Disclaimer: This is belongs to a gorilla, not me. I just made it less funny.
Notes: I apologize profusely for how profoundly unfunny this fic is. No, really. Sorry.

Keep Body and Soul Together

As bad as the war had been, the nothing that came afterward was worse. He had expected the bakufu to make some sort of token effort to round up the last of the joui shishi and make an example of them to further cement their alliance with the Amanto, but the sad truth was that so few had survived that last desperate battle that it wasn't worth the effort to track them down and take their heads.

Gintoki found himself wandering, free of all ties but unable to find his way in a world that had grown foreign to him over the long course of the war. The heavy burden was gone from his shoulders, but the lack of it was an almost physical ache in itself, one that seemed to drain all his strength away. Around him, Japan began to pull itself together and settle, a long collective sigh seeming to escape from the country as a whole. They'd been defeated, and this time, it seemed, they were more than willing to accept a little less freedom for a little more prosperity and the general safety the Amanto could bring.

In this post-war landscape, Gintoki was no longer a demon, but simply a ghost. And like a ghost, he wandered. Old habits died hard and even after all the years between, he still knew how to scavenge like a pro. There were enough unsecured buildings still scattered around that most nights, he even managed to have a roof over his head. It wouldn't have been hard to find a job-he was young and strong, and there was a definite need for raw labor now that rebuilding efforts were in full swing-but a job meant caring about something, even if it was just a paycheck, and he'd had all the caring wrung out of him.

He was far from the only person who had not moved on. With the end of the war, and the sword-ban in place, there were many displaced samurai floating through the landscape, some of them trying to move on, some of them wallowed in their own rage, and some of them rendered numb by the enormity of their sudden insignificance. It was easy to be lost, to do nothing, to simply wait for something, anything, to change. Sometimes he found himself wondering what Shouyou-sensei would have advised him to do, and in the end he could only assume their gentle teacher would have wept for the fate of the beloved students who had chosen to wage a war in his memory. Less often, he found himself thinking of his comrades, of the ideals they had shared, and the things that, separately, drove them forward.

Sakamoto had wanted a new future for Japan, but he was a man in tune with the times, and the means of the country's revitalization were a fluid thing. When the war became a lost cause he moved on, seeing opportunity among the stars, far from blood and sorrow and his comrades' graves.

Takasugi was fueled by grief and rage in amounts vast and undiminished by even the worst of defeats. If the man was still alive, Gintoki had no doubt he would find some way to continue seeking his revenge. It was Katsura who had grappled with loyalty and ideals, trying to justify an ever-losing battle by framing it in the terms of bushido and the responsibility that rested on the shoulders of all men of valor, pushing ever forward even as he sent the men who respected him most to their graves.

Gintoki had joined for revenge but found himself continuing or the sake of protecting those he cared about. With the war over, that burden had evaporated in the worst way possible. Sakamoto was gone to space, Takasugi had vanished, and the last time he'd seen Katsura, the idealist had been bleeding out all over a make-shift cot in an even more make-shift field hospital. Gintoki had chosen not to stay and see which side of the veil his friend ultimately wound up on. He couldn't stand and mourn at another grave; he just didn't have it in him.

It wasn't such a bad thing, living hand-to-mouth. He liked the quiet of it. He'd had too much of war, too much of violence and death and now he wanted to live like this-aimlessly floating without a thing to tie him down. His drifting had lead him to a town just beyond Edo's sprawl, where the technological explosion that had gripped the city had yet to take hold. It was a good place for a young man who didn't want to feel the weight of everything he'd already lost in so short a life.

The stream might have had a name, but he hadn't bothered to ask it, and the villagers who were around didn't seem too keen on approaching him. Given his current state, he hardly blamed him. He probably looked like a wild man to them, dirty, clothing in disrepair. It was fine, he didn't want the company anyway. The important thing was that the stream held fish, and where there were fish, there was lunch. Lacking both a pole and a net, he was knee deep in the stream, trying to remember how on earth they'd ever managed to catch them with their bare hands as children. He was just beginning to contemplate looking for something to fashion into a spear when a shadow crossed over the water.

"That's no way to catch fish."

His head jerked up at the familiar voice, squinting against the sun to see a black-clad figure silhouetted in the glare, and he stood there staring, his fishing attempts all but forgotten.

"If you're hungry, I think I have enough for both of us."

It really wasn't much of a home, more of a renovated shack than anything else, but Zura's place was the cleanest, tidiest place he had been in in months, so he wasn't about to complain, especially when his old schoolmate was plying him with rice and the fish he'd cooked over the fire. Zura, predictably, hadn't touched any of it himself, preferring to simply watch Gintoki eat as he sipped calmly at a cup of tea.

The walk from the stream to Katsura's place had been a quiet, tense thing, as if neither of them had quite been sure what to say to each other. That had been broken when, immediately upon arrival, Katsura had ordered him to go around back and wash off with water from the well while he prepared their lunch. Normally, Gintoki would have made some scathing remark about Zura doing a remarkable impression of his mother, but his heart wasn't in it, and he knew he could do with a washing. By the time he had finished, his dirty yukata had vanished somewhere, replaced with a clean one, and Katsura was calling him from inside to tell him lunch was ready.

His comrade had seriously missed his calling in life as a housewife.

Which brought them back to the present, where he was staring across the hearth, bowl and chopsticks in hand, wondering what on earth he was supposed to say. When was the last time they'd had a conversation about anything other than the war and how they were inevitably going to lose it? He couldn't remember. Katsura, it seemed, was content to sit there looking serene with his tea, but the need to say something was overwhelming, if only to get the awkwardness over with. "I thought you were dead," he finally mumbled around a mouthful of rice. He'd assumed-maybe even hoped-that it was true. It seemed impossible that Katsura could live beyond the crushing end to all they'd been striving for.

"We still have some loyal followers. They took me in and saw to my recovery."

"Hn." He reached for some fish with his chopsticks, eying the other man critically. "You still look like shit, Zura." He could see how thin his friend had gotten, the pale, drawn appearance that spoke of months of inactivity. It was a poor way to return the other man's hospitality, but he'd never been very good at tact. He liked to think that extreme bluntness was part of his charm, regardless of how untrue that was likely to be.

Where he'd expected a sharp rebuke, he received only a quiet laugh. "Have you looked at yourself lately? The village children told me there was an ogre in the stream. I think you would have been better off using it to bathe than to fish in." He shook his head slightly. "I would ask how you've been getting on, but it's pretty obvious from the look of you."

Gintoki hated that tone. It was the Katsura Kotaro mother-henning voice, and it meant they were going to spend the next few minutes squabbling at each other like they were still children. "I'm fine," he retorted. "I don't need stupid wigs like you fussing over me."

Katsura arched an eyebrow slightly. "No? What is it you've been doing with yourself all this time?" The look he got in return seemed to be all the answer Katsura needed. "You can't keep on like this. You're filthy and half-starved. It's no way to live. We're working on rebuilding the rebellion, you should-"

"Don't be an idiot," he interrupted. "We lost the war, Zura."

The long-haired man flinched, but that was the only sign that betrayed his composure. "I realize that. It doesn't mean we have to abandon our goals. We can still-"

"The only thing you'll do is send more people to their deaths."

To his credit, Katsura didn't slap him. Instead, he simply set the teacup down and stood, expression utterly unreadable as he walked to the doorway. "Enjoy the rest of your lunch, Gintoki."

The house was small, but Katsura had managed to disappear into it, somehow. Or maybe it was simply that he didn't really want to search that hard for him. Either way, the sane, logical thing to do at that point would have been to leave. Katsura was a comrade, and old friend, but the gulf that had yawned wide between them was all too apparent. There was really no reason to linger. It wasn't as if he'd ever had much use for manners.

But Zura still had his clothes. They were patched and dingy, and what he'd been lent was of far better quality than what had been taken, but they were his, and he stubbornly told himself that he wasn't going to leave without them.

It was just an excuse. He knew it, but it was a fiction he could hide behind. So instead of leaving, he walked out onto the porch and laid down in its meager shade, allowing the quiet hum of summer to lull him to sleep.

When he woke, it was hours later, his shoulder and neck sore from the hard porch floor and the sun just beginning to sink behind the trees. He sat up and stretched, scrubbing a hand through his unruly hair as he looked around. All was silent in the house, but the room behind him had been cleared of dishes at some point, and just inside the sliding door, there was a tattered but clean yukata, folded with precision. Even at a glance, he could see that tears had been mended, and all he could do was sigh and shake his head. It really was ridiculous.

"You can keep what you have on, if you'd like." The words were bereft of any emotion, as was Katsura's face as he stepped from the shadow of the hallway and crossed the tatami with quiet footsteps, a cloth-wrapped bundle in his hands.

"Zura..."

"I told you, it's Katsura." He sat down on the porch, just far enough away to make the distance an awkward one. "It's fine. I can't convince you to stay, but I can at least see you on your way properly." He set the bundle down on the stretch of wood between them and folded his hands in his lap. "Enough to keep you until you can learn to fish properly, anyway."

It was a joke he couldn't laugh at, and a kindness that felt like a burden.

"It's not a bribe," Katsura continued, eyes fixed somewhere in the distance. "I still want you to join us, but that has nothing to do with this." He turned, just slightly, and from Gintoki's vantage point became nothing but a silhouette against the setting sun. For an instant it was an achingly familiar sight, one anchored in years long gone, and the agonizing sting of grief.

He forced the image away, replacing the memory of wheat-pale hair with the raven sheen of reality, and let out a long sigh. "He wouldn't have wanted this."

Katsura made a minute movement that wasn't quite a flinch, and nodded once. "I know. But it's too late for that now."

And that was that, wasn't it? Gintoki knew that determined as he was to leave everything behind, Katsura was determined to cling to it, to hold on to the scraps of the past, no matter how useless they became. Nothing was likely to change that. They were set on their respective courses, whose headings they could not-would not-alter.

End