Voices.
Familar, angry, sorrowful voices. They echoed around him, they filled his ears, they carved their way into his very soul. And they all uttered the same sentence.
"You failed us."
Inoue, murdered by Kazama because he wasn't fast enough. Yamazaki, killed by a blow meant for Hijikata. Kondou, left behind at his own insistence to be arrested and executed. Souji, abandoned in Edo to succumb to tuberculosis with the knowledge that Hijikata lied to him about Kondou. Saito, whose fate was uncertain since they left him to fight alongside the Aizu. Sanan and Heisuke, both of whom had turned to ash while he held their lifeless hands.
"You failed us."
They were right. It was his fault. He had let his anger over Inoue's death lead to Yamazaki's own demise. He had shielded Kondou from the harsher realities of leadership and then thrown him to the wolves. He had not done enough to calm Souji's lust for killing and jealousy. He had put so much on Saito's shoulders, of course he would want to separate from him. He had taken Sanan and Heisuke for granted, had never been there for Sanan during his struggles as a Fury and brushed aside his pain, he had not done anything to help young and naive and hot-tempered Heisuke, he had failed them both despite fully understanding what it meant to be a Fury, despite enduring twice the agony they did due to his duties as Commander and then Chief.
He failed them, he killed them. And soon enough he would die too. What point was there in living without his purpose? Once the Shinsengumi fell, he would fall with it. This was how it should be.
"You failed us."
The voices had grown louder, angrier, closer. It was as if the speakers were approaching him with each repetition until their mouths were at his ears.
"You failed us."
Their hands were gripping his arms and shoulders now, squeezing so hard that their nails dug into his flesh. But that pain could never compare to their verbal assault.
"You failed us."
He was a fool. He was a walking dead man. He was a failure in so many ways.
"You failed me."
Hijikata froze. The other voices stopped, and their grips on him vanished. That new voice, that slight change of phrasing brought with it a new pain, a new reminder of his failures. It belonged to the person he had hurt the most, the person he would never see again, the person who did not deserve to suffer the same fate as the others who had put their faith in him.
Chizuru stood several feet away from him, tears pouring down her face, eyes cold, body still as a statue. None of the affection, fond exasperation, or determination she had displayed around him were present, just a glare so icy that it brought his Demon Commander's glare to shame. And the hatred in her voice was a thousand times worse than those of his other comrades.
She had been his page, his rock, his…savior. And he had left her for her own safety, to prevent another loss and source of grief for himself. As he watched her fall to her knees from shock and sorrow, watched the tears form in her eyes, heard her sobbing and calling out to him as he walked away, his heart screamed for him to stop, to turn around and embrace her and never let her go. But he kept walking, even as the anguish grew with each step he took away from her.
"You failed me," Chizuru repeated. She pointed behind him."You failed them," she said, and he turned to see the owners of those voices that proceeded her arrival standing behind him with the same expressions on their faces as Chizuru.
Chizuru moved her finger to point directly at Hijikata. The men copied her actions. Then, in unison, they screamed that sentence.
"YOU FAILED US!"
Hijikata woke up, covered in sweat and shaking like a leaf. That dream, as horrible as it was, was nothing new to him since he arrived in Ezo. All that was different about this night was the addition of Chizuru, which made his heart ache even more than usual.
He closed his eyes as a single tear fell down his cheek."I failed you all," he whispered.