A Tonne of Feathers
Gintoki opened the door to his apartment, sliding it across easily with his fingertips. It barely made a sound. He released his feet from hours of capture, removing his boots to feel the soft padding of flooring under his heels. The fresh air was welcomed around his toes after such a long day on his feet. His body felt heavy, like he had barely had a chance to breathe all day. What had he been doing again? He didn't know, but the fibres of his muscles were burning like hot coals. The sight of his living room brought great comfort to his weary head. What brought even greater comfort was the sight of a man in his kitchenette, glaring at the rice cooker with a furrowed brow. He loved that furrowed brow. The man glanced up, his expression easing. Half a second passed as they read each other through sharp eyes – it was a process growing more accurate every day. In that fraction of time, Hijikata would be able to tell that he was tired today and meanwhile Gintoki knew immediately that Hijikata was in a good mood; he smiled.
"What're you grinning for, you big fool?" Hijikata chided immediately. "Fix this stupid thing."
"I can't fix user error," Gintoki countered, flopping onto the sofa for what he already knew would be another great night alone with his best friend.
"It's not my fault. You buy cheap tac from dodgy car boot sales and expect it to work?"
"You're the breadwinner now. I just look after the kids. I'm basically a housewife at this point." Gintoki lifted the remote for the TV and flicked mindlessly through the channels.
"Then get up here and cook dinner yourself."
"That's incredibly sexist, you know. As a man, you can work and cook dinner."
"You can get off your stupid backside and fix this, or you starve."
With great reluctance – whilst making clear this lack of enthusiasm with every thumping step – Gintoki tottered over to the kitchen side and bashed the rice cooker with his fist a couple of times. It hummed louder, the noise sounding like an indignant complaint.
Hijikata snorted, irritated. "Good work. What are you, a caveman?"
"Take the rice out of it and I'll take a proper look." Gintoki ignored his sarcastic remarks and stretched, letting loose a huge yawn. He wiped tears from the corner of his eyes and made his way out of the living room towards the storeroom where he found his small wallet of tools. He really didn't know what had made him feel quite so exhausted but every step was painful – he couldn't wait to lie down. He returned a second later, still dragging his tired feet, and unplugged the device. Hijikata glared over his shoulder as he began to unscrew the back.
"Do you even know what you're doing with that thing?"
"How do you think I manage to run a yorozuya if I can't fix a simple electrical problem?"
Hijikata hummed, not convinced but also surprised that he'd never thought of that himself. Gintoki must be quite handy with his tools. He tried not to let his mind wander at that thought.
"It's the fuse. Needs replacing," Gintoki indicated to a small object near the main wiring. "I'll check if we have any."
He yawned again, trying to think back through the day. He was drawing a blank. Now that he concentrated on the pain, he sensed an ache in his jaw. His cheek was smarting on one side, like he had been hit. He would think about it later. Right now, he just wanted to spend time with Hijikata. Once he returned to the kitchen, Hijikata had moved to the microwave instead. He was bent over, staring intently into the face of the microwave like the answers to life's questions were rotating inside on the glass plate.
"This thing isn't working either," Hijikata spat. "No wonder all you eat is parfait. The only thing that does its job properly in this household is the fridge. And I'm including you in that."
"You're part of the household now, too." Gintoki admired the view as he swayed round the kitchen side and stood behind Hijikata. He leaned forward, placing his entire weight onto Hijikata's back and flopping his head over his shoulder to mimic Hijikata's staring. Chest to back, hips to hips, cheek to cheek.
"You see, this …" Gintoki said, his voice purposefully low and scratchy, "is actually an extremely easy problem to fix." He let his breath tickle Hijikata's ear and revelled in the way goose bumps immediately erupted over Hijikata's neck. He flicked the switch next to the plug and the device instantly whirred into life.
"Ah," Hijikata said, simply.
"Ah, indeed."
Gintoki allowed Hijikata to spin round so they were nose to nose. There was a slight redness to Hijikata's cheeks but as always, he kept the challenge in his eyes. Gintoki placed his hands on his partner's hips, connecting their bodies together. He loved the hinge of his hips and the way it rolled down into his pelvis. He loved the sink of his back. He loved the drop of his shoulder blades and the handful of muscle under his arms which powered the swing of his sword. His hands moved up to explore the width of his shoulders, narrower than Gintoki's but with more muscle in his deltoids and traps. He clearly worked out more than Gintoki – Gintoki had this sort of natural bulk. During their bitterest arguments, one of the insults Hijikata liked to use involved the term 'dad-bod'. Gintoki was bulky and strong, but nowhere near as toned as his partner. Gintoki's retort to Hijikata was always to call him spaghetti arms. The argument would dissolve into comparing biceps and much to Hijikata's frustration, Gintoki won every time. He was all bulk, no toning, whereas Hijikata's body was laced with a net of ridges and dips. Gintoki licked his lips, unable to contain his excitement. He just wanted to see this strong warrior pinned beneath him, begging for it.
"You called me disgusting," Hijikata whispered and Gintoki's heart stopped. He stopped looking down at the rim of Hijikata's belt and flickered his eyes up to meet him. Hijikata continued, voice void of emotion. "You turned your back on me."
And suddenly the form in Gintoki's hands shrank away to a skeleton of what had been. In the grasp of his hands, Hijikata's hips cracked as though the tension of his grip was too much. The arms resting on the counter behind them were thin and the muscle so stretched and taut that you could see the vein in his forearms – it was like he was transparent. Gintoki released him immediately and staggered backwards. As he let go, his partner fell, unable to hold himself upright under his own esteem. And as he fell, his skin fluttered away like ash, his skeleton clattering on the kitchen tiles. A voice echoed on even after all movement had ceased, saying, "you don't love me anymore."
And Gintoki woke up in his cell once more, panting hard. His entire body ached. He realised that he must have been here for some time and the way he had been curled up unable to stretch had turned his tendons to stone. The bruises on his body woke with him. The amanto still hadn't really beaten him properly; just given him a few swollen cheeks to think about and the lace of a friction burn where he had been thrown across the floor. He wriggled to stretch as far as he could, but these cages would not allow for such liberties. However, lucky for him, a face was grinning at him through the bars.
"Ish time for the real fun," the amanto grinned.
"Oh, good, I thought you guys had given up on the torture." Gintoki retorted.
"Torture?" The amanto giggled so gleefully that Gintoki knew he was in for a bad time. They were finally getting serious. "You haven't even been tortured yet. The fun beginsh now."
Always looking for the silver lining in his darkest days, Gintoki allowed himself a small amount of relief given that at least this meant he would be able to stand up. That was one good thing to count. He didn't think he'd run out of fingers to count all his liberties on any time soon. As soon as he was on his feet, the amanto gave him a harsh shove that on his new bambi legs nearly caused him to skitter down the corridor. He concentrated on the surge of pleasure running through his veins now that he was upright and allowed each step to roll from heel to toe to relieve some of the strain. His spine clicked a hundred times as he rolled it upright.
"So," Gintoki drawled, lazily. "What fun are we going to have today?"
The amanto giggled once more and Gintoki rolled his eyes. This little fellow was beginning to get on his nerves, but he didn't need another thing to add to his list of miseries. "You've got a shpechial meeting today."
"Shpechial?" Gintoki couldn't help but imitate. The tone went straight over his prison guard's head.
"Yesh, very shpechial. And so, we've got to dressh you up for the occasion."
"Might I ask who my esteemed guest is?"
"No, you might not," the amanto sneered. He used a round disk on his keys to wave in front of the door panel. It flashed green and clicked to announce the unlocking of the door. Gintoki, arms still bound behind his back in handcuffs, pushed the door open with his foot and walked on through. He knew the route by now. He'd been down it enough times.
He turned the corner and continued down towards his interrogation room, each light above flickering on a second after he stepped under it, like the lights of a runway slowly powering up. Usually there were a couple of amanto roaming the halls as well but today, the whole place appeared to be empty. Gintoki tried not to wonder who he was 'meeting' later on. He figured it might be the General in charge of SparrowHawk. His first question to the man would be why he chose such a lame name. He understood the reference: sparrow hawks hunted down other birds and their prime target was the skylark, a bird known in legend as a bird of trickery and practical jokes. That didn't make it any smarter. They sounded like a local scout group. In the back of his mind, he thought about what this meant. If he was meeting the General, did that mean they were getting more desperate? That was a good thing for now, as it meant they didn't have Zura's whereabouts or much evidence linking him to Hijikata. It wasn't a good thing for his future, though, as desperation usually called for more drastic measures.
However, he tried not to think about it, but … why did he need 'dressing up' to meet his guest?
He shook his head. There was no use thinking about things like that. Recently, he had been a fish caught in the waves of a storm. The waves were rolling in and he was just flowing with them. As much as he wanted to escape, he would just have to keep holding his breath until the storm passed. He had been imprisoned before. He had been tortured for information before. There were many similarities between his current situation and the past – he knew he could handle it. The problem was, there was much more at stake this time round. Last time, he had been prepared to die. Last time, he had nothing left to live for. This time, he had everything to live for.
He located the room and once more allowed the guard to wave the fob at the lock. Once inside, he sauntered over to the chair in the centre of the room - a thick wooden chair that was fixed to the ground - and sank into it. He kept his expression blank. In the corner of the room, another amanto had been waiting and immediately wheeled over a trolley to his side. Gintoki didn't even glance at it. The door thunked closed and it was immediately locked from the inside. The amanto buried his keys into one of his pockets and shuffled over to Gintoki, pure glee on his twisted features. Gintoki felt one of them lock his handcuffs to a metal loop on the back of the chair and attach a pad to his arm. He blanked his mind, didn't think about the needles on the trolley. Both amantos were silent as they worked away, setting up some sort of contraption that fed into the band on his forearm.
"The boss doeshn't want you to be too perky when you meet your friend," his original guard said. "So we've got a little something for you." Immediately, Gintoki felt something sting his forearm and dread began to fill his chest, tightening his breathing. He wasn't meeting the General – 'the boss' would be the General. He was meeting someone else. And they were drugging him. Truth serum? Anaesthetic? … Lethal injection?
He hadn't prepared himself. The waves were crushing him now, dashing him against the rocks. His chest was thumping and he gasped air into his lungs, eyes darting frantically around for an escape. He should have escaped by now. He shouldn't have played the waiting game, expecting anything to change, flowing with the surge of the tide. He should have beaten these guys and made a run for it. His arm was beginning to feel numb, like death crawled through his veins. It was chasing away his soul, leaving a coldness behind in his fingertips. Gintoki thrashed, like a shark out of water, panicking. He rattled the chain his cuffs were attached to, smashing his feet frantically into the ground to try to dislodge the chair. He could break something if he moved quick enough. If he kept thrashing, something would give. It had to before this coldness encompassed his entire body and the life faded right out of him. He could already feel the world swaying. The eyes of the amanto before him swelled and morphed, ever smiling. Gintoki was blinking slowly, the amount of time between each blink shortening and the lapse of time he spent blind always lengthening. He had run out of time. This was it.
"No," he whined. He couldn't help it. The word slipped from his mouth in a pained moan. This only made the amanto laugh louder, the sound like nails on a blackboard. He was breathing impossibly fast now, hyperventilating. The poison must be acting. "No …" He gasped again. The hallucinations he could see were getting stronger. He couldn't differentiate between reality and his delusions. Had the sky really turned yellow? There was no sky. He was indoors. Why could he see clouds floating by, then? Shadows, maybe? They were growing heavier, darkening the heavens with a thunder that threatened rain. His thrashing began to weaken. His feet flopped helplessly one last time.
"Enjoy your trip!" A voice called, but by now, Gintoki could not tell if it was real.
…
Hijikata didn't know if he could do this. He didn't know if he should. He felt like he was doing a lot of things recently that were high on Gintoki's list of – absolutely do-not-do's. For example, involving Kagura in a high stakes plot. Added to that, selling out one of his best friends. The plan in his head was vague. It certainly wasn't as thought out as he would like it to be. Katsura had given him a credible but fake location of a joui hideout. He would then leave traces behind that suggested the joui had recently scattered. That way, when SparrowHawk raided the building, "Gintoki's information" would turn out to be genuine but at the same time, Katsura would not be discovered. The result? General Kristen would grant Gintoki more time before his death sentence, as promised. Thereby, more time alive for Hijikata to plot his escape. Preferably, legally. If not, with any amount of blood on his hands.
Otose had spoken to him last night. She knew Hijikata was going to meet with Gintoki once more. They had always had a difficult relationship. Hijikata, constantly burdened by a sense of guilt that he was stealing Gintoki's chance at happiness by monopolising him, found it difficult to speak with Otose. She had vastly differing opinions to Hijikata as well and wasn't afraid to make those thoughts clear to him. As she had last night. She had told him to think about Gintoki: who he was, what he believed in, who he held dear. Once he had those images swirling around his imagination, she asked him – "would he want you to do this?"
It felt almost criminal for her to be asking such a thing, an act of betrayal. She reiterated, "whatever you are doing to free him, consider the consequences. If you hurt those two kids in the process of saving him, he will never be the same man again." And that was a shocking statement. It blew Hijikata's courage into a thousand fragments. 'He would not be the same person' … he already wondered on some quiet nights whether or not the Gintoki he knew was the same Gintoki he slept with after his ordeal. The changes weren't significant, but there was a darkness sleeping between them now, snakes in their bed, coiled around their ankles. The way Gintoki looked at him was different. And even then, Hijikata wondered if the Gintoki he knew was the same Gintoki he had been as the Shiroyasha. Some of the (admittedly very few) stories he knew of the Shiroyasha did not even appear to be the same guy. He had always blamed that on the consequences of war … but what difference was this trauma to the battles they had fought years ago? The results were the same. The loss of friends, the pain of change, the torture of human evil. Would this change Gintoki once more?
She continued, "The man I met at my husband's gravestone was a different person. He was grieving, as I imagine he had done for some time. He took many years to recover. You see him now as the charming, lazy fool we all love. He was never that way before. For a long time, I feared I would come upstairs one day to an empty apartment – one way or another. I would call him down to the bar every night, hoping I could crack that hard shell of his. Normality was such a foreign concept to him. The only way he could cope with life was to start up that Yorozuya. Do you think he could have become an employee in a normal job? Certainly not. Some days, he couldn't drag himself out of bed in the mornings. Others, he'd lay awake for days on end. Sometimes, he'd erupt into violence and others a ghastly silence that strung out for weeks." She seemed to watch her memories flow in the swirl of her drink for several long moments. Her words seemed to have aged her and the further she thought back, the more the wrinkles around her eyes seemed to stand out. Eventually, she set down her glass and looked up at him. "He's a broken man already. Don't hurt him any further."
And despite the fact that she did not know, she could not know, that he had nearly completely sold Katsura out … made those words sharper. Like glass. Inside his mind, Hijikata did not feel he owed Katsura a thing. He was only refraining from arresting Katsura because SparrowHawk's mission stood against his own principles. His moral compass would not allow him to incarcerate Katsura at a time where it was clear that he would receive the death sentence. He didn't even feel any compulsion to protect Katsura based on Gintoki's relationship with him; Gintoki was well aware that Hijikata would hold no punches against his old companions. Plus, he didn't seem to care. Therefore, when the opportunity came to rat out Katsura to extend Gintoki's sentence, he had begun to reason with himself. Firstly, it was his job to capture Katsura. Secondly, it would assist both their aims of saving Gintoki. Thirdly, that would give them more time to ensure the death sentence was revoked anyway. He started to believe that he could drag Katsura by the scruff of the neck to the door of SparrowHawk if it meant Gintoki could live a while longer.
Then Otose had said that thing … and it wouldn't leave him alone. Was the risk worth the price of what could be lost? Katsura could be killed, and Gintoki in his final moments would resent him for having used his trust to sell out his dearest friend.
So he had re-thought his plan from the beginning and come up with this … Something that even in the back of his mind, he knew would not work.
Kristen welcomed him with a smile filled with a hundred sharp teeth. He entered the building through the delivery entrance, as the General had instructed. The media had been lurking by the main entrance, trying to capture the activity of SparrowHawk. It was a hot topic. Until now, this had been a facility used to lock away only the most horrific criminals. The numbers of such criminals had never been high enough to fill all the cells, so it had not required much persuasion from the amanto to encourage the government to sell them this facility. Even from the outside, the building stank of rot and recycled air. Some rooms had completely been renovated meaning that the old brick dungeon had several modern and extremely clinical elements to it. The main entrance had clearly been invested in, and this was where Hijikata had not been allowed to enter. Instead, he shuffled in alone through the back door amongst peeling wallpaper and sodden carpets. Further down the corridor, Kristen filled the space with his bulk, almost shoulder to wall on both sides.
"Welcome back," Kristen grinned. Although he smiled, the gesture was as rotten as the walls. "I hope you can use your policing expertise to syphon out that tit-bit of information we requested."
Hijikata stepped past him, knowing the route to the interrogation room through experience. "I'm sure I can." He replied, keeping his tone jaded. This beast appeared to feed off other people's emotions, so it was best to keep his thoughts under wraps.
"As per the deal, the location of Katsura Kotaro for the push back of Sakata Gintoki's execution date."
"Shouldn't be a problem."
"I don't doubt your competency, Mr Vice-Commander." They rounded the final corridor where Hijikata nearly bumped into an amanto hovering at the doorway of the interrogation room. "One last thing before you go," Kristen said, his footsteps halting at the end of the hall. "Sakata has been less than forthcoming with his information. As I might have mentioned before," he lowered his tone but Hijikata could hear the hint of humour to his words, "I can't guarantee what sort of state he'll be in."
Hijikata swallowed. He wouldn't be perturbed. He would not be blackmailed. This was the General trying to get a rise out of him so that he could suck out all his composure like a vampire. He didn't allow his hand to hover for even a fraction of a second, opening the door with such force that the heavy metal slab swung back and clanged against the wall. It was there that he paused and felt his heart knot, painfully.
"G-!" The word nearly slipped desperately from his lips as his eyes ran over the beaten form of the shiroyasha, strapped to a chair in the centre of the room. His eyes were closed, head rolling back to an unnatural degree. All his limbs hung limply across the seat. He didn't even stir as Hijikata took a step forward.
"What …" Hijikata began, approaching Gintoki's body with a hammering heart, "have you done to him?"