What makes history (Hijikata x OC)

Kaoru

18th day of 13th month

Days passed. Cold, with grey hanging skies that promised more snow, but didn't deliver. A morose atmosphere where we all waited for Kondō to return. Toshizō was on edge, much more than usual, and it didn't help my mood. Yet, I still helped him sort out his paperwork. By now, he had accepted to delegate menial tasks, mainly logistics. My strict sense of organisation equalled to his, so I was able to handle some of the Shinsengumi's needs on my own.

I was working in his room, freezing my ass beside the brazier, when he returned from whatever errand he'd had to run. A string of curses caused me to lift my head. What had the Baka trio done again? Or was it Okita?

My eyes found his, and the piercing glare he sent me caused me to freeze wih the brush midair. Uh Oh. Eventually, he sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose in that exasperated expression I adored. Then, fast as a snake, he reached for my hair and took the pin away...

The pin.

Oh... Damn. It wasn't a hair pin; I'd stolen his brush, the other day, because I left in a hurry and had to secure my hair. And failed to return it.

I'm in trouble.

"Damnit, Kitsu !", he growled, shaking the brush in front of my eyes. I had to refrain the urge to snatch it back; cat's instincts. "I had to ask Yukimura to get me a new one and she was ready to perform seppuku because the first one was lost."

I reddened shamefully. Poor Chizuru, I wasn't making her life easier with my habit to pick up stuff and put it down anywhere. Anywhere meaning I'd once found my hairbrush in the fridge. My mind was always so busy that I so often failed at remembering what I had done with the things I held.

Long-term memory: badass. Short term memory: catastrophic.

"Gomen nasai," I stuttered with a bow. Hair tumbled down my shoulders, free of its securing brush. Hijikata knelt on the other side of his desk, and his expression softened.

"You need to stop stealing things like a cat," he told me, his eyes crinkling in repressed amusement. "You need to stop calling me Kitsuneko," I retorted with a tentative grin.

Toshizō snorted; I poured a cup of warm tea for him, and handed him the recipient. "How is it that I can't stay mad at you?" he asked. I frowned; I remembered vividly pleading him to stop looking at me with anger. Those days weren't so far away...

"You've been mad at me for a lifetime."

Toshizō didn't respond as he shifted on his knees, his gaze distant. Sometimes, it felt like he was hiding things from me, things about why he'd been so angry with me in the first place. The next moment, that peculiar light left his eyes and he reached for a loose strand. A hum passed his lips while he absently played with a stray lock.

"You know," he eventually said absently. "Unbound hair was fashionable in the Heian period. You really are a woman of the past..."

I waited, feeling him tug upon a curl. His eyes were intense, but his mind far away.

"Today, it is saved for husbands..."

A slight blush crept up my cheek; there was such a big fuss around hair keeping here. Something about the Shinto teaching that the body was inherited from our ancestors and must be taken care of. Tousled hair, bad hygiene and beards were considered filthy, or the apanage of ghosts. Thusly, combs and hair adornments had a sacred place in their world. I wondered idly what Kondō would have thought of King Arthur's rowdy knights ... or Aragorn as a ranger.

Regarding the husband thing, though... I certainly knew that in the Edo period, going gallivanting around the compound with my hair down would be akin to me walking out naked. So I nodded.