. Alone. In the alley where buildings breathed down on necks, only he stood. A second arm glistened with the saliva of a lustful monster, one that preyed on a heart and left only acrimony, a spiteful mirror that reflected all light as darkness.

"... what are you doing here."

Okita turned. His shoes squelched and slid into a corpse, but he shook them out. Black splotches splattered in front of Kagura as she watched him. Any normal human would've run. Any normal human wouldn't have been there in the first place. But she wasn't a normal human, or even a human in general. She was a Yato, a monster just like him, and this was only routine.

"What are you doing here," he said, his dead voice hitting the ground like glass. "Little porcelain dolls shouldn't be splashing in bloodbaths."

"You're right," Kagura agreed as she jumped up onto the grotesque human altar and leaned over, her nose almost touching his. "Little porcelain girls shouldn't be splashing in bloodbaths."

"But I'm not your average porcelain doll, Sadist," she breathed and her whisper sent chills up Okita's spine, spinning him into a whole different world. One where blood wasn't painted on his face and hands, one where it wasn't corpses but a dojo floor beneath his feet, one where there would be sun-warmed eyes and not bone-white, too knowing irises. One where maybe, just maybe, there might've been a couple fist fights under dancing blossoms.

His mouth hardened into a thin line, his lips stark white. But that's just a dream, a wonderful, wonderful mocking dream in this hellhole called reality. "Get out China. This isn't a place where you should be."

Her eyes narrowed into slits, a vicious and cold sapphire blue. "No one should be here."

"I can't atone. Someone needs to do the dirty work."

"... whoever said atone."

Kagura took a shaky breath and grounded herself, again focusing her gaze on him. "Sadist, you're not looking for atonement. You're just a lonely coward trying to drown yourself in work. Or whatever you want to call this." She gestured vaguely to the 'ground', swallowing down her nausea. "You don't want to face the truth. And you hurt others because that's all you can do."

Okita stared at her, and suddenly the snake in his chest was slithering up his throat and making it hard to breath. He was distantly surprised to hear how ragged his breathing was, how his shoulders shuddered, how his knees were weak. Kagura shoved her face right up to his and hissed, "Get yourself together."

His anger erupted. "What would you know?" he growled softly, and for a split second, Kagura had never seen such scorching hatred in a pair of eyes. Or haunting pain.

Cross that. There was only one other time she had seen that, and she never wanted to see it ever again. Not in those cerulean eyes.

"Nothing. Nothing at all," Kagura whispered to the insane eyes boring into hers, a similarity so similar it hurt. "I don't know anything except what it's like to lose everything, from the ground to the sky. From your home to your world."

And then she touched his cheek. His bloodstained, dirty, torn cheek. The soft fingertips hesitantly stroked down, leaving a trail of faint warmth above the hardening scabs. Kagura quickly pulled away, face flushing in a place where he should've been sick with red and yet he wasn't. He should've been sick with passion yet the burn lingered.

And he wanted more. Oh he wanted so, so much more.

Okita lunged for the hand, and Kagura flinched, shocked by the hunger alight in his crimson eyes. Yet it was a different hunger from before. Just as desperate, just as longing but… not reckless. Terrified. A soundless plea.

He didn't realize he was babbling until she gulped with difficulty and replied hoarsely, "I won't. I won't leave you. I won't leave you." Only then did he hear the words "Please don't go" drop from his lips. Okita held the back of the hand up to his cheek again, his eyes half-lidded as memories rushed over him, memories of the dusty past, filled with star-fire momiji and star-crossed lovers and cold, cold memories of never. But the tearing longing for something, anything, to fill up the gaping maw where his heart used to be did not close. It only grew wider.

Okita's eyes fluttered open. They locked onto the azure eyes watching him.

"But I haven't lost you yet," he murmured. "The sky is still here. My sky is still here, and I don't want to lose you."

"I love you China."