"He's fine," Otose says, standing in the hospital corridor.

Gintoki is sitting hunched-over in a plastic chair, bloody hands dangling over his knees. His gi is stained with dark blood, drying stiff and crackly. Kagura is curled sleeping in the chair beside him. Her head is resting on his leg, tucked securely beneath the line of his arm. She is small and motionless with a terrible, bone-deep exhaustion.

The white fluorescent lights are too bright above them, too harsh. It makes the blood on them stand out too darkly against the sanitised halls.

It makes them look like they're being eaten alive.

"Obviously. I told you, didn't I?" Gintoki tips his head back to look at her; his eyes are dull and apathetic, like he couldn't care less.

He doesn't say, I thought he would die. He doesn't look like he thought it, even for a second; except that he does. He looks emptied-out and bled-dry, like the blood on his clothes would be far easier to bear if it were his own. He is utterly blank; he has nothing left in him to give.

He doesn't say, I thought he would die. He doesn't need to. Otose has watched her fair share of fights; Otose knows that moment when the blade cuts open someone you love and your own heart is cut open in your chest - that moment where you're not sure if your husband, brother, family, friend, is going to take his next breath and you wish, you wish it had been you instead. She knows the look Gintoki wears because she's worn it before, she's lived it before, when you stare down at bloody hands and wish that the blood were your own. When you think, I almost lost him. I almost-

And the thought chokes you like a garotte wire, bleeding out of your throat without ever becoming words.

She raises a cigarette to her lips. Gintoki's eyes slide down to his bloody hands. "What sort of person smokes in a hospital?"

"You think anyone here actually cares?"

"Keep it away from the brat."

"Like I need you to tell me, punk." She breathes out a mouthful of smoke; stubs out the cigarette. He's right, damn him. He's right. Not in front of Kagura. Not today.

His eyes are bleak.

"You saved them. You made it in time."

He doesn't reply. There are footsteps ricocheting down the hallway, too loud in the silence. Running steps, and they both know who it is before Otae bursts around the corner and launches herself towards them.

"Shin-chan!" Her voice is so loud, so desperate, so raw. Gintoki rises to his feet, sliding Kagura's head gently from his lap. His own head is tipped down, his hair falling to hide his face. Otose wonders if that's why he keeps his stupid fringe so long. "What happened to Shin-chan?!"

She is so, so glad that Kagura sleeps like the dead.

Gintoki exhales in a sigh, forced out of him like his lungs are too heavy for even him to hold up.

"He's going to be fine," Otose tells her, before he can say a word.

Otae's eyes are wide and wet, shining beneath the lights. She turns to Gintoki, snaps, "How could you let him get hurt?!"

Gintoki face is hidden in shadow. "Aa," he says, voice a perfect calm. "It was my bad."

Otae bares her teeth, hands fisted by her sides, but suddenly the anger is gone and she just looks- she looks lost.

Obi one laughs, rounding the corner with Hisayoshi behind him.

"That's not fair," he says, and grins so wide and relaxed that Otose wants to relax, too. "Otae-chan, stop worrying so much- Shin-boy's strong, ain't he? He cries a lot, but he ain't gonna cave."

Hisayoshi smiles, a calm, gentle thing. His eyes are serious but soft, flicking over the bloodstains on Gintoki's gi, his hands. "Looks like you did your fair share of work."

Gintoki raises his eyes to meet his. He is a dark creature in the overbright light, shadows hanging over his eyes, blood clotting his clothes stiff. "My bad," he repeats.

"He will be fine," Hisayoshi says, glancing at Shinpachi's room. He strides forward, clapping one calloused hand on Gintoki's shoulder. Gintoki doesn't flinch, doesn't move. His gaze is dull and dead on Hisayoshi's. "You did what you could. Thank you for saving him."

"Oi, I think you've got it wrong. Clean out your ears, old man - don't you know it was my fault in the first place?"

Hisayoshi just looks at him. "You did what you could."

"As if you'd know that."

"I know." Hisayoshi's hand tightens on his shoulder. His gaze is very steady. "I know."

Gintoki looks at him for a long moment. "You're an idiot, you know that, old man?"

"Who the hell are you calling old, brat?"

Turning away, Gintoki dips his head and hides his stupid, empty expression behind his stupid, too-long hair. He raises a hand in farewell.

"Aa," he says. "I've got another job to do. Old lady, keep an eye on the brat, won't you?"

"No way," she replies. "Come back and look after her yourself."

-x-

So he comes back.

It's not until he walks into her bar at four in the morning with blood soaking through his gi that she realises: she wasn't sure he would.

"Gintoki," Otose says.

"Oi, oi, is this some sort of parental inquisition?" Gintoki asks, standing in the centre of the bright bar like an open wound. His voice is very flat, and his head is bowed. Otose cannot see his expression beneath his blood-matted hair.

Hisayoshi, sitting at the bar counter with Otose, tosses an damp cloth at him. He catches it without raising his head, red fingers curling around white rag.

"Yes," Hisayoshi says, grinning a steelier version of Obi one's too-wide grin. "You're grounded, young man."

Gintoki rubs at his face with the cloth. "Aa, shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't you old folks be in bed by now?"

Hisayoshi laughs, warm and almost paternal. "Now, now, we're not the ones staying up late, partying, doing drugs, losing our heads-"

"Oi, old man, are you sleep talking? My head's still attached."

Hisayoshi asks, still smiling, "Are theirs?"

Gintoki tosses the rag back onto the counter. It's covered in red blood and black grime. "Mostly."

"Gintoki," Otose says.

"I didn't kill them, old lady." He rolls his head back, massaging his neck with one hand. His face is pale beneath the grime and the bar lights; the skin on his cheek has been shredded off, like someone grabbed him by the back of his head and dragged his face across asphalt. Otose thinks of the careless way he scrubbed at his face with that rag and wonders how he could care so little.

He glances at Hisayoshi and his eyes are utterly dead. "Any complaints, old man?"

"Yes," Hisayoshi says aimably. "I know that you're a teenager and you think that you can do whatever you want-" Gintoki snorts flatly; Hisayoshi's grin widens- "But growing boys like yourself shouldn't be staying out so late fooling around."

"Oi, oi," Gintoki says. "If you want them dead, do it yourself. Old fogies, always foisting the work on young people and then accusing them of fooling around-"

"How did you even get to that?!" Otose demands. Hisayoshi laughs.

"Listen here, young man-"

"Alright, alright, stop your nagging." Gintoki starts towards the stairs. "The brat sleep alright?"

"She went to the Shimura house," Otose says. "She's very angry, Gintoki."

He stops. "Aa?"

"You left without her. She wanted in on the action, too."

Gintoki makes a sound that, with a thousand times more energy and exasperation, could maybe pass as a harrumph. "Little kids always want to do things like the grown-ups. It's only when they become adults that they miss the golden days of their youths."

"Oh?" Otose raises an eyebrow. "Then perhaps you should stop acting like an adult yourself."

Gintoki smiles at her-a flat, blank thing. "Aren't parents supposed to be the ones telling kids to grow up?"

"Nope," Hisayoshi says. "We're the old fogies telling children to enjoy their youths."

"Go home and tell that to your actual kids, then, old man." Gintoki starts up the stairs. "Gin-san's going to bed."

"Gintoki." Hisayoshi's smiling, but there's something very still and serious behind his voice. "It's alright."

Gintoki pauses.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he says, voice a monotone. He disappears up the stairs before they can say anything else.

Hisayoshi sighs. "Boys, right?" he asks Otose.

Otose pours him more drink. "Are you his father now?"

Hisayoshi raises an eyebrow. "Would that make you his mother?"

"Sorry, my husband was much more attractive than you."

Hisayoshi laughs. "My wife was the most beautiful lady you've ever seen," he says. "Otae takes after her, you know. Looks, personality, cooking…" He drops his fist into his palm, as if he's just thought of a great idea. "If either of you would like to come by our dojo sometime, we'd be happy to part with some of her food."

Otose leans back against the bar counter and lighting a cigarette. "I'm not planning on departing any time soon," she informs him, "but I'm sure that Gintoki would love to join you for lunch tomorrow." She feels absurdly like a mother arranging a playdate for her child.

"Anytime," Hisayoshi says cheerfully. "There's always plenty of Otae's specialty black eggs to go around!"

#

The next day, Kagura storms into the bar and up the stairs. Otose nods good morning at her and polishes the sake glasses as she listens to the ensuing screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. Yelling rips through the ceiling and tears into the bar.

"Why didn't you take me along?!"

"Bray, you were in such a deep sleep that I thought you were dead! Gin-san was all ready to make you a grave, here!"

"You are just lazy, yes?!"

"Who are you calling lazy, coma-sleep girl?"

"I'll put you in a coma, you stupid perm-head!"

By the time they come downstairs, they both look frazzled and frustrated. Otose raises an eyebrow at them.

"Did you break my walls?"

"Gin-chan started it!" Kagura cries.

"Oi, brat, I wasn't the one who started beating on me-"

Kagura rounds on him, and there's something glittering sharp and bitter in her eyes and voice when she shouts, "Why didn't you ask me to come?!"

Gintoki looks away. His eyes are very tired. He says, "Don't go thinking that this was your job."

"I let him get hurt!" Kagura's hands are fisted tight. Her lips have peeled back from her bared teeth, and she's bowed her head, hiding her eyes. Otose thinks, not for the first time, that she and Gintoki really are too alike. "I let him-"

Gintoki sighs, putting a hand on her head. "Brat, that wasn't your job."

"It was!" Kagura throws back her head to look at him, and the expression on her face is too old for her round cheeks and big eyes, all desperation and fury and gritted white teeth. "I should have blocked him-I let him get past me-"

"Brat-"

"You taught me that I gotta take responsibility, yes?" Her eyes are skies in fractured ice, shattering apart. "You taught me that I have to protect my friends. Why won't you let me take responsibility for this?"

Gintoki looks at her and he looks terribly old. "You should have been able to let the adult handle it."

"But you cannot always be there to protect me, yes?"

"I was there, brat."

"And who was there to protect you?!"

Gintoki looks up, expression a bored apathetic blank. "I'm not like your family. You don't need to be watching out for me all the time."

"But then you guys will slip away!"

The hurting, jagged edge in Kagura's voice sends Otose's stomach into a low swoop of pain. The girl's expression is pulled wide-open, sharp with furious hurt.

This is a child who was left, Otose thinks. This is a child who, according to Gintoki, was the thin scared stitch trying to hold a breaking family together; who tore in two when her open wound of a home finally split apart.

Gintoki says, "Who's leaving, huh?"

"Shinpachi-"

"He's still here, isn't he?" Gintoki asks, and his voice is gruff but painfully gentle. "I'm not going anywhere."

Kagura looks up at him, face tear-sticky and still hurting, but the bleeding gash in her expression has closed up just a little.

"Kids like you don't need to try so hard, you know," Gintoki says. "We're all still here."

"You were almost gone." Kagura scrubs the back of her hand across her eyes. "Pachi almost—and when I woke up you—"

"Almost means that it didn't happen. We didn't go anywhere, brat."

Kagura shakes her head; looks up, and there's something fierce and bedrock-steady in her eyes. "Next time, I'll be strong enough to hold on to everything, so that you can't go no matter how far away you want to be."

"Uh, that's starting to sound like a real scary hostage situation."

"And then I'll grow super-strong laser beam eyes," Kagura continues, "so that if you even think of going, I'll kill you with my extra-beautiful looks-"

"I don't think your beauty is going to be the thing that kills me!"

"You just don't appreciate my special attacks," Kagura says, striking a pose as if her eyes aren't still swollen and a little red.

"What is this, some stupid action manga?! Special attacks don't happen in real life, you know. Look at Sadaharu-he's the biggest dog I've ever seen and all he has going for him are just an extra-big appetite and giant pieces of crap-"

"He just hasn't released his true potential! The mikos who we helped last week called him special, yes?"

"Special in the head, probably-"

"Don't badmouth Sadaharu!" Kagura howls, jumping up to kick him in the face. Gintoki falls onto the bar floor, shouting all the way down, and Otose smiles, because she thinks that they're all maybe going to be okay.

#

Around lunchtime, Obi-one runs into the bar and up the stairs. From where Otose stands at the bar, she can hear Gintoki squawking and the boy yelling.

Good, she thinks, smiling a little as she watches Tama prepare their-perfectly edible-lunch. Kagura left for Shinpachi's house earlier, but Gintoki begged out on account of lack of sleep and, more importantly, a severe disinclination to be in attendance while Otae taught Kagura how to make possessed eggs. It had all sounded very logical and displayed a sense of self-preservation highly uncharacteristic of Gintoki, but Otose had looked at the bags beneath his eyes and the slight hunch of his shoulders and thought that this wasn't about logic or self-preservation at all.

Knowing the stupid boy, it was about self-recrimination; it was about guilt. And Otose understands that, too-can see how a failure to protect someone might hurt after he's fought a war and failed to protect a whole planet already-but that doesn't mean she'll condone it in her bar.

As far as she's concerned, no killing in her bar means that Gintoki's not allowed to kill himself, either, not even in small ways like beating up his own soul.

So she's smiling, as Obi-one comes down the stairs dragging Gintoki along, watching with satisfaction as the boy talks about about how "Shin-boy's been asking for you, and the two girls made you eggs-Kagura-chan found a way to give it some extra kick-"

"What the hell is extra kick?! What sort of possessed thing did they even make?!"

"It's definitely out of this solar system!"

"My soul will be out of this solar system soon if I eat something like that!"

"You don't know until you try-"

"I don't want to try!"

"-anyway Shin-boy and Otae-chan's father is going to beat you into the floor if you don't get over there in the next-oops, we're already late, sorry, I got distracted by an ice-cream shop on the way, look, I bought Otae-chan Haagen Dazs-"

"I'm gonna get killed either way, aren't I?! And how the hell did you get ahold of that when the Earth has already been destroyed?!"

And despite all his protests, Gintoki's letting himself be pulled along, barely putting up a fight. There is something that's not quite relief in the edges of his eyes, something he's not letting himself feel.

It's not quite relief, Otose thinks, but it wants to be.

"Feel free to use him as a punching bag," she calls, careless and offhand. "He's a week late on his rent. You might as well collect the interest."

"Roger that!" Obi one flashes her a bright, sharp smile and a thumbs-up. Not just for the offer - it's a complicit sort of camaraderie, fierce and warm and I'll take it from here.

One day Gintoki will really have to open his eyes and learn that he's like a damn magnet. The rest of them, they've got spines made of steel, and there's not a single one of them who could unstick themselves from his sides; not a single one of them who would.

"Oi! I told you I'd pay in a couple of days, shitty old hag-"

"Watch you damn mouth, punk!"

"Like yours is any better!"

And later, when he gets back, he has Shinpachi on his back-"Don't even think of walking, brat, what'll poor Gin-san do if you drop dead?"-and the boy is plastered with bandages but also a beaming grin that Otose thinks could stop a lesser woman's heart, and Kagura is sitting on Gintoki's shoulder because "It's no fair that he gets piggyback and I don't, Gin-chan!", and-

-and Gintoki's still not letting that emotion in his eyes bloom into relief, but when he slides into the barseat that night, his expression is lazy and unbrittle at the edges, and he orders strawberry milk instead of sake.

Otose slides it to him, even though this a bar for pleasure and drinking, even though she vowed that she wouldn't stock up on strawberry milk again until he paid his rent and possibly his tab.

His lips curl up at the edges, calloused fingers curling around the plastic box.

"Thanks, old hag," he says. She doesn't have to look at him to know that he's not just talking about the milk.

Otose snorts. "You're paying for it, punk."

She thinks about the warmth in the bar - the newfound laughter and love and life, the way everything feels just a little more full in ways nothing has since Tatsugorou died. She thinks about Gintoki screaming and complaining and hustling Kagura out of the apartment for school, about birthday parties and picnics in fields of flowers that burn like a hundred million suns.

She's not just talking about the milk, either.

Gintoki tilts a smile at her, and downs the box.

-x-

And that should be it. That should be all the miracle they get - the calm before the storm, the gasping breath of a drowning man, before a riptide drags him under. It's a shitty planet, and a shitty world, and people die every day, and there is no room for miracles in this unyielding ice.

That's the way they live. One step forward, two steps back.

But Gintoki… Gintoki is a magnet. And they all, every single one of them, have steel in them; in their hearts and spines and eyes.

And so there is this:

A travelling monk stops by her bar one day.

At least, that's what he claims to be, but Otose isn't an idiot and she can see the shape of a sword beneath his lumpy robes. He's not trying to hide it. Not quite.

It's terribly reminiscent of the night she met Gintoki; the same wide-brimmed hat pulled low over the eyes, the same battle-weary tension in the shoulders, the same fluid stride. The only thing the figure is missing is a child dogging his steps.

It is way past midnight and far too late. The patrons in the bar are drunk or passed-out and Otose wonders if all hunted swordsmen think the same way; if they plan their visits for times when no one will notice they've arrived. When they can be dismissed as a ghost, an apparition, a thing from half-forgotten memory made faded and indistinct with the haze of sake.

"You look like you've come a long way," Otose says, as he slides into a seat at the counter. For all his grace, there is something exhausted in the hunch of his shoulders, bled-dry and worn.

"Perhaps I have." The man rests his palm on the counter. His fingers are long and calloused; a swordsman's hand. "I have been… searching for some people. I have been searching for a long time."

"Oh?" Otose raises an eyebrow.

"Three men. Not together, I think. One rather short, with green eyes and an angry face. One with curly hair and blue eyes and a weak stomach. And the last with white hair like an old man's."

White hair like an old man's. Silver, he calls it, but, but, but-

"And what," Otose asks, carefully casual, "Would be your business with those men?"

"They are my friends." Unlikely, Otose would think, because that's an easy enough lie for any person to tell-except for the way that his fingers curl briefly, helplessly, with the words, in something halfway to a prayer. "I would like to know if they are safe."

She wonders if she should call Gintoki. She looks down at the man; there's steel in his spine, but it's chipped, and worn. Not breaking, not yet, but-there is something there that aches.

And then it doesn't matter, anyway, because Gintoki is standing on the stairs like the idiot that he is, always with the worst possible time and yet impossibly good time, always moving to exactly where he needs to move, even if it cuts him down to his bones-

-and right now, he looks cut. He looks like something's torn him straight down to his marrow; is standing there helplessly, painfully still. He's frozen, like he's got ice under his skin, breathing shallow and barely there, a half-dead thing buried beneath snow. His eyes are wide and desperate and suddenly filled with a painful, desperate hope.

And his voice doesn't crack, but it sounds like it wants to, fracturing beneath the burden of something hammered together from a wish and a plea and a prayer.

"Zura?"

The fake monk does not move. For that pleading, empty second, Otose thinks that his heart might not even beat. And then one hand pushes back his hat, and his strong swordsman's fingers are shaking, and-

-with his face uncovered, Otose can see that he's not a man at all. A boy, with long raven hair and brown eyes. And the moment is at once beautiful and terrible, a knife lancing an infected wound, two boys staring at each other and dying a thousand deaths before they each take a shuddering breath.

The swordsman-boy grins, sharp and delighted, and there is a thank you in his voice, not shaking only because it is too heavy to shiver, the weight behind it too tired and cold and worn, like a frozen man handed a small, bright flame.

"Gintoki."

Gintoki inhales, a drowning man breaking the water's surface, gulping in a lungful of air.

Then he throws himself off the stairs and kicks the boy in the face.

"What the hell took you so long, you bastard?" And Gintoki has his hands fisted by his sides, his expression crafted into exaggerated rage, but everything about him is shaking. His lips pull back from his teeth, and his voice is furious, but his eyes- "I thought you were dead, dammit!"

-there is something breaking in his eyes, wide-open and shining and wet and raw like dawn opening across the sky.

The boy pushes himself up on one arm. The movement is smooth and graceful, but his hand is shaking against the floor's wood boards. When he tilts his head up, there is something gleeful and achingly relieved behind the primness that Otose can already see is a mask.

"It is significantly harder to find one man in a galaxy than you seem to think, Gintoki."

"You know me." There is something tight and broken in Gintoki's voice, blood or warmth or tangled, twisted relief caught in his throat. "You know the places I'd go, you stupid, stupid bastard."

"There were things that I needed to settle, and you could have searched for me-" Something probing and soft in those words - you could have searched for me - and Gintoki's fists tighten by his sides.

"I couldn't search, you stupid bastard!" He snaps, a furious wretched heat spilling out to speak unvoiced words - I couldn't search. I couldn't search, but I wanted to. More than anything in the world, I wanted to. "And don't give me your damned excuses! You could have popped by; Gin-san almost wasted money making you a damned grave-"

"Aren't you the one making excuses? What do you mean you couldn't search? You know something like that would not be sufficient to kill me."

"That's why I was waiting, you bastard!" His voice rises too sharp, too loud-it sounds like it grates against something inside of him, something a lot like bone.

"I'm sorry."

The boy dips his head in apology. Something drains out of Gintoki - and Otose has seen him cut to his core, has seen hope and happiness bleeding out of him like lifeblood spilling to the dirt, but this is not that. This is poison draining from a deadly wound, ragged edges left sore and bloody but capable, now, of healing.

And that's all any of them have ever needed. That vague possibility - that small, unkillable hope.

"You're still such an idiot, huh, Zura?" Gintoki asks, and offers the boy a hand. The boy takes it - gripping tight, too tight, like neither of them could ever bear to let go - and Gintoki hauls him to his feet.

"It's not Zura," the boy says. He grins, standing firm, the steel in his spine suddenly, impossibly, made whole. Unbreakable, this boy, with his sharp grin and molten eyes. "It's Katsura."

A/N: I realised I updated on ao3 but forgot to update here.

I've been working on my own novel lately, which sucked up all of my time, but I haven't abandoned this! Please go to ao3 for longer A/Ns and more timely updates ahaha. Thank you guys as always for all of the love T^T it still amazes me how far this story's come.

God bless!