Author's Note: I can't say how long this will take as I want to go back and fix the mess I made of the earlier chapters before I go full speed ahead, so please be patient. In the meantime, I offer you chapters 7 and 8 as an apology and peace offering.

Thank you

A Hazy Shade of Winter

Sometime later, after noting that his left thumb was twitching, he raised his head to look once again across the room.

Not a dream then.

He had hoped.

When he had once again become aware of his surroundings, he had hoped it was a dream. That the rawness in his throat was from an oncoming cold and not hours of silent screaming. That the coldness in his body was because he'd thrown off his blankets and not because he was in shock.

That his seeing Souji's pale white body propped against the wall across from him was because he was dreaming and not because Souji was dead.

But it wasn't.

And he was.

And everything was just...so,

Wrong.

This was all wrong. He was supposed to be the one.

Obviously he hadn't been planning to commit seppuku* before Souji could die on him. The kid was always going to go first; they were pretty sure. But not like this. Not without a fight, or what would have been a fight, if given the chance.

If she hadn't been such a coward.

He continued to move his thumb as these and other thoughts flowed through his mind until he was moving his entire hand. He began to work on moving them both, along with his feet, and before long he was able to lean forward enough to put some of his weight on his hands.

At this point it no longer mattered to him if the rest was still numb. He didn't care if he fell on his face and broke his nose, or any other part of his anatomy. He didn't care how much it hurt because he deserved it, all of it.

What mattered was getting to where he had to go.

Slowly, so very slowly, he worked his way across the room until he could reach out and touch Souji's hand.

And then he pulled.

He hadn't waited until he was close enough to lean against the wall next to the body of his friend, or even until his own body could hold more than itself semi-upright.

He just pulled, and as Souji came away from the wall and into his arms stiffly, they fell together to the floor.

He lay there, in that room with only the barest hint of light and warmth radiating from the fire that had all but gone out, and held his friend close, trying to share what little of his own warmth he could.

He's not dead, he told himself, he's just really cold. If I can warm him he'll wake up.

If I can just get him warm, he'll be fine.

He told himself this as the cold of Souji's body began to seep into him and make him shiver.

He told himself this as his tears dripped down and smeared the blood, long since gone rusty brown, on the boy's yukata.

He lay there and lied to himself for what seemed like hours until he was sure he had regained the full use of his limbs.

After gently placing a pillow under Souji's head and covering him with both of their coats, Hijikata did a thorough search of the entire property, starting with where she'd gone for the cushions. It did not escape his notice that not everything she may have considered valuable had been removed. The injury had been as bad as he thought then, or she would have been able to take more with her.

He returned to the front room with a nice, thick sleeping coverlet and spread it out on the floor. Using the tip of his sword he cut a gap in it dead center side to side, and one third of the way from top to bottom.

Next he dressed himself and Souji in their coats and shoes before lifting the boy's body onto it and raising the short end until he could slide the gap over Souji's head.

After laying the body back down, he tied a section of rope he'd cut from the well bucket around the waist and the boy was snugly wrapped in a poncho, of sorts.

He slid another section of rope under the poncho at just about mid thigh height and tied the wrists with a third.

Once done, he squatted down in front of the body. He once again pulled Souji up into a sitting position against his back, and lifted Souji's tied hands over his own head. He then took the ends of the rope still laying under the coverlet and brought them to the front, crossed them over his chest, and pulled them up past his ears before tieing them back behind his head.

Leaning forward, he took the weight of Souji's body onto is his own back, got a good grip on the rope supporting that weight, and lifted.

As he stepped out of the little room he used one hand to grab a hall lantern and threw it into the pile of cushions. Let the place burn. Right down to the ground.

And as he passed through the gate,

"Hold on for me just a little longer, Souji."

"We're going home now."

o0o0o

It wasn't until he nearly fell down the dike and into the rice field that he realized he couldn't see where he was going. Not that there wasn't enough light, there was loads of it; too much in fact.

Hijikata looked up. The moon was full. Souji loved full moons. Damned kid would stay up all night to watch how the light changed as it moved across the garden. He loved how it made everything glow.

Hijikata looked down. The ground was covered in snow. Souji loved snow, too. He hadn't been allowed out in it these past couple of years, though. It was the worst kind of cold and damp for him.

"You could have told me before I nearly walked us off the side of the road, imp," he said out loud.

Silence.

Complete silence, and not just from behind him. That was one of the things Souji loved about snow; the way everything got so hushed, how it felt as though you could hear the very world itself turning.

He had been right, Hijikata could hear everything, except the one thing he wanted to hear most. But no matter how hard he strained his ears, the only heartbeat he could hear was his own.

He turned in place, searching for landmarks now buried. Aside from the tracks he'd made himself up to this point, the blanket of snow lay unbroken. Pristine white covered everything as far as the eye could see, shining in the light of the full moon.

One of the first things Souji had asked him after getting his new winter yukata was if he could go out and play in the snow this year.

"Now's your chance, kiddo," he said, and after a minute, "I'm not waiting out here all night, you know."

But there was nothing. No sound escaped that heavy blanket of white.

After one more full turn to get his bearings, Hijikata began the slow trek back to the monastery, through the first snow of the season.

"You would have loved this," he told his friend as they headed home.

o0o0o

As the youngest of the Shinsengumi captains—younger even than Okita-san—Toudou Heisuke and his squad tended to catch a lot of flack from the older guys.

They also tended to get stuck with some of the worst duties on the schedule.

Which was why, on the morning of the first snow of the year, they'd been given graveyard duty. This meant that they were out patrolling—roaming—the streets looking for trouble at the coldest, darkest, bleakest part of the night, when even the trouble makers were all in bed.

Well, not all of them. It was beginning to look as though someone had set fire to a house in the area.

So the fact that he and his squad were coming home at five thirty in the morning was no surprise at all.

The fact that they had Vice Commander Yaminami with them was a surprise.

The fact that they ran into Vice Commander Hijikata and Captain Okita on the way; that was a flat-out shock to the system.

Toudou had heard rumblings earlier about Hijikata-san and Okita-san not coming back from town but had paid it little mind. After all, not even the remaining Ishin-Shishi slinking about the capital would dare to mess with those two. As individuals, they were deadly. Together, they were a walking natural disaster area. So he had tried to put it out of his mind.

He needed sleep.

The squad who got stuck with graveyard watch had no choice but to split their sleep.

During the day they performed all their usual duties and training, slept as much as they could manage after dinner, stood patrol from midnight until five, and tried to get a quick nap in between returning to headquarters at around five thirty and first muster at six thirty.

Splitting sleep was hard enough to do on principal, but some of the older guys liked to get loud and obnoxious after dinner just to keep the squad on graveyard watch from sleeping. They thought it was a big joke.

Until Kormaru was killed.

He wasn't out manned in numbers in a fight, or even over-powered by someone better then he was.

No.

They'd had five straight nights on graveyard watch, and the seniors went out of their way to make all five of those nights as miserable as possible.

On top of that they'd also had their usual daytime duties to perform; training, cleaning, supply runs, and of course, rotating through gate guard duty.

Kormaru fell asleep.

On gate guard duty.

Vice Commander Hijikata had not demanded Toudou's head, which he should have done since the squad captain is responsible for his people. But he did demand Kormaru's.

For his part, the guy took it well.

Toudou had assumed that Kormaru would ask him or one of the other members of their squad to be his second.* That was tradition.

Instead, he chose the one guy, more than any other, who had made a point of keeping them all awake. And while Kormaru himself never asked for concessions, Okita-san had gone to the Vice Commander and demanded that all the guys responsible be made to sit in the front row.

Toudou was alive thanks to the Vice Commander's mercy, and though his squad still got more graveyard watches than was strictly fair, no one disturbed their sleep, thanks to Okita-san.

So when Toudou realized who it was walking ahead of them he called a halt to his squad and looked to Vice Commander Yaminami for orders.

For his part, the Vice Commander put the lieutenant in charge and waved Toudou to his side. "We'll go on ahead and see what's wrong."

And see it they did.

"Vice Commander Hijikata, sir, is Okita-san—," he began to ask before he could stop himself.

"Toudou."

"Yes sir?" the Vice Commander's voice was as rough and pain-filled as Toudou had ever heard it.

"We're going home," was all he would say.

"Yes sir," said Toudou.

Vice Commander Yaminami nodded in response to Toudou's silent question, after which the young Captain called his squad forward to take up positions on either side of the Vice Commanders and Okita-san for the escort home.

He made a point of taking the front position of the left column. Not that it was a particularly dangerous position; he just didn't want his men to see him cry.

It was bad enough that they got stuck with such a newbie for a captain, and that they were paying dearly for it. But if word got out that the baby captain was a cry baby captain, well, there would be no help for it.

Toudou would have to resign his position just to ensure the squad's safety.

And so he stayed out front of the column in case his emotions should betray him.

And when they reached the gates he waited, face set in stone, until the Vice Commanders, carrying Okita-san, had gone in.

And after he marched his squad in and dismissed them, he continued to bury it all beneath the reams of paperwork and watch reports he needed to complete.

He held it together until approximately six fifteen when his friends and fellow squad captains rushed in, wanting to know what had happened.

At which point nineteen year old Toudou Heisuke, The Shinsengumi's youngest squad captain, completely broke down.

Notes: * Seppuku is the term used for ritual suicide. Some westerners refer to it as hari kiri.

* A second is the person who is tasked with the duty of taking the head of the one committing seppuku, in order to allow him a quicker and more honorable death.