!!NOTES BEFORE YOU READ!!:

- Shieikan is the dojo (and house) Kondou had in Edo. Okita and Hijikata trained there until they moved to Kyoto to start the Miburoshi/Shinsengumi.
- Hijiakta was one helluva womanizer IRL.
- Genpuku = age of accountability/adulthood/coming-of-age/etc for a samurai
- Historically, hiragana = feminine. Kanji = Chinese characters.
- I think historically Hijikata forced Yamanami to commit seppuku, but in PMK Yamanami attempts murder on Hijikata, and Okita kills Yamanami.
- The line “his breath fills his lungs” is modified from “Breathe” by Maria McKee.
- Modified from the Taiga Drama “Shinsengumi!”
- Tama songs/dances (20)
- Okita saying he has no sympathy (38)


- Thanks for reading!





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Sixty-Eight Seasons



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1. Edo

---

The boy’s hair is tied up into a bobbing ponytail, and his eyes are bright, reflecting the early summer sun. His fair skin stands out like white paper, impatient for skillful strokes of ink, blood, water, tears.

This is Hijikata Toshizou's first impression of Okita Soujirou, and it presses into Hijikata’s mind, which is still soft, unhardened by battle and sword. It creates a mirror image of the boy, which isn't hard to do, for he is already and always will be Okita's opposite.

"I don't want to," the boy begins to complain with small thin lips set in a childish scowl. They are both left out of the dojo, where faint, exciting clashes and shouts can be heard.

"You don't want to what?" Hijikata asks, indulgent though condescending, and the boy's frown wrinkles some more as he hefts a bamboo sword that is, not amazingly, taller than he is.

The boy explains, "I don't want to wait, I want to learn now," and then he giggles like he will never realize that swordsmanship is the art of highly stylized murder.

"Moron," the first of many times, "you're too young to hold a blade." Hijikata cocks his head to one side, feeling his ponytail of newly-grown hair swing. He isn't exactly used to its weight and pull yet - the offsetting gravity of pretending to be a samurai - and his clothes still stink of medicine and dirt, bitter and wretchedly common, just like he is.

"I'm nine," the boy informs him with a huff, and as if that is sufficient, "teach me something." He looks at the shinai in his hands and then at Hijikata expectantly, almost imperiously.

Hijikata makes a guttural snort that he usually reserves for overly clingy young women, the kind who accost him in the marketplace asking why he never spoke to them again after a few days of blissful lovemaking, or stupid old men, the kind who complain that his cough medicine doesn't work when they should know that all men will die one day.

"You must've been born a samurai," Hijikata grinds out. The look in the child's eyes is fearless if brazenly innocent, and they demand something out of him in the same way cocky samurai tend to demand that people move out of their way.

"My parents are dead," the boy declares with a hint of childish sorrow, the kind that rain and rainbows can mostly wash away, on his face that dances in the middle between feminine and boyish.

"But my sister tells me that I'm a samurai, and I have to act like it - so that’s why she sent me here to train, and I can't cry when I think about my parents." And he indeed does not cry, though the haze in his eyes reflects the clouds in the half-gray half-blue sky, about as far from himself as his mind has flown.

"Will you cry when I kick your skinny samurai-child ass?" Hijikata inquires in his roughest street language, just for the shock factor. His smile is more amused than arrogant, but the boy doesn't quite perceive that, given how annoyed and hurt he suddenly looks. The teasing curve of giggling reverses around his mouth, and everything but color melts out of his large eyes.

The child had no response for Hijikata's wit, and he simply turns to flee - utterly unbefitting a samurai, Hijikata grinds with his teeth.

The boy's mind must echo Hijikata's sentiments, for he stops running and turns around with a glaring grace that no nine-year-old should possess. For what will be the first of surprisingly few times, he charges with the shinai in a not very trained stance - and one simple stroke, not very trained, from Hijikata sends the child tumbling into the ground.

The boy doesn't cry out; Hijikata feels no satisfaction whatsoever. At the end of the day, when, like a connoisseur, he smells the medicine that Kondou makes for the unconscious child - during a long and furiously rambling scold at Hijikata - Hijikata sulks by way of criticizing Kondou on his mix of herbs.

"Fine, you make it," Kondou snaps and pushes over the teacup, whereupon Hijikata realizes that he's been had.

He's still a medicine peddler, and the child is still a samurai-child.



---



The next day Hijikata is surprised at an addition to the Shieikan Dojo's far too early morning lineup, and the samurai-child grins a smile as he bows deeply to everyone - except Hijikata, who gets a petulant pout that mocks him.

That day he learns Soujirou's name, and along with Kondou, he becomes one of the few who will ever remember anyone named "Soujirou". The other students and boarders feel that the small boy, in an inexplicable fashion, has always been above them, and they call him "Okita-san" even though he's too young and doesn't really deserve that sort of respect. Hijikata understands the men because he feels it too, but he refuses to acknowledge it.

But, sometimes, when Kondou and Hijikata talk late at night like the childhood best friends they used to be, Kondou whispers that it's frightening how good Soujirou is and will become. If Kondou makes a single mistake, Soujirou will become the kind of sword that cuts the hands of its user when it shatters.

"A good sword needs a good master to wield it," Kondou whispers to the darkness, his hands clasped into each other.

"Or a sheath to contain it," Hijikata points out from his place in the shadows, knees tucked into his chest, and tries not to imagine what blood would look like, slick and thick on white skin.

Maybe Soujirou isn't strong enough yet to make a killing stroke, but he is cursed with a genius for its principles, and does not know that yet. He only knows that he can do anything Kondou or Hijikata puts to him. For now, it's all Soujirou wants and needs, and they can control that, and him.



---



One gorgeous day in spring, the kind that writers waste paper and ink over, Soujirou wheedles a match out of Toshi. Maybe it is the cherry blossoms dancing in the air, carrying a pink tinge that matches perfectly with the high color in the boy's cheeks. There is something very pretty about the whole scene, and Hijikata fancies himself poet enough not to reject it.

Soujirou grins and attempts to tucks bits of his hair behind his ears - those strands that are too short to tie up, and so end up dangling around his white face in a thoroughly distracting manner. Hijikata is distracted indeed, and wastes a few precious seconds of time and concentration wondering where Soujirou learned to frame his face in delicate violet silk.

The match will end with Hijikata eating dirt, or so they both think. That's how their last ten matches have ended, and this is one of few ways in which the impish boy is consistent. But today, Soujirou's moves are overconfident and sloppy, so his shinai goes flying when he is thrown back. His feet skim the ground and they kick forward once - and he crashes on his back in an undignified cloud of dust.

Hijikata's eyes go wide. "Soujirou!" he shouts as he tosses his weapon aside and runs for the boy, half expecting the imp to declare it a joke by way of kicking Hijikata once he is in striking range. No such thing happens - Soujirou gets up, trying to catch his breath. He looks at Hijikata with some semblance of shame and half-runs half-limps off, one hand clutching at his side.

Soujirou is slow and stiff in practice that day, and Hijikata can see that it hurts him to move fast. Bruises accumulate like splatters of indigo ink all over the boy's white skin.

When Kondou finishes scolding the "slacking" pupil after class, Hijikata finds Soujirou and says, "You could have just told him what happened."

Soujirou looks fearful, his eyes' color deeper than the bruises on his hands, arms and legs. "I didn't want Kondou-san to worry."

Hijikata grunts and snorts. He thinks that Soujirou is not concerned about Kondou worrying about him. Rather, he is humiliated and unwilling to show weakness. Hijikata understands, but wonders whether Soujirou does.

"Moron," the taller man scolds, but in the middle of it, Hijikata also honestly admits that it is such a good feeling to send the dojo's prodigy flying, and even better to see the boy wallowing in defeat.

A few moments later, inexplicable guilt replaces rejoicing - maybe it's the way that the boy is obviously depressed, and not merely sulking, or that Hijikata doesn't entirely delight in others' misery. Soujirou is nowhere to be found all day, and at dinner, while the boarders wonder aloud why Soujirou was falling apart in training, Hijikata alternately smirks and scowls. When he looks up, Kondou is giving him strange looks.

The next day, to please the boy - even though he doesn't entirely know why he wants to do this - Hijikata hands over some candy that yet another adoring female had insultingly given him. What kind of man would he be to eat women's and children's sweets?

Obviously Soujirou has no such concerns, for his eyes and lips both widen at the pretty colors. After one cautious lick, he shoves three candies in his mouth at once and grins at Hijikata like he has just been given the world.

The boy bounces through the house for the next hour - Hijikata doesn't follow him, but he can hear the laughter and shouts and footsteps - and when Soujirou feels the hyperactivity ebbing, he seeks out Hijikata and begs for more sugar. After fifteen minutes Hijikata gives in and hands him the rest of the bag, watches Soujirou run around at a ridiculous speed, and ponders how he will explain it to Kondou.



---



Kondou feels compelled to educate Soujirou, if only because there's no sense in allowing Soujirou to focus only on swordsmanship. It's far too obvious already that it will consume his life, and Kondou doesn't like that. A blade that has no give will only snap when stressed, he reasons to Hijikata, who agrees.

So Kondou decides that every day Yamanami, a relative newcomer and by far the most educated disciple under the roof, will teach Soujirou how to touch brush to ink to paper, showing him the angles that one uses to tease the lines along, the proper points in the anatomy of a kanji to apply pressure, almost like acupuncture.

Soujirou balks, and only acquiesces upon a promise of not having to learn literary classics. The next time he faces Yamanami in the dojo, he lets his shinai do the complaining, and heavily bruised arms make it rather difficult to teach calligraphy to a smug Soujirou.

Hijikata of course knows calligraphy already, and one afternoon, after eavesdropping on Yamanami reading some haiku to Soujirou - who admits that he doesn't understand poetry one whit - he buys a blank book wherein he tries to compose poems as good as his handwriting. One day, feeling inadequate and therefore needing someone for a favorable comparison, he wanders upon Soujirou, who is practicing by himself and biting his lips into such shreds that it's a miracle there isn't any red mixed with black ink.

"Your handwriting isn't bad," Hijikata snorts - somehow his rare compliment doesn't sit well, and his next words reveal why - "but that kanji is wrong. I thought Yamanami-san would teach you better than that." His tone makes it unclear whether he blames Soujirou or Yamanami for the mistake.

Soujirou looks up and doesn't even blush at the display of his ignorance, or just sloppiness, emblazoned on paper. "Well, he tried to, anyway."

Hijikata glances at the pretty hiragana swirled perfectly. "So you're only good at women's writing," he surmises with a slight smirk, as if he is being particularly clever, or observant.

"Maybe," Soujirou responds in a curious tone formed by pursing his lips in a pout - rather like a woman's, indeed. Then Soujirou glances at his inkstained hands, and both see that the thick smattering of calluses that splay across both palms and all ten fingers are just as powder-pale as the rest of his soft, white skin.

Soujirou learns thirty kanji perfectly in a week, twice the quota, and when he writes them, the strokes are brilliantly beautiful as if he were cutting a katana through the paper.

Kondou looks admiring and speculates that Soujirou is as skilled with the brush as he is with his sword. Hijikata just rolls his eyes, and grins knowingly when Soujirou complains that since he did double-duty last week, he shouldn't have to go near the book-room this week.

Yamanami gives in to Soujirou, who laughs and smiles and thanks the learned man profusely. Hijikata just shakes his head at the antics, but when he's alone that evening and stuck on the third line of a haiku, he wonders what he might teach Soujirou that Yamanami doesn't know.

It's strange how jealously Hijikata guards the bits he knows of Soujirou that he is reasonably sure that nobody else does: what sort of candy he adores, how fussy he can be about the white ribbon that holds up his hair, that he likes pigs for some godforsaken reason. He is slowly learning to read the boy's different smiles and chuckles, even some of the teasing pouts and rare sulks, and he will never admit to the cadres of women over the years that he is grateful.



---



Kondou is the fourth master of the dojo and of Tennen Rishin Ryuu, not Hijikata, even though it becomes obvious that Hijikata will surpass him one day. Still, Kondou is the far better sensei, and he trains Soujirou by himself every day while Hijikata leads the rest of the dojo. After every lesson, even though no one can really tell just how Soujirou's stance and footwork and the speed of his sword might have changed, everyone can count the increasing number of bruises on Soujirou's opponents.

Soujirou spars with Toshi sometimes, and it seems that he never really learns much in those times, except how to irritate Toshi better. But it's obvious that he enjoys himself much more then.

Kondou gets the bows, the obedient "yes, sensei" and "no, sensei".

Toshi gets confused smiles when Soujirou reads him haiku out of books stolen from Yamanami, mischievous grins in the morning when Kondou sends Soujirou to wake the slugabed Toshi, and sometimes he imagines that he gets a backwards glance and a soft, wondering smile, framed in violet and lingering over a thin shoulder.

The boy has begun to ask to tag along when Hijikata goes places. After two weeks of buying candy and explaining every other colorful or shiny thing that falls into the boy's line of sight, Hijikata begins to grumble. Kondou only laughs and points out that being cooped up all day in the dojo isn't healthy for mind or body.

Hijikata is lifting sake to his lips when Kondou says, "If he likes you that much, he should be your servant," in an amused tone.

Hijikata chokes on the sake, three implications and five retorts competing for his lips.

Kondou continues. "His sister can't pay for him anymore. I don't want him to be a household servant; you know what Mother is like. And I don't need another attendant."

"What am I going to do with him?" Kondou hears but ignores the emphasis, since he supposes that Toshi will eventually figure out what Kondou sees first.

"So call him a 'page', have him bring you tea and fetch books," Kondou suggests. "I want you train him regularly. I've taught him almost everything I know. See what you can add." Kondou's smile grows prideful. "When he turns thirteen, I'm going to let him teach in Tama. One day he'll be head instructor of Shieikan."

Hijikata knows what comes after that. Okita Soujirou will become heir to the dojo and the style. What fills his mind isn't sheer amazement that in four years Soujirou has almost mastered a style, but annoyance that Hijikata has not managed to do the same in more time.

The next day, at the first training session with his new "page", Hijikata spends it insulting the boy's technique. When Hijikata’s finishes, the boy is trembling, clutching his shinai for dear life, though it obviously was no protection against the onslaught.

In the next instant, Soujirou drops the sword and starts to cry. He's mumbling things that Hijikata can't discern, and Hijikata doesn't want to be responsible for hearing them, so he stomps away, leaving a weeping boy behind. Soujirou is prominently missing from dinner, when he would have brought Hijikata's food and tea and sake, also for the first time.

Later Kondou congratulates him sarcastically, saying that nobody has seen Soujirou cry since his parents died when he was five, what exactly did Toshi do or say to the child?

"I ... got mad at him," Hijikata glosses.

Kondou has never seen Toshi this uncertain in his life. "What for?" He isn't surprised, just interested.

Hijikata explains nothing, and doesn't know how to, anyway. For a brief moment of insanity, he considers saying, "it wasn't him; it was me."

The next day, Hijikata gets up around when he guesses the boy does - when morning breaks. To his annoyance, the sky is gray with cold and a hint of rain. He finds Soujirou dressed in thin grayish night clothes, through which he can almost see white skin. The boy is sitting on the roof and holding out his small hands, trying to coax either the birds or the sunbeams to approach him.

Hijikata sits down next to the much shorter boy and fingers the poor fabric for a few seconds. "You'll catch a chill like that," he mutters as he lets go. The heavy haori around his own kimono feels a bit clammy and hot in the morning moisture, and he toys with the idea of lending it.

Soujirou ignores the concern and continues what he was doing before, though Hijikata notes that his lips are pouting slightly.

"About yesterday," Hijikata begins. He doesn't want to, but he will - he always finishes what he starts. "I went overboard. Let's spar today and actually teach you something." He tries to convince himself that it's an adequate apology.

The boy breaks into a merry peal of laughter. "You are sorry," he exclaims in a teasing tone, as if he knew all along.

Hijikata grunts and lets Soujirou interpret it as he will. "I'm serious about teaching you." He realizes that the boy cannot understand that there is something terrible in those words, and in his head, Kondou's warnings about forging swords are echoing.

Soujirou turns serious, too, and nods, with only swordsmanship on his mind. "I want to learn from you."

"Why?" Hijikata can't help but ask.

Soujirou, sitting so close, twiddles his small fingers along the bottom of Hijikata's haori, and Hijikata thinks he can guess at the answer.

The heavy look doesn't last on Soujirou's face, and is replaced by a smile and a chuckle. Small round drops appear on his cheeks, and Hijikata thinks that the boy is crying again - and his chest feels so strange in that small slice of thought - but he realizes that it's the sky, not Soujirou, dropping tears.

The next thing they know, a steady rain is drumming on the tiles around them. Soujirou makes a tiny sound of panic and cold as the rain quickly soaks through his ridiculously thin clothes, and he clutches them around him as he shivers.

"Moron!" Hijikata complains as he whips off his haori and wraps it around the child, whose eyes fly open wide, violet and surprised and dangerously happy.

Soujirou's mouth dangles open, as full of questions as his eyes. He squirms and tries to catch Hijikata's eyes, but the older man is already scrambling to get off the roof.

Soujirou chooses to stay in the rain, and wears the haori around him until he is certain that Hijikata is in the house.

Later that day Soujirou is trying to apologize and offers to buy a new haori, since the silk fabric has been ruined by rain and mud. Hijikata refuses, and the boy offers to give it back. Hijikata says that Soujirou can keep it, the boy whispers "Hijikata-san?", and this time Hijikata catches the vulnerable-wide eyes and all their inquiries.



---



Soujirou's first time is one sunny afternoon when he finishes teaching in Tama, and runs into Hijikata who is in the village for some reason he refuses to explain.

To the various young men and women of Tama, Okita-sensei is sweet, slender and smiling like a girl. His hair doesn't help - especially since he still keeps some of it short and layered around his delicate white face. Hijikata senses trouble every time that glances are thrown at the slender boy, but upon questioning, Soujirou always tells Hijikata that he doesn't care for the whispers of the boys, the stares that girls throw at him, or discussions on how easily kimono can spread apart.

Hijikata decides to believe Soujirou, who does not lie, which is why he tells the boy to go straight home while Hijikata minds his own business.

Soujirou is insulted at this, and complains dramatically about how Hijikata-san doesn't trust him to stay out of trouble, how he is mean and no fun at all. Then he moves on to guessing all manner of improbable things that Hijikata is planning to do and doesn't want Soujirou to observe. When the boy suggests that he's going to practice singing and dancing in the Tama folk tradition, Hijikata howls, "GO AWAY!" and Soujirou does so with an injured sniff.

Soujirou is unpleasantly surprised and very confused when he finds a very naked Hijikata straddling a partially naked woman, in a very well hidden shack - mayhap not well hidden enough.

For an innocent boy, Soujirou has a lot of courage to stand there as if waiting for an explanation. Hijikata groans for multiple reasons as he pulls out and throws his kimono on, and all the while the woman, no doubt amused, teases Soujirou and ignores the fuming Hijikata. Soujirou stands and blinks a lot, and when Hijikata finally hauls him out of the place by the back of his obi, he still seems in awe of whatever the hell he saw.

They run for Edo, and while on the road, Hijikata is torn among berating the boy for disobedience, explaining the facts of life so that he doesn't carry wild and highly alarming tales to the rest of the dojo, and some combination thereof.

In the end the boy decides for him by accusing with a shout, "Were you hurting her?"

"NO, YOU MORON!" Hijikata begins an insufficient description of sexual intercourse, and every time that Soujirou's innocent eyes widen in disbelief, Hijikata ends the statement with "and if you don't believe me, try it!" By the end of the short lecture Soujirou is thoroughly confused while Hijikata is regretting most of the day, and pondering how to get together with that pretty woman again.

They're mostly unprepared when a bandit with a katana breaks out of the roadside, with the woman - this time dressed - smirking and standing besides some bushes. By the time Hijikata realizes what's going on and notices that the bandit is one instant away from killing him, he also remembers that he isn't carrying any swords.

Hijikata is horrifically proud of himself when Soujirou flicks an arm and a katana in a fluid silver half-circle, and the stroke slices through the man whose eyes cannot quite believe that a boy of thirteen has just cut him down.

The woman is forgotten.

Hijikata ends up holding back Soujirou's hair as he throws up by the roadside. He thinks that the boy’s hair has never felt so soft and fragile before, but maybe it's because he sees the boy as breakable for the first time.

When there's nothing left in Soujirou, and he has trouble standing, Hijikata helps him some distance down the road, where they sit in the sweet-smelling grass and Hijikata rubs his shoulders as the boy stares out at nothing and retches some more. They don't make it home for many hours later than usual, and that night, facing a furious Kondou and equally agitated Yamanami, neither of them has anything to say.

"No one is going to find out," Kondou stresses, and they all nod.

"Okita-kun," Yamanami whispers. Soujirou puts a hand to his mouth as if ill again, and Hijikata's hand strays to the child's back to steady him.

Soujirou hasn't spoken since the afternoon, and he only brings out one phrase that night, when they are alone.

"Hijikata-san, have you ... ever killed anyone?"

"No."

The blunt word, without explanation or elaboration, is exactly what Soujirou needs; he doesn't like convoluted philosophy, never asks for the meaning of life or anything twisty like that. He does not ask, Hijikata realizes with a sick feeling, whether or not he was right to make the cut - he knows already that there is no answer. Hijikata knows that Soujirou accepts all things because asking questions does not change anything.

Hijikata thinks that he should never teach something he doesn't know. But kenjutsu is murder, and Soujirou should have known that before he drew his sword.

It has been too late for hours, and Hijikata doesn't know when he will catch up to his student.

When everyone else finally gets to bed, Soujirou is lying still in Hijikata's futon, and Hijikata has clasped his sun-darkened hands over Soujirou's pale ones because it's the only thing that the boy will allow to touch him, and because it's the only way that he will sleep.

The next day Soujirou smiles again, the ink in his eyes diluted. All his opponents in the dojo that day walk away without a single bruise, and Hijikata feels his heart dread the day that the stains on skin will come back.



---



In celebration of Soujirou's fifteenth birthday and genpuku, Kondou gets over, or maybe just represses, his misgivings by way of giving Soujirou an unspeakably precious ancestral katana, the Kikuichimonji Norimune.

Yamanami helps Soujirou choose a new name for his coming-of-age, and it's nearly cheating to choose a similar sound for totally different kanji. It's a week before the boy answers to "Souji" on the first try, and two more before he thinks of himself as "Souji". It takes Hijikata much longer to think of the boy that way; sometimes he sits in the dojo, watching Souji go through endless kata that nobody assigned, and he wonders where Soujirou's ghost is hiding.

Hijikata buys Souji a fine new kimono of blue raw silk, because that day Kondou and Yamanami are the ones pushing him down the path. Hijikata, for once, desperately wants to do something simple and kind for the boy. The kimono turns out to be too large, but Souji just giggles and says he'll wear it when he's taller.

In celebration of Souji's sixteenth birthday, Hijikata takes him, without Kondou's knowledge, to an upscale teahouse full of geisha.

Hijikata thinks and knows that there's something he's trying to prove to the both of them, but can't and won't put a finger on it.

Souji is mostly curious and apprehensive, and when he asks how he looks before heading out, it's with regards to what Hijikata thinks, rather than what the girls will perceive.

"Please, call me Otsuyu," a jewel-eyed beauty murmurs at Souji in chaste but alluring tones. Her hair is done up with blue silk in loops complex enough to rival her obi. Souji, wearing a plain gray kimono and grayer hakama, looks at her with fear that no sword or enemy has ever induced. Then Otsuyu says, "Okita-sama ..."

Hijikata all but chases after Souji, who escapes with ridiculous speed from the teahouse after throwing a smattering of coins on the table - much more than Otsuyu would bill, but Souji seems past caring. Hijikata is about to ask Souji what the hell is wrong with him, when he realizes that the boy is paler than ever, and his hands are trembling.

After three hours and many cups of tea at a roadside stand, Souji refuses to explain his behavior. Hijikata wonders if the boy didn't understand the lesson the first time, and was perhaps too traumatized by the afterwards. So he begins, "Souji, if you don't know what to do with a woman -"

Souji laughs to interrupt, and Hijikata realizes he might have missed the mark. When Souji speaks, it's confirmed. "From all your other women, Hijikata, I think I've learned that -" and his tone is disappointed, something never directed at Hijikata before.

"They were never my women, you should know that," Hijikata also interrupts, and wondering if the words are too late. And halfheartedly, he adds, "... moron."

Souji's hands are twisted within each other, white in the afternoon sun. His eyes are gray-lavender, the color pale as if by faded by too much light, and Hijikata decides that it's a mistake to make the boy think too hard.

Souji hesitates and, as if in a side-thought, he sniffs his hands and breathes in the delicate perfume of Otsuyu. Hijikata smells it too, and the fragrance becomes stronger as Souji approaches him, looks at him with wonder, and says, "Really?"

Hijikata remembers that Souji has always trusted him, his words, his teachings - as he made clear two years ago when he brought out his blade. Souji will trust him, and Hijikata has never been able to lie to Souji the way he can lie to any woman.

"Ah-h." Hijikata can't bring himself to speak any more, mostly because he doesn't know what to say. The women were all diversions, Hijikata always made that clear - and maybe Souji suspects he is one, too.

Hijikata thinks about the things he tried to prove in Souji and himself with Otsuyu.

Souji's eyes are softer than Hijikata has ever seen them, and they have a shimmer like Souji's hair. Then Hijikata realizes that Souji never needed proof of anything; Souji knows Hijikata and knows where they stand. Souji only asks to make sure that Hijikata knows the answer, too.

Then Souji's pale hands unfurl like trembling ribbons, reaching and yearning towards Hijikata.

Hijikata takes two tiny steps forward, they touch hands and lines of sight but nothing else, and they stand there for a long time while the sun sets.

There exist a million questions and cautions that they could and perhaps ought be asking and making - like all the reasons that they shouldn't do this. But Souji has never cared to speak or think on complicated things anyway, and Toshi knows that too much internal reflection leads only to madness.

They acknowledge everything that is and will ever be wrong with them in the way that their locked gazes are off and not quite perfect, and it satisfies them.



---



When he is eighteen and head instructor, Souji finally draws someone else's blood in the dojo. Hijikata doesn't know what to expect, and is ready to step forward if Souji should react violently. He lowers his eyes when Souji looks at the red with mostly indifference and fast-fading regret.

Afterwards, he and Souji disappear together into their now shared room. When the door closes, Souji's hesitant touches and wistful smiles are tinted with remorse - not that it stops them from embracing in the privacy of a bedroom, or training endlessly in the dojo.

In the winter, Hijikata takes Souji to an inn for a week.

One morning Hijikata clutches his thin yukata around him and looks out at a landscape so perfect that he might be dreaming it - snow and plums and bamboo, shards of green and orbs of violet on white. Then he gazes at the brighter shade of violet splaying over the backside of a young man in his futon.

Souji makes a beautiful reflection when he looks back at Toshi with eyes soft like petals, gives a smile patient like the curves of bamboo bent under snow.

Hijikata doesn't know what to say, so he pulls out his book of poetry and searches for inspiration in the scenery. But his mind will not cooperate, and the blossoms only drive him to meditate on silken hair and intent gazes. Plums bloom best in the snow, after all, he marvels as he stares at the perfect white of Souji's robe.

Souji watches him turn away to write, and asks, "Hijikata-san, another haiku?"

Hijikata smiles when he puts away ink and book and says, "I'll show it to you later."

He shifts onto the futon and looks at Souji, whose slender body is a mixture of languid and drowsy, though his eyes are achingly awake. There is silence, heavy like air before the fall of a sword. In that emptiness, Hijikata thinks he can hear plum blossoms touching snow as he reaches out and strokes Souji's hair, watches the strands swirl on fabric, listens for the soft sandy rasp of silk on silk.

"Yes," Souji whispers in answer to the questions spilling over from Toshi's eyes. Those eyes are too dark for glints of light to play off their orbs and make patterns that can be memorized and studied. But Souji doesn't need that to read his lover; he has Toshi, all of him.

Once more, Toshi teaches Souji and shapes Souji’s body into something new, makes Souji into something else, but discovers that Souji in bed is somewhat like Souji on the streets and in the dojo – he is still made of the same carelessly sweet smiles, callused but precise hands, something vague and perilous swaddled in layers of silk and skin.

After one week, they have each other memorized like kata.

They become lines and circles of predetermined motion, stabs and thrusts executed to perfection such that they know exactly what the other will do and expect it, too, and the anticipation makes the pleasure that much greater. They are still swordsmen, and even while making love, their limbs spar and they fight, measuring and testing one another.



---

2. Kyoto

---



They follow Kondou's idealism into the chaos of Kyoto for selfish reasons: Hijikata because he wants to make a name for himself, and Souji because he won't part from Toshi's side.

Souji's second time is much easier than the first. Afterwards he stands, staring at nothing, while feeling the terrible weight of blue sky and golden sunlight, the colors shrill and bright and dazzling, all choking him. He thinks that death nudges everything around him into focus, makes the world more vibrant, and forces him to feel disturbingly more alive.

Kondou apologizes many times for sending Souji out to the slaughter, but he and everyone else does it anyways, because there exists no better killer.

"I don't want Souji to die in Kyoto," Kondou mourns one night in Mibu, thinking of the bright looks in passing that Souji always offers him, and he wonders if those smiles will fade after years pass in Kyoto. Kondou has long stopped searching Souji's entire face, hidden as it is behind hair and blood and a smile.

"You think I do?" Hijikata snaps back, and wonders how Souji likes his new title, Shinsengumi. It's much prettier than anything Hijikata would have called them - murders, assassins, demons, and the like.

Kondou only has one request of Hijikata: to keep Souji human, if he can. Any piece of his soul, however small, he begs. It doesn't help that Hijikata composed the rules that guide Souji's sword. Hijikata promises to try anyway, because Souji understands him and why they all do the things they do, more perfectly than Hijikata ever hoped or wished.

Early in the morning, when Souji comes back half-awakened from another bad dream on the streets of Kyoto, his sword and face are streaked with carnage both fresh and dried, and Hijikata marvels at how much it looks like Souji is weeping blood.

Hijikata watches that blood cling to Souji and imagines that the young man really is a sword, even though he sees nothing sharp in his body's flowing lines - the gentle drape of his kimono - the rounded corners of his smile. Soujirou the child and Souji the demon play hide-and-seek all day, and Hijikata supposes that the shadow-thin slice of Okita that exists, wedged somewhere between the boy and the killer, might be an edge after all.



---



Even after swimming through a slaughter, Souji still dons off-white kimono in various shades of drizzly gray, the only person in the Shinsengumi to opt for such gentle tones. He stands out, stark as a white flower impaled on a tangle of black thorns.

Hijikata doesn't exactly know why, but he guesses.

He suspects that Souji wears white to forget that he is stained, in a desperate attempt to affirm that the blood slides easily off his sword, his clothes, his skin. Or maybe paleness is ghostly and sheer like Souji himself, whose katana, footwork, hair, and ready smile always seem to float above the world.

Hijikata himself wears dark shades, only thinking of what is easiest to clean. His blade tastes blood days and nights without end, and catches up to Souji's eagerly. It's as if he wants to be as stained as Souji is, to share the pain of being on the other side of the katana, if only so that he can understand Souji better.

Kondou trained Souji in the techniques of slaughter much more than Hijikata ever did, and yet Hijikata's harsh marks are the ones to remain, not Kondou's overly gentle ones. Hijikata can almost feel his own arms dealing deathblows when Souji rips through yet another set of men.

It is a surreal feeling to watch Souji whirl about in a dance of impossible strokes and deceptively severe, sparse footwork, always somehow just enough to finish the job, unless Souji feels extravagant. Although Souji never indulges himself, he might sometimes lose control.

Then Souji paints lavish, rusty pictures against walls and stones and ground. Afterwards, Hijikata's desperate words, pleas for control and more control will play in Souji's mind, clinging to the curves of his thoughts, dripping off tangents and into whorls like blood all over his sword and his hands. And Hijikata will wash that blood from Souji and bundle him up with robes and blankets, remembering what Hijikata said long ago about swords and sheaths.



---



Souji, wielding a shinai, nearly kills an innocent new recruit in training one day. He's only stopped because Hijikata grabs his arms, spoils his aim, and let the man crash to the floor instead of being pounded into it. Souji, uncontrollable, rams the bamboo sword into the floor where it misses and shatters.

While the other men scramble to take the battered man to a doctor, Hijikata grabs Souji by his shoulders, shakes him gently, trying to shove some light back into narrowed eyes that are dull as frozen ink. And he tries not to think about breaking his promise to Kondou.

Blood from the man stains and soaks into the splintered wood that Souji still clutches in his white hands. Hijikata wrenches the broken shinai free and watches Souji's eyes melt, then he breathes again and holds the younger man close, and asks Souji never to leave him.

When his eyes fade again into clear violet, Souji manages in the way of an answer, “Not so long as you wait for me.”



---



Most couples have fights, squabbles, things of that sort. But when everyday life consists of death, dying, and efforts to protect an entire tumultuous nation, somehow, commonplace points of contention become less significant.

Maybe that's part of why they have lasted, Hijikata thinks, until he remembers that they have nothing to contend anyway.

He had once thought Souji might blame him for anything, everything, but Souji is a sword after all, and does what his wielder demands must be done.

In public Hijikata hardens his heart and says there's no help for anything they must do, and in public Souji nods obediently, understanding, eyes downcast. In private they sit in the bath and slowly, methodically wash the bloodstains from each other, and their swords, discarded in a dark corner of their shared room, are equally sullied. Hijikata doesn't know if he should apologize, and neither does Souji.

Hijikata thinks of sorrow and death, counting off all the reasons that the Shinsengumi must carry the burden.

Souji only allows himself the luxury of melancholy when he is by himself, or with Hijikata, which amounts to the same thing. Sometimes when Souji sits on the porch holding Saizou, eyes filled with sky and face like a child’s old before his time, Hijikata asks him what he is thinking.

Usually Souji answers with "kata" or "candy" or "Hijikata-san". Some rare days he will be honest and say "what I must do tonight", then Hijikata will always nod, and Souji will always know that Hijikata understands.

One day Souji murmurs with a smile, "I'm thinking that I'm happy to be with you."

Hijikata remembers his last woman, Souji’s first kill, and how little time was between the two. Then he wonders if, back then, Souji should have associated sex with death. When they enter their room, close the shoji, and slide into the futon together is when Hijikata thinks about it the most.



---



In the damp and chill of winter, Souji complains of a cold, and begins to cough.

Three months later, when sakura begins to bloom and fall at the same time, Hijikata still listens to Souji coughing softly into a sleeve, a dry and crackling sound that he has memorized and tries to anticipate. He tells Souji not to strain himself, not to run around too much, and to actually sleep once in a while. Being Shinsengumi, Souji ignores all that.

One morning Hijikata wakes up to the sound of disgusting wet coughs - Souji wrenching mucus out of his chest. Hijikata abandons his futon and clutches at a trembling Souji, who has a fever but insists that he is fine. Hijikata worries and speculates but forces himself to dismiss his imaginings as morbid fancies, and Souji placates Hijikata by drinking obscene amounts of tea and staying in bed for a few quiet days.

Two weeks later, Souji wakes gasping in the middle of the night. Hijikata bolts upright as well, heart pounding when he sees that Souji's face, pale as moonlight, looks sick and wan and ominous.

They find that Souji is sweating profusely in the lukewarm spring night. Souji then remembers that he was dreaming of black blood, and the pain in his chest from the murky dream is more real and horrible now that he is awake. His sleeping robe is so damp that he will have to change out of it, and his hair sticks to his cold forehead in thick strings.

"Your sheets," Hijikata murmurs, clutching at soaked blankets, and understanding breaks through all the vague symptoms in his mind. A lump sits in the bottom of his ribcage, nudging his own lungs. When Souji clutches at his chest and coughs for an entire minute, Hijikata finds that his breath, too, chokes in his swelling throat.

Souji changes into a dry robe, lies down again and falls asleep with Hijikata's arms around him in an embrace that feels tighter than usual.

In the far too early morning Souji's coughing is harsh and deep. In the middle of the day Souji comes back from practicing, ashen gi and charcoal hakama stained with sweat, and Hijikata listens madly for scratches and catches in Souji's tired breathing. As soon as Souji enters their room Hijikata stomps to the doorway, slams the shoji shut to trap them both, and tucks a surprised Souji into the bedsheets for an impromptu round of desperate lovemaking.

Souji can sense that his lover is being too gentle with his hands and too quiet when he comes, so that nagging thorn of worry spoils what Hijikata wants to be their last time before Souji knows.

"Hijikata-san, something seems wrong. Have I displeased you today?" Souji teases in a drawl, hands teasing and streaking Hijikata's face the way tears would do.

"No!" Hijikata almost screams, his teeth grinding into each other. He reaches out for Souji but stops short, horribly ashamed that he is afraid of the shadows that Souji's hair casts across his white chest, which already seems hollow.

Souji looks at Hijikata with eyes as questioning as that childish day in the rain, and his mouth opens in a half-question. He waits patiently, breathing in the aftertaste of their passion.

Hijikata cannot trust himself to speak or to touch, so he sulks instead. Souji goes off to dinner with a quiet face, his smile noticeably pale, and leaves the table early, claiming that he is tired.

The next morning Souji coughs until he retches up his breakfast, and gives in with wounded pride when Hijikata offers to make him some medicinal tea. Hijikata asks Souji to find something in one of his books on herbs and sickness, choosing a convenient place where the writer will mention consumption, and Souji can read it for himself.

Souji comes back with eyes that look washed out, and has forgotten what Hijikata wanted him to look up in the first place.

They don't talk about it then, but the next time that Souji is supposed to go on patrol, Hijikata pulls him down into the futon instead. There's no lovemaking this time, but they hold each other under the blankets and Hijikata thinks that Souji is so warm and so still-alive.

"Maybe we're wrong," Souji whispers with hope that night as he snuggles into Hijikata. "There's no blood yet."

"Yet," Hijikata echoes, and wishes Souji doesn’t already know.



---



Souji's twenty-first birthday consists of toasting to the existence of the Shinsengumi. Hijikata finds it highly disturbing that Souji is willing to identify the landmarks of his life with those of the group.

Souji entertains himself with Hijikata's new page - another recruit he almost kills - and tries to forget himself by playing with the child he never was.

When Tetsu asks Okita-san why a person picks up a katana and throws away humanity, Souji only smiles in a vague way and says it’s different for everyone, leaving Tetsu to judge whether he spoke the truth or merely evaded the question. But when Souji thinks that Tetsu is not listening, he murmurs Hijikata-san with a questioning lilt and a wistful face, and thinks on the haori in the rain.

Days later, Hijikata claims that a fifteen-year-old is too young to choose to pick up a sword and to kill. Then Souji, holding a bag of candy, reminds Hijikata that Soujirou was nine years old once, and implies to Hijikata that he regrets Souji.

Hijikata freezes in his steps as Souji, giving him time and space to think, walks on home and disappears into the fading evening light. Hijikata has always forgone words in favor of actions, and so for the next few days the page isn't allowed anywhere near their quarters.

Souji does not ask again; he buries that thought with the shreds of himself that die along with anything else under his sword. As for Hijikata, he always finishes what he starts, and they have both long passed the point of no return. All they can do is go to each other, looking for what was lost earlier in the evenings, hoping to find something still dear in a meshwork of touches and words and tears.



---



When the Shinsengumi are about to run off for Ikeda-ya, there is a hum of excitement in the hot, unmoving air, as if everyone predicts that this will be one hell of a night and wonders what it'll be like to make history.

Hijikata knows that if they fight together, they'd only distract each other during the raid. So they separate, and Hijikata is very far away when Souji's lungs betray him, leaving the first of many red stains, thick and opaque, on Souji's hands.

Somehow in the aftermath Hijikata makes it to the back tatami room and drops to his knees, moves Souji to his lap and resists the urge to scream for everyone else to leave the room so that he can cry without humiliation. In front of the soldiers, Souji avoids Hijikata's question and claims that the trickles playing on the lines of his mouth are not all his blood. Hijikata knows what it really means, and shuts his eyes.

Souji coughs as he counts off the people he has killed. Then he tells Hijikata that Tetsu will be strong, will not be like Souji, and Hijikata wants to slap some sense into the younger man, except that he would rather commit seppuku than lay a rough finger on Souji just now.

The next day, when Souji breathes easily again, he admits that it was a moment of weakness and self-pity and too much thinking, then promises not to do so again. Hijikata can’t imagine any broken promises out of Souji, and he knows that Souji does not lie, so he smiles and holds Souji’s hands and counts Souji’s breaths all day, in and out.

The only reason that Hijikata doesn't let Souji out of bed for a week is so they can pretend that resting will heal the sickness that has begun to rise to Souji's lips.

Souji's cough goes away after Ikeda-ya for a while, his lungs finding a temporary reprieve for which Souji is quietly, and Hijikata is pathetically grateful.

Still, two months later Hijikata brings out a mossy mess, pungent and looking like a pile of soot and ashes, remnants of cremation, to any untrained eye. He thinks that making medicine is the ultimate admission of weakness and inevitability, because simply by attempting to prevent death, one acknowledges it.

Hijikata smells the powder carefully, and when the bitterness is just right, he takes the kettle of hot water that an annoying page had set down not very long ago. Together they watch the water turn murky gray, swirling with black bits of undissolved herbs, floating to the surface like scum.

If Hijikata hands over the medicine now, it will mean defeat - it would mean that yes, they acquiesce to the tiny spots, pinpricks of a failed attempt at choking, wet and angry and smeared in Souji's palm that morning.

Before Hijikata says anything, Souji reaches out, grasps the cup in his hands, and drinks it in one smooth swallow without a pause for breath, a defiant gesture that ends in triumph as he finishes the medicine.

Souji sets the cup down, empty, and both see that there is a small smear, a resigned shade of red on the rim.

At that, Souji gives up. He coughs lightly, like dried flowers rustling, into his hands and whispers, "Hijikata-san, when am I going to die?"

Souji's voice is brittle and delicate like rice-paper, and Hijikata imagines strokes of ink, words falling through the room and making soft stains when they land.



---



One day Hijikata speaks of Yamanami's betrayal, which can only end in death, and asks Souji for a reaction.

"I don't have sympathy for those who waste their lives," Souji murmurs in a lost voice, more bitter than Hijikata has ever seen him, and the sharpness is as honed as Souji is.

Souji comes in from killing in the afternoons and early mornings, and Hijikata wonders who of those fallen to Souji’s blade receives sympathy.

The night after the day that Souji kills Yamanami for trying to kill Hijikata, Hijikata asks, "Souji, what do you dream about?" He speculates that maybe Souji sees Yamanami's lessons from long ago, imagines unfamiliar hands sketching out the haiku that Hijikata tries to invent, and maybe the poems are written in blood.

"You," Souji responds.

"Do you regret anything?" Hijikata asks.

"Never you," Souji answers.

The next day, as if trying to prove to himself and Hijikata that he is still very much alive, Souji spars with Hijikata in front of the entire Shinsengumi. Afterwards, when the oohs and ahhs have faded and they are alone in their room, Hijikata puts arms around Souji, whose eyes widen, unmistakable in their desire that has been too long without fulfillment and release.

"We can't," Souji whispers in protest. Hijikata knows Souji doesn't mean that he is too weak, or doesn't want it, anything like that. Hijikata will be gentle, and they've both missed it.

"Are you frightened?" Hijikata asks softly as his large hands reach around Souji's backside, and Souji stands there without a single motion, simply letting Hijikata undo the knot in his sash. Of course Souji is not scared, but Hijikata needs to show his concern somehow.

Souji only shakes his head and frowns a little, lips trembling in anticipation that he cannot hide, and says, "Hijikata-san, what if you -"

Hijikata shuts up Souji with a kiss full on the mouth, parts the gray kimono with his fingers while he parts Souji's lips with his tongue. As they gently tumble into the futon, Hijikata thinks that after he has killed so much of Souji, it would only be fair if Souji could and did kill him.



---



There will be, Hijikata hopes, time. He is no doctor, but sometimes there is more truth in his former trade than in the doctor's. After all, it's considered cruel for a physician to bluntly speak of death. But both doctor and patient will tell the pharmacist, sometimes unwittingly, by the choice of medicine.

Hijikata makes tea and medicine for Souji, who never asks what is in it.

Souji coughs through some of the days, most of the nights, and Hijikata waits.

He waits for winters to make Souji’s coughing worse, springs to recover Souji’s spirits and breath, summers and stifling air to make Souji gasp at nights, autumns for Souji to choke on the dust of dying leaves. He waits for fevers to come and subside, aches and pains to flare up and melt away, coughing fits to start and stop, but Hijikata tries not to wait for the illness.

Usually there are only a few red spots or silk-fragile ribbons mingled within whatever Souji coughs up. On the rare occasions that the blood truly flows, it's a dramatic affair, as if for the express purpose of reminding them that Souji is fading with every breath he manages to draw in, let out.

Those incidents are the most memorable, even though they both know that it's the time in-between that they should be memorizing.

One day while Hijikata sorts through old letters from Edo that run along an almost forgotten timeline, Souji clutches Hijikata as he coughs, eyes turning glassy when his chest heaves forward. Hijikata jerks out of his thoughts - his left hand rubs Souji's back while his right swiftly reaches up to catch the blood that flies. When Souji suddenly quiets, Hijikata realizes that Souji is choking on his own blood.

"Breathe," Hijikata commands, whispers desperately as one hand gently taps Souji's backside, and the other dangles awkward and helpless and bloody, rather like Souji.

Souji mouths something silently as he tries to obey.

"I have your blood on my hands," Hijikata says in a sad, wondering voice, watching drops tumble through the air and splatter on the gray of Souji's kimono.

Souji takes a minute to recover his breath, but when he does, he shakes his head softly with a slight smile, and lays a white hand on Hijikata's bloody palm.

Hijikata suddenly realizes that Souji's heart beats his blood and his breath fills Souji's lungs, which is why suddenly he, too, cannot breathe.



---



Souji celebrates his twenty-fourth birthday by way of fainting dead away in the midst of battle.

Several months afterwards, Kondou is one of the other few in the Shinsengumi who never ask why Okita-san has stopped going on patrols. When Kondou asks why he won’t tell anyone the truth, he says that he doesn’t want to make his soldiers worry, or decrease their morale.

But there is humiliation and maddening frustration, too, that Hijikata knows Souji refuses to let anybody else see. It hurts the both of them to know it, and neither can imagine the pain if everyone else saw, too, and Souji might wilt under the pity.

Souji breathes heavily for weeks afterwards, no longer bothering to smile at those who pass him.

One morning, he sits up in bed and murmurs that he doesn't feel well, that he would like to lie down for a while longer. Hijikata sees the flush on Souji's thin cheeks and knows how much it cost to admit that, and wonders how many days were leading up to this admission.

When the rest of the Shinsengumi are out on patrols and rampages, leaving the temple bare, Hijikata watches from his writing desk as Souji tugs on practice clothes, and notices that the hakama is looser than ever before around Souji's waist.

After he closes all the doors of the dojo, Souji swings into the first kata that was ever taught him.

Even as he stands in the Tennen Rishin Ryuu stance, his breath resists him the same way that his shinai resists swinging through the air in a way it never has, not even when he was nine.

He steps and his calluses smack the floor; he moves quickly. His arms are taut with reflex and training, and they snap into a swing, the kind that sends blood fluttering in splashes.

And the empty air laughs at him, for the swing will not and can never cut again. There is no sword that could ever counter his, but Souji's blade stops anyway, because he can't move it any further.

It's so heavy, is all he can allow himself to think, and the clatter of brittle bamboo slamming onto scarred wood is thicker than the sound his body will make the next time he faints.

The shinai has become too heavy, and he will not pick it up again, just as he doesn't pick himself off the floor.

Ten minutes after Souji realizes he is conscious again - whenever that is - is when Hijikata finds him huddled on his left side and tucked into himself. There are tears and bloodstains on Souji's face, on the floor around him. When Hijikata squints, he can see that Souji has dabbled his fingers in the globs like a child's into paints, smearing the mess into whimsical streaks.

Defeat is not an option for the Shinsengumi, and Hijikata would order any other failure to slit his belly on the spot - but he knows that Souji doesn't need to be told to die.



---



Souji coughs, looks apologetically at Hijikata as he puts a hand to his mouth and staggers from their room so that Hijikata doesn't have to listen.

Hijikata sees Souji growing thinner than the wisps that he blows out in frustrated tangles. One more addiction, he thinks, squinting after Souji over the pipe.

Hijikata's eyes are stinging, as if he's not used to the smoke. Watery eyes follow the wafts that lick his tongue and brush his lips, curl teasingly and lovingly around his face for a brief touch. Then the tendrils escape upward, swirling and dimming until they leave behind nothing except an odor of desire, a taste of need.

It's not the smoke, and he knows it.

However, the smoke does make Souji's coughing markedly worse, and it drives Souji out of his bed, where he mostly needs to stay these days. So Hijikata eventually throws out the pipe, and becomes sullen and twitchy for a few weeks while he goes into and out of withdrawal.

After the cravings are over, Hijikata feels that he desires Souji more than ever.

After the latest round of futile fighting, Hijikata returns bloody and his eyes are angry, pained, dark with regret. Souji enters the bath with him, washes the blood from Hijikata in silence. Afterwards, as Souji is slowly combing through Hijikata's hair, Hijikata forces out the names of Shinsengumi who were killed, died later from wounds, died from seppuku that Hijikata ordered. And Souji hears traces of tears that they never will know that Hijikata possesses.

“I feel useless,” Souji murmurs as he finishes cleaning up Hijikata, and they both remember how much longer these baths took back when Souji, too, was useful in the alleyways.

"For a Shinsengumi, you're actually quite accomplished," Hijikata murmurs. "You'll die in bed. How many of us will be able to do that?"

It's the cruelest thing he has ever said to Souji, but Souji understands, and laughs until he chokes a mouthful of blood into Hijikata's lap.



---



Hijikata cuts down a man one day, and next to that man is his wife.

Hijikata will remember that she has stark black hair and wears a white kimono sewn with plums, and has a long blue shawl wrapped all around. He stands back from the kill and lets her cradle her dying lover, he watches her cry the way that he wants to sometimes, and he hears him whisper to her: why are you still with me? Why do you have to wait and watch me die?

He will not remember what happens to the woman.

When Hijikata returns to his room, Souji is sweet and fragile, swathed in slumber. Souji wakes up to see Hijikata at his side, which has been true for the last few years; it's as if Hijikata promised sometime ago that he would always be there when Souji wakes up.

"Good morning," Hijikata greets, "would you like some tea?"

Souji nods slowly and tests his lungs with a few gentle, deep breaths. They fail, and he chokes. Hijikata thinks that Kyoto was a mistake, and the Shinsengumi was a mistake, and when he sees Souji wrapped in a blanket and shaking with coughs, he finds it hard not to regret.

When the fit is finished - for now - Souji looks up and smiles a bit at Hijikata and says he would indeed like some tea. The tea comes with a red-headed page, who looks at Souji with palpable pity before sliding the door shut.

"You never ask," Hijikata says softly and with a smile, not clarifying the question or touching his lover, for his hands and tongue are all tangled up. The unfinished question sounds terrible, he realizes as soon as it leaves his lips, for it implies that he needs a reason.

But he also knows that Souji comprehends his smile; Souji knows that Hijikata is happy because there is no doubt, no space in-between the two of them, only clasped hands and touching skin and mingling hair. Hijikata sits by Souji's side, watching sunlight spill over Souji's skin, which is so white that Hijikata's hands must work themselves free, reach out and caress Souji.

Souji drinks the tea and makes soft, appreciative sounds of both the drink and Hijikata's hands. He smiles at Hijikata over the teacup and says in quiet tones, the only time Hijikata can remember Souji sounding regretful, "Asking a question whose answer I already know is wasting breath. Asking a question whose answer I do not know ends in things I don't want to hear."

He leaves Hijikata to discern where this question falls. When Hijikata clutches him dearly and closely, Souji smiles and asks because he knows Hijikata wants him to, "Why do you stay with me, Hijikata-san?"

For an answer, Hijikata brushes Souji's hair exactly the way Souji likes it and ties it high on his head with a white ribbon. And he wonders what the woman did after her love died - did she die too, or did she live on, in a manner of speaking?

Souji and Toshi don’t think that they are perfect, and neither of them cares to wonder or worry about fate and destiny and being meant to be. But Toshi understands all the fragments and facets of Souji, and Souji reads all the hidden pages bound up within Toshi, so perhaps the absolute ease of being them is what makes anything else impossible.



---

3. Elsewhere

---



On Souji's twenty-fifth birthday, Hijikata coddles the frail thing his lover had become. Souji has good days and bad days, and that day, Souji's skin seems so transparent and smooth that Toshi imagines a glass bauble wrapped in delicate silk.

When winter comes, they sit outside of the empty dojo, dressed in thick winter kimono - Hijikata's is dark brown wool, and Souji's is pale blue silk, carrying traces of warmth lost many years ago. The robe fits well, Hijikata realizes, and he thinks that at least one thing he did for Souji has been validated.

They decide that Souji should leave for a hospital come the spring, because they finally think that Souji needs to rest - and Hijikata will not allow either of them to think on any possible cruel play of words.

When Souji asks if he is counting, Hijikata says no, lying to him for the first and last time. Souji understands him anyway, so he merely snuggles into the folds of Hijikata's clothes to warm his cold skin, and the falsehood is forgiven along with everything else.

It is snowing, and Hijikata has a large, thick blanket that he drapes around the both of them, overlapping it around the white angles and hollow shadows of the thin figure nestled against his chest. Souji's face tilts back, content and lovely, though there is still a flush to his cheeks. His eyes are clear, fragile, precarious like unshed tears before they fall.

"I don't want to," Souji murmurs.

"Don't want to what?" Hijikata asks, if only to make sure Souji knows that Hijikata hears.

"To leave," Souji whispers, and Hijikata hears the sound of snow falling. "To wait ... "

Whiteness rains down all around them in soft whispers, with cold smiles. Gentle fingers caress Souji's cheeks, which approach the color and chill of snow all too closely. Souji, too, sighs and smiles as he turns on his side, wraps thin arms around Hijikata, and breathes soft and quiet as the winter sky.

Hijikata thinks about spring.



---



Four months later, cherry blossoms fall, layering like snow outside a hospital room window.

Souji sits up in his bed with a bloodstained smile, whispering a breathy "see you later" instead of "goodbye" to Toshi.

That night Toshi holds Souji's hands, sings soft and low about cherry trees in the spring sky. When Souji wakes to the gentle sunlight of late morning the next day, he opens his eyes to find himself alone. He thinks on waking up with Toshi next to him, he cries in the loneliness of the empty room and his bare hands, and everything feels cold despite the spring sun.

Souji passes the days somehow, stares out the window, counts the petals that fall, and wonders how long one flower can wait for another.

One month later, rain pours from the sky, and somewhere, much too far from Edo, Hijikata finally lets his blood and tears touch the ground, mostly because there's no Souji to catch the drops before they fall.

Another month later Souji, pale as if faded by sunlight and sunken into his white sheets, is still lying in wait for Toshi, because he can no longer rise.

Some days later Souji coughs, sharp and burning-hot like a knife into flesh. He gurgles mouthfuls of something sick and sticky into his trembling hands, feels it dripping in-between his thin fingers and overflowing the edges of his palms. He is too far gone to see, and so he imagines that his hands and bedsheets might resemble something like blood on snow.



---



Souji's twenty-sixth year never arrives.

Hijikata counts anyway.

He thinks that he has become a voice without an echo, wandering aimlessly with no one to catch and return him to where he needs to be.

Hijikata sulks and lies in the white coldness that winter, feeling the frozen embrace and wonders if Souji, lingering in wait somewhere in the silent snow and dead leaves and rotting flowers, might feel him somehow.

Months later, something unexpected explodes in his back, and the screams and wails of the battleground fade pleasantly around him. He doesn't bother to ask what has just happened or what is going to happen, because Souji never questioned, and neither will he.

Blood leaves him quickly and he grows cold and numb, and he remembers lying in the snow alone.

He thinks that maybe there will be a figure in white somewhere beyond, because Souji murmurs a see you later, never a goodbye, and then Hijikata remembers a red promise in a white face.



---