AN: This will have multiple chapters! Exciting, I know. I got carried away. No concept art requests please.

Hijikata's footing was swept from under him as the ship lurched drastically portside. Luckily, his arms already had one of the ship's beams in a tight bear hug; he knew letting go would be certain death. He had just enough time to plant his feet before the ship swooped over starboard. Straining against the rain, he squinted across the deck which glistened wet in the moonlight. He counted the tangles of limbs grasping other objects – one, two, three, four… all there. Most people were below deck. Only an essential number were scrambling on the deck, fighting the storm's fury. A slightly smaller wave rolled them back to portside and gave Hijikata an opening to glance towards the quarterdeck where Kondo still had the helm in a white knuckled grip, Yamazaki shadowing him. The moonlight painted one side of their faces, illuminating the whites of their eyes, their pale cheeks a wet silver slickened with perspiration and the ceaseless rain.

A knot of legs kicking up high caught his attention and he noticed Sougo had been completely plucked from the crow's nest and now flailed upside down. Mercifully, he was tied in. With a deft flick of his hips, the boy righted himself and scrambled back into the cutches of the nest.

The rain was pellets of ice on Hijikata's face and the persistent pebbling of tiny frozen stones had rendered his cheek the painful kind of numb whilst blood throbbed in his battered ears. There was not a dry garment on his body. Most of what he wore was so drenched with salt water that his limbs felt twice as heavy. This storm had it in for them. Perhaps it was the worst storm Hijikata had ever suffered, though he wasn't much of a sea-goer. They'd made a mistake here, that much was unmistakable. It brought dread into the pit of his stomach (when his guts weren't heaving left and right). What's more, they should have stayed clear of land – the seabed shelf below was causing the heaving storm waves to break under them. The ship, which had seemed so grandiose and superfluous when Hijikata had first boarded, now felt no more than a bath toy in the roaring ocean.

"The sails!" Hijikata exclaimed as one of the sails blew loose and bloomed. "Reef the sails!" He bellowed against the rain, the effort straining his throat – only for the words to be sucked into the abyss. He couldn't hear himself, never mind anyone else. Between cracks of thunder, he could hear humanlike sounds but no words. The storm felt heavy in the air, almost static. His eyes were momentarily blinded by a bright flash, followed almost immediately by a rumble of thunder which stifled the shouts. The cacophony of cracks built into a deafening scream across the sky.

Hijikata timed his release of the beam with the next rock of the boat, using its momentum to hurl himself towards the mast. His hands scrabbled for something to grip before the next surge came and for a second, panic rose in his chest. The ship was already tilting, and he hadn't yet found purchase. Finally, the ropes in his hands pulled tight and he braced himself for the next swell. In the short breaks between wave breaks, Hijikata reigned in the sail, though the thing was doing its best to defy him. His hands were wet, the sail was wet, the bark was wet. Everything slipped from his grasp. He was so cold that his hands felt like fat sausages trying to tie the sail back in position before it rocketed them towards land. Once the sail was securely tied, he lowered his head against the mast and allowed himself a second to breathe. His shoulders heaved. The ship heaved. The sky cracked, heaved. His stomach heaved.

He needed to get over to Kondo as soon as he could and lend a hand with steering. Sougo was up in the crow's nest to provide the eyes of the crew, but whatever he could see, the message was not able to make it past the whipping winds into the ears of the ship's Captain. Kondo was navigating on instinct, but he was no Captain. None of them were. Of all the times for the bakufu to demand they head to Hokkaido, this had to be the worst timing. Emergency, Hijikata's left arse cheek. It certainly was an emergency now.

Once they had sensed the arrival of the storm, at that time just a low rumble out of view and a darkening horizon, the plan had been to outride it. To get to land as soon as possible – they knew they were not far away. The ship was fast and the winds blowing strong in the right direction. But the storm had hunted them every nautical mile and now boomed over them at the worst possible moment. They were surely close enough to land for it to be visible in typical conditions, but the dark heavens hid every treetop, every hill and valley. Black-grey horses galloped over them and blocked out even the sun, their hooves thunderous. Hijikata searched the horizon but saw only charcoal.

Another particularly violent lunge of the ship dislodged Yamazaki like plucking a chick from its nest. His body flailed towards the stern, unable to avert his course overboard. Both thankfully and mercilessly, his path was broken by the wooden rail. The force made Hijikata wince. Kondo's mouth called his name, but the words were lost to the storm. He simply could not let go of the helm to go save him. Hijikata had to go. There was no-one nearer. Yamazaki wasn't getting up. He remained face down, limp. Damn it. Hijikata waited for the next surge to pass, eyes flicking about the deck to look for hand purchases. He glanced over the bow of the ship to count his men once more.

As he did so, a fleck of amber swayed across the sky – just a fleck. "Lighthouse," he breathed, terror rising. Ordinarily, a lighthouse was a godsend – but it was too close, and they didn't want to be this close to land in a storm. They were going to crash. He knew not what into – rocks, land, the lighthouse itself. They needed to ride it out, wait for the conditions to fade as they surely would. Yamazaki couldn't wait for them to ride it out. Neither could Kondo, who now had sole grip on the helm as it fought for freedom to spin the ship into the sea and send them all to their watery graves.

"Yamazaki!" Hijikata cried, knowing it was hopeless. The body stirred a little and it seemed like he was regaining consciousness. As the ship swung again, his body slid across the deck. Yamazaki's hands reached out in confusion but grasped nothing. Hijikata had to go now. Kondo's eyes caught him and that look of relief was unmistakable – Kondo knew he was going to go save him and trusted him to do it. At once, Hijikata let go of his safe purchase and used the roll of the tides to hurl himself in Yamazaki's direction while the waves still worked in his favour. A quick leap up the steps and skid across the wet wooden panels had him quickly by Yamazaki's side. The delirious eyes of a slightly concussed Yamazaki glanced up at him. Hijikata bundled him quickly under one arm, found his grip on an iron chock, and braced to launch himself towards the ladders leading to the lower decks. The next swell dislodged his footing entirely – for a second, he was completely aloft and then crashed down onto the deck. His face smacked into the floor, and he knew immediately that he'd broken his nose. He could taste blood, too. Fortunately, he hadn't loosened his grip on Yamazaki who remained bewildered but unharmed.

"Fuck this fucking godforsaken ship, the shitty cunting storm and every last one of those bakufu fuckers," he cursed and cursed and cursed, crawling the last bit to the ladder and hurling Yamazaki down it. He didn't have time to check the guy had survived the fall. He hoped those under deck would hurry him into their care. If they didn't want to become a floating mess of splintered wood and bone, Kondo needed help – right now.

As Hijikata got himself onto his feet and sought for a fresh handhold, nature dictated she had other ideas.

The sound of wood breaking was unmistakable. A long, low groan like an injured animal. Crrrrrrrrrrrrrkkkkkkkkkk…. Followed by a sharp crack. Hijikata did not see the thing that fell, but he most certainly felt it. His ribs were cracked instantly, that much he knew. His head whacked the deck, and a fogginess spilled into his mind. The rest was a blur of whites, blues, black and deep, throbbing pain. He skidded across the deck. There were plenty of sensations of things crashing and scraping against his body, bruising and battering him – then suddenly nothing. The lurch in his stomach that signified he was falling, somewhere. Then the smack of concrete across his entire body. Suffocation. The feeling of tumbling over and over, the sense of 'up' a luxury that didn't belong to him. Opening his mouth to suck in a breath and swallowing the ocean. Now he couldn't get any oxygen in. He didn't know which way to swim. He frantically pulled his arms through the water in an effort to break the surface but when his ears began to pop, he realised in abject panic that he had been swimming the wrong way. The vague silver glint of the underside of the waves finally gave him something to aim for, but it was so far away. Surely, he would not make it. Lungs afire, fear freezing his bones, he fought harder against pain than he had ever done in his life, despite the searing pain of many definitely broken things. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. He was going to die. This was it. Another meter. If he didn't breathe now, he was going to die. This was it. And then,

"KURRRGH!" He broke the surface and choked in almost as much water as air. He tried again, this time heaving in a fraction more oxygen. One more time, and that red panic behind his eyes eased, slightly. Instead, the pain hit him in full. A cruel trade-off. Where was the ship? Not close. Not by a long shot. He couldn't see it. Just how far had he been flung? Did they know he'd fallen overboard? Surely, Kondo would have noticed. It was pitch black. All he could see was that bobbing amber glow. His fingers brushed something floating and sturdy and grabbed on immediately. It couldn't take his weight, but it did ease the effort to swim. Swim for the light, he thought. The right light. Not the wrong light. He assumed amber was good, white was bad. But maybe white was good, amber bad? What colour light was at the end of the tunnel? This amber glowed like a warm sunset. Surely heaven had sunsets? The white light over there was small and crescent. It glittered. Tunnels were crescent-shaped, not full circles. Maybe that was the light he should avoid. Swim. Swim. God his ribs hurt. He swallowed and knew it was more blood in his mouth. Or possibly from his nose. That hurt too. What was he swimming for? It didn't matter, swim. What was he swimming from? Where was he? Nothing to worry about now – swim. What happened this morning? Why was he swimming now? Why did that light seem to be blinking at him? Never mind all that – SWIM!

…

When Hijikata came to, it was peace that met with him. The comfort of something soft beneath him. The sight of his chest rising and falling. The sound of waves breaking on the shore somewhere distant. An almost darkness that provided a blanket of comfort, not horror. The musky scent of an abode. A ceiling high above with a fan spinning softly, creating a quiet hum of background noise. As his eyes adjusted to the shadows, an amber light in the corner of the room glowed warmly, similar to the amber light he had been following before. His eyes were drawn to it and caught a glint of silver in its small radius. He realised the silver was a mop of unruly curls on the head of a man bent over a desk, scribbling away. On either side of him were open books, one of which he turned the page of and continued scraping pen against paper. There was a steaming mug of something at his side. He looked a similar age, but it was hard to tell in the light. The man turned his face into the glow of the lamp and Hijikata was able to scrutinise his features for a few seconds.

A high-bridged Roman nose intersected a frowning face, the slight scowl of someone concentrating on the task at hand. Rounded cheeks contradicting a sharp jawline and thin lips pursed together as he chewed on the end of a pen. His curls sat low on his forehead and almost interfered with his vision, casting a slight shadow over unmistakably red eyes. Bright, unruly locks. Those red orbs now flickered over to Hijikata, pausing as they made eye contact. His heart leapt out of his chest, fingers on his right hand crunching the bedsheets by his hip.

"Look who's awake," the man said, softly. He spoke like he didn't want to disturb the air in case it extinguished the small flame, though it was cocooned in glass. "How are you doing?"

Hijikata found he was at a loss for words to describe 'how' he was. Agonising pain in his chest that made it a struggle to breathe in, a crusty nose blocked with dried blood, a familiar throbbing between his eyes that indicated it was probably broken. His wrist didn't feel great, a sprain at least. His head was the worst – a dull pound right behind his eyes. He didn't think he'd been in many worse scrapes… but he couldn't remember. There wasn't much he could remember at all. "I'm…" he paused, collecting his brain as best he could, "Hijikata Toshiro." He finished, weakly.

The man's eyebrow flicked up beyond his fringe, but he was kind enough not to make comment. He placed down his pen and turned up a dial on the lamp to brighten the flame. Once done, he began to walk over to a chair already positioned beside Hijikata's bed.

"I know," the man replied, dropping himself into the seat. He wore a thick woollen jumper with the sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms that could surely grip like steel, and a pair of faded jeans that looked like they had seen better days. Now he was closer, the glint of stubble on his chin became apparent.

"You… know?" Hijikata frowned and his hand went straight to his temple to clutch at where a new pain began to ache.

"I checked your ID. From your pocket."

"Oh," Hijikata replied. "Makes sense."

"I'm Gintoki. Sakata Gintoki." The man held out one hand for Hijikata to shake, which he did robotically. His brain felt like it was lagging far behind right now. He could do nothing but go along with the circumstances while he scrambled to arrange his thoughts in a straight line. Scrambled was the right word – his brain was thick, gooey scrambled egg. "You hit your head pretty hard."

"Did I?"

"I assume so, I didn't see it. That bruise is vicious."

"Oh," he said again. Once their hands had shook, the man carefully turned over Hijikata's wrist to inspect it.

"I hadn't noticed this was swollen." The man hummed, one finger delicately pressing to assess the lump. Hijikata swallowed a wince, but he could tell it didn't go unnoticed. "I'll go get you something for it."

"Thanks…" Hijikata mumbled. The man waved a hand. He headed to a large set of walnut drawers beside an even larger glass cabinet that appeared to be filled with bottles, some near empty, some full. The drawer made an uneasy noise as it was forced open and had to be jimmied shut with his hip when he'd retrieved the right item. The man returned to him, his face darkened by the shadows of the room until he seated himself by Hijikata again, in the light. When the man held out an expectant hand, Hijikata meekly placed his wrist into it.

"A very obedient little dog we've got here," the man chuckled softly as he began to wrap the wrist with a clean bandage, tight enough to provide support but not so tight that it would cut off his circulation. "I would have thought from the lines between your eyebrows that you wouldn't be so compliant. You've got the face of a rebellious type. You fought me almost every second when I was dragging your sorry arse out of the sea. I almost left you there. Seemed like you wanted to become one with the mermaids."

"I … can't remember anything," Hijikata admitted. His voice was nasal from the blockage in his nose. It throbbed every time he spoke. The wrapping paused for a second, bright red eyes watching carefully.

"Is that so?" The hands busied themselves in their task again. "Well, I'm not sure I know how to fix a broken brain. I've done all I can for the ribs, the nose, the scrapes and the pain. I don't have the talents to fix something like that." He tied off the bandage adeptly, clearly a task done many times before, and reached for something else by the desk. "Here, it's water with some pain relief in it. You still look pale." Gintoki offered out a glass of water. He gladly partook. After he'd taken a swallow, feeling the relief as he washed salt water from his mouth, his eyes became lost in the rippling water of the glass. What could he do without a memory? He'd lost his life, in some ways. He didn't know who he was, who his family were, who his friends were. What if he never recovered his memory?

"I'm sure rest will bring you back to normal," Gintoki's reassurance broke his train of thought, and he realised his anxiety must have been written plainly on his face.

"How long have I been here?" Hijikata asked. There was at least one source of information available to him.

"A couple of hours. I guess you fell from the ship that nearly dashed itself onto the rocks tonight. I don't know what sort of idiot Captain you have but no one should have been sailing tonight. And definitely not so close to shore. You shouldn't underestimate the ocean."

A ship, thought Hijikata. That certainly felt familiar. He could recall a few faces as well. A young boy with big round eyes but a sadistic glint in his demeanour; a plain-looking brown haired, kind guy; a tall, athletic man with crossed arms and an idiotic grin.

The silver-haired man continued. "They're all safe, somewhere. I suspect they'll come back to look for you after the storm has cleared if they noticed you went overboard. It's a fair miracle you managed to swim so far to shore. You're lucky I happened to be keeping an eye on that ship and spotted your head bobbing around in the waves. If the moon hadn't been out tonight, you'd be a goner."

"Thank you," Hijikata mumbled, feeling sheepish despite not really knowing what he had done. "Sorry for troubling you."

"S'not a problem. It's my job." He got himself out of the chair and made his way back to the desk. "If you don't need anything else, get your head down. The painkillers should help you sleep. You didn't seem too comfortable earlier."

"I don't usually sleep well."

"You remember that much."

"… Apparently so." Hijikata rolled some thoughts around in his head, mulling over the last few sentences they'd shared. "What do you mean, it's your job?"

"I'm a lighthouse keeper."

That made sense. There was an inordinate amount of sea-related memorabilia and devices littering the walls of the small room. "Where's the ship now?"

"Gone. It managed to get back out to sea. Against all odds."

"And the storm?"

"Almost over. If they're going to look for you anywhere, they'll start with a lighthouse. So, rest up."

"Did you find me on the shore?"

"No, I got my boat out and fished you right out of the sea. You were clinging to some splinter-ridden plank of nothing. Refused to let it go." The man raised the palm of his right hand which had a sharp graze cutting from top to bottom. "Fought me off in your delirium as I tried to get you into the damn boat." Hijikata noticed that though each and every one of his own cuts and bruises had been layered in salve and hidden under clean bandages, the man's own injury had been left untended. Perhaps it was hard to tie a bandage with one hand.

"Sorry." Once again, he was sheepish. His eyelids felt heavy. He wanted to know more, but he was fighting a pounding in his head that was lulling him into rest. A light chuckle came from across the room in the shadows. The pain relief had begun to work its magic.

"Sleep," it said. "You look like a zombie." Hijikata felt himself nodding, still positioned slightly upright in bed. His body slouched to the side. "Hey," a voice called, sounding distant. Maybe he was underwater again. "At least lie down and get comfy. Hey." In his trance-like state, Hijikata felt arms bundle him down back under the covers again, lifting his head to adjust the pillows. When his head was placed down again, he went out like a light.