They leave the villages and enter the battlefield, and the moment Gintoki feels the soft ground beneath his boots deja vu hits.

It occurs to Gintoki that this has happened to him before.

Terror strikes like lightning, and it takes everything he has to steady his breathing as they walk across the battlefield, taking in the blood-soaked dirt and the rotting copses being torn at by crows.

Suddenly he thinks that he knows what's going to happen, how it's going to end. Beside him, Takasugi and Katsura are gagging on the scent of death; it strikes him then, that for all their skill and intelligence, they have never once been on a battlefield, have never once killed a man.

Terror has a death grip on his heart, the same way it did the first time he stepped onto the battlefield, the first time he killed a man and watched blood run down his blade.

(If they fight this war to the bitter end, Gintoki knows how things will go.)

"We'll get sensei back," he says. "We'll get him back and get the hell out of the war."

Katsura and Takasugi, made quiet and sullen by the gory picture of death and blood, nod seriously.

They don't find sensei fast enough, that's the thing.

Slowly everything falls back into how it was before; not in the good way, but in the bloody, stinking way that everything used to be, before Shouyou saved him.

He watches men stumble into the camp, wide-eyed and clad in raggedy clothes, with steel-bright determination in their eyes and swords in their hands; reflections of himself, the mirror images of a child stumbling onto a battlefield.

He knows this sad story, this tragic play. He's watched it before.

(Happily ever afters only happen after "Once upon a time"s. When something happens not once, but twice, three times, four times, so many times, over and over until one forgets to count-

-is it still a fairy tale?

Gintoki doesn't think so.)

In their first battle, three of his five remaining classmates die.

It's Gintoki's own damn fault. The commander is a stupid ass who refused to change plans though Katsura had pointed out enormous gaps in the formation, but Gintoki was the one who couldn't protect them. He'd been getting used to being in a world of blood and rot and every man for himself, and he'd forgotten that this wasn't the same as when he was a child.

Everything is different, now, and he didn't notice it fast enough. In a world like this, you protect what you have with your two hands and your sword, and you carry your burdens on your back.

Maybe it's because he never thought of his friends as his, but he didn't protect them - he didn't even think of going to them until it was far too late; his mind had been swallowed up by fighting and cutting and taking out just one more enemy. He didn't spare a thought for his friends until they were dead and no amount of trying could have brought them back.

They paid for his mistake with their lives.

(It's not the last time.)

They find two of the bodies, bloodied and mangled and once-bright eyes now staring and lifeless and glassy, limbs stone cold.

It hurts like a knife in the chest, twisting slowly, and carrying their bodies - dead weights, now, limp and heavy and just as lifeless as a particularly heavy sack of grain, with strange angles jabbing into Gintoki's ribs and fingers frozen in claws tapping his arms - makes him want to be sick. Takasugi takes the other body and his face is a pale mask of horror and hurt.

They nearly go mad trying to find the third. They comb the dead for hours, wandering through that sea of blood and bodies until the sun begins to set and it becomes hard to see the faces of the dead in the dimming light.

Finally Gintoki stops and breathes out and tells himself that this is just ridiculous, that there's going to be another battle tomorrow and they can't waste their strength looking for their dead comrade in the dark.

He catches Takasugi and Katsura by the shoulders and tells them to give it up; it's not like they can save him, anyway. Takasugi glares at him and Katsura just stares as if he doesn't know what Gintoki is saying, as if he doesn't know who Gintoki is anymore.

Gintoki is suddenly, terribly reminded that they are fourteen, freaking fourteen, far too young to be in a war, far too young for any of this shit.

"Gintoki," Katsura says, and his voice is a choked wail and an admonishment and a plea and a cry all twisted into one distorted, breaking sound. "We can't just-"

"You're a bastard," Takasugi says, with eyes burning with rage and maybe tears, if Takasugi weren't such a stubborn idiot that would never ever let others see him cry or even tear up.

Gintoki grits his teeth and balls his hand into a tight fist and punches him, hard. He feels Takasugi's jaws clack together and the idiot's head snaps back.

"We can't save him," he says, and it hurts. It freaking hurts, a burn in his chest and white-hot pain in his gut, the words clawing their way from his tight throat. "He's dead."

Katsura shuts his eyes and Takasugi's hands fist by his sides, knuckles whitening. Both of them - all of them, really, all three of them, but Gintoki doesn't want to think on that - have hearts that are far too soft, clinging to the people they care about and refusing to let go. Their friend is dead and there is nothing they can do about it, and that hurts both of them, all of them, almost beyond what they can bear.

"But-" Katsura begins, and Gintoki forces the blankness back onto his face.

"The dead don't care 'bout their bodies anymore," he says. "It ain't gonna do any good."

Even as he says it, he knows that the burial of the dead is more than just for the person who died. It's for the people who were left behind, the people who cared. It's a time for them to do something when they couldn't do anything for the person when he was alive even if it doesn't matter. Even if it doesn't change a damn thing, they want to and have to try. (It's like hoping beyond hope and trying even if it's worth nothing is programmed into humans, and Gintoki hopes survival instincts can override the programming because he can't watch them die for a worthless cause, he can't.)

What it boils down to, right now, is whether the closure or preparing for tomorrow's battle is more important.

Katsura says: "What if he's alive? What if he's injured and we could save him, if we just searched harder?"

Gintoki grits his teeth. "He would be back by now."

"Not if he can't walk," Takasugi shoots back. Gintoki refuses to flinch.

"One hour," Katsura says.

"Do what you want," Gintoki replies, but there's a cold, heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach and nothing in him can imagine Haru being alive, no matter how hard he tries, no matter how many plausible reasons Katsura and Takasugi may give. He doesn't know if it's instinct or if he's cynical or if he's just plain terrible.

They find Haru when the world is nearly pitch black.

He's dead; even in the dark they can see his stomach sliced wide open and the guts and blood that have spilled onto the ground. His eyes are a writhing black mass and it takes a moment for Gintoki to realise that they are swarming with feasting flies. There's a rat eating at Haru's stomach walls and flies eating his spilled organs. Gintoki has seen this before, on a million other men a thousand other times, but this is a boy he grew up with, a boy who he played with and sparred with and encouraged and belittled and travelled with. This is - was - his friend.

He swallows down the bile that burns at his throat and digs his fingers into his palms and doesn't look back when he hears Katsura give a sound halfway between a moan and a retch. He kneels on the bloodstained dirt and he slides his shaking hands under the limp, cold body and he doesn't mention the tears in Takasugi's eyes when he stands.

He holds the rigid, chilly body to his chest and tries to ignore the half-eaten eyes that stare accusingly at the sky. He does not tell Takasugi and Katsura that he told them so.

(He grits his teeth and he swallows thickly and he especially, especially does not cry.)

He knows things that a kid his age shouldn't; things that a brat who has never been on a battlefield would never know.

(He's seen this played out a hundred times before.)

When his classmates' eyes go dead after one too many battles, Gintoki knows the way they curl up with what little fabric their stocks can offer. He knows the way they get a desperate, frantic edge in their eyes when there's too little water to wash the blood from their hands and the way they never, ever release their swords, cradling the weapon like it's a safety blanket or gripping it like a lifeline.

Even Takasugi and Katsura go through it - though they hide it alarmingly well, only Gintoki seems immune.

The thing is, he's been there before. Maybe he developed immunity; maybe it was a survival instinct. He doesn't know. What he does know is how to how to use the damp dirt and mud to scrub blood off his hands and how to scavenge bodies for extra food and supplies.

(It's not pleasant or ethical or respectful, probably, but those useless programmings were overridden in Gintoki years ago.)

Katsura and Takasugi taught him to read, to write, to count. They taught him geography and poked fun at his table manners until he got something resembling decent down, taught him how to fit in as something more than a half-wild demon child. Gintoki could tell them that they were the ones who taught him to slowly release the death-grip on his sword, to grow comfortable with merely having it nearby instead of always clutched in his hand.

Somehow it's fitting, that the demon child now teaches them where to rid themselves of the blood on their hands, how to search bodies for food and supplies, and how to dig and layer trenches to collect a little extra water

After he's taught his friends how to clean blood off their hands with dirt and mud, he teaches them how to identify edible plants that somehow manage to survive the battles. Then he shows them how to clean and bandage wounds when the medic is far too busy to worry about a handful of raggedy, cut-up fourteen-year-old boys.

His classmates ask him why he knows this, and he sidesteps their questions neatly, as easily as he sidesteps sword swings on the battlefield. It's common sense, he says sometimes, though it's really not - more than any sort of sense in the world, it was attempts of a desperate child pushed too far that led to these discoveries. Other times he says that it was trial and error; the truth, though only a small fraction of it.

"How do you really know this?" Katsura asks him one day, as Gintoki is pressing marginally clean rags against Katsura's back and ordering him to put pressure on that cut on his arm before he bleeds to bloody death, dammit.

Gintoki wipes blood from the gaping wound on Katsura's back and pours water on it, rinsing out the dirt, then pinches the ends together. "This is gonna hurt," he says, and passes Katsura a stick to bite on. Katsura ignores it and Gintoki shrugs, then pushes a threaded needle through the skin.

Katsura makes a thick gulping sound, like he's trying to swallow down a cry. He might bite his tongue; he should have taken the stick. The moron's probably gonna bite his lip so hard it bleeds to keep from screaming.

Gintoki pulls the bloodied needle through and pushes it in again, and Katsura's shoulders shudder up and down once. "Hold still, damn it. If you move this is gonna hurt more."

Katsura lets out a gasp through gritted teeth. "How do you know that?" He asks, words dragged through his clenched jaw.

Gintoki has to admire his determination.

"Common sense," he says, and this is actually the truth in it's entirety, because how the hell would moving with a needle in your skin not hurt? "Two more stitches. Stay still."

Katsura muffles a cry when Gintoki pushes the needle through the blood-slick skin again. Once more, then he's done and cutting the string and Katsura's shoulders are slumping in relief.

"How do you know how to do this, Gintoki?" Katsura asks, with his dogged determination, as Gintoki lifts the rough fabric from Katsura's arm to check the cut there. It's shallow, the blood already clotting, and he sets the needle and thread aside gladly.

"Grew up in a place like this," he answers. He's never been upset to talk about his past, but it's never been something his friends needed or wanted to know about, so he just didn't. He's just not close enough to his classmates to feel comfortable about taking to them about this stuff, anyway. Katsura and Takasugi are probably the only exceptions.

He wipes the blood off Katsura's back with a damp cloth and sets it aside. "Watch your back; don't break the damn stitches."

Katsura just looks at him.

"What do you mean by a place like this?" Katsura asks, and Gintoki shrugs.

"Ya know," he says, gesturing at the smoky sky and the bloodstained dirt. "The battlefield after a battle. Dead Amanto and soldiers everywhere, stray soldiers once in a while, and blood all over the place." He puts his hands behind his head. "Good ol' days, huh?"

Katsura is silent for a long moment, then he shifts over so that his shoulder presses against Gintoki's.

"Oi, what the hell are you doing? Stop moving before the stitches go snap and Gin-san's hard work all goes to waste, idiot."

Katsura just shrugs takes out a box of cards that's only a little bloody.

"Let's play UNO," the idiot says. "Get Takasugi and the others."

They are his friends and they are important to him. More important than eating or drinking or even breathing, because the loss of them will be the loss of parts of his soul, and that would be the biggest loss of all.

He fights on the battlefield he same way a drowning man fights for air, the way a starving child fights for food. He fights like his very life hangs in the balance because it does, because it's not just his life he's fighting for but a dozen others' as well, and the burden of their lives is a crushing weight on his back.

He fights tooth and nail, swings of his sword fuelled by desperation and adrenaline and the need to keep them all safe. It occurs to him that only a demon would fight like this, with blood from kills splattering into his eyes even as he spins around to gut another enemy, fighting through the bodies until he is ankle-deep in blood and guts or knee-deep in bodies, whichever comes second.

The demon in him claws its way to the surface, lunging and biting in the gleam of his eyes, in the swing of his sword, sitting restlessly in his veins. Viciousness that belongs to a predator or cornered prey, either, both, he doesn't know which and couldn't care less.

You are turning into a demon again, Gintoki tells himself, then he thinks of Katsura and Takasugi and each and every one of his comrades and friends who might not breathe another breath if he can't keep them safe.

He thinks of Shouyou-sensei.

For you, he thinks, and he could be addressing any of them, all of them, none of them. He doesn't know.

For you, I'll be anything.

Until sensei came along, he never cared that he was a demon, anyway.

This is how it goes:

He fights and cuts and fights and cuts and fights and cuts and tries, so hard, so damn hard, to save them.

And his friends die, and die, and die.

He shoves away the guilt, because he's been there and done that and he knows what guilt can do to you; survivor's guilt especially.

He can't afford to feel guilty over surviving on the battlefield. Death is always waiting to pull him into its dark embrace.

And then they're dead, all of them, some burned and some buried and some just left on the battlefield to rot because there was no time to dispose of the bodies. They're all dead and all that's left on the battlefield of Shouyou's ragtag class are Gintoki, Katsura and Takasugi, and Gintoki can't breathe.

"You could leave," he tells Takasugi one day. Rain pours down in torrents, soaking them to the bone as they stand side-by-side, staring at yet another grave.

How many graves have there been? Gintoki can't remember. He remembers - has never quite forgotten - why he never practiced counting a decade ago, on that abandoned battlefield, though he'd learnt the basics of numbers before he fled there. It's because the weight of the tens, hundreds, thousands of mutilated corpses was and is enough and he doesn't need the numbers. Doesn't want the numbers, ever, because things are bad enough.

"I'll save him."

Gintoki can save Shouyou. He will save Shouyou - he has to, because that's what they're here for. That's why Takasugi has lost his bright-eyed innocence and why Gintoki didn't grab Katsura and the rest of his classmates and strangle them for even thinking of stepping onto the thrice-damned battlefield. He can't - won't - let it all go to waste.

Takasugi cuts him a sharp look. "Are you unwell?" He asks, green eyes sharp and shining even in the darkness of the storm. "You haven't slept for four days - you should go rest. Obviously nothing's working right in that stupid head of yours."

Takasugi is right. Gintoki should have known better than to think that his fellow good-for-nothing would ever leave. He shuts his eyes.

"Shut up, Bakasugi, my head's working fine. I'm going to bed."

He's watched this tragedy before, he's acted in the play. It's like riding on a train and knowing the ugly, inevitable end.

He copes. He kills. He copes. Rinse and repeat. Just the same; exactly the same as when he was a brat. This, he can live with.

His comrades die around him and that's new, something harder to deal with, something he doesn't know how to fix. He digs them graves when he can and burns their bodies when he can't, and when he can do neither dreams of their rotting corpses haunt his sleep.

Slowly, he stops feeling human, and this too is familiar; that blood-sticky feel on his hands and neck that stretches to his very core, that makes him feel detached and blank and empty.

"Shiroyasha," Katsura says one day, testing the word.

Gintoki barely looks at him.

Katsura must have heard the stories by now. The battle that ended with nothing but the white-clad demon atop a heap of corpses, a monster standing amidst the bodies in a ravine that was more like a mass grave.

Mangled corpses and shredded flesh, wounds and blood making it nearly impossible to see the faces of the dead; crushed, bloodstained armour and limbs twisted at ugly, painful angles making a mountain ridge of hell.

"Apparently."

Amidst it all, crouching with a sword stabbed into the ground, was the Shiroyasha, the only survivor, the creature with steel claws and eyes that matched the bloodstained dirt.

"You could tell them that it's not Shiroyasha, it's Gintoki."

"I'm not you, Zura. Anyway, it never works."

"It's not Zura, it's Katsura."

"See?"

"Failure doesn't mean you should stop trying." Katsura leans against the tree beside Gintoki. Gintoki breathes out.

He wants to say that if failure leads to death, the way failing in the war will, then maybe they should stop, and cut their losses.

Instead he shrugs. "What difference would it make?" He asks, shutting his eyes. "Give them the advantage of having a demon on their side."

There's silence for a long moment. Gintoki feels Katsura's gaze on him, but refuses to open his eyes, the same way he refuses to feel guilty for not being able to protect his comrades.

After the war, after the battles and death, there will be time for guilt. During this period, during this time of blood and death and monsters waiting for the slightest misstep, there is no room for it. Similarly, there is no time for debating his name.

What does it matter? He's been a demon before, and he's a demon now. No. Big. Deal.

"I will call you Gintoki," Katsura says. "It's not Shiroyasha, it's Gintoki."

Gintoki shrugs, refuses to acknowledge the loosening of a certain tightness in his chest.

"Do what you want."

There should be something when Gintoki realises that he has stopped caring about the lives he's taken. He's always told himself that he didn't care, that there was no time for guilt on the battlefield. That it was him-or-them and he chose him, no questions asked.

But there was always that painful pull in his gut when he thought about the men he'd killed, the families he'd taken them from. Hell, when he was a tiny brat he'd even cried over it once.

Then one day, after raiding a Bakafu supply ship and watching ten of his comrades slaughtered by soldiers right before his eyes, something switches off. The battle proceeds as per normal, with blood flying and guts spilling to the ground and his sword flashing through the air almost faster then anyone can see, but later- later it's just… click. Blankness that he can't seem to fight through, no matter how much he thinks that he should feel guilty.

Afterwards he thinks back on the men he's killed without feeling that familiar cold-cement feel in his chest.

He stares at the blood on his blade, the splatters of blood on his hands and forearms, and doesn't feel a thing. And he thinks that there should besomething.

There should be something monumental and earth-shaking, something that shifts in his psyche and changes his world. That's how things always go in a manga. The main character stops feeling bad about the people he's killed, and becomes depressed, realising that he's a bad person, or becomes a literal monster and kills more liberally, without batting an eye.

But Gintoki has always known that he is not a good person. With the things he's done and the lives he's taken, he can't even make it to halfway decent. And the soldiers already know him as a demon.

One day Katsura will tell Gintoki that there is a difference between the soldiers thinking that he's a demon and actually being one, but Gintoki thinks of himself as one, too, to be honest.

He doesn't enjoy killing, but he doesn't resent it, either. And the day he realises that he honestly, truly, really doesn't care that he's just killed, he doesn't break down crying or go on a trigger-happy killing spree.

He wipes the blood off his blade with a dead man's shirt, apologises in his mind to his sensei - sorry for turning into a monster, I know this isn't what you wanted and it wasn't on purpose, except it sort of was - and returns to the camp with the same dull-eyed, blank-faced expression he's always worn.